Why would clergy, of all people, want to go public with their sexual preferences?
I am a humble blogger. I have no responsibilities. But you don’t see me tearing up the blogosphere talking about my sexual orientation. You don’t read long horny blog posts from me discussing what it was like to be a hound dog in Seventh-Adventism, Judaism and the academy.
No, sirree, I believe these matters should be private.
Why would one want to talk to the world about one’s sexual tastes?
This seems particularly inappropriate for clergy. For bloggers and novelists and actors and musicians, fine. But people who are supposed to be moral leaders?
Why would morally serious people want to identify themselves to the world by their taste in sex? So you’re a bloke who likes to bugger other blokes, why preach that from the pulpit?
Everyone I know has particular sexual preferences. Some like to be spanked. Some like it in the context of adultery. Some can’t get excited unless there’s pain. But these people don’t identify themselves to the world by what they like in the bedroom.
So why do so many homosexuals lead with “I’m gay!”
I have some particular sexual identities too but I don’t go introducing myself by them. I don’t go up to women in shul and say, “Hi, I really dig chicks in high-powered office wear.” Instead, I talk about the parsha.
I think we need a public discussion about what it is like to be gay and in the pulpit as much as we need a public discussion about what it is like to love porn and yet be in the pulpit, or to love spanking and yet be in the pulpit.
By participating in this forum, these gay clergy are asking to be identified primarily by the way they use their genitals. If you want people to respect your private sexual choices, then keep them private.
I’m sorry but I’m all cried out over gays who want to go public with their sexual orientation and then make a dramatic play for your compassion.
I have a very definite sexual orientation too, much of it out of the norm, and yet you don’t see me writing op/eds about it.
I just suffer in silence. I wait for marriage and for the blessing of God, Torah and state.
The Jewish Journal writes: “When Denise Eger was in rabbinic school in the mid-1980s, she couldn
