Conservative Rabbis Delay Vote on Gay Issues

Conservative Judaism is apparently on the brink of accepting gays as Rabbis and same-sex unions:

A committee of legal experts who set policy for Conservative Judaism decided yesterday at a closed-door meeting in Baltimore to wait until December to vote on whether to lift the movement's ban on gay rabbis and same-sex union ceremonies.

The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards has been considering the issue for three years, and many Jewish leaders had anticipated that the two-day meeting that ended yesterday would produce a change.

But members of the committee said in interviews that the decision is a momentous one, and that they are still divided on whether acceptance of homosexuality is permissible under Jewish law, known as halacha.

The four legal proposals on the table were sent back to their authors for "extensive revisions," said Rabbi Joel H. Meyers, a nonvoting member of the law committee and executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, which represents the movement's 1,600 rabbis.

...

Of the four proposals the committee is considering, two essentially oppose any change to the current law, and one advocates a substantial change of the law. One tries to find a middle ground by permitting gay rabbis and same-sex ceremonies, but prohibiting anal sex, an effort to stay consistent with a Bible passage that says, "Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination."