As the rest of the world tries to figure out how they feel about Gay Marriage, Gay movies, and gay cowboys, many Orthodox Jewish communities are trying to figure out who exactly is gay in their community. It’s been known for sometime that roughly 10% of the population is gay and some Rabbis and communal leaders have just started to realize that their little enclaves of Yiddishkeit whether it be in San Francisco or Lakewood are probably 10% gay. The only thing is, that no one is coming out of the closet too fast. If you’re like most normal closeted gays, you tend to stay in the closet until you’re either outed or until you can’t bear to live the lie any longer. If coming out of the closet was complicated for the normal gay man, imagine how much harder it is for the man in a community that thinks Gays are pretty much the cause of every evil regime, natural disaster, and terrorist attack that happens in the world.
I pondered these threatening ideas as I sat in shul the other day, I wondered how families, friends, rabbis, and colleagues would react when they heard the news. Would the outed man or women be shunned. Would their friends abandon them? Would I allow them to pour non-mevushal wine for me? Would I trust their kasharus? Would I join the witch hunt and bang on their door with a pitchfork and lantern in hand as the Rabbi read from a scroll and banished them to the modernishe community next door? I pondered such things as I thought about the impending gay crisis.
“Did you know that I slept with a bunch of rabbis” my friend bragged to me, excited to finally be “out” to someone who was one of the last to know. As a straight man, I still had this fascination with gays and for the first time I was hearing some very disturbing and exhilarating stories from a real live frum gay man. He went on about the signs in various mikvah’s, frum gaydar, and Rabbis coming on to him. It was insane and if I didn’t hear it with my own ears, I would have written it off as frum gay urban legends, akin to the time some Rebbe tried to use an elaborate shabbos lichter as a dildo and it didn’t work as planned. I guess you can call that the gay version of the Sternberg Hot Dog story. Regardless of the fact that gay sex was disgusting to me, I also found plenty of straight sex gross too, although girls and horses still gives me a laugh.
I got back to wondering about gays in my community, in San Francisco I had been told that many of the older singles in the Bay Area were merely there for the opportunity to be in a community that didn’t ask questions and in an area where they could be gay and not fear for their lives. I guess I have been wondering why perfectly normal single guys would come to live out their lives in a community designed for married people, in a place that far out priced anywhere else in the country. Was it possible that our large population of single men meant that many of them were gay. It all started to fall in place, it made sense.
I digress, I wonder if the frum community is really ready to deal with all of the closeted gays in their midst. As we become more open and less likely to lynch gay folks, I think that more folks are going to peek outside the closet and maybe fully leave. Families will be broken, shidduch market values of siblings will plummet, and small shuls may need help with their minyan. Are we ready for the gay crisis?
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FAAAAG!
That’s mature and shows complete intelligence. But, you misspelled “fag.” Oh yeah; you’re a dumbass.
Be a good liberal and don’t judge
F-word is totally unacceptable. Does anyone know if one allow to call gay people “homos”?
Who said fag is unacceptable? Some liberal wuss on cnn?
where did you get 10% figure?
This is what they used to say, though I’m sure the figure is hotly debated.
It’s probably much lower and just overblown by the media.
Most feel that the 10% statistic was sorta picked out of a hat, because we have a base 10 system and like round numbers.
“Gay crisis.” Akin to the shidduch crisis or bugs in the water crisis. I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry at all these crises.
“Homosexuality” involves a number of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects. Studies have shown somewhere between 1% and 10% with most in the range of 4%-5%.
The studies with the higher percentage generally have broader criteria (e.g. “have you ever…?”) while the lower percentage usually have narrower criteria (e.g “do you routinely…?”).
Does anyone know if the 10% est. also true for lesbians? Why no one talks about them? Granted it’s lesser of avira, but it’s still not allowed.
I agree with S. The 10% figure is probably “anyone who has ever experimented”, but the actual rate of those who identify as LGBT is 3.5%.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/160517/lgbt-percentage-highest-lowest-north-dakota.aspx
The percentage who are actually gay is probably pretty similar in the frum community, but i would imagine that the rates of experimentation among basically straight men are considerably lower.
You had to use a picture of guys blowing shofars!!!
Ha ha ha ha ha.
That is how they like it.
I always wonder how the closeted frum homosexuals in our population feel when they read frum media that rather than say homosexual say abomination. It’s one thing when the Torah says it. But when the more “enlightened” of the current frum media say it, it must hurt and make them feel alone. My sympathies to them.
