The California Supreme Court will hear legal arguments on March 5 about Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage that was approved in November by 52% of the state’s voters. The point of law at issue is whether or not Proposition 8 constitutes a legal revision to the state constitution.
I am not a legal expert. But for me, and for the community I serve, this case is about much more than a legal abstraction.
On May 15 the California Supreme Court ruled that marriage was a fundamental right that must be extended to gay men and lesbians. In the months that followed, up until Election Day, some 18,000 gay couples married legally in the state of California.
As a rabbi, I officiated at more than 60 weddings for gay men and lesbians — including one of the first three such marriages performed in California following the court’s ruling. My wife and I — we were married with a ketubah and a chuppah more than 15 years ago — finally gained legal recognition for our relationship.
The couples at whose weddings I officiated tell me that there is a difference in the way their relationships are regarded by themselves and by others. Even if they had been a committed couple for many years, they woke up the day after their legal wedding and saw their rings and their paperwork. They finally felt that they were fully a family, fully next of kin. As Elliot, one of the grooms, said to me: “We have been in a committed relationship for nine years, but after my wedding day I knew and Peter knew we were joined together fully and completely and no one could separate us.”
I also see changes in my own life. Even though my wife and I have been together for almost two decades, people now treat us differently. They understand our relationship; they no longer ask if Karen is my business partner or my sister. Even strangers understand when I say, “This is my wife.” We now feel a sense of full equality with our neighbors.
Our 15-year-old son, who was the best man at our recent wedding, feels the bonds of his family in a different and deeper way. He is proud that his parents are legally married and feels that his family is more legitimate in his own eyes and in the eyes of his friends and schoolmates. “I am so happy that people finally see us as the same,” he said.
But with the passage of Proposition 8, the ability of gay men and lesbians to legally marry in California ceased. If Proposition 8 is upheld, gay and lesbian couples who have not yet married will not know the joy, dignity and protections that marriage can bring to them and their families. It is apartheid of love.
For those of us who married during the short window that opened last year, the legal status of our marriages now hangs in the balance. We wait anxiously for a ruling as to whether our marriages will be retroactively annulled. Our lives and our families are in the hands of the seven justices of the California Supreme Court.
One of the reasons we have courts is to protect members of minority groups from the tyranny of the majority. In California, a majority has taken away the civil rights of a minority. I pray that the justices will do what is just and protect our constitution by invalidating this vote that took away my rights and those of my congregants.
Rabbi Denise L. Eger is president of the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis and founding rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, Calif.
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Looks like the reform rabbis have really become delusional.
I read in another local Jewish paper, that a rabbi (female), of a nearby congregation, noted for it's gay crowd, admonished Prop 8 for having the audacity to deny same sex marriages, a Jewish thing. (Over 85% of Jewish voters voted No on Prop 8, a real shonda).
What have we Jews come to I ask? Gays ARE allowed civil unions, with legal benefits. What they don't have are tax priviledges afforded by the IRC (Internal Revenue Code). Thus, they cannot file as married, filing jointly, or married, filing separate.
In essence, I believe, this is their real goal, not so-called equal rights under the law. They represent 2% of the population, not 25 or 45%, as they want us to believe.
Does anyone really not believe that there is something morally contemptable and undesireable to same sex marriages?
Danny and Manny, Judy and Trudy, just doesn't do it.
Think of it this way: it's Sunday (or Saturday) and Danny and Manny are in bed together..just waking up. Their two children, one male, the other female, both under 5 or 6, want to jump into bed with their parents a typical family routine. They do..to observe the usual foundling and kissing..just good old fashioned love between two married adults.
But something is terribly wrong..(I won't describe).
This is what this argument is all about, NOT whether Prop 8 changed the State's Constitution.
There is only one law in this entire perversion, and that is G-ds law, the Torah spells out specificially what is acceptable. This law is not subject to revision or interpretation as promoted by these awful rabbis.
Same sex marriages are NOT acceptable under any circumstance It's also bad for our species...even monkeys know that.
The rabbis that perform these marriages should be defrocked, the way Catholics are defrocked..and X communicated. Maybe we Jews need a similar procedure.
Our people are confused enough without this. Assimilation and intermarriage are destroying us. We don't need to add to our disappearance by disobeying G-d.
In this case, the Mormons have it right. No wonder they are increasing, while we are disappearing.
Hitler and Arafat are laughing in their graves.
I can hardly figure out where to start with this pile of nonsense-- I will leave aside, as the author does, the fact that neither Jewish law nor Jewish tradition would countenance the notion of a gay "wedding."
