Lawsuit Filed Against Gay Conversion Therapy Group

Chaim Levin, along with three other gay plantiffs, filed a civil suit today against a JONAH, a New Jersey-based therapy organization, claiming their methods of trying to change their sexual orientation were fraudulent.  The New York Times writes, " the former clients said they were emotionally scarred by false promises of inner transformation and humiliating techniques that included stripping naked in front of the counselor and beating effigies of their mothers."

I have known of Chaim Levin for about a year now.  He is doing very important work and I have the utmost respect for him.  It was very recently that I ruminated over how to keep my children safe from child predators.  As I told Chaim on his Facebook page this evening, I admire him for his kind, level-headed, peaceful demeanor.  No one likes an angry activist (tendencies which I have and need to work on, admittedly), but Chaim is such a wonderful orator and writer.  I know he will succeed no matter what the outcome.  He's a real mentsch.  

I do worry about how the world will view Orthodox Jews as a result of this press.  Naturally, I believe this therapy is a terrible thing and that this awful experience should be given justice.  Yet there are those folks who jump at every opportunity to put down Jews, especially the Orthodox ones.  Don't you have a cousin who thinks that all Orthodox Jews are smelly swindlers who force their wives to shave their heads?  Evidence of forcing young adults to try to change their gay orientation with quackery therapy doesn't look good.  But that doesn't mean it should be kept locked up in a box.  Quite the contrary, as Chaim and his co-plaintiffs are proving.

My hope is that this will ultimately help strengthen the Jewish community.  And that those rabbeim crooks individuals who have gotten away with abusing innocent kids in yeshivas for years, thereby turning people away from their rich heritage, will be exposed and excommunicated.  And that the vibrant percentage of our world that is gay can live in health, happiness, success and harmony.  Because we all deserve to get to the Garden of Eden.

As I mentioned in the past, it is the Golden Age of Miracles, right?

An Age of Miracles...Before You Go To Sleep, Say a Little Prayer

Do Western people think of overt miracles happening on a daily basis in their very own lives?  Certainly, the types of miracles that appear in The Bible which detail discussions between man and God do not happen in our day.  Plagues such as blood on the Nile River are of the past.  No sea is going to split open and an oppressed people will just prance on through to the Promised Land.  These grandiose, larger-than-life miracles are difficult for some to believe, and yet.

My esteemed teacher Rabbanit Chana Henkin taught me a few lessons about everyday miracles for which we should be grateful.  The daily sunrise at a beautiful shoreline.  Waking up after a night's slumber.  The first flowers of a fruit bearing tree.  The appearance of a rainbow serves as a reminder of the covenant between God and Noah that the world will never again be destroyed, as was the case after the Great Flood.

TV On The Radio is a Brooklyn-based band which came out with the song "Golden Age" a few years ago.  Only today did I watch the video.




I presume the use of symbols connected to no organized religion was purposeful:  I like it.  I love their glasses, too.  The white-clad-angelic figures versus the dark-clad-law enforcement-evil figures set the stage in a place somewhere between heaven and earth.  Except that eventually the presumed bad guys (the fuzz) end up turning good, grooving and sending out love-hearts.  The angels send their symbols of peace upward.  Are they turning into animals that will be ultimately used, in a positive way if you can believe it, for animal sacrifice (korbanot)?  I don't purport to fully understand the genius behind that one, but it is there.

Everyone loves a rainbow, but do viewers realize its symbolism with regard to the promise of world peace, unity, and ultimate redemption?  This video got a lotta rainbows coming down from the heavens.  It's all good.

Thank you to TV on the Radio for an artful, insightful interpretation of the world's state of affairs.  Let's hope it keeps getting better and better.

This is not a spiritual blog.  Just in case you thought that.