pressure on gays to straighten out, and on jews to convert, do indeed have strong and disturbing resonances.  But from the perspective of having moved to Israel where christian (or any) proselytization of Jews is explicitly forbidden, I am reminded that they really are different issues (and that a sovereign Jewish state can partly solve one problem, whereas a sovereign gay entity, um, isn't really possible.)

Given the 'puff daddy' nature of Christianity and Islam (came later than Judaism, took our original texts, remixed them, had better marketing, and became way more popular) I think it is INEVITABLE that any Jew living in a Christian or Muslim country SHOULD expect pressure to convert.  Our continuing existence as Jews threatens their belief systems themselves.

 But I simply don't understand the corresponding fear of gays, even within Judaism. Homosexuality has been discussed a lot lately in Jerusalem where I live, where the prospect of the int'l gay pride has sparked near-violent controversy.  It has damaged my relationship with many friends and rabbis here-- otherwise open-minded and tolerant people who still take literally the explicit prohibition on 'unnatural sexual acts'.  (BTW, lesbianism does not provoke the same level of anger-- it's far more tolerated both in torah texts and in the community.)

Can anyone explain to me the depth of this intolerance/hatred? Why, why?  To my rabbi's credit (the rosh yeshiva in Bat Ayin, Rav Natan Greenberg) he responded to the controversy over the parade by saying "Of course they should be allowed to march!! This isn't Tehran, and given a choice, I'd rather live in San Francisco than Tehran! Whether one agrees with them or not (and he didn't say he agreed with the pride parade), setting a precedent that a given population or position shouldn't have the right to a public parade or protest is incredibly dangerous, and we as [religious]Jews should KNOW that we're always next." 

Indeed the Israeli gov't's persecution of anti-withdrawal protesters has often crossed the line of abuse of civil liberties. What is it about the issue of homosexuality that screws up so many people's understandings of basic principles of freedom?

This article highlights a challenge the gay liberation movement (if we can still call it that) has long faced: how to deal with the question of the
"origin" of homosexuality. Some people argue that the "nature" position offers a stronger case for gay rights: this is the "benign immutable difference" argument --we're born that way, we're not hurting anybody. Then there are those who argue against this "essentialist" claim. Neither argument has prevented the right from coming up with effective counterarguments, policies, and, indeed, "ex-gay ministries" whose tactics are not always so gentle as Christian prayer.

Some interesting arguments on this topic among queer scholars actually lead back to religion. Rather than arguing that homosexuality is "like race", these scholars suggest, might we not try to argue that homosexualty is "like religion": deeply felt, personally crucial, but not necessarily "inborn." For more on this notion, see the work of legal scholar Janet Halley and see the collaborative book Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance by Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini. Jakobsen and Pellegrini note that, in order for the "like religion" analogy to work, the US would have to drastically change the way it thinks not only about the value of sex but its attitude toward religious pluralism as well.

I read once that the Rorschach test was phased out as a diagnostic tool years ago because it didn't show any significant differences between most people.  The only thing it consistently showed was that fundamentalist christians all reacted the same way to Rorschach tests.

So-- are fundamentalists made, or are they just born that way?

;-)

What about orthodox reaction (actual curses!) to the Jerusalem Pride Parade? I haven't heard word one from Jewcy about how the knesset wants to ban it outright!

mm: I must say I often disagree with you but every one of your posts is quite thoughtful (i'm the "barbeque" guy from the sacrifice thread).

Regarding your point about homosexuality, I think it can be applied to any situation where one side of an argument doesn't want the other side of the argument to even be heard. And I think the answer to your question about why it "screws up so many people's understandings of basic principles of freedom" is that most people don't really have very strong "principles of freedom" to begin with.

Through most of human history people settled major religious or philosophical disagreements more often than not through battle rather than discussion. It's really only in the past 300 hundred years or so that Western intellectuals adopted the notion that even your enemies have certain god-given rights that must be respected, even if you have utter contempt or hatred for their beliefs. It was also within the same time period that the same intellectuals discovered the idea that certain procedures governing how we order society (i.e.: "due process") were more important that the actual manner in which society ended up being ordered (ie: pro gay vs. anti-gay).

