Sixty Orthodox rabbis voiced their support for the LGBT community in a letter as Israel’s Gay Pride parade set to occur on August 2.
The letter condemns the insults hurled at the LGBT community and warned that such intolerance can lead to instances such as at the 2015 Pride parade, where a 16-year-old Jewish teen was stabbed to death by an orthodox man.
“Our dear and beloved Jewish LGBT brothers and sisters, we, the undersigned, Orthodox rabbis who are committed to the Torah of life and love of kindness, feel a religious and moral obligation to make an alternative religious voice heard … a supportive voice,” the rabbis wrote.
They added, “The use of offensive and insulting language such as ‘perverts’ towards people created in God’s image is unacceptable and dangerous, and certainly when those words come from rabbis who order us to ‘Watch our words.’”
Other rabbis have condemned the LGBT community as an “abomination” and claim that children raised by same-sex couples would be raised in “a reality of moral distortion.”
