Conservative Rabbis Embrace Gay/Lesbian Seminarians

Rev. Debra Haffner of the Religious Institute writes today (http://debrahaffner.blogspot.com):

Yesterday a high-level group of Conservative Rabbis voted to allow seminaries to ordain openly gay and lesbian Rabbis and to allow their Rabbis to perform commitment ceremonies for same sex couples. They join the Reform and Reconstructionist Jewish denominations, and a number of Christian denominations, in moving to full inclusion of gay and lesbian people.

The vote was close, and the report was not without controversy. As I understand it from the press report, the Rabbis decided that the Leviticus texts only prohibited a very specific sexual act -- an act incidently that about one in four married heterosexual couples have tried. See the article at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/06/AR200612...

We applaud this move to recognizing the full humanity and gifts of gay and lesbian people, but as our Religious Declaration (www.religiousinstitute.org) says, we need to move beyond an act-centered morality, to one that is based on relationships. The fact that a specific act makes many people uncomfortable does not make it immoral or unethical; only the context of the relationship can determine that.