As to the courts and their purpose, yes-- one of those purposes is to protect members of minority groups-- when they are denied rights secured by the Constitution (not when they are denied imaginary rights made up by activists). It is not the courts' job to amend the Constitution, nor is it their job to tell the people whether or not they are permitted to amend their own Constitution.
Tragically, the gay movement in California (and elsewhere) has used the courts to ram a political agenda down the throats of an unwilling population. Gay marriage is not a right secured by California's Constitution; the court that ruled that it was did so dishonestly for political resons. Now, the Constitution which that court so shamelessly abused to further this agenda has been amended; and this is as it should be, for the people have taken their laws back out of the hands of the judges.
So, don't come crying to me, "rabbi." The real issue at stake here is not gay marriage-- in a democracy, that is a matter for the people to decide. When the people wouldn't decide your way, you and your allies tried to take the question out of their hands, and used a left-wing activist court to suit your undemocratic ends. In other words, it is you who violated people's civil rights by undermining their very political process. The people showed that democracy is not dead, however, and undid the court's political act with a political act of their own. Now, you "pray" that the democratic process be broken once again to suit your ends, and attempt to victimize your fellow citizens by playing your own 'victim card.' Shame on you.
You want gay marriage? Fine; obtain it honestly. Persuade your fellow voters-- not a few lawyers in black robes.
I know some Jews DO support same sects marriage, especially Satmar, as long as you marry within the same sect, you are ok and a credit to your race
www.kingsolomon.com www.tonyshlo.com
What ever happened to the separation of church and state? We don't need another Iran religious state running our government. And it seems in most of America its citizens do not believe in full civil rights for all Americans except those that at kept at the heel of many religious leaders. Reformed Jews at least believe in full rights for all Americans, but I do not know of any Christian religious group that does. To say the USA practices fully civil rights to all Americans is a oxymoron because gays and Lesbians are citizens too and anyone denying them their civil rights does not believe in America or civil rights. Good for the rabbi in California who performed those marriages as that rabbi understands what full civil rights means.
David,
Where to begin? For starters, you are clearly very bigoted against gay people, and not someone to be admired. As to your saying that gays should obtain the right to marry "honestly" by getting voters to agree, does that mean that African-Americans got the right to vote and to use public facilities reserved for whites "dishonestly" in the 1950s and 1960s, since they did so through Congress and the Supreme Court, rather than by putting the issue to a vote in the South?
Your approach would leave any minority group completely at the mercy of the majority's prejudices. This is not a satisfactory way to go. And while we're at it, I suggest you rethink your infantile bigotry against gays.
Dav Lev,
It is not acceptable to say gays can't marry on the basis that God and the Torah forbid it. This reasoning imposes a particular set of religious beliefs on others. There is no proof that God even exists. Whether or not there is a God and whether the Torah is the law of God is a matter of personal belief, not fact. Even if the Torah prohibits something, that is no basis for prohibiting it in secular law. To do so denies people with other beliefs their religious freedom. Freedom of religion is what distinguishes America from a country like Saudi Arabia.
I would just like to say thank you to the 85% of Jewish Voters who voted no on Prop H8.
Thank you
When gays and lesbians marry they strengthen family values in our society! What we need are more stable family units, not fewer. More stable, loving families in which children can be brought up, not fewer.
Prop 8 undermines our society and should be reversed for the good of both gay and straight families.
Rabbi Eger expresses well the sentiment of couples like my wife and myself who were married legally in Canada two years ago, after being together for 22 years. Our two children, ages 12 and 10, were devastated by the disappointment of Prop 8's passage - for them, and for all the children of Gay and Lesbian parents - legalization of marriage for same-sex parents is vital for the legal and full recognition of our family units as legitimate and whole.
For the time being, we are in a legal limbo here in California - and are required to spend thousands of dollars on a patchwork of legal protections to attempt to replicate the rights and benefits that are simply established through the rite of legal marriage.
The old arguments of Leviticus are time-worn and outdated, as are the notions of sacrifice and other aspects of the Torah which we no longer observe as modern Jews. The Reform Jewish community has taken the moral high ground in recognizing the validity and sanctity of same-sex marriage, and in time the rest of society in the United States will follow.
My family and I look forward eagerly to that time.
TO RABBI DENISE EGER - WHO GAVE AVI AND ME ONE OF THE MOST MEANINGFUL EXPERIENCES OF OUR LIVES BY BLESSING OUR MARRIAGE IN SYNAGOGUE.! TO RABBI DENISE EGER - WHO HAS TAKEN THE TRUE MEANING OF A RABBI AND PUTS IT INTO PRACTICE EVERY DAY.
