Israel – Yair Lapid Working To Pass Gay Marriage In Israel

Israel – Finance Minister Yair Lapid is working to build a “coalition within the coalition” to create a civil alternative to religious marriage in Israel, including gay marriage.

In a question and answer session on his Facebook page Thursday night, Lapid told a questioner that he was “definitely” planning on advancing the civil marriage issue.

“I’m a big supporter of civil marriage,” Lapid said. “We’re working to create a coalition within the coalition. Yisrael Beytenu is for it, other parties less. We’ll battle for this and work for it tirelessly, for civil marriage, including marriages for same-sex couples in Israel, simply because it’s the just and right thing to do.”

“The rabbinate can’t have a monopoly on marriage and divorce. People need there to be an alternative,” he added.

Lapid’s video chat was part of a media offensive to shore up support for his budget, which included tax increases and welfare cuts that critics construed as a departure from campaign promises not to harm the middle class.

“Everything that we’re doing today is to ensure that the middle class doesn’t become poor,” Lapid said. “This pain is very temporary. We will come out of it in a year or a year and a half.”

Saying that “fixes” was a better word than “cuts,” Lapid reiterated his talking points of recent days: that the disabled, elderly, Holocaust Survivors were shielded from cuts, while the country continued to invest in education. The middle class, he said, would reap many benefits in upcoming economic reforms, which he said would lower the cost of living.

Most dramatically, Lapid said the harshest cuts were aimed at the haredi community to help push them into the labor force.

“I already cut for the haredim more than ever has been,” he said, alluding to cuts in child allowances that disproportionally affect the fertile community. “Israel doesn’t need a culture of allowances, but a culture of work.”

“What are child allowances? Child allowances say ‘I have kids but want someone else to pay.’ Who is paying? Someone else who has kids, who is taking from his kids and giving to others’ kids,” Lapid said. The cuts, he continued, “act to push people to the job market.”

The state’s responsibility for children, he said, was not to subsidize their families, but to provide education and a productive army experience.

“Nobody should bring children into the world and say someone else should pay their bills. Allowances don’t prevent poverty, allowances perpetuate poverty.”

One questioner, who said he was a full-time Torah student, complained that cuts would leave his family short of money, and said his wife would have to divorce him to obtain a subsidy for single mothers in order for their family to survive. Isn’t that a “piggish” intervention into his wife’s private life, the man asked? Lapid’s response: “There’s another option – that you’ll work.” Noting that the man would only need to work for ten hours a week to bridge the difference, Lapid shot back, his decision not to work was the gross intervention into his wife’s private life.

“The Rambam was a doctor,” Lapid added in reference to Maimonides, the great rabbi of the middle ages, “ and still managed to be the Rambam.”

Content is provided courtesy of the Jerusalem Post