|
The Jewish Daily Forward
 Los
Angeles, Calif. — With California Jews lining up on either side of a
heated gay marriage debate, those opposed to gay nuptials were
vindicated November 5 when a ballot initiative banning same-sex
marriage passed by a narrow margin.
Proposition 8, which calls for
amending California’s state constitution to define marriage as solely
between a man and a woman, was adopted despite intense efforts by
non-Orthodox Jewish clergy and activists to defeat it. At the same
time, Orthodox leaders took a strong public stand in support of the
measure, aligning themselves with the Mormon Church, which spearheaded
the Yes on 8 campaign.
With some 95% of the precincts reporting,
the California ban on same-sex marriage passed 52% to 48%. But
Proposition 8 opponents did not concede defeat, claiming that
provisional ballots had not been counted.
Two similar bans on same-sex marriage also passed in Arizona and Florida.
In
recent months, the ballot initiative emerged as a hot-button issue in
California’s Jewish community, especially as polls in the final weeks
showed that it was likely to be a close vote. Jewish groups on both
sides — the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America on one,
and the Progressive Jewish Alliance on the other — joined interfaith
coalitions, took out full-page ads in local Jewish newspapers and
enlisted rabbis to address Proposition 8 from the pulpit.
The
election outcome left some of Judaism’s staunchest opponents of the
gay-marriage ban fuming at the activist stance that the Orthodox took.
“The
Orthodox Jewish community should be ashamed of itself for trying to
take away the civil rights of its fellow citizens,” said Denise Eger,
rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami, West Hollywood’s gay and lesbian Reform
synagogue. “If they don’t want to do the marriage in their shul, they
don’t have to.”
Meanwhile, Orthodox Jewish leaders said they felt
compelled to speak out in favor of Proposition 8 in light of the fact
that less traditional corners of the Jewish world were vocally opposing
it in the name of Judaism and Jewish values.
“On this particular
issue, if the Orthodox community had not maintained a voice on
Proposition 8, it would have been spoken that we agree or accept the
public face of the Jewish community on this issue, ergo what the Reform
and Conservative movements were saying,” said J.J. Rabinowich, who
heads Agudath Israel of California, the West Coast branch of the
fervently Orthodox advocacy group Agudath Israel of America.
In
recent weeks, the Board of Rabbis of Southern California — which counts
fewer than 20 Orthodox rabbis among its 290 members — passed a
resolution opposing Proposition 8. That resolution was passed with the
support of 93% of those who voted, according to the board’s executive
vice president, Mark Diamond.
Jewish communal efforts to defeat
the proposition were led in part by Jews for Marriage Equality, an
L.A.-based group founded by Steve Krantz, who has a son who is gay. The
group includes Elliot Dorff, a prominent Conservative rabbi who
co-authored the rabbinic opinion that in 2006 opened the doors for gay
clergy in the Conservative movement. Jews for Marriage Equality joined
forces with PJA — a liberal California-based grass-roots group — and
the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco.
That
coalition amassed the signatures of 258 California rabbis who added
their names to a statement supporting gay-marriage rights. In late
October, the coalition took out ads in the Bay Area’s Jewish weekly,
San Francisco J, and in the Los Angeles-based weekly the Jewish
Journal. The ads touted the number of signatories and encouraged Jews
to vote against Proposition 8.
The very same issue of the Jewish
Journal, dated October 31, included a two-page ad published by a
coalition of Orthodox groups supporting the ballot initiative. That ad
was placed by the Rabbinical Council of California, a 70-member body of
Orthodox rabbis, and co-sponsored by such groups as the Agudath Israel
of California.
With the passage of Proposition 8, the fate of an
estimated 18,000 same-sex weddings performed since last spring — when
the California Supreme Court issued a watershed 4-3 ruling legalizing
same-sex marriage — now hangs in the balance. Hundreds of Jewish
weddings have been performed since June 16, when the state first began
issuing marriage licenses to gay men and lesbians.
At Beth
Chayim Chadashim, L.A.’s oldest gay and lesbian synagogue, Rabbi Lisa
Edwards said that more than 40 couples in her 225-member Reform
congregation have wed in the past four months. Edwards said that as a
result of those weddings, the congregation has grown far stronger as a
community.
“We’ve been through this very intense time of celebrating
and getting to know each other,” she said, “and all of that still
holds.”
|
