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only in the case of a man; but when it is that of a woman the action is regarded as mere obscenity.
And the following passage from Maimonides Yad Issurei Bi‘ah 21:8 says: It is forbidden for women to commit lewdness with one another. This is one of the“practices of Egypt ” concerning which we were warned, as it is said.“You shall not copy the practices of the Egyptians. Said our sages, What did they do? A man would marry a man and a woman, or a woman would marry two men.”(Sifra to Lev. 18:3) Even though this practice is forbidden, they do not impose flogging as a penalty since it does not have an explicit prohibition of its own and no intercourse is involved. Therefore they are not disqualified from a marriage to a kohen on the grounds of being considered a whore, nor is a woman prohibited to her husband if she has done this, for this is not a matter of zenut. But it is appropriate to flog them for rebelliousness for violating this prohibition. And a man should take care that his wife does not do this and should prevent women that are known to engage in such practice from coming to visit her or her, going to visit them.
Friedman writes:“Throughout the rabbinic discussion there is no evidence of any awareness of such a phenomenon as sexual orientation among either men or women. A married woman engaging in lesbian relations is seen simply as a woman engaged in illicit sexual acts—not as someone whose entire sexual and emotional being draws her to seek intimacy with women rather than men.
In fact it would be no exaggeration to say that the conceptual framework within which we understand sexuality and sexual relations is irrevocably different from that of our tradition. The chasm between them is as wide as the Enlightenment .... We can
not simply start quoting halakhic sources without stopping to ask
ourselves about the context of these sources and its implications for their relevance.
The responsum continues:“To the extent that the sources offer a rationale for the Toraitic and rabbinic condemnation of homosexual behavior, we find that the concern over the breakdown of marriage, the bearing of children, and“normal sexuality,” the proper and accepted relations between the genders, figures prominently. The Talmud explains that the prescription