If elites can convince much of the world to celebrate same-sex marriage, then is there nothing they can’t do in shifting basic moral values.<\/p>\n
Does anyone seriously think that if elites were against same-sex marriage, we would have same-sex marriage?<\/p>\n
Jews provide most of the funding for the Democrats, much of the funding for the Republicans, we dominate media and finance, and much of academia and law. We helpset the agenda in America. For instance, we got the country to provide Israel with over $100 billion in aid<\/a>. <\/p>\n Traditional Judaism is 100% against gay marriage, but only about 12% of American Jews are Orthodox, and most of the rest of Jewry not to mind same-sex marriage. <\/p>\n Are there any significant differences in the same-sex marriage issue between Jewish elites and non-Jewish elites? <\/p>\n Jay Michaelson write for the Forward<\/a> June 26, 2015: <\/p>\n \nOne of the key points in today\u2019s Supreme Court decision overturning state bans on same-sex marriage is that religious and civil marriage, like church and state, are separate. This is profound spiritual writing, even if it is found in a secular Supreme Court opinion. It seems to understand the humanity of same-sex couples, and the historical import of this 5-4 decision. From JTA June 26, 2015<\/a>:<\/p>\n (JTA) \u2014 How often do you get the opportunity to pack \u201c109 years,\u201d #LoveWins and the rainbow colors into 140 characters? For 109 years AJC has stood for liberty and human rights. Today is a happy day for that proud tradition
\nAnd yet, the court\u2019s opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, is itself prophetic in its tone. For the 80% of American Jews who support same-sex marriage, it is a clarion call to our better natures:
\n“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization\u2019s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”<\/p>\n
\nIn yet another of his childish, intemperate dissents, Justice Antonin Scalia called Kennedy\u2019s language \u201ca style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic.\u201d Scalia does have a point, if judicial opinions are meant to be dry, brittle, legalistic documents that never discuss the real lives they affect \u2013 like his very dissent.
\nBut as many American Jews enter Pride Shabbat this week, we do so with a text that, while secular in nature, nonetheless takes the moral high ground.
\nKennedy outlined four principles, in particular, which color marriage as a fundamental right.
\nFirst, \u201cthe nature of marriage,\u201d Kennedy wrote, \u201cis that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality. This is true for all persons, whatever their sexual orientation.\u201d
\nSecond, perhaps echoing Genesis 2:18\u2019s principle that it is not good for the human being alone, Kennedy wrote that \u201cMarriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there. It offers the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live there will be someone to care for the other.\u201d
\n\u201cA third basis for protecting the right to marry,\u201d Kennedy continued, \u201cis that it safeguards children and families and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education.\u201d While this is usually a conservative talking point, Kennedy observed that \u201cas all parties agree, many same-sex couples provide loving and nurturing homes to their children, whether biological or adopted.\u201d
\nThus, \u201cexcluding same-sex couples from marriage thus conflicts with a central premise of the right to marry. Without the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage offers, their children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser.\u201d
\nThis is a neat, and truthful, inversion of the conservative claim that procreation is the essence of marriage. That is false, according to Genesis, Jewish law, and centuries of lived experience. Not only are many heterosexual marriages childless, happy, and complete, but as Justice Kennedy notes, many same-sex ones bring children into the world, via adoption, IVF, surrogacy, or other means.
\nYes, such methods may not seem as \u201cnatural\u201d as the birds and the bees. But then again, modern medicine isn\u2019t \u201cnatural\u201d either, yet we use it all the time to save and enrich our lives.
\nFourth, Kennedy continued, \u201cAs the State itself makes marriage all the more precious by the significance it attaches to it, exclusion from that status has the effect of teaching that gays and lesbians are unequal in important respects. It demeans gays and lesbians for the State to lock them out of a central institution of the Nation\u2019s society. Same-sex couples, too, may aspire to the transcendent purposes of marriage and seek fulfillment in its highest meaning.\u201d
\nThese four principles \u2013 the values marriage promotes, its unique bond of companionship, its connection to child-rearing, and the imprimatur of the state \u2013 constitute the reasons, according to the Supreme Court, that marriage is a fundamental right, regardless of sexual orientation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nThat\u2019s how the American Jewish Committee celebrated the Supreme Court ruling Friday extending marriage rights to gays throughout the United States.
\n\u201cFor 109 years AJC has stood for liberty and human rights,\u201d its tweet said. \u201cToday is a happy day for that proud tradition \u202a#LoveWins.\u201d It was punctuated with a heart emoticon splashed orange, yellow, green blue and purple \u2013 the gay pride colors.<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t#LoveWins<\/a>pic.twitter.com\/8PDsS5cLFl<\/a>
\n\u2014 AJC (@AJCGlobal) \t\t\t\t\tJune 26, 2015<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n