Can I Have Some Emails Please!

I met with another frum gay guy in London this evening to discuss the setting up of a support/social group for gay guys in the United Kingdom from a frum background. The problem at the moment which really does stump me is that there aren’t really that many of us out there! If you believe the research conducted by Alfred Kinsey in the 1940s, approximately one man in ten is homosexual, yet somehow I find it difficult to believe that ten guys in my class of one hundred in school, or that eighteen guys from my yeshiva of one hundred and eighty are homosexual. More recent research conducted by the Office for National Statistics suggested that only 1.5% of British men are homosexual. Which, if accurate makes frum gay jews such as myself pretty much בטל בששים – a mere one part in sixty of the population.

Having said that, there can be no more suitable an arena than the internet for frum gay jews to find each other and for a support group to emerge. So if you’re a gay jew in the United Kingdom who may have been reading my blog for weeks but not yet said hi – please do take the trouble to email me – anonymously if you’d prefer!

Also – what’s with the 16 hits I’ve got this week from Saudi Arabia. Do I have a muslim following? Please be in touch too! You’ve got me curious!

From an Antipodean Perspective

I was the recipient of an unnecessarily flattering phone call earlier in the week. It was from someone in the Golders Green community with whom I was previously unacquainted. He started off the call explaining how he got my number and then proceeded to tell me how amazing I am. He must have gone through four or five different people in the community who all spoke really highly of me and “that’s why I think you’re going to be just perfect for this girl I know.”

“Can I stop you just there?” I interrupted him. I had a feeling where this conversation was headed.

I told him I was really flattered by everything he’d just said. “You see, I’m happily dating a girl at the moment.” I lied.

“Whoever the girl is, she is extremely lucky to be dating you. I am sure that a mazal tov is imminent, but please do get in touch with me if you become available”. I found the compulsive compliments cringe worthy. I assured him I would get back to him if for whatever reason things didn’t work out.

So now – not only do I need to contend with friends’ parents, family members and neighbours coming up with suggestions – now I find myself having to thwart recommendations from perfect strangers!

And I may only have bought myself a couple of weeks. I used the same excuse (that I was in the middle of dating someone) to fend off suggestions from my next door neighbour as well as the neighbour next door to her! Now I get nervous when I walk down my own street in case I bump into them and they want to know how things are going with my date. I can’t keep dating this imaginary girl for too long without an engagement, and if I tell them I’m dating someone else, they’ll be annoyed I didn’t get back to them after the earlier date had fizzled out.

Then of course the flattering phone call itself really hurt. It sort of highlighted the lie I’m living. I doubt very much that any of those people he cited as thinking highly of me would continue to do so if I they were aware of my sexuality. After the call I just cupped my head in my hands and for the first time in a few weeks got all teary-eyed.

It was 9pm. I turned on the television for the news headlines. It was the Australian floods. People missing, communities shattered.

“I have a roof over my head and the carpet under my feet is dry so stop pretending I have it so bad” – I commanded myself.

The Uncertainty Principle

I’ve mentioned in a previous posting how what stops so many people from coming out is a lack of certainty over the issue of whether or not they can find girls attractive. Even now, with rosho ve'rubo (my head and most of my body) firmly in the closet, and just a few carefully selected relatives and friends being aware of my homosexual feelings – I still wonder if I could make it with a girl.

Last week I met a girl who I dated around Pesach time. She was undeniably the girl I’d got on with the best out of all my dates over the years, and when her love for me became apparent, I knew I could mess with her mind no longer so I played my final card and insisted on living in the UK – something I knew she wasn’t prepared to do. The relationship ended, and she turned down my offer to remain friends on the grounds that it would be too difficult for her emotionally. Recently she’s been texting me again. We met up for breakfast one morning a few weeks ago and had a long chat. Then just this past week I met her again at an event. We got on so effortlessly. We just chatted like crazy, I knew she liked me – and that knowledge helped dispel any low esteem I may have had (something which normally gets in the way where girls are concerned). While talking to her, I found myself completely enchanted by her and thinking some mild sexual thoughts. Nothing major but enough to get me totally confused again :(

Help!

