Recently my alma mater, Yeshiva University, has been in the news over the issue of an officially sponsored LGBTQ club with the court ruling that YU is obligated to allow it. To be clear, I am opposed to YU probing into the personal affairs of students. I do not want any guys expelled for being caught having sex with their girlfriends. I do not wish to be accused of being inconsistent so it only seems reasonable not to expel guys caught having sex with their boyfriends.
A major part of the culture of YU is that many students do not personally live the kind of life that YU endorses. This is important if YU graduates are going to take leadership roles in the broader Jewish community. The practical goal here is to create a world in which even those Jews who personally do not practice Orthodox Judaism, see themselves as Jews and see Orthodox institutions as representing them. Chabad is a good example of this kind of thinking. There are thousands of Jews in this country who drive to Chabad shuls because Chabad makes them feel welcome. For all my disagreements with Chabad, it needs to be said that Chabad has a genius for loving Jews even the completely unobservant.
Whether you are YU or Chabad, one's ability to be welcoming requires a balancing act where one still recognizes that there are lines that cannot be crossed. For example, I would expect a Chabad rabbi to welcome people who they knew were active homosexuals. I would not be surprised if Chabad rabbis were even willing to acknowledge a couple as husband and husband or wife and wife. That being said, any Chabad rabbi who performed a same-sex wedding would need to be expelled. Failure to do this would mean the end of Chabad. If Chabad could allow same-sex marriage then what redlines would be left that would stop us from simply thinking of Chabad as Conservative rabbis in funny hats?
It is hardly obvious that YU would lose its ability to claim to be the flagship institution of Modern Orthodoxy in America if a rabbi with YU ordination agreed to perform same-sex marriages as a personal decision. An institution like YU may have significantly more leeway than Chabad to allow its rabbis to go off script. That being said, even YU must have its redlines. I am less concerned about where precisely those lines are than the fact that they really do exist.
I recognize that there are practical reasons for there to be an LGBTQ club at YU. I have no doubt that there are LGBTQ students at YU trying to figure out how to balance their identity with their Judaism. I honestly want such people to feel that they can attend YU. Having a club is likely to strengthen their connection to Judaism. That being said, one needs to ask the question of whether there can be a club that crosses a redline. Is there a club that would be perfectly reasonable to expect at a regular campus but would destroy YU's claim to be an Orthodox institution if it ever officially agreed to recognize it?
While likely far fewer than LGBTQs in the Orthodox community, I assume there are Jewish teenagers who have privately accepted Jesus as their personal savior and are struggling with how to balance their desire to live observant Jewish lives while being true to their Christian faith, knowing that most people in the Jewish community would react with extreme hostility if these kids ever came out of the closet.
If I knew that my roommate was in the closet about Jesus, I would not out them or try to have them expelled. If people began to suspect that he was really a Christian perhaps because he shokeled when reading the New Testament a little too intensively for mere academic interest, I still would not support any action being taken against them. Things begin to change the moment our Jewish Christian steps out of their closet and actively proclaims that they believe in Jesus. By doing this, they would be putting YU in a bind, either take action against the student or implicitly acknowledge that faith in Christ is not as absolutely contrary to Judaism as one might have thought. If YU feels that it has to choose the former then so be it.
Clearly, YU should not allow there to be a Campus Crusade for Christ club on campus. I believe that USC should allow Campus Crusade for Christ on its campus even though they are a private university. The difference is that Campus Crusade for Christ does not present a head-on challenge to USC's mission while YU exists precisely to be a space for people who reject Christ.
I believe that YU should not be hosting Christian missionary attempts to convert Jews on campus even though it is hardly obvious to me that Christian theology is less heretical than hardline Chabad messianism. I would be willing to allow a messianic Chabad club on campus even over the objections of Prof. David Berger. In truth, there are large numbers of non-Jews in YU's graduate schools. If non-Jewish Christians in graduate school wanted a Christian club, I would support them. For that matter, if a group of Christian undergrads from South Korea enrolled at YU to learn about Judaism and America, I would welcome them and allow them to form an official Christian club even if it crossed the line into missionary activity. What would be the point of these students coming to YU if they were not allowed to discuss religion?
If you want to argue that YU should have an LGBTQ club, I am not going to tell you that you are wrong. I am going to ask you, though, to produce a list of clubs that would be perfectly fine on most campuses but should not be on YU. YU should not have a Nazi or Hamas club on campus but neither should USC. I see a Christian club as less of a problem than an LGBTQ club. If we are going to have an LGBTQ club at YU then it would be unjust to keep Jewish Christians in the closet about their chosen savior.
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