We all like to think of ourselves as sophisticated individuals who respect the rights of others, but we all have a little ayatollah lurking inside of us who secretly wants to control what other people do rather than convince others (and be convinced!) through truth and logic. Free speech will remain under assault unless and until people decide to vigilantly use their intellect to prevent the little ayatollahs from making their decisions for them.

I agree, zbird.  It just saddens me when people claim to be for certain principles (of freedom, etc.) yet are so quick to abandon them when something strikes a nerve.  I agree with you about why-- that such convictions aren't really deeply rooted-- yet they are stated, and that makes the turn an actual hypocrisy, which in my eyes is a greater sin, so to speak.

FYI, anonymous, the knesset doesn't have much to do with the pride parade.  The matter is generally decided by some combination of the Jerusalem municipality and mayor, the police force, and (in the context of last year's Lebanon war) the security establishment, which was the deciding factor to postpone/move it then.

Thanks for connecting Jewish identity to gay identity. I'm proud of the role jews played in America's civil right movement. It should be the same with the gay rights movement.

An important part of my heritage as a jew is my support for minority rights. I'm not religious at all, but this stuff i consider to be a mitzvah in every sense of the word.

It's funny how so many Jews object to gays marching in the heart of the Jewish world (Jerusalem) yet so many Jews in the American media (and there are TONS of them) have NO PROBLEMS WHATSOEVER soiling America's airwaves with the same material. Why is that?

This "paradox" comment offends me. Please be explicit about the "soiling." If you don't believe in freedom of expression, including freedom of expression in the media (and freedom to include positive representations of gays and lesbians in media), you can ignore the "material" in question. And if you live in the US and you don't believe in freedom of expression or in pluralism, you shouldn't be here.

Because Jews in America aren't intolerant, self-righteous bigots?

Mr. Paradox just seems like a bigot reciting tired stereotypes--that all Jews are all conspiring in a giant kabal to control the media for their own illicit purposes. Therefore "the Jews" both publish pro-gay material in the US media and forbid it in Israel.

Of course this is nonsense. The Jews who opposed the Jerusalem parade would almost certainly opposed homosexuality everywhere, and vice versa.

For those who haven't wasted their lives away on mediaeval and early modern history (...she writes from her Ivory Tower), the Black Legend refers to anti-Spanish/Catholic propaganda created in England and initially encouraged by Elizabeth I in a political move intended to prevent Catholic sympathy from leading to uprisings against the precariously-Protestant monarchy.  With that in mind, apologies for the nitpicking, I'm sorry, but I had to comment on the below paragraph, which contains certain historical inaccuracies definitely influenced by said propaganda.

"Forcefully told to change, Jews were encouraged to do so by being tied to the Inquisitor’s rack, expelled from most European nations...or otherwise offered the choice between conversion and death. During Spain’s transition to state-mandated Christianity, men had to prove they were not Jewish infidels (or Moorish Muslims) by eating pork and pork fat in public."

Jews were absolutely never, ever encouraged to convert through torture by the Inquisition, let alone the fact that the majority of the forcible conversions which did take place in Spain (anachronistic, I know, but easier to use in this case) began shortly after popular uprisings of anti-Jewish sentiment in 1391.  With that in mind, let it be noted that the Catholic monarchs did not ask for papal permission (which was given reluctantly) to institute an Inquisition in their kingdoms until 1474...eighty-three years later.  In addition to this timeline, the fact remains that the image we hold in our Anglo-Saxon-culture-influenced minds of a masked Torquemada torturing hundreds of prisoners to death with glee, simply isn't true. 

Just by looking up "Spanish Inquisition" on Answers.com, one can find a compilation of the research done by Jaime Contreras and Gustav Henningsen on the breakdown of early modern Inquisitorial records - I'll reproduce it here, with my comments in [ ]s.

