The New Jersey Jewish Standard claims in its “About Us” that it is “dedicated to giving expression to all phases of Jewish life.” Its actions, however, show that it is not open to the Jewish LGBT community. The Standard did the sensible thing last week by printing a community couple’s same-sex wedding announcement, just as they would for a marriage between a man and a woman.
This, of course, led to a barrage of letters and protest from what they call the paper’s “traditional/Orthodox” readership (and what is in fact the paper’s homophobic readership). As a result, the Jewish Standard stated yesterday that they will not run any more same-sex wedding announcements. Even worse is that instead of apologizing and reaching out to queer Jews, they apologized to the Orthodox community for “any pain” they may have caused. And all of this is happening right after a gay college student from New Jersey committed suicide because his roommate outed him.
This is shameful and wrong; it betrays the paper’s commitment to communal pluralism, acceptance and non-denominational-ism. The editors should retract their statement; This is a shanda for the Jewish community. [Jewschool]
How time flies. I remember the beginning of what became the “Al-Aqsa Intifada” during the High Holidays of my freshman year of high school. Since then we’ve seen multiple wars, breakdowns in the peace process, ruined economies and, worst of all, thousands upon thousands of deaths. Now the Israelis and Palestinians have a chance to make ti right. Don’t mess it up, says Sever Plocker. [YNet]
In related news, the Jerusalem Post (!) tells us to support Salam Fayyad’s unilateral statehood plan for the Palestinians. [JPost]
On a lighter note, Jewlicious gives us their picks for JFNA’s Jewish Community Heroes contest! [Jewlicious]
And can Modern Orthodoxy have the best of both worlds? [My Orbiter Dicta]
I have heard many state that the reason they canceled their subscription to X paper was because of those ads. This could just be a circulation issue in which case you can’t ask the paper to commit suicide even if you disagree with the position of many of its readers. The paper also presumably is not open to Jews for Jesus – every community has borders, even if we disagree where they are.
and as for the unilateral Palestinian state – merit aside, the Jerusalem Post is not known as a right-wing paper in any right-wing circles (I am well familiar with such circles), so it should not be a surprise that this op-ed appeared in the Post. They regularly have columns from both sides of the aisle – Larry Derfner is a regular (leftist). It’s actually a rather good paper for that reason – there’s stuff in there to make you angry no matter where you find yourself in the poliitcal spectrum.