A Call for Tolerance After Kosher Cookie-Gay Marriage Mishegas

14/08/2015 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

Tolerance at Work?

The image that Challah Connection put on its homepage

The image that Challah Connection put on its homepage following the SCOTUS marriage equality decision sparked hate mail from some, kudos from others — and a fresh sense of social activism in the company’s owner.
What do cookies, marriage equality and Jewish identity have to do with one another? For Challah Connection owner Jane Moritz of Norwalk, Connecticut, the three have become indelibly linked.
You might have read about the not-so-sweet situation: Soon after the Supreme Court announced its Obergefell v. Hodges decision, codifying the right of LGBT Americans to marry across the country, Moritz placed a picture of kosher rainbow cookies on the homepage of her company website, along with the line, “Never have these treasured cookies had such meaning.”

Image: Ann DelaurentisChallah Connection’s Jane Moritz

And that’s when the hate mail and angry social-media postings began to arrive. Moritz received letters expressing outrage, questioning her Judaism and asking how she could consider her site kosher while supporting what the Torah condemns.
“What this did is reinforce what I already knew,” Moritz said. “We’re all Jews, but there are factions, and my little cookies seem to have brought that up.”
She forwarded me a few sample scribbles:
You consider yourselves a “kosher” site?!? How dare you support what the Torah considers an abomination!! You should be ashamed of yourselves!
You just lost my business. And that of anyone I know. Hopefully the word will spread.
ur so so twisted. if u claim to be so jewish, then u must know that g-d hates homosexuality and it’s a terrible sin. while we must love e/o created in g-d’s image, we must condemn this sin and those who commit it. what is WRONG with u?!
Moritz held her ground, and a funny thing happened. “It kind of ignited something in me,” she said. “I didn’t plan this. I put what I felt was true to my own heart and once I got challenged I became resolved in what I wanted to put out there, and I’ve become even stronger in my resolve.”
Knowing what she knows now, would she do it again? In a heartbeat.
“If it comes up again, I’m not backing down. I have some pretty conservative upbringing, but I have my own version of being Jewish, and anybody who want to challenge me, I’m ready to take them on.”
Moritz is quick to note that positive feedback outweighed the negative. And while the hate mail has subsided, she’s still receiving messages of support.
“I got a call Friday afternoon from a rabbi in Oklahoma to say how pleased and happy he was that I had stood up for this, that it showed all this moral fortitude,” Moritz said. “He said it was strong of me to put my business at risk.”
As it happens, though, orders for rainbow cookies only increased in the immediate aftermath. (They subsequently leveled off.)
“There was an overwhelming majority of people who supported my stand,” Moritz said. “I think there are a lot of people out there who feel the way we do, that Judaism is something we can all take part in and it doesn’t have to be prescribed in a certain way. We’re all one big family.”
As we were saying goodbye, Moritz asked me to think of her if I ever heard about food-related initiatives spearheading social action.
“As I say,” she said, “it ignited something in me.”
Liza Schoenfein is food editor of the Forward. Contact her at schoenfein@forward.com.
Read more: http://forward.com/food/312160/kosher-cookie-clash-sparks-social-activism/#ixzz3imYTbOqf

Gay Muslim risked death to produce documentary about pilgrimage

05/05/2015 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

Republished from

GLBT News

The official news outlet for the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table of the American Library Association
On: May 3, 2015

By John Mack Freeman
Screen-Shot-2015-04-30-at-10.10.58-AM-360x199

Out Muslim filmmaker Parvez Sharma produced a documentary about his pilgrimage to Mecca (known in Islam as a “Hajj”). Primarily filmed with cell phones and small cameras, the documentary traces the trip through an area where homosexuality is punishable by death and filming is forbidden.
Via Queerty:

The film was denounced by the Iranian state media as a “Western conspiracy” to legitimize the “despicable sin of homosexuality,” and security for the three sold-out screenings a the Hot Docs festival in Toronto was amped up in light of the death threats and hate mail Sharma has received.
“The Hajj is the highest calling for any Muslim,” Sharma explained. “For years I felt I really needed to go, so this film is about me coming out as a Muslim. I’m done coming out as a gay man.”
He shot the film on iPhones and other small cameras, as filming is not permitted. Along the way his equipment was seized, footage deleted, and he constantly feared for his freedom and life.
But it was never about salting wounds, says the director, but rather healing them.
“I feel the film is a call to action to all Muslims to change the things that need to change within 21st Century Islam,” he said. “We’re running out of time.”

Tolerance in Victorian Times

12/03/2015 By David McFarlane Leave a Comment

Was the UK really more tolerant of gays in Victorian times

Reprinted from Pink News: 12^th February 2015, 6:52 PM – Molly Rose Pike

Oscar Wilde was famously sentenced to hard labour but Victorians weren't as tough on gay men as we think. — Oscar Wilde was famously sentenced to hard labour but Victorians weren’t as tough on gay men as we think.

A new study has shown that there were more convictions for homosexuality in the 1960s than the ‘prudish’ Victorian era.

The largest ever study into the convictions of gay men has revealed that the country was more accepting of gay men in Victorian times than it was in the era of free love, the 1960s.
Manchester historian Jeff Evans, who works at Manchester Metropolitan University, looked through more than 280,000 criminal cases at the National Archive in Kew, London. The records are said to represent 64% of all indictable court cases relating to sex between men held in the Lancashire assize and quarter sessions.
Mr Evans found that regions outside of London, such as Lancashire, were largely uninterested in convicting gay men in the era known for being prudish about sex. In the decade known for embracing free love, the 1960s, the records demonstrated a rise in prosecutions.
One of the most famous convictions for homosexuality, the iconic Oscar Wilde, happened in this time-frame but between 1850 and the start of WW1, there were less than four or five prosecutions of consensual sex between men in Lancashire per year.
Mr Evans said: “When these cases actually got to court, more than half were thrown out. The grand jury apparently thought it was just none of their business.”
Even those who served a sentence for these crimes were not treated as harshly as you might expect for the ‘prudish’ Victorian era.
“In the late 19th century punishment drops off from death or life sentence to a handful of years. We can’t quantify why, but can statistically say the ‘disgust’ of the crime wasn’t reflected in the sentencing.
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