More than Just Paintbrushes?

I’ve just listened to this recording of a shiur given last night by Rabbi Ilan D. Feldman, Rav of the Congregation Beth Jacob in Atlanta in Georgia, USA. I have to say Rabbi Feldman comes across really well – refreshingly so - and in no way could I describe his shiur as homophobic. He is consistent and that’s what I like about his view. He asserts that an openly gay man would be unwelcome in his community, although he feels equally strongly that anybody attending his shul who publically admits to enjoying forbidden mixed fabrics (sha’atnez) would also be unwelcome as such a person is in flagrant breach of a Torah commandment.

However, Rabbi Feldman still seems to imply that the Biblical prohibition necessarily boils down to a Torah inspired social agenda which frowns heavily upon homosexual relationships per se regardless of what may or may not be happening in the bedroom. In other words, Rabbi Feldman doesn’t quite see the prohibition as an unexplained chok which covers a single bedroom activity, but would view homosexual house sharing, handholding and kissing as all highly problematic.

I would argue, as I’ve argued in an earlier blog-posting, that reading a wider social endorsement of Victorian family values into the Torah is somewhat disingenuous and if anything, it’s taking a relatively recent view of family values (say, the last two hundred years) and looking back into the Torah to try to find support for it. One of the ironies in Rabbi Feldman’s talk was that he predicted that the acceptability of homosexual lifestyles may one day lead to paedophilia being accepted as a normal variant. Yet, the Torah seems to have no problem at all with paedophilia! It’s only in the modern age that the Western World has learnt to be outraged by it – which is why Rabbi Feldman is so outraged by it. Yet, the Shulchan Aruch merely advises against marriage to a young girl due to a technical concern that as she’d be too young to conceive, any ejaculate in the process of intercourse would be considered to be wasted seed.

So I’d want to ask Rabbi Feldman and indeed my readers: We’re all outraged by paedophilia because we’ve been brought up in the Western World to feel that way even though the Torah has no particular problem with the issue. But the unease which you may feel towards homosexual relationships? Does that originate from your Victorian ideal of what constitutes a proper family – or from the Torah itself?

Come on in, the water's lovely

I got into an argument last week – not a proper argument – in fact, the argument was conducted amidst scenes of such civility that my antagonist probably didn’t notice that we were having one. I told him of two people I know, both frum, both gay, both closeted, both dating girls – all while in a relationship with each other.

The guy I was arguing with is also frum and gay – except, he’s had the courage to be open about it and no longer dates girls. When hearing of these two girl-dating gays, he got into a rage – I didn’t actually witness the rage as the argument was held over the internet – but I did notice that he put CAPS LOCK on. He was just very angry that gay guys should be doing this. What they need to do is accept their destiny, accept that for whatever reason, God has decided that they shouldn’t marry girls, and they need to stop pretending that they can.

In a huge way, I completely agree with this position – if I didn’t –I would never have come out to my parents. I was dating for three years solid and not once did I feel there was much chemistry between myself and the girl. Every so often, the girl I was dating would feel the chemistry, she’d get attached, phone me up loads, facebook message me, text me, and just generally get really excited about our future, and then the inevitable ditching a week or two later would come like a bolt from the blue. I don’t think back proudly to those dating days, I’m sure I caused a lot of girls a lot of hurt – and whenever I listen to Christina Perri’s wonderful “Jar of Hearts” I keep imagining the song is talking to me, demanding to know “who I think I am, going round leaving scars, collecting my jar of hearts.” But it was something I had to go through to know whether I could or whether I couldn’t.

Which leads me to my point, and it’s a common theme in conversations I’ve had with many frum gay guys – we don’t all know whether we can or whether we can’t. Often we’re brought up in Orthodox homes, we’re shomer negiah, we’ve had no sexual experiences with girls. We know we like guys, but then every so often we see a girl at a wedding or at a shabbos meal and we think, hmmm maybe I could. I admit that finding yourself asking the question is in itself a pretty ominous sign, but this is what we’re going through – this is what leads to the indecision, the delay in coming out, the refusal to acknowledge our homosexuality. Coming out is one humongous step which is pretty difficult to step back from once taken. We need to be 100% certain that there’s no way we can take the straight road, before we can commit ourselves to taking that deep breath and coming out to family and friends.

