Religion Magazine

Better to Eat Pork...

By Gldmeier @gldmeier
In light of the Pride Parade in Jerusalem this past week, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Rav Shlomo Amar spoke about the issue in a recent shiur. And he spoke about it harshly.
Often, after such harsh speeches, people feign shock and surprise, leading to anger, about what these rabbis say. My approach is that I don't expect most Orthodox rabbis - especially (but not just) Haredi rabbis -  to say anything different, definitely not anything positive on these types of issues, so I do not see why people get shocked or surprised by these things. What else are they going to say? They take a hard line stance, based on the Torah, and are unwilling to tone down their position just to make people happy. they think they are fighting God's battles and that this is what is demanded of them. At best they can remain quiet on the topic, but many don't want to or can't.
In light of that introduction, Rav Amar spoke about how they should be embarrassed about this , not take pride in being homosexual, with some pretty harsh things that you can see on Kipa and I don't want to write here. He especially criticized religious people who support or identify with the LGBTQ community saying they should remove the kipa from their head and it would be better to publicly eat pork before doing this (I assume he means an actual homosexual act, not just expressing support for human rights for homosexuals). Rav Amar said there is no sin worse than this one - it is the 50th level of impurity.
Right or wrong, I would not expect him to say anything different (other than maybe how harshly he worded it), if he already feels the need to speak up about it.
That being said, wouldn't the pork and homosexuality not be mutually exclusive? Just because you are doing one sin does not mean you should do others. Maybe a person who is caught with two strong desires, one to eat pork and the other to have a homosexual relationship, at the exact same moment, maybe he should choose to eat pork - but homosexuals are allowed to just go eat pork because it isn't as bad as something else they do?
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