"Cases in the Spanish Inquisition, 1540–1700 (Excludes the tribunals of Cuenca, Cerdaña, and Palermo)

Judaizers - 4,397 - 9.8%
Moriscos - 10,817 - 23.2%
Protestants - 3,646 - 8.1%
All Others - 25,814 - 57.8%
_______________________
Total - 44,674 - 100.0%

Total Relaxed [released to the secular arm for execution] - 1,604 - 3.5%

Adapted from Jaime Contreras and Gustav Henningsen, "Forty-four Thousand Cases of the Spanish Inquisition (1540–1700): Analysis of a Historical Data Bank," in Henningsen and Tedeschi in association with Amiel (eds.), The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe. Studies on Sources and Methods. Northern Illinois University Press, Illinois 1986, p. 116. Included in the category "All Others" are propositions and blasphemy (27.1%), bigamy and solicitation (8.4%), acts against the Inquisition (7.5%), superstition (7.9%), and various (6.8%). The "Total Relaxed" involves only those sentenced to death in person [i.e. not those relaxed in absentia or posthumously, whose bones were dug up and burned]."  As you can see here, not only were "Judaizers" the second smallest group of those tried, but the numbers of executions are much, much smaller than I think most of us would imagine.  To put it in perspective: in one hundred and sixty years, the recorded deaths are less than half the current American deaths in Iraq (four years) and almost half the number of people lost on 9/11 (one day).

While I'm not saying that it was right or ideal in ANY WAY, the Jews and those conversos who maintained their faith in secret prior to 1492 were given many opportunities to leave Spain.  The choice was conversion or leave; the choice was not convert or die.  Not only that, but I'm unclear on how expulsion from "most European nations" would constitute encouragement to convert; the entire point of the Expulsion Decree of 1492 was that Isabel and Fernando felt that the proximity of Jews to converso communities was preventing "New Christians" from fully practicing their new faith.  They wanted the Jews to leave, they didn't want to make them convert falsely or torture them just for the fun of it.

In the last bit of analysis of this paragraph, and out of professional curiosity, could you possibly share what source you used for the information of eating pork as a public test of Jewishness/Muslimness?  I have never heard this before and I am certainly interested!  However, again, Jews were not "infidels" (a particularly emotional/biased choice of word, I must say) nor were Muslims (funny, considering it's a word we associate primarily with Islam's view of non-Muslims).  Let one thing be perfectly clear: the Inquisition had no jurisdiction over unbaptised Jews or Muslims.  If you were YET unbaptised - and therefore the definition of an infidel or nonbeliever - the Inquisition had no truck with you.  The point is that the Inquisition was instituted to deal with heresies and heterodoxies within the Church itself...and as we saw above, it certainly had its fair share even without the "contribution" from forcibly-converted Jews and Muslims.  Additionally, the use of "Moorish Muslims" is not only redundant (because in Old Castilian moro/a meant "Muslim"), but, to me, it also smacks of exclusionism: the Muslims of the Spanish kingdoms were Iberians, as were the Jews.  When the moriscos (converted Muslims) were finally expelled in 1609, they reversed their previous attempts at maintaining Arabic and reverted to speaking Castilian or Romance-influenced languages once settled in Muslim territories.

Finally, If Spain was not officially Christian (or Catholic) before, it was only because large parts of the Iberian Peninsula were occupied by Muslim rulers OR because Jews were allowed to live in the Christian kingdoms as second-class citizens in many ways.  They were officially chattel of the king (a status that did afford them some protection) and were primarily tolerated as contemporary witnesses to/reminders of the horror they had committed when they "murdered" Jesus.  Maybe I'm alone, but I find that theory as offensive and horrible as the thought of expulsion.  While I certainly agree that the Jewish community should stand up and recognise the similarities between the current ex-gay movement and anti-Semitism through the centuries, this article has something of the lachrymose about it, when I think it could be so much stronger and more powerful by identifying and further defining the strengths that become clear during moments of oppression, rather than bemoaning what appears to be the status quo. ...or maybe I just need to get back to work on my Ph.D and stop ranting in the comments section of Jewcy...

Wow, Lys, that's a lot of trivia.

I can't source to anything more reliable that stories long told to me by near-strangers and things I may have read somewhere, but I have no connection to Bonnie Morris and also have heard about the public pork during the time of the Inquisition.

Anyone who spends 15 minutes in Spain will notice huge legs of salted, aged ham hanging from the ceiling of nearly every place that serves food, from the fanciest restaurant to your corner cafe. (for the non-kosher among you, "jamon serrano" is quite tasty).

When I was there I remember being told that recently converted Jews started the tradition of hanging hams in public, in order to prove to all the world that they were really Jewish.

Ah, but it's not "trivia", it's a thesis ;-)  I work on "marginal" women in late mediaeval Spain and it just really bothers me when something historical is used to evoke a certain emotional response, when it's based on inaccuracies.  I think there are enough horrific things that have happened without us trying to make bad situations worse or perpetuating Tudor propaganda.

