"It's no secret that I wear a kippa...Judaism doesn't recognize gay marriage, just as we don't recognize meat an milk together as kosher, and nothing will change it."
To be fair, this is a political hot potato. After all, it is impossible to form a government without including the religious parties, and they would outright reject any attempt to permit two people of the same gender to get married.
But why is that?
The typical response is that the Bible defines marriage and that it opposes homosexuality, and therefore, same-sex marriage would be an abomination.
But is that true?
The Bible defines marriage as between a man and as many women as he can buy, support, and impregnate. Without pregnancy there can be no marriage, for there can be no family, and the Sages interpret this to mean that if a woman who was purchased cannot get pregnant, then she can be returned without penalty. After all, that was what she was purchased for.
And yet, people will still point to the Biblical model without ever really looking at it themselves.
The Rabbis have redefined this, limiting a man to only one wife (with a possibility of a second in only rare occasions - a process that is extremely difficult to enact). They also permit marriages between elderly (infertile) couples, and the ability of women to own property.
The Rabbis redefined the position of women in society, permitting them to acquire property of their own. In a religious divorce, a woman may actually be able to retain the house - something that would have been unthinkable 2,000 years ago.
So we do have Rabbinical adjustments to who can get married, and the manner that it expresses itself.
With the exception of an extreme segments in society, most religious Jews do not see their marriage as the act of a man buying a woman as his property for the purpose of producing offspring.Most Rabbis will permit the marrying a couple who will never have children (perhaps they are too old or infertile). These are considered valid marriages, where sexuality and fertility are excluded from the equation.
Keep in mind that sexuality and fertility are part of the original definition, along with defining women as property with no rights of ownership while the men have the ability to purchase hundreds of brides if he could afford it. And with the exception of some odd segments, virtually nobody else holds this view in the 21st century.
So if you exclude sexuality and fertility from the modern discussion, then why ire people arguing about same-sex marriage, other than out of fear (phobia)?
Marriage is the legal contract between two people and the state which recognizes them as a family unit with all of the legal rights that go along with that. It does not dictate that they are sexually active (that is part of the old definition), nor does it define their ability to produce children (again, that is part of the old definition), but it defines them as family - a legal recognition of their commitment as a unit, and equal partners without one being the master over the other.
If the thought that two people, behind closed doors might be doing something that you find distasteful, such as, eating a BLT sandwich or a cheeseburger, then fine. But they are going to eat that forbidden meal and your feelings about it do not apply. And we do not forbid people from marrying on the basis that they might consume such sinful foods in private.
So if one says "I am religious, and therefore I am against same sex marriage", it is really a non-sequitur. One does not imply the other. If you are saying "I hold to the original meaning of the Bible, where marriage is the process of a man, as master, can buy as many wives as he can support for the purpose of procreation", then you certainly have an argument there. If you say, "I hold that marriage is the contract between two committed individuals and the state, which defines their equal partnership as a family unit", then welcome to the 21st century, where same-sex marriages should not be discriminated against by the so-called "religious" faction of society.
In pointing to your head covering and saying "Judaism doesn't recognize gay marriage", you are not declaring yourself as religious, but as an ideologue and as dogmatic, holding onto definitions that have been discarded by most (owned brides, polygamy, fertility, sexuality) out of fear, and not reason. And by holding onto those views, you push away a large segment of society, a society that may be even more religious than you.
