There are quite a few laws that are no longer upheld, even by Orthodox Jews, who follow many of the laws provided in Leviticus - when, for example, did you hear of someone stoning a witch? Or, for that matter, walking the proscribed distance from the city walls, digging a hole with a wooden paddle, using it for bodily waste, and filling it back in again? One of my favorite quotes from
Spock's World, by Diane Duane:
"I remember a time some year ago, on Earth," Sarek said, "when I was invited to attend a religious gathering as part of a cultural exchange program. The people at the gathering were professing their belief in one of your people's holy books, and stating that the only way to be saved - I am still unclear as to what they felt they needed saving from: we never go as far as an explanation - the only way to be 'saved' was to follow the book's directions implicitly, to the letter. Now that book is a notable one, in my opinion, and filled with wise advices for those who will read them and act on them wisely. But some of the advices have less bearing on the present times that others: at least, so it seemed to me. I asked these people whether they felt that all the book must be obeyed, and they said yes. Then asked them whether each of them then did indeed, as the book said they must, take a wooden paddle, when they need to evacuate their bowels, and go out the prescribed distance from the city where they lived and dig a hole with the paddle, and relieve themselves into the hole and cover it up again? They were rather annoyed with me. And I said to them that it seemed to me that one had no right to insist that others keep all of the law unless one keeps it all himself. I am afraid," Sarek said, mildly, "that they became more annoyed yet."
Too many people, as described by Sarek in the above quote, insist that others keep those parts of the Bible that are important to them, citing the Bible as the supreme authority, and yet ignore those rules that they consider unimportant. Homosexuality was decried in many early societies because it prevented conception - and in general, homosexuality was
most likely to be decried in belief systems which also touted procreation as a tenet of the faith - after all, until recent times, people who engaged solely in homosexual relations did not have children.
Reform Judaism, in the mid-1800s, split Biblical law into to two categories: laws of morality and laws of conscience. Laws of morality are those you keep because you are a moral person, while laws of conscience are those you keep because your conscience requires you to do so. The latter mostly encompasses the food laws, the clothing laws, laws about work on the Sabbath, the requirement of 10 adult men for a minyan (needed for certain religious obligations) and other things that set Jews so clearly apart from those around them - the split in the laws was intended, in fact, to allow Jews to blend in better with society, and also to allow Jews to live in the expanding frontier without having to huddle together to meet the needs of those laws. Now, the question becomes: is homosexuality a law of morality, or a law of conscience? For myself, I consider it a law of conscience - and therefore people can choose to keep that law or not, as their conscience dicates - NOT as my conscience dictates.
My opinion is, and always has been, that love is hard enough to find without putting such strictures upon it. If you don't approve of homosexual relationships, don't participate in one - but don't tell others they can't, simply because you don't like it. There must be some reason for homosexuality that goes well beyond personal choice, or it would not show up so consistently despite all the efforts various societies have made to suppress it; even when no one talked about it, no one admitted to it, no one saw it, it still occurred - that, in my opinion, goes well beyond personal choice and into genetic predetermination.