 Seriously, I've never heard the public pork thing.  Of course, cooking your lentils without pork was a dead giveaway, and it's only since I've moved to Spain that I've realised how incredibly hard it must have been to be a secretly-practicing Jew here...in the land where pork is essentially a fruit.

Hmm, that sounds like urban legend to me.  Hams have to hung because that's how they dry, of course!  And psst, I think you mean "really Christian" ::grin::

In response to the idea that Jews would be terribly offended by ex-Jew "I chose to change!" propaganda:
I encourage you to check out the Jews-for-Jesus ads (I've seen them in NYC subways and in pamphlets which I collect for fun). They include pictures of smiling former Jews talking about how upset their families first were when they found Jesus, but that everything is OK now that they have the Lord and Savior in their life!
These things really do exist.

On another note, I am always perplexed when I meet Jews who are sexist, racist, or homophobic (and there are lots!) As though being persecuted hasn't taught us anything.

You live, work, and study in Spain? Lucky you! Yes, you caught my typo. Probably it's too late for me to be publishing comments on the internet.

Yeah, well, they're all kind of one, i.e. my study is my work and my work should be my life.

It's good now, but you wouldn't say that if you'd spent six months dealing with Latin bureaucracy.  Ugh.  Never again.  Next time I'm totally going the illegal immigrant route, ha!

When I studied abroad in Spain I managed to get a visa after spending about 18 hours in line at various immigration offices. I had to make three appointments because they kept giving me different information about what I needed.

as an actual historian, i have to warn you against claiming definitive historical truth from answers.com... but even within your post, you don't prove your point.  'Only' 1600 people executed by the Inquisition?? Listen to yourself for god's sake.  Yes, the Inquisition preferred to convert than kill people.  But the threat of death was very, very real, as was torture.  Effective threats, backed up by action.  Leaving Spain was not so often an option, considering England and France had already expelled their Jews and not too many other countries welcomed Jews.  And the practice of public pork-eating festivals to catch out any closet jews is well documented, and attested by many Sephardi Jews I know here in Israel. 

Lys, you may mean well, but maybe you should stick to your little corner of history.

"as an actual historian....." ??? In one of his numberless other posts, mausner describes getting his BA in history from Yale. Is this what constitutes being an historian? Maybe he was too modest to describe his graduate work?

In any event, note the academic solecisms in friend mausner's reply to Lys's very specific and interesting post, which actually sought to correct common misunderstandings with reference to actual sources:

1. He excoriates her mention of "answers.com", but in fact she referenced the entirely respectable source alluded to at "answers".
2. He replies to her raised eyebrow regarding public pork-eating as a method of outing Jews by describing this practice as "well-documented" (oh. well, that settles that...) and then nailing his case by referring to the testimony of the "many Sephardi Jews I know here in Israel." Since they'd be about 600 years old by now, perhaps he'll forgive us if we're a little suspicious about the accuracy of their memories.

If I were Yale, I'd recall that diploma....

Full disclosure: I admit that mausner's gotten on my bad side for questioning my remarks over at the "4th grade suicide bomber" post regarding Israeli kids inscribing love notes on the bombs destined for Lebanon last year. When I provided him with the reference he requested, he had neither the grace nor menschlichkeit to acknowledge his mistake.

My narcissistic injuries notwithstanding, mausner's tiny efforts may safely be ignored by anyone interested in actually learning something.

mmausner, that's funny, you're an actual historian?  I say funny because, as far as what you've cited in your profile, my academic qualification go far beyond yours, considering that I'm close to completing a doctorate and you have a poxy masters...of which I have two.  Or do "actual" historians have to have gone to up-their-ass Ivys?  Please don't take a condescending tone with me, I did not claim definitive historical truth from Answers.com, as Anonymous pointed out, I used the table it cited from the Contreras and Henningsen article as an opportunity to provide valid academic material which was readily accessible to the Jewcy reader.

