This is the Forward’s coverage of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, nonbinary, queer and questioning Jews.
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The Latest
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The Schmooze Gay Rights Pioneer Franklin Kameny Dies
Franklin Kameny, the pioneering gay rights leader whose Jewish identity inspired some of his historic activism, has died at age 86, the Washington Post reports. As the Forward wrote last year in an 85th-birthday profile, Kameny “became a vocal activist at a time when other downtrodden and discriminated-against gay people scarcely dared to show their…
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Life LGBT Heroes Posters: An Outdated Approach?
Keshet, an organization that works for the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Jews in Jewish life, has issued its first three “Jewish LGBT Change Makers” posters through its Hineini Education Project. When I took a look at them online, I was immediately reminded of the Jewish Women’s Archive’s “History Makers” (formerly “Women…
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Life Will Israeli Court Decision on Surrogacy Bring Changes for Gay Couples?
I’m in Israel for a month reporting on a number of different stories, including a magazine piece about the growing number of Israeli gay couples who are having children with the help of gestational surrogates and egg donors in foreign countries. Although there is no law explicitly banning the use of surrogacy in Israel by…
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The Schmooze When It Comes to Gay Rights and Klezmer, the Musical Is Also Political
Photo by Angela Jimenez. At a July 26 concert at 92YTribeca in celebration of New York’s first legal same-sex marriages, the singer-guitarist Nedra Johnson struggled to find the words to describe the relationships between love, politics and the blues. In an age in which sex and marriage are subjects of legislative debate, she reasoned, performing…
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Opinion ‘Zombie Liberalism’: Standing Up for Minorities, Losing Sight of the Majority?
The Washington Post has a useful news analysis that looks at the New York State gay marriage decision and what it says about the state of liberalism. The headline says it all: “The rise of zombie liberalism: Half-dead, half-alive. “ The basic premise isn’t terribly new, but it’s too often forgotten: the liberalism of “Expanding…
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The Schmooze Celebrating Gay Marriage at ‘The Greenwich Village Follies’
Photo by Peter James Zielinski There are times when a trip to the theater is more than just an evening out — times when there’s something in the air (fairy dust? a benevolent ghost?) that transforms a merely great performance into the kind that makes all your hairs stand on end. June 26, for those…
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Life Beyond N.Y.’s Same-Sex Marriage Bill
The LGBT–oriented Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in Manhattan, led by openly gay Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum — a Sisterhood 50 selection — was front and center in the fight to get same-sex marriage legislation passed in New York state. (Kleinbaum also made headlines when she put her arm around an ultra-Orthodox man protesting the legislation, and…
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The Schmooze In Albany, A Scuffle Over Marriage Equality
If you were to ask the question “Who is a Jew?” to some ultra-Orthodox Jews demonstrating against marriage equality yesterday in the New York state capitol, their answer would definitively be “Not Sharon Kleinbaum.” In a video made yesterday by The Times Union (the newspaper serving the Albany region) and posted today on the gay…
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News Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s selection as JTS commencement speaker roils graduating class
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News Analysis: As Democrats unite behind Platner, Schumer’s future as leader faces tests
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