It's Not So Simple

Hyperbolic utterings about "gaybashing" and "homophobia" aside, there is a massive difference between being against homosexuals and being against homosexuality. The staff distorts the issues involved, almost to the point of making them unrecognizable.

Ignoring for the moment that Adam Webb's figure for the percentage of homosexuals in America is probably wrong--2 percent is probably too high (see Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud, 1990)--Webb's other comments need to be taken in context.

It is unreasonable to assume, as the staff does, that Webb means to attack Hillel as an institution. Rather, he seems to be saying that by coming down on the easy-pickens side of a political issue that does not directly concern it, Hillel's coordinating committee is making Hillel look like "a political, P.C. hack group." As a matter of fact, the committee's actions last week have upset many of Hillel's rank-and-file.

Finally, homosexuality is a complicated issue, and deserves more space than either a poster or an editorial can give it. But the idea that "the Jewish religion doesn't count in AALARM's religion and morality" is silly. The best-known prohibitions against sodomy in the Judeo-Christian tradition come in Leviticus.

Check your Torah.