I just cannot understand all of the selfishness (possibly based on fear) that so many "anti gay marriage people" express. Gay marriages (simply the legal and social acknowledgement of 2 people's relationship) has now been legalized and/or recognized in numerous countries. I don't see the social fabric of Canada or Spain for example disintegrating as a result of the acceptance that 2 human beings of the same sex want their relationship to be recognized by the legal system of the country. For myself, I would not accept any other term, name or label to my relationship with my partner of 27 years except marriage. We fully accept the privileges of a married couple, along with the responsibilities. If only the "good family valued" people of the world would spend some of their energies on stopping the terrible isues facing all of us ( but are certainly predominate among the straight population - not the gay / lesbians) such as pedefiles, stopping parents that abuse their children, stopping parents that kill their children, on educating teens about unsafe sex, educating teens about what being a parent really means (so there would not be so many teenage pregnancies)....instead of harping on the gay marriage issue. Interesting how threatened these people are by the fact that I want the same legal status as them.
Yashir Koach, Denise! The hypocritical audacity of some within the Jewish community to deprive the right of the entire LGBTQ community, Jews and non-Jews alike, to wed suggests that the lachrymose lessons of our people's history have not been learned. Why are people so much quicker to deny gays/lesbians/bisexuals/etc. their rights than they are to protest secular Jews for performing work on Shabbat? It's clearly far more than halakhah, it goes to sociology and people's discomfort with blurred lines. Perhaps discomfort, too, with their own sexual orientation.
Thanks again, Denise!
Jonathan
Bravo, Rabbi Eger. The right to marry the partner of one's choosing is THE civil rights issue of our time. In no other facet of American civil life is a minority discriminated against as gays and lesbians are when it comes to marriage.
Whether or not God and Torah support the freedom to marry is beside the point, although the Torah no more opposes gay marriage than it opposed the Emancipation Proclamation because of its many verses supporting slavery. The issue before us is whether an openly discriminatory law based on religious belief is constitutional. Clearly, it cannot be - just as with Jim Crow laws, and with anti-miscegenation laws.
Furthermore, the social data is clear and convincing that marriage is good for society. Marriage, period. That includes gay and lesbian marriage as well. Enabling these human beings to sanctify their familial commitments in the same form as we heterosexuals currently enjoy will help create a stronger, healthier society for all Americans. The time is now.
It is unfathomable to me that any Jew with any understanding of history would discriminate. The first two responses to this article are very sad, they call for segregation of rights based upon immutable characteristics and rank acceptability upon those characteristics. If those two respondents wish to live in a society ruled entirely by G-d’s law, perhaps a theocracy might be a better place for them rather than a democracy? In America we are supposedly governed according to the rule of law, with the courts to interpret the Constitution. It is the conservatives that appear to call the Courts “activist” whenever there is a ruling with which they disagree. Equality means equality for all, not just for some, and if marriage was religious orthodoxy only, they could comment on their religious interpretation, in America it is civil law that rules marriage. The courts exist to interpret and apply law. Do those that oppose equal civil rights really believe that Jews would have any rights if we left it to the population in most countries? Could we today have President Obama if we had left slavery to a popular vote?. Would women be equal? Shame on those that would deny equal rights based upon any personal belief system. Congratulations to leaders such as Rabbi Eger who show us the values of humanity dignity and love. If those are not the core components of Judaism, what are?
Denise,
I, in the last 25 years, have lost respect for most organized religions, NOT due to a dis-belief in God, but for a distaste for the intolerance of most religions that I have encountered. The Jewish Faith has always been one of the few that I have viewed as more of a way of life than a religion per say. Some of the above comments are forcing me to re-think my opinion.
It is comments like those of Dav Lev that highlight the very reason that I struggle with religion. A G/L marriage hurts nobody, causes no pain, no war, no sickness, etc. How then can it be so bad as to draw such cruel words? The only thing I see as "morally contemptible" is the extreme selfishness and bigoted words of Dav Lev.
How can someone who is of a people that have been persecuted for a thousand years be so quick to judge and hate?
Please do not let the Dav's of the world bring you down. Love you - Kirk
Only the fool in his heart says there in no God, creation declares this around us all. Evolution and the Big bang theory are fairy tales for adults. These theories are just that theories they cannot be proven. Scientist are clearly aware of the complexities of our genes and dna and are now wondering why they bought into these lies about no creator. When the people vote against a policy in a democracy or republic the majority vote needs to be upheld and propostion 8 had a 52% vote that is over half of California's votes this should be upheld in court according to voting laws this is fair.
Jacob,
For someone who believes in God to declare that evolution and the Big Bang are "theories" that "cannot be proven" is the pot calling the kettle black!