And I can’t deny I still have doubts today, while in my quasi-out state. I’m on the verge of telling another shadchan that I’m not into girls and to stop calling me with all the names! But part of me isn’t quite ready to stem the steady stream of girls’ names being recommended my way. It’s almost soothing to know that they’re still there, that the option to marry a girl hasn’t completely gone! Only last week, the girl I dated the most seriously in all the past three years got in touch asking if we could do breakfast tomorrow morning - as friends. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t mean it when she says “as friends” and somehow I can’t seem to stop myself wondering if there’s a flicker of a chance that I can love her enough to make it work.

So I would say to my antagonist: It’s easy from our side of the closet, to look back to the guys still hiding inside it and be disgusted at their denial at their refusal to join us on the outside. What they need more than anything is our understanding and our warmth. Let’s not rush them and let’s not forget that we’ve been there too.

And I would ask my readers: If you’re gay, did you struggle to know with certainty if you could or couldn’t make it work with a girl – how did you answer that question, and at what point did you decide to stop trying to answer it and just to come out?

Despicable Me?

What follows is an open letter to Rabbi Aryeh HaKohen Katz, a rabbi and teacher at a yeshivah in Brooklyn, New York.

Dear Rabbi Katz,

I was disappointed to read your open letter written in response to Rabbi Boteach’s constructive article in the Wall Street Journal last week. Rabbi Boteach made no attempt to deny that there exists a Biblically mandated prohibition against gay sex – he simply sought to dissociate the prohibition from the homophobic baggage with which it is invariably entangled.

In my own conversations with chareidim, many have latched onto the concept of “תועבה”. “Don’t you know the Torah describes it as a תועבה?” they tell me, smug and self-satisfied that they and God are of one mind on this issue. But let’s get this the right way around. It’s not as if people who feel strong levels of repulsion towards homosexuality were going along with an open mind until one day they encountered the Torah’s view in ויקרא and zealously developed a Torah-inspired sense of abomination. I’m pretty sure that for most people, the prejudices were there anyway, the repulsion for “the other” for people who don’t quite fit in to the mainstream, were there anyway – a more vehement version perhaps of the disquiet many chareidi men feel when sharing their views on goyim, sephardim, women. So Rabbi Boteach is right to highlight the fact that the word תועבה is used by the Torah in many contexts, none of which seem to provoke quite the same level of repulsion as homosexuality.

רבי אלעזר בן עזריה אומר: מנין שלא יאמר אדם נפשי קצה בבשר חזיר, אי אפשי ללבוש כלאים, אבל יאמר אפשי ומה אעשה ואבי שבשמים גזר עלי תלמוד לומר ואבדיל אתכם מן העמים להיות לי
תורת כוהנים ט:י

Rabbi Elozor son of Azariah said: From where do we know that a person should never say "I am disgusted by pork, I can't bear to wear forbidden mixed fabrics", rather that he should say "I would quite like to, though what can I do, as my Father in heaven has ordained otherwise". It is derived from the verse "I separated you from the nations to be Mine".

Rabbi Katz, I would implore you to view the Torah prohibition against gay sex with a similar objectivity as suggested by רבי אלעזר בן עזריה when it comes to eating pork. Better still; think of it as a חוק such as שעטנז. If I had a penchant for fine interwoven wool and linen fabrics wouldn’t you still come round for tea, Rabbi Katz?

