There are few issues facing America today which necessitate truly difficult personal choices more than the question of what to do about homosexuality. The reticence that most Americans feel towards a complete, uncritical acceptance of homosexuality as the equal of heterosexuality is balanced by the personal relationships most Americans have with homosexuals who just don’t appear to be the vile demons out to convert the young that some forces on the right suggest that they are. A few weeks ago CCAR (Central Conference of American Rabbis), the governing body of Reform Judaism, took a stand on this issue by deeming homosexual partnerships as "worthy of affirmation," a stance which seems to support gay marriage.

The decision to legalize gay marriage is probably one of the most unfortunate decisions that Reform Judaism has made, second only to the decision to recognize patrilineal descent. The latter decision served to confuse the question of Jewish identity so as to make Reform Jews unacceptable to a good number of other Jews; the more recent decision serves to confuse the question of Jewish morality so as to make Reform Judaism unacceptable to a good number of other Jews. I say this despite the fact that I support legalizing gay marriage in the United States. How does one reconcile these two positions?

A wise man once said, "render unto God that which is God’s, and to Caesar that which is Caesar." I know we don’t agree with a lot of what that fellow said, but this was one area where Jesus had it right on the money when it came to living in the diaspora. Once upon a time, we lived in a Jewish state which respected Jewish laws, but in this day and age we live in a secular state where the state shall establish no religion, and I think it is a big step forward. That means that the state is free to have different laws than any of the religions that the people within it may hold.

There are three strong arguments for legalizing gay marriage in America: An idealistic one, a legalistic one, and a utilitarian one. The idealistic one is simply to believe that gay relationships are, in the words of the CCAR, "worthy of affirmation" just like heterosexual ones. While it may shock some urbanites who wouldn’t know middle America if Dale Earnhardt’s number three car rammed them in the tuchus, polls clearly show that Americans aren’t buying this one. It is a simple fact that most Americans don’t feel that homosexuality is the equal of heterosexuality and they aren’t likely to believe it no matter how much they might enjoy "Will and Grace."

That means that if liberal forces (and their crazy cousins in the basement, libertarian forces) want to see gay marraige legalized, they will have to depend on one of the other two arguments. The United States government, as everyone knows, gives a certain number of rights and privileges to those people who are married, including inheritance rights, custody rights, and certain tax breaks ("marriage penalty" be damned). The legal argument for gay marriage states that it is unfair for the government to determine that a corporation of two formed in order to obtain these rights has to be one male, one female. In a way, it is sexual discrimination. Why should the government determine that in order to have my lover visit me in a public hospital, that lover has to be female?

The other argument, the utilitarian argument, addresses one of the most common points argued by those who oppose homosexual rights. Many conservatives believe that gay marriage, like anything which demonstrates "state approval" of homosexuality, will result in making it easier for people to be homosexuals. If (and this is, of course, the big unanswerable if) homosexuality is somewhat environmentally influenced, and not entirely genetic, anything which makes homosexuality easier will make it more appealing. Or so the argument goes.

The utilitarian argument accepts this position, as silly (or significant) you may think it is. OK, so we agree that gay marriage makes it more likely people will be gay. But, on the other hand, all conservatives agree that marriage makes people more likely to be monogamous. So which is a more important moral goal: discrediting homosexuality or promoting monogamy? It isn’t such a difficult step for conservatives to take to agree that promoting monogamy is by far the more important traditional goal. That would seem to point to gay marriage as an acceptable compromise.

So, getting back to the decision made by CCAR, why shouldn’t Judaism go along with the state and legalize gay marriage. The answer, bluntly, is that we have Torah and Congress doesn’t. For all the huffing and puffing about "Judeo-Christian values," this nation has no traditions it needs to hold to other than democratic traditions that are outlined in the Constitution. No matter how individual Jews live their lives, however, Judaism as a religion cannot overlook the Torah.

There is just no getting around what it says in the Torah: A man shall not lay down with a man the way he lies with a woman. No means no, and 4000 years of history and Talmud back it up. Liberal forces will argue that the Torah describes a way of life that we don’t practice any longer. We no longer have slaves, having realized that those laws have been superceded by modern morality; neither do we sacrifice live animals. There are a thousand examples that can be given, but on the whole these examples are of things once permitted and now disallowed (slavery, polygamy) or things discouraged by tradition but not by Torah (female Rabbis). Negative laws of the Torah have not been made positive by non-Reform Jews. We still don’t eat pork, we still remarry without a get (Jewish divorce), and we still don’t marry the same sex.

There has been an argument made for allowing gay marriage by a number of more liberal Conservative rabbis which states that the Torah’s prohibition on homosexuality is not a prohibition on loving, caring relationships but rather on the type of power-based, mostly pederastic relationships carried on by non-Jews at the time of both the Torah and the Talmud. It is a reasonable argument, but not one which Reform Judaism used to make their decision. Instead, they simply did the liberal thing and in the process turned off not only most other forms of Judaism but the great majority of their own lay members.

By changing the rules without giving reasons for fiddling with halacha (Jewish law), Reform Judaism simply separates itself more and more from normative Judaism. This can only be a negative thing for the strength of the Jewish people as a whole. For a long time now, most of the world’s Jews have not lived their lives by halacha, but their rabbis have, and Jews have always known that despite their flaunting of the rules, those rules were still there and were still Judaism. Reform Judaism created a different situation here in North America, but by abrogating halacha in this most personal area, Reform Judaism creates a gap between not the practices of themselves and most Jews but more importantly the standards and values.