Toronto, May 26, 2005, (LifeSiteNews.com) – The survival of the Liberal government over the recent budget vote has now refocused attentionÂon Bill C-38 with traditional marriage defenders resuming their fight against passage of the bill. As the recent rallies in Toronto and Charlottetown attest, this is not an issue that will go away. The latest salvo in the defence of marriage comes from an article written in the National Post of May 25 by Rabbi Eliezer Ben-Porat, the author of several works on Jewish law.
Rabbi Ben-Porat, Dean of the Ottawa Torah Institute, begins his comments by pointing out the silence of his fellow clergy. “Perhaps many of my colleagues,” he writes, “refrain from expressing their views about the matter lest it appear that they are trying to impose their own parochial Jewish values on society at large. However, in my opinion, the discussion is broader than any particular religion or culture. It touches upon the foundations of human civilization. I feel it is my moral duty as a rabbi and a Canadian citizen to speak out.”
The comments by Rabbi Ben-Porat describe the historical and sacred nature of marriage within the Jewish faith tradition. However, the Rabbi also states that the traditional understanding of marriage is also universally acknowledged by all faiths. “All traditional religious people,” he writes, “subscribe to this fundamental principle of the sanctity of the union between man and woman, and see it as a divinely given moral estate not subject to human modification. Indeed, the exclusivity of this relationship as a moral principle is endorsed by many, perhaps most, Canadians. Yet people are now led to believe that if they stick to this moral principle they are intolerant.”
Rabbi Ben-Porat says “The promise by the Prime Minister that the clergy will not be forced to administer same-sex marriage does not give us any comfort. What about those who are not members of the clergy? Why should they be compelled to call this marriage?”
The importance of the public safeguarding of the traditional understanding of marriage is explained by the Jewish law expert’s recourse to the 15th-century Jewish Spanish philosopher Rabbi Isaac Arama. Arama, says Rabbi Ben-Porat, “points that, as far as morality is concerned, there is a difference between the private domain of the individual and the public arena of the judiciary. It is one thing what one does in the privacy of his own quarters, but it is entirely another matter if the law of the country sanctions it, and defines it as an ideal.”
Rabbi Ben-Porat concludes his statements by saying that “we should not be ashamed to say that the proposed bill legalizing gay marriage is abhorrent to us, since it desecrates what is to us very holy and precious. The redefinition of marriage as other than a sacred union between man and woman is suggested by people who possess no historical or philosophical concept of the nature of marriage, and have the audacity to wreck principles and traditions that have become hallowed throughout history and across cultures. They should not be permitted to succeed.”
With files from the National Post.