Last week, Steve Greenberg, a gay Orthodox rabbi, spoke at the Swope Lecture about the personal battle between his sexuality and his faith. This upset a few parents of students. In the spirit of open debate, the Combat Zone published one of these responses to the Swope Lecture.
Hello,
My name is Joseph Pearlman, a native of Tacoma, and a parent of a UPS student. My oldest son, Adam Pearlman, is a junior at Puget Sound. The other week, a homosexual rabbi, Steve Greenberg, came to campus for a much-publicized lecture. I find this very irresponsible on the part of the university.
I imagine myself to be an open person. I think that people have the right to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own home, so long as they don’t try to brainwash other people or evangelize. So when you bring a man like Greenberg to speak to impressionable youths, you are simply being blind to the consequences and negative impact of your actions.
My son was in that audience, and ever since then he’s been talking about nothing but the silly ideas he picked up at that lecture (though I don’t doubt the campus climate promotes such thoughts). He keeps talking about, “what’s right for him,” and “the urges he’s always felt,” and that Rabbi Greenberg, “gave him the courage to be open about himself.” My son never kvetched like this before last week.
Thanks to that gay rabbi my own son thinks it’s all right to be a rabbi. A rabbi! Well, it’s not all right. It’s simply wrong.
It’ll start small, with a Torah scroll hidden inside of a copy of Playgirl, but then he’ll start going out on Fridays to walk to the synagogues, instead of dancing at the gay bars like he should be doing at his age. Then he’ll start talking like a rabbi and dressing like one. Just imagine my son with one of those yarmulkes like some stiff-wristed, Manhattan zionist. And then he’ll start praying on children—brises and bar mitzvahs and other such horrible acts that Richard Dawkins frowns upon.
The shame that my son has brought me! He could have been a normal gay person: a gay doctor or a gay lawyer, even a gay carpenter for all I cared. But now he has to go and be a gay rabbi. Try telling that at the next dinner party: “No, Adam doesn’t have a hot piece of gentile manmeat…He ‘realized’ he was a rabbi, so he only dates Jewish men…” I’m getting verklempt just thinking about it.
In short, shame on you, University of Puget Sound. This is what I get for $60,000 a year? My son decides that he’s a rabbi? I know it’s a liberal part of the country, and kids like to experiment and everything, but come on! Don’t be schmucks. Against my better judgment, my daughter just entered Puget Sound as a freshman, and may she be swallowed by a whale before she decides to become a imam or something, after attending one of the university’s abominable lectures.
Regards,
J. Pearlman