Philadelphia, PA – Members of the local LGBT and ally Jewish community have recently been mobilizing to press an area newspaper to overturn its policy toward coverage of same-sex couples.
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The Jewish Exponent has a long-standing policy barring it from printing wedding or civil-union announcements of same-sex couples.
Lee Rosenfield, a longtime reader of the newspaper, undertook a letter-writing campaign earlier this month to urge the Jewish Publishing Group of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia — the paper’s publisher and the body that makes policy decisions for the publication — to revisit this rule.
Rosenfield acquired signatures from 45 area rabbis from the Reconstructionist movement on an e-mail letter he sent to the Jewish Publishing Group late last month, detailing why the policy is harmful to the Jewish community at large.
“At least 5 percent of Delaware Valley Jews, using the most conservative estimates, are LGBT,” the letter stated in part. “If you add their families and friends, as well as those who see them as part of the community, the Exponent’s failure to recognize their life-cycle events is a blow to most Jews in the Delaware Valley.”
Rosenfield said he’s planning to send a similar letter in the next week or two with about 50 signatures from Reform rabbis, and anticipates he will also garner support from leaders in the Conservative and Orthodox Jewish communities.
Rosenfield said many of the rabbis and other LGBT and ally Jewish individuals from the area have also sent their own messages to the Jewish Publishing Group about the issue.
Dr. Rebecca Alpert, an openly lesbian religion professor at Temple University, said she added her name to the petition because “same-sex couples want and need recognition and support from the Jewish community when they make a commitment to creating a Jewish family.”
Bennet Aaron, chair of the 16-member Jewish Publishing Group, said he was “very much aware” of the campaign.
He declined to speak about the reasons for the policy, but said the board will address the issue during its Sept. 23 meeting.
“This item will be on the agenda for that meeting, and the board will have a discussion and take some appropriate action,” Aaron said.
Rosenfield noted that he and others first approached the newspaper’s leadership about their LGBT coverage about 15 years ago when he was working for the Jewish Federation. At that time, the paper was not mentioning same-sex partners in obituaries or publishing birth announcements for children of same-sex couples — two policies the publication has since discontinued.
“To their credit, they did address some of our concerns at the time, but where they fell short was gay marriage and unions,” Rosenfield said, noting the paper also does not publish personal ads for gays and lesbians.
He said his fight to overturn the policy was recently renewed after what he saw as a lack of adequate coverage in the Jewish Exponent of last month’s double murder at an LGBT community center in Israel.
The newspaper’s brief write-up about the incident was an “aberration,” as the Exponent is “usually very good to the community,” said Rosenfield.
“I think times have changed and we stand at a different place now than we did 15 years ago,” he said. “The issue [of gay marriage] is getting more coverage, and I think the paper should reflect that change.”
“Dr. Rebecca Alpert, an openly lesbian religion professor at Temple University, said she added her name to the petition because “same-sex couples want and need recognition and support from the Jewish community when they make a commitment to creating a Jewish family.”
should we give support to michalilay shobbos too and may be to killers, robbers and every thing ells thats against the torah?? the tora say out rite “mishkov zucher mois yimus”
I guess the analogy would be to require a Catholic newspaper to run ads for abortion providers or to mandate that Hamodia run ads for a local McDonald’s.
Bring it on! Shove it down our throats. pigs and swines! ad mosai! perhaps you want obam of A to put this in to the curriculum, Try he might go for it! Teach our kids that znus is commendable! and that you are the true jews! the torah means something else, we mean better than the torah! We know better than Humanity has known all along, einstein, etc, were just dumb souls, were smarter than everybody cuz were sic. We can calculate how to do Shmutz! and even more than that, we can find ways to force people that think theyre smarter than us to teach it to their kids! We’ll encourage behavior that brings on aids and all other machlos and it’s all gonna be to our pleasure! go to hell with all your Reconstructionist movement Rabbis Just please dont call yourselves jew, you are slandering and degrading us all who do still have some decency and moral value.
It’s sick and it’s getting sicker.
“…letter he sent to the Jewish Publishing Group late last month, detailing why the policy is harmful to the Jewish community at large”. Harmful no less!
“… the Exponent’s failure to recognize their life-cycle events is a blow to most Jews in the Delaware Valley”. A blow to most Jews; you hear?
“…and anticipates he will also garner support from leaders in the Conservative and Orthodox Jewish communities”. Can someone name one Orthodox Jewish Rabbi who will support?
“… need recognition and support from the Jewish community when they make a commitment to creating a Jewish family”. JEWISH FAMILY???, neither Jewish nor a family.
After seeing that McDonalds successfully stopped anyone from using any name which sounds even remotely like McDonalds; I think it is time to sue Deformed and DeConstuctionists from using the name “Jewish” to imply that it has anything to do with the Jewish religion.
Before someone starts with their tricks let me hereby declare that I consider Reform Jews just as Jewish as I am. Reform Jews (those Halachically Jewish) are Jews, but Reform Judaism is NOT Judaism. No tricks please.
How do these people think they will be adding Jewish “families” to the dwindling pool of the non-frum? The average non-frum traditional family does not replicate itself! Same sex couples cannot reproduce and add to the Jewish gene pool. Those who bemoan the fate of “Jewish continuity” and simultaneously applaud deviant behavior are total idiots.
There is a comedy Rabbi in Phily that asked, Maybe we can create some kind of a ‘Heter Iska’ kind of a thing, or like a ‘Pruzbal’, or ‘Shemo Yaavirenu Dalet Amos’, to bend the rules so that we can help these couples.
Sick to have the chutzpah to demand this!
this is a federation paper it is orthodox or conservative but reports to all give them credit for refusing to recognize homosexual elements in our society till now the real problem isnt them its us we walked away frim them closed down after school religious training in our shuls years ago we turned our backs on them and now we want ot no why
Those who you who think the Jewish community should openly embrace homosexual Jews need to learn much more Torah, since there is no room in Halacha for such a stance. Those of you who are quick to excise homosexuals from Klal Yisroel need to learn much more about human nature as a sex drive is as basic to human nature as is hunger for food.
I assume that they charge a fee, and then they print the notice. It’s basically an ad, not an endorsement of anyone’s lifestyle. While I’m not a fan of gay marriages, I’m not sure that this is more than a tempest in a teapot. If a gay couple wants a notice in the paper, and they can afford to buy it, let them have it. Nobody has to go to the wedding if they don’t want to.
All decent people need to band together and form an organization to stand up for basic decency and against those who seek to destroy us physically or spiritually.
What is truly amazing is just how fast society has fallen. 25 years ago, say in the mid-1980s, the notion of same-sex marriage was considered bizarre and unthinkable — like marrying a dog or a goat would be today.
Now it is a mainstream idea, in fact the traditional view is being hounded as bigoted and discriminatory.
Yeah, sure, I just love the statistics the gay community wants to shove down our throats; it ain’t no 5%, you can be sure of that. But why be truthful about that if their entire existence is Sheker? There must be many jews who have the tendency to be gay but I am not interested to know about it. I will accept you as a person and not for your agenda or what goes on in your private life.
This is so hypocritical this is the same paper that has large ads for traif restuarants!! They can advertize for shrimp, lobster and ham but not a civil union… I think neither should be published…
Our local paper in Cleveland places ads for non-kosher stores all the time. I advertised in it anyways because it was a way to reach the community. When they started printing articles and mazel tovs about the lgbt’s i stopped my ads (as well as many others), circulation dropped and now they are hurting financially.
look in to the rambam issury biah 23.. MItzrayim was full of Gays, it was a immoral country.. please, anyone with the power of preventing this large scale immorality, should put a end to this..