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Patti Jung of Loyola University, Chicago and Jeffrey Siker, a Presbyterian minister and Loyola Marymount University professor, were among six scholars at a Swig Judaic Studies conference who called on the Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant traditions to welcome homosexuals.
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USF Events Examine Sexual Orientation and Law, Religion
Two recent University of San Francisco forums, one sponsored by the School of Law and another by the Swig Judaic Studies Program, aimed to further understanding of sexual orientation issues in law and religion.
“In the last 20 years, the gains that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and even transgender people have made have been breathtaking and monumental,” said attorney Kate Kendall of the National Center for Lesbian Rights during her talk at an April 8 Peace and Justice Forum on sexual orientation and the law at the School of Law.
“Hundreds of municipalities, thousands of employers have instituted domestic partner benefits….You now have gay-straight alliances in hundreds of high schools. With family issues, there’s much to celebrate. It used to be that even lesbian and gay people were automatically deemed unfit (to have children). Now our rights to marry, to be parents, are part of a national conversation.”
Most recently, domestic partners in California won the right to sue for the wrongful death of their partners when Kendall convinced a California judge that her client, Sharon Smith, should have legal standing to bring a civil suit against Marjorie Knoller and Robert Noel, the owners of the dog who killed Smith’s partner, Diane Whipple.
While Kendall expects the judge’s decision to be appealed, she says it is an important step. Indeed, many of the cases her organization takes on are appealed several times, making the legal gains for lesbian and gay people slow to materialize.
“We win some, we lose some,” she said. “What we’re trying to do is institute some kind of societal change. It is work that has made an enormous difference in the legal landscape.”
On April 21, a conference was held in McLaren Center to discuss the status of gays and lesbians within the Jewish and Christian faiths. More than 150 people attended. The event was sponsored by the Swig Judaic Studies Program, along with more than a dozen gay and lesbian community organizations.
It was the first interfaith symposium focusing on sexual orientation and religion to be held at USF, said Professor Andrew Heinze, director of the Swig Judaic Studies program and organizer of the symposium.
“The symposium focused on new approaches to be creative with religious interpretation,” he said. “It is a question that has to be addressed in a positive way. The problem crosses religious lines.”
Speakers included priests and scholars from Catholic and Jewish universities, including USF’s David Robinson, S.J., Elliott Dorff of the University of Judaism, and Fr. Frederick Borsch, former bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
While all speakers agreed that their religions do not condone homosexuality, they said progress has been made in Catholic and Jewish acceptance of gays and lesbians.
“In a way, this symposium itself is proof that progress has been made,” Heinze said. “Perhaps most importantly, a lot of people felt glad that this somewhat path-breaking event was held at USF, which puts the campus in the forefront of a vital religious issue of our generation. I got strong feelings of gratitude from people who deeply wanted their lives to be understood as part of Judaism and Christianity, rather than as something alien.”
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