Gay Synagogues Torn Between the Straight and Narrow
By Anthony Weiss
Atlanta - When Gayanne Geurin Weiss and her husband went looking for an Atlanta synagogue to join, they soon found one that had everything they wanted; it was warm, friendly and spiritual. There was just one catch: It was for gay men and lesbians, and Weiss and her husband are straight.
Gay and lesbian synagogues first began to appear in the early 1970s, in the wake of the 1969 Stonewall rebellion, which spurred the rise of the gay movement. Feeling unwelcome in mainstream synagogues, and inspired by the founding of gay-friendly churches, Jews in New York and Los Angeles formed congregations of their own.
“If the world is going to change, we have to model that change. Gay and straight people need to build community together as Jews,” said Rabbi Denise Eger, Kol Ami’s founding rabbi. “We didn’t want to be a gay ghetto.”
In that same spirit, when families such as the Weisses asked to join Bet Haverim in the mid-1990s, the congregation’s members felt that they couldn’t justly turn them away.
“I’ve had straight men confide in me and say: ‘I didn’t really fit in in other synagogues where everybody was talking about sports…. Here at the synagogue, I can just be comfortable in who I am,’” Lesser said.
For the time being, many say there is still a value to be embraced in synagogues that can understand and focus on issues uniquely gay and lesbian. And they say that until discrimination is eliminated, those synagogues provide valuable beacons to those who are not yet out.
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