February 2014
Same-Sex Marriage and the Jews
The Reform and Conservative branches of the Jewish religious world have been eager to institute gay marriage. The only outlier is Orthodoxy. What's at stake?
When your forefathers went down into Egypt they were only seventy strong, but now the Lord your God has made you countless as the stars in the sky. (Deuteronomy 10:22)
In the mid-20th century, the American Jewish community distinguished itself for the zeal of its commitment to the cause of civil rights. Recently, American Jews have been no less zealous in behalf of another cause that many have likened to its predecessor. This is the movement to advocate, create, and legalize the institution of gay marriage.
Is that a surprise? That American Jews as individuals strongly support gay marriage should come as news to no one. What may be surprising is how much more avidly they support it than do non-Jewish Americans of the same socio-economic profile: educated, affluent, politically liberal. In 2010, the last time the Pew Research Center broke out separate opinion numbers for Jews, over three-quarters supported gay marriage, scoring eight points higher on this issue than liberals in general and 27 points higher than white mainline Protestants. Only the small group of avowed atheists believe more devoutly in gay marriage than do Jews. In a related datum, American Jewish attitudes toward homosexuality itself have long tracked markedly more positive than the attitudes of Americans in general.