And what point was it that I was trying to make, in your opinion?  There was no definitive thesis, per se, behind my post, other than an attempt to clarify the exaggerated idea of the Spanish Inquisition which so many people seem to share.  I never said "only" 1600 people executed by the Inquistion.  In fact, if you knew how to read historical data, you would see that the data I cited was from a sample, which did not include three tribunals, and did not cover the entire period of the Inquisition, which I was careful to point out when I said that in that particular 160 years, this was how many people were killed.  In addition, you fail to understand yet again.  The Inquisition was not in the business of converting people.  The Inquisition was instituted in order to deal with heresy within the Church itself; HENCE, it did not deal with people who were not technically a part of the Church, i.e. unbaptised, i.e. it DID NOT convert anyone.  Do you find it hard to understand that concept or is it just that Yale no longer requires any semblance of literacy from its graduates? 

Or perhaps it's that your understanding of Europe/the Mediterranean area is only limited to Spain, France, and England?  Did you perhaps forget about the Low Countries and the large Sephardi contingent that moved there, particularly to Amsterdam, and still exists to this day, albeit diminished by the atrocities of the twentieth century?  Or what about the Muslim countries of the Mediterranean, where Jews could live recognised as dhimmi?  Hungary, Greece (particularly Thessalonika), Italy, Turkey, Morocco...I guess those places do not now nor have ever existed?  "Public pork-eating festivals" (my italics), huh?  I'm laughing hysterically.  Please provide a citation.  Or better yet, why don't you come to the archives with me and you can give me the correct legajo to read, with a note concerning the defendant's inability to consume pork at a "festival" (ha!) and his subsequent execution.  Have you even heard of a sanbenito?  Do you know what that is?  Or the penance and absolution originally granted in most cases of the Inquisition?  Or perhaps I should just take centuries-old hearsay as the basis of my thesis?  I think that would go down extremely well with my committee...

Oh, and what did you do your undergraduate work in?  Nazi Germany?  And your MA?  The modern United States?  I have a suggestion: you keep your pretentious, ill-informed mouth shut on "my little corner" of history, go back to "hunting and gathering", and leave academia to the real scholars.  You clearly know nothing of my subject, as evidenced by your broadly sweeping statements, your lack of solid citations to back up those statements, and your attempts to belittle the efforts of someone else to make accurate history available to others.  I think that what people understand of history should be accurate not to justify the work done by the Spanish Inquisition, but because without knowing the real truth, by operating on the basis of falsehoods and centuries-old propaganda, we do ourselves a disservice.   

Finally, you incredibly condescending, smug, and uneducated waste of air, I ask, why don't you stick to reading your modern history and leave the real work - i.e. dealing with palaeography, antique languages, the difficulties of interpreting meaning across long periods of time - to the "actual historian"s?  I'm sure you don't mean well and perhaps this tirade was an attempt to make up for your inability to perform...academically, course...but don't take it out on me just because you couldn't hack a doctorate.  

p.s. Anonymous, thanks for pointing out my use of a credible source.  The table was posted online at Answers.com and in the spirit of citation, something mmausner clearly doesn't understand, I wanted to give any readers the opportunity to see the table for themselves, as well as not taking credit for a compilation I did not make.  Your ability to understand what I was trying to do - simply to clarify some mistruths which are considered to be common knowledge - is much appreciated over here.

zbird, I know what you mean.  It took about three tries every time I needed to get anything done here, because people "forget" to give you essential information and/or forms all the damn time.  Gah!

you wouldn't get so upset if you didn't know i was right.   At certain points, Jews had (very limited) safe havens to escape from the inquisition; but at any given point, they might not have had any real options.  Thus the huge number of 'marranos' or 'conversos'.  Some of those conversions date from before the inquisition; the biggest number of jews in spain to convert was in the 1390s under the influence of Averroes' ideas.

Lys, you implied something about the relative benignity of the Inquisition that you essentially took back in your last post.  I appreciate your clarifying the '160 yrs' etc.

 Anonymous, (try getting less anonymous for a bit more credibility), I didn't happen to see you reference the love notes from israeli kids on bombs.  I do happen to live in israel and i know that it's damn near impossible for anyone except dedicated army personnel to come anywhere near any ordnance, esp. in wartime. 

"you wouldn't get so upset if you didn't know i was right."

