Teaching Jewish children to cure gays
Posted: January 20, 2012 | Author: Adam Wagner | | Tags: gay, homosexuality, Jewish Free School, jfs, jonah, leviticus, orthodox, theJC |2 Comments »
by Adam Wagner
The Jewish Chronicle reports this week that Jewish Free School (JFS) pupils are being “taught how to ‘cure gays”.
My first reaction was probably similar to many others: shock that a mainstream Jewish school is promoting a sinister “gay cure” institute which offer “research and clinical strategies for growth out of homosexuality”.
But before you choke over your Shabbat lunch, I think the article needs some closer analysis.
First, I’ll state what should be obvious. JONAH (‘Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality’) International, the organisation which was referred to in a JFS religious studies lesson, is a purveyor of snake oil and non-scientific “woo” which should be discouraged by any school and consigned to the unenlightened past where it belongs. As the American Psychiatric Association states in relation to “reparative” or “conversion” therapies:
As a general principle, a therapist should not determine the goal of treatment either coercively or through subtle influence. Psychotherapeutic modalities to convert or “repair” homosexuality are based on developmental theories whose scientific validity is questionable. Furthermore, anecdotal reports of “cures” are counterbalanced by anecdotal claims of psychological harm. In the last four decades, “reparative” therapists have not produced any rigorous scientific research to substantiate their claims of cure.
So, as the science currently stands, there is no evidence that gay cures work and I would expect that they can do significant psychological damage as any snake-oil can. This should not be presented as a legitimate view in a school, either implicitly or explicitly, in the same way that racism or creationism should not be.
But were JFS teaching students how to cure gays? The JC front page splash states that
As part of the school’s Jewish studies curriculum, pupils are shown a website from the American group JONAH – Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality.
[…]
The JONAH website is introduced at the end of the textual study part of a lower sixth lesson on homosexuality and the Orthodox viewpoint.
Pupils have complained that, coming at the end of the lesson, there is no opportunity for debate and that the JONAH website was effectively presented as the authoritative statement of the Orthodox view.
Having choked on my own Shabbat lunch (well, Thursday dinner), my second reaction was to doubt whether the article the facts straight. The JC is not exactly a paragon of journalistic rigour (see my previous post) and often preferences sensationalism over accuracy.
Certainly, the headline that JFS kids were “taught how to cure gays” is quite a far distance from the paragraphs quoted above. What seems clear is that the students were shown a slide on a PowerPoint presentation, amongst others. What is not clear is the context.
More worrying is the quotes from JFS students:
“At the end, we were asked what we thought about religious Jews who might hate themselves because their religion condemns being gay. The last slide on the PowerPoint was a picture and a link to the JONAH website, after we were discussing what gay Orthodox Jews can do, if they hate themselves.”
The student said there was no condemnation or discussion of the controversy around gay “conversion”, and no alternative group was mentioned. “I was appalled; it felt like it was saying, ‘If you are having doubts, check this out’.
Another pupil who was in the lesson said: “If I were gay or worrying about my sexuality, sitting through that lesson, I would have been so upset. They could have advertised other organisations, which are not there to convert but to support whatever decision people want to make. I know most people were offended by it.”
The first quote seems to contradict the first part of the article, which states that the “coming at the end of the lesson, there is no opportunity for debate”. It seems that the PowerPoint slides were shown as part of the debate, not at the end of it. As to the second quote, phrases such as “it felt like it was saying” in addition to the “was effectively presented” in the first part of the article sound to me like poor justification for the headline accusing the school of teaching its students how to cure gays.
Rabbi Jonathan Miller, the school’s headmaster, said to the JC:
The website is referred to at the end of the lesson, as another opinion, ‘some Jews think this’, to leave students with food for thought.
However,
It is absolutely not the case that we promote JONAH. The teaching materials explicitly state that Judaism would utterly condemn homophobia and discrimination
Gay news website Pink News has posted a less hysterical and more nuanced article. It says of Miller:
He denies students were taught particular views were right or wrong in the lesson, which was designed to promote discussion, and said the school employs a student welfare officer to provide counseling on the campus.
I am sure there will be an official response from the school next week. But what can we take from the current evidence?
My best guess is that JFS students were not “taught how to cure gays”, and to that end the JC headline is probably inaccurate and irresponsible. However, the of limited sample of students interviewed, it would also appear that the lesson was either not very well planned or well taught. When dealing with such a sensitive and difficult subject, this is inexcusable.
All that said, I do think that in his response Rabbi Miller has inadvertently highlighted the elephant in the room here. Let’s revisit what he said:
The teaching materials explicitly state that Judaism would utterly condemn homophobia and discrimination
The key word is “would”. Not “does” condemn, but “would” condemn. Why the conditional? Because Orthodox Judaism does not “condemn” homophobia and discrimination, but in arguably encourages it. The basic Orthodox view is that homosexual sex is banned. As Wikipedia says:
While there is disagreement about which acts come under core prohibitions, all of Orthodox Judaism puts certain core homosexual acts, including male-male anal sex in the category of yehareg ve’al ya’avor, “die rather than transgress
There are nuances and philosophical disputes – see, for example, Rabbi Jeremy Gordon’s JC article Why gay sex is not immoral – but the fact remains it is contrary to Orthodox Jewish law for two people of the same-sex to have sex with each other. This prohibition can only lead to discrimination and homophobia. When your Rabbi says your instincts are prohibited, how could it not?
The ban on gay sexual contact in Orthodox Judaism means that whilst organisations such as JONAH may be on the periphery of the Orthodox world, it is hard to expressly condemn them from an Orthodox perspective. Hence “would”.
And, anyway, the idea that gays can be cured is not limited to the periphery of Orthodox Judaism. The popular Chabad website states the following about how someone should “react to homosexual feelings”, offering “free will” as the answer:
So what to do when our desires are for unequivocally forbidden acts? While firmly closing the door on the act, often we find that when we consistently redirect those emotions, again and again, the emotions are slowly tempered and change. Sometimes it takes just a little work, sometimes many years. Some feelings never go away. That is the challenge of being human.
In other words, practice makes perfect. Act straight and eventually, you will probably be straight.
So once we have dislodged that piece of salmon and choked back our collective outrage, the reality may be that the JC owe JFS a bit of an apology, certainly for its hyperbolic headline.
However, the school probably needs to accept some responsibility for the confusion of its students, and do a better job of explicitly rejecting certain perspectives. Just because a view is held by a number of people doesn’t make it legitimate or safe; the danger of ignoring this, even in a religious studies lesson, applies doubly when dealing with confused and vulnerable adolescents who may well be struggling with feelings about their own sexuality.
Finally, it is important to consider where the moral outrage we instinctively feel after reading such a headline is really coming from. The fact that children are being taught a perspective which is unscientific and dangerous in a mainstream Jewish school, or the much more disturbing reality that mainstream Orthodox Judaism still condemns homosexuality and therefore implicitly (to paraphrase the JC) condones that perspective.
If the latter, then all Orthodox Jews – me included – must bear some of the responsibility for pernicious organisations such as JONAH.
Adam Wagner is a barrister practising in public, human rights and medical law. He edits the UK Human Rights Blog, and writes for guardian.co.uk. Twitter: adamwagner1