“We are each created in the image of God. It is no badge of honor to be heterosexual and it is no sin to be homosexual, just as it is no honor to be White and no sin to be Black. It is simply who we are.”
The quote from Rabbi Paul Menitoff comes from his opinion piece in Reform Judaism, “Boycott the Boy Scouts.” I thought it important to share it, since it illustrates a very different kind of reasoning based on the Bible than many Americans are familiar with if their contact with the Bible has been through conservative Christianity. In Reform Judaism, the concept of b’tzelem elohim – being made in the image of God – is a key moral foundation, one which is derived from the Bible but which trumps what individual passages may happen to say, much as the Golden Rule trumped passages about slavery for the abolitionists who opposed conservative Christians who defended slavery based on a variety of individual passages.
See also Mark Silk’s article arguing that Genesis supports same-sex relationships.
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