2011-03 - The Commentator [Purim] - Jewish Homosexual Demands More Condemnation

Jewish Homosexual Demands More Condemnation

SATIRE

March 2011

After wrestling with his sexual inclinations for years, YC Sophomore David Smith came out of the closet earlier this month. The transition, he says, has been harder than he could have imagined: "I haven't been spit at, cursed out, or publicly degraded," Smith complained. "It's like people don't even care."

Smith, who hid his true sexual orientation for years out of fear for public ostracism and private disparagement, has been disappointed by the "liberal lovey-dovey stuff," as he describes it. "Where are all the good old hell-damners?" he asked.

Smith is another in a line of Yeshiva College students who have been welcomed as themselves with "love, support, and understanding," said one senior administrator. The letter Smith recently posted on his blog (www.controversialgayjew. com) was met with nearly unanimous support, as 98 of 104 comments ran along the lines of "we are proud of you, David." The remaining six were split evenly between confusion about whether Smith was the 60s Abstract Expressionist sculptor and gentle corrections of Smith's grammar.

Smith was prepared – and even excited – for the anticipated condemnation. "I thought this was going to be really epic, especially after the panel last year," he said. He pulls out a stack of note cards. "I even prepared a whole series of sassy comebacks! Do you want to hear them? Please?"

Instead, he has had to face the worst-case scenario: acceptance. "This has been incredibly hard for him," said Laura Smith, David's mother, who has known about her son's orientation and encouraged him for the last eight years. "He has always been sure of who he was – an outcast, a pariah – but now he's not so sure. I don't understand how the community could do something like this to him. He's only twenty-one, and now he has to try to reinvent himself completely on the assumption that people will accept him?"

Though understated by nature, Smith has taken to extreme flamboyant behavior in an attempt to claim this very identity: "I don't even like pink, but what can I do? I'm sick of people treating me with civility and respect, and I really wish they would treat me the way that I've always expected to be treated." Smith has only been further frustrated, though, by a Facebook campaign that got nearly half of Yeshiva College students to wear pink shirts last week in support of him.

"At this point, I've been approaching random Yeshivish people on the street and telling them I'm gay!" said Smith. But even that hasn't worked: a guest at the Wilf Campus over Shabbat from a rightwing yeshiva sat down with David on Friday night to talk about the struggles of living openly gay in the Orthodox community. "The conversation didn't last all that long," said Smith, "so we ended up talking about Glee for like four hours."

Despite all the hardships. Smith is managing to acclimate to his new life. "It's hard when everyone has been so...supportive," Smith sighed. "But I'm Switching shiurim next week, and I'll see if I get a rise out of a different Rosh Yeshiva."

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