You lose significant credibility making an argument like that. 

mmausner, I was not upset; I was validly angry.  Without having any obvious training in this field, you treated me, my post, my work, and my field like garbage.  Your dismissiveness highlights just unwilling you are to engage in real debate, let alone the fact that you've *still* failed to address whence comes your actual expertise on this subject, let alone your continued lack of source material to back up your assertions.  In your last post, you repeated things that I'd said previously as though it was new information I'd left unsaid.  Additionally, your use of "marranos" shows just how outside of the current scholarship you are, as this word, with its derogatory connotations, is almost never used in academic works. 

I never implied anything benign about the Inquisition.  I never said it didn't kill people or torture them, or pursue them or make their lives hell.  Of course it did.  I just asked that we be clear about who was under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and see the real numbers of people executed.  I appreciate nothing about your contributions to this "conversation", as they've been almost completely ignorant of anything resembling real training in this field, aside from clamping onto information already stated (conversions in the 1390s) and belittling others based on a background you've as yet failed to disclose.  Maybe you find it hard to distinguish between what you think is the basis of an argument and the demeaning things you've said, but it's not your misinformation which "upset" me - because it's so laughable - but the incredibly patronising tone you've taken throughout your writing.     

Using conservative estimates, I'd say that Jews are disprportionately gays and lebians to the tune of at least 10 times the Gentile population...why is that? Maybe this is why so many Jews are having problems finding Jewish mates these days?

Jews were/are at the forefront of the gay rights movement in the USA, that much is certainly well known.

Friend mausner's facility in weasellling out of stuff continues to astonish.

First, Lys gives him a thorough and proper schooling in correct academic argument. He declines to address her points, and instead pulls the unscionable trick of analyzing her ("...you wouldn't get so upset if you didn't know i was right.") instead of her thesis.

Second, he "didn't happen to see" the reference he asked me to provide, which I did instantly. He then assures us that the sorts of things for which I provided evidence simply couldn't happen in Israel. Note the similarity to the "I've spoken to many Sephardi and they told me about the public ham-scarfing festivals" ploy; mausner's simple assertions are meant to trump such shabby moves as providing photographic evidence, citing academic studies to support one's argument, etc.

As I said, he's neither graceful nor menschlich.

Anon, you just made me giggle-snort loudly in the national library at "ham-scarfing festivals"!  Thanks for the laugh!

 Something I just found which is amusing me: while I'm clearly the pro-torture-and-execution villain here for trying to maintain accuracy about the Inquisition, mmausner is defending things that the Nazis "got right" about Jews, for the sake of accuracy in history: http://www.jewcy.com/dialogue/2007-06-13/joey2#comment-7863

O, Irony, you are so very, verah sweet...

Hey - I found this to be stupid. the ex-gay groups are run by....ex-gays! there is no leader "converting" gays, rather, these are folks who decided to try a different path.

as someone who did that, I find the whole tone of this article to be condescending. this IS NOT christians trying to convert Jews....there is NO comparison.

check out: www.jonahweb.org

As a person that has been part of the Gay community and Jewish, I found this article interesting. As a Jew, I have inherited several ideas, habits, and rituals. I can choose to become non-observant or maintain my level of Observancy.
As a gay male, I participated in everything from one night stands to Pride parades. Honestly, I met some wonderful people. However I could not find what I was looking for. It was only in a accounting class I took that I began discussing what is marriage. We decided that it was a commitment between a two people to work together. I am anti-gay marriage but pro-domestic partnerships. Marriage is a religious institute that the Fundamentals can stop in their realm and if there is a group, aka. Reform or MCC that permits it good for them. Domestic partnerships help people and should be open to those who choose to live together.
After my accounting discussion, I made the decision that I would marry a woman. At that time breast did not even interest me; however, I have grown to find women very interesting and intriguing. Some people like myself can change when we see what the alternatives are and allow ourselves not to follow the pro or anti gay propaganda that is out there. Both are dangerous and destroy lives.
My wish is that the truth that a person can choose one's path and that the simple answer that one is born or develops same sex attraction is unfounded. It is a combination of both and if one can live happily, then one should how they see fit. Change is possible but not easy and for some, NOT WORTH IT.

When did this topic get hijacked by the gay conversion lobby? There's absolutely no evidence that converting gays is successful or results in happy, heterosexual families.

"I have grown to find women very interesting and intriguing."

I'm sure you'll have lots to talk about as you struggle to get anything resembling an erection with your future wife. Do you at least plan to tell her that you're not quite straight?