But then of course there is the societal dimension to all this – and that’s something which Rabbi Boteach seeks to pre-empt by explaining that the heterosexual family unit isn’t exactly the pinnacle of stability itself, with half of heterosexual marriages culminating in divorce. And as for the “Torah way of life” you aspire to uphold, Rabbi Katz: It’s nice to think, that the Torah endorsed lifestyle is the single family unit, a happily married heterosexual, monogamous couple with children, complete with a shabbos table, cholent, kugel and zemiros. It’s funny isn’t it, how if you went back two millennia and had a look around at how Jewish families back then were living, you’d have encountered men with multiple wives, pre-pubescent daughters sold into marriage with an opt-out clause once they hit puberty. But these days we find that difficult to relate to. We learn those sugyas in gemoroh with a sense of unarticulated discomfort. We’re continually evolving our own views as a society on what constitutes a desirable lifestyle. We’ve been quite good at sanitising our Jewish custom from time to time, by discarding the socially unpalatable aspects and updating our practice to fit in with these evolving views. So let’s not pretend that it’s necessarily the Torah which informs our sense of what “frum” society should look like. As for the איסור, Rabbi Katz, it isn’t about living together, and it isn’t about holding hands, it isn’t even about the bedroom.

It’s about paintbrushes and tubes.

And that’s all it is. There’s no divine message to be inferred here about lifestyle choices, it’s a single act that’s off limits, just like they’re plenty of single acts which are off limits for heterosexuals. That’s the type of thinking we’re going to need to help people like myself gain the acceptability in Jewish society that Rabbi Boteach is so earnestly advocating.

Rabbi Katz, there will be boys in your own yeshivah who may be coming to terms with their sexuality and who may be struggling in the process. They will be encouraged by your appeal to “extend them your love”. I am immensely grateful for this, at least.

Good shabbos,

Yitzi G

The Security Threat

So it’s been a week since my last posting – and I’ve been encouraged by the wide readership this blog has received. (For those who don’t know – Google blogs has this wonderful feature whereby it provides details of the countries from which the blog’s readership comes – I’ve been getting really excited each time a reader from a new country pays a visit – although so far, no-one from Liechtenstein or the Cape Verde Islands – well guess you can’t have EVERYTHING.)

I wanted to write a post on how coming out of the closet has affected me emotionally, and what sort of changes it’s brought about to my life – but it still feels way too recent – I’m still living those emotions, and thinking about out how my life is going to have to change – as we speak, so maybe in a couple of weeks’ time I’ll feel more able to comment from an enhanced vantage point on how things have been.

But for now, I wanted to share with you an episode from my past – one which at the time upset me, but which now, looking back – really makes me cross.

I joined a modern orthodox boys’ school when I was 11 with all my class mates from primary school. I had a really wonderful time at the school, made loads of friends and was just generally really happy. A couple of years after I realised I was gay – I decided I really had to tell someone about it. I was finding it hard to cope – I was only 14 and it was difficult for me to work through all the issues on my own. But then, I didn’t want to tell someone who was already an established good friend – as I was terrified it would wreck things, so I told a newish friend, but one that I knew I could trust and who would be really understanding and supportive. And so it was. I told a friend in my class. It was really of great benefit to me, and I was glad that I told him. We would chat loads about me being gay, as well as plenty of other stuff. After a couple of months, we decided that it might be an idea to tell a second friend. This second friend, was one of the more mature boys in the class, someone we both trusted, and we both just felt having another person to help discuss being gay with would be a step in the right direction.

So then we were three. We’d sit down in one of the empty classrooms in break time, and we’d try to answer questions like

• was this a phase?
• would I get married?
• if I got married would my kids be gay too?
• would my beard ever grow?
• does therapy work?
• could I cure it by getting more into sport?

When you’re 14 all these questions are very important. The trouble was that the answers were never forthcoming and in the meantime I was getting increasingly upset. One day, when I had just turned 15, one of my friends had an idea.

“Talk to the school counsellor – I heard he does really important work with kids in the school who are going through a hard time. He also knows loads about psychology and how the mind works he’ll probably be able to answer you much better than we can!”

I took some convincing. Telling guys my age was one thing – but an adult – and not any adult – but a frum adult? I was scared about where this might lead. I put it off for a couple of weeks but eventually I came round to the idea.

