Rabbi Marries Gay Men and Lesbian Women

See what you think of this idea. From the Vancouverite:

JERUSALEM – An Israeli rabbi of the modern national religious stream has matched and married 11 observant Jewish gay men to observant Jewish lesbian women and, with surprising successes, plans twith colleagues to institutionalise the experimental venture through a well-known religious matchmaking organisation.

All the matches were arranged by Rabbi Areleh Harel of the West Bank settlement, Shilo near Nablus who told Haaretz daily that he has another 30 gays and 20 lesbians seeking matches.

“They don’t deny their sexual identity, but want to establish a home, whether to become parents or for social recognition. A family isn’t just sex and love. It’s an instrumental partnership, and not just a technical one,” Harel told the paper.

Secular homosexuals see gay marriage as the solution; religious homosexuals are often unwilling to violate the halakhic (religious law) prohibition on homosexual sex, and seek other solutions. Israeli rabbi match-marries religious gay-lesbian partnerships

The good thing here is that there is no pretense that anyone has "changed," or even that there was anything wrong with anyone in the first place. They are what they are, and this approach avoids ostracizing them, it avoids weaving a web of delusion (for instance, that they are "ex-gays" and no longer homosexual), and it does not ask people to pretend to be something they are not.

Granted, there will be some dissatisfaction, but given the constraints of the culture this compromise may best meet the needs of all involved. Do you think?

Gay-lesbian marriages have long been practiced among the ultra-Orthodox, but the current initiative results from a growing acknowledgment of homosexuality, prompted in part by four organisations for religious homosexuals.

“Most of the couples agree not to have relationships with members of their own sex, but if there are ‘lapses’ once every few years, they don’t see this as a betrayal,” Harel said. “Generally, it’s between them and their Creator.”

Each couple decides how its marriage should organised. Harel deals mainly with the moral and ethical issues of the relationship. But he is worried by the fate of children of failed experimental gay-lesbian marriages.

The married couples receive close support from a team of psychologists, marriage counselors and social workers. They also consult frequently for moral and legal advice with reputed rabbinic authorities of the modern orthodox establishment like Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein of the Har Etzion Yeshiva outside Jerusalem and Rabbi Menachem Burstein, who heads the Puah Institute which specialises in halakhic solutions to fertility problems.

I will point out one important thing about this arrangement. That is, this Jewish group is not demanding that everybody else should do what they're doing. They do not insist, for instance, that evangelical Christians follow these traditions, they do not seem to be judging the secular community or trying to get them to change their expectation of marrying someone they might be sexually compatible with. While they themselves do not accept same-sex marriages, they do not seem to be insisting that no one else should allow them. A religious community has every right to establish their own norms and practices, and no right to impose those norms and practices on others.