David,

12:40 anonymous was just relating his personal experience. He wasn't trying to make a general statement about the wisdom of "converting gays." In fact, he made it pretty clear that one's sexual orientation is a personal decision and opposes BOTH THE ANTI-GAY and pro-gay propaganda.

"There's absolutely no evidence that converting gays is successful or results in happy, heterosexual families." I tell you what--if you find me a study showing the secret formula for "happy, heterosexual families," make sure to patent it, because you'll be a billionaire in no time.

It's uncalled for to take swipes at him by labeling his as part of a "conversion lobby" and it's completely innappropriate and insensitive to insult his mojo.

My personal experience is that I've been totally enchanted by women since puberty and can't even imagine the thought of being with someone of the same sex. That being said, I know many experts have said that sexual orientation is more of a continuum than a black and white thing, and if Anon's personal experience bears that out, who are we to judge?

"I tell you what--if you find me a study showing the secret formula for 'happy, heterosexual families,' make sure to patent it, because you'll be a billionaire in no time."

You're straw-manning my argument by portraying it as an over-ambitious recipe for a happy family. All I've said is having a gay father in a straight marriage doesn't work.

"[I]t's completely innappropriate and insensitive to insult his mojo."

It would be naive to ignore the sexual issues he will experience if he does go on to marry a woman.

"That being said, I know many experts have said that sexual orientation is more of a continuum than a black and white thing, and if Anon's personal experience bears that out, who are we to judge?"

Anon doesn't say he sits somewhere in the middle of some spectrum. The self-label he applies is "gay." The only interest he claims to have in women seems like a tortured attempt to fill some mold. "[...] very interesting and intriguing?" It sounds like he's describing a theory published in an academic journal.

People are welcome to contort their own lives however they please, but what Anon is doing is also deceptive and hurtful to his future wife and family. If he is genuinely bisexual, then I have no problem with him marrying either sex. This just doesn't seem genuine.

It's late and I'm tired and yet I feel compelled to say that, while I agree with the spirit of David's last post, I want to point out that this is a complicated issue. Even someone who describes himself as "gay" but finds himself capable of experiencing women as "interesting and intriguing" is acting out of constrained choices. This is a homophobic society, for the most part, despite the advances of the (former) gay liberation movement and the (current) gay rights movement. I do think Anon's actions are potentially (even likely) "deecptive and hurtful," but they also hurt him.

David,

What you're saying now makes more sense to me.

But although I can see how people might try to fool themselves into thinking they're no longer gay, I can also see how one's sexuality might really evolve over time. Few 30-year-olds want anything to do with a 60-year-old woman, but there seem to be plenty of 60-ish husbands who don't think that way about their 60-year-old wives. If that kind of change is possible, maybe it's also possible to move along the gay/straight spectrum.

Also, I agree that Anon owes full disclosure to any potential wife, regardless of how well he performs in the sack. But I wouldn't assume he's hiding anything from his girlfriends just because he doesn't feel comfortable publishing his sexual histor on the internet.

"But I wouldn't assume he's hiding anything from his girlfriends just because he doesn't feel comfortable publishing his sexual histor on the internet."

Disclosure is complicated two ways. When he first meets a woman, saying, "Hi, I think of myself as gay, but I'm trying my hand at women" isn't the best pickup line. It remains quite off-putting well into the relationship. On the other hand, if he waits until he has a working relationship, he will fear more and more that disclosure could poison what he has.

As a former-gay jew, let me just say that the reason that you dont see more info from us formers is that we shy away from these sites, etc. We want to put that past behind us. No more contact, so as not to "fall" into the rut again. It's so easy to fall in. And it's so easy to get caught up in the "pleasure" of it all.

But, once we're out of that circle of "friends" and the internet sites, etc, we see the truth. The "light" of the Torah. And how beautiful and meaningful a Torah-true (hetero) relationship can be. I know there are those of you who will mock me, and that's why you dont see more posts like mine, but don't knock it 'till you've tried it!

It's easy to mock us, and it "rationalizes" your stand. I'm not saying you're not "gay." You may very well be. But, that doesn't mean that you can't have a straight relationship. I mean, if you keep kosher, does that mean that you must "hate" lobster. It may be very tasty. But, if we follow the Torah, it says we may not partake of that particular pleasure. So we don't. Hard as it may be!