I remember the room. Right up at the top of the building – in a poky loft extension. I guess the idea was that having sessions up there, where no one else normally ventured would keep things discreet and confidential. I wanted my two friends to come with me for the first session, so they did. The school counsellor, very much a member of my community, sat there facing me, inviting me to talk about my issues. He was a suited, bearded man with bushy eyebrows and a concerned frown on his forehead. He looked like he wanted to know, like he wanted to help, and that I should feel safe to entrust my dilemma onto his experienced shoulders. This was a man whose workload had most likely consisted of disruptive school kids, kids with ADHD, maybe kids affected by troubles at home. But what was this? I’d brought an entourage with me for support! What could this all be about? He looked into my eyes:

“Yitzi – anything you tell me here today will be kept strictly confidential. I never ever break that rule, unless somebody is in danger of harming themselves or others”

I believed him. His rule spoke to me, it seemed just, even his exception to the rule seemed perfectly reasonable.

I told him that I was gay and that I really didn’t spend time thinking about girls. I told him I was worried about my future – and yes, I told him that it can be frustrating being in a boys’ school, surrounded by a lot of good looking guys a lot of the time – particularly as the weather gets warmer – yes, I remember making that point!

“Well Yitzi, I’m actually rather worried about this” his frown returned.

Worried? I thought – I’m the one with the worries – I thought he’s supposed to help me alleviate those worries. My thoughts were interrupted by the following suggestion:

“What will you do if you blonde haired, blue eyed, muscular cousin comes over from Israel to spend the week at your house and your parents put him in your room? How would you cope with that?”

Hmmmm – how does this guy even know what kind of guys I’m into! Besides, I don’t have a cousin with those specifications. “I guess that would be difficult” I suggested. “But that’s something I’ve just learnt to cope with whenever I have a sleepover party, or go on camps or shabbatonim”.

“Yitzi, I’m afraid I’m going to have to share this information with the head teacher” that kind of came out of the blue. I wasn’t expecting to hear that! There was me thinking I was impressing him with my maturity, my introspection, my careful reflections and thought out answers. He was getting more out of me than the adolescent grunts he must normally be used to. But, you see – I’d fallen into the category of being “in danger of harming myself or others” – a category I vehemently denied being in. I told him in no uncertain terms that he did not have my consent to pass on the information.

The next day, my name was called out over the Tannoy system. I was called out of class for the first time of many. Sent for regular meetings with the head teacher who wanted to keep a careful eye on my progress and presumably on the level of threat I posed. I refused to talk to the school counsellor after that, so I’d have to have these personal conversations with a man not of my choosing. Worryingly, the head teacher knew my family, and I’d occasionally see him in shul or at kiddushim in NW London – not something I felt very comfortable with. When I was in Yr 13 and was about to leave school for Yeshiva in Israel I was called in for my last meeting with the head. He told me that he had decided to inform my Rosh Yeshiva in Israel so that he’d be aware of the situation.

“That’s completely outside of your area of concern” I warned him. “You were told in your capacity as head teacher of this school, and you really need to restrict your concern to this school alone.” I was proud of my hastily compiled legal argument.
He smiled (at my defiance, I suppose) “But I’m also a concerned member of the Jewish community. Once information has been brought to my attention, I can’t possibly stop myself from knowing it and from being concerned by it simply because I wasn’t given the information in that capacity”.
My argument demolished, I tried another: “So what’s this information that’s been brought to your attention”, I challenged him. “That I’m a sexual predator? That my deviant sexuality might rub off onto others? What information? And what evidence do you have. I’ve been here for 7 years and in all that time here has even a single person come to you with an allegation that I’ve behaved improperly?” I lost my temper.
The head teacher realised he’d taken this too far, and we compromised that he wouldn’t tell the Rosh Yeshiva as long as I agreed to be in touch with him regularly.
Something I agreed to do but then reneged upon.

I’m sure school counsellors can be a great resource for kids discovering their sexuality – it was just unfortunate that in my case, the professionalism I thought I could expect was tarnished by a very narrow minded view on homosexuality.

Oh and if any of you are still wondering: Yes, my beard grew :-)