Some misguided people feel if you mean to them, they will examine their ways and straight their ways.
My faaaavorite holiday is Rosh Hashanna – the site of the man blowing that long hard ramrod sends chillies up my weinus.
Love the suggestive pic lol. No frum community can never be ready because the Bronze Age Torah forbids it. End of story. Change religion or drop organized religion or hide who you are.
When I came out some years back to a very prominent orthodox Rabbi in Brooklyn, he said to me “They say that 10% of people suffer from this ‘affliction’. From my perspective, I would say the number was somewhat higher.”
Personally, as a BT who is now borderline OTD, I feel like 50% of Yeshivish guys come across as gay.
So true. lol
Not sure why this is being rediscovered now. The faygeleh has been one of those droll caricatures in frum communities for centuries. For much of that time they were just one more part of the community pageant along with the schnorrer and the macher. Until the 19th century, at least among the Ashkenazim, there were no recognized secular Jewish communities for these people to escape to, and even when available there is no reason to think the Reform of Germany or the Bolshevicks of Russia would be any more less inviting to them the way the non-Orthodox have been in our era. It’s just a situation that has always been there, much as sexual abuse of children or domestic violence has always been there, but the difference may be one of more difficulty dealing with both internal and external scrutiny and leader accountability.
what will really will make this a crisis is that they will no longer be able to take government funds unless they promote full equality
I’m pretty sure my boss is OTD (Black shoes, black pants, white long-sleeve shirt. Extreme discomfort with risque language), and he is constantly advising one of my gay colleagues to move to the city “where you would feel more comfortable.” He doesn’t seem to realize how incredibly inappropriate such comments are. Although I’m judging from just one man’s reaction, and I don’t know that he’s formerly frum, I’d guess the frum community is going to have tremendous difficulty determining how to react to and accept its gay people.
Your comment made no sense. Are you thinking he is OTD just because he is socially awkward and looks imbred?
Did I say he looks inbred? I may have intimated he looks like a Mormon missionary with long sleeves instead of short, but I didn’t say he looks inbred. I think he’s OTD because he’s the most sexually uptight Jewish guy I’ve ever met, and if he were from my area I’d think he had run away during Amish Rumspringa. He seems a little puzzled by things, and–yes–he’s a bit socially awkward.
OK. Maybe my boss just can’t dress himself and doesn’t know how to talk to people. Apologies to all OTD.
That’s hardly conclusive evidence that he’s OTD. Why don’t you just ask him about his background?
Yes, that would be the mature, respectful thing to do, and I am never, never going to do that because he is intensely private about his life outside of work. For example, his wife suffered an injury which required an operation, and no one heard about it until she had to have follow-up appointments after surgery months later. We don’t even know his wife’s name. He NEVER mentions his home life, so I’m not going to say, hey, do you never eat anything at work because you’re glat kosher? And are you the person who left the apples and honey because I definitely think you are. I think if I mention these things, he will turn bright red and sizzle through the carpet, and then I will die. So, there it is.
What does OTD stands for? Usually I thought it stands for off the derehk. Do you mean ” OCD”? like for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?
Picture is awesome.
And I was wondering how the frum world was handling the crisis of disbelievers in God. But that isn’t a crisis, it is the reality. It is easier to find a true believer in the OTD or Secular community then it is to find one in the frum world. There they are busy with gays, shatils, segregated buses and not being part and parcel of the only country which God gave the jewish people. Oh I forgot, and checking microscopic bugs in the lettuce.
It seems you are more obsessed with gays.
I know, I’m a psychologist and it makes me wonder….
dude your ten percent statistic is way off, its fifteen percent for San Francisco (the gay capital of america) but just 1.7 percent for the rest of america
http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/research/census-lgbt-demographics-studies/how-many-people-are-lesbian-gay-bisexual-and-transgender/
I certainly hope so. The Shidduch Crisis, the Internet Crisis, the Tuition Crisis and the OTD Crisis are all so fifteen minutes ago
I’m so gay I could tell you the flavor of the kugel you serve me just by sitting on it. But I can’t come out of the closet yet because my life would be as over as Princess Diana’s. Looooved herrrrrr. I get more boners in shul than I do at the urologists office.
In a community event promoting compassion for gay Jews in the midwest recently, sponsored by the CRC, Rabbi Chaim Rappaport (London Bais Din) said that gay Jews should be welcomed into Jewish communities and into Jewish shuls/schools etc. He specifically said that we must be make sure that gay Jews don’t lose their lives, their families, their communities and their G-d.