I think that the most telling statement anyone has made thus far in this conversation, what really gets to the core of the irreconciable difference (because let's not kid ourselves by thinking someone's going to "win"), is where you say "What this all boils down to is that the Jewish tradition is a set of rules."

Is that all we are? 3000 years and all we've got is a bunch of identical scrolls and a few too many volumes of commentary? Instructions on how to live our lives without any justification beyond "G-d said so and I'm better at understanding G-d than you are, so because I said so too?" You're missing the forest for the trees, refusing to glean principle from the written text.

In a context with which I am admittedly more familiar, Justice Scalia and Justice Breyer have been having this argument on the Supreme Court for years. Do we live by words that our forebearers recorded? Or do we live by the principles that they were trying to enshire? When we realize that those principles require stretching the words, what do we care about more - words or people?

Judaism is more than words (to quote my favorite 90s power-ballad). When you pray or wrap teffilin you're being Jewish. But when I work on an antidiscrimination lawsuit, I'm being Jewish too. Because the core of Jews as a people, not just as a religion, are driven by experience and shared ethics that instruct me that it's the right thing to do. Do you think so many Jews are liberals by accident? Because they're mistaken? I'm curious where you think our people's collective ethics come from.

We may not have always known what the right thing to do was. When the torah was crafted as a code of laws, we were a small people concerned with producing children, so we forbade homosexuality. But the principle was never that homosexuality was wrong "because I said so."  So the rule can change. And we can learn. It's time to do so.