2018 Gay Pride parade in Tel Aviv, Israel Image by Getty Images

More than 200 leading rabbis published a letter condemning the idea of surrogacy and adoption for gays, describing homosexuals as “perverts,” The Jerusalem Post reported.

In the letter, released Thursday, the rabbis wrote that “the aggressive terror which accompanies the media’s brainwashing” designed to “destroy the concept of family and turn perverts into heroes will not succeed, and nor will the attempt to silence rabbis and sane people and turn them into delusional extremists.”

It was signed by prominent leaders of the hardline wing of the national-religious community, including Rabbi Dov Lior; president of the Har Hamor Yeshiva Rabbi Tzvi Tau; Chief Rabbi of Safed Shmuel Eliyahu; co-dean of the Eli pre-military academy Rabbi Yigal Levenstein; dean of the Ateret Yerushalayim Yeshiva Rabbi Shlomo Aviner; and Rabbi Ouri Cherki, an educator in the Machon Meir yeshiva.

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The rabbis said they were writing in defense of Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Aryeh Stern, who said last week that allowing surrogacy for gay couples would cause “children to be born and enter a very strange and unnatural life, a life without a mother and father,” and that these children’s lives would become “wretched.”

Stern’s comments addressed the strong backlash to the new surrogacy law recently passed in the Knesset, which extended access to surrogacy to include single women but not single men or gay couples.

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

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