200 Leading Rabbis Sign Letter Describing Gay People As ‘Perverts’
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.
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
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
