Progressive Halakhah and Homosexual Marriage 159
and lesbians are there in a particular society? Is this a widespread social issue? Furthermore, what is the proportion of Jew ish homosexuals in relation to the entire Jewish population? It would appear that no such census has been taken. How many of these constitute permanent couples?
The Kinsey Report, published in 1948, had been the basis of the statistical assumption that about 8 percent of the adult population is homosexual. Kinsey actually concluded that 8 percent of men were exclusively homosexual. A half century later in 1994 The New England Journal of Medicine analyzed a number of scientific studies published independently, that concluded that 2 percent of men were currently exclusively homosexual.!® There are no statistical data on lesbians. We have no data on the sexual orientation of Jewish males. The most reasonable conjecture is that the percentage of Jewish homosexuals is about the same as that of the general population, namely, 2 percent. The question remains: How many of these homosexuals are involved in a committed, coupled relationship? The answer would undoubtedly be a small proportion of the Jewish population, perhaps 1 percent or less. Coupled gays or lesbians therefore appear to constitute an extremely small portion of the Jewish population. How would Jewish law and tradition react to such a situation?
In several instances the halakhah was not clear to the sages. In one such case we learn:“Rabbah bar Hanin asked Abaye : ‘What is the legal ruling?’ Abaye said to him:‘Go and see what is the accepted practice of the people.””!” What is the accepted practice of the vast majority of the Jewish people today? There is no doubt that the accepted practice is heterosexuality.
A Matter of Choice?
One of the controversies surrounding the phenomenon of homosexuality is whether it is based on a free choice or a compulsory orientation. Are they the way they are because of nature or of nurture? The report of the CCAR Ad Hoc Committee on Homosexuality and the Rabbinate indicates that members of the committee held two major opposing views on the origin and nature of sexual identity: 1) Sexual orientation is not a matter of conscious choice but is consti