Ira Stup

I worry every time I write this column. Will people find it relevant? Do LGBT experiences matter to the people reading it? Is it going to be typecast as the “gay column”? I especially worry about the value of critiquing institutions like marriage, a ritual unlikely to change dramatically in the near future.

Imagining a future for myself was one of the hardest things to do when I was first coming out of the closet. Before admitting I was gay, I thought I knew exactly what my ideal future would look like: a large family, a nice house, a good job, and, of course, a loving wife. It was this powerful notion that kept me so fearfully in the closet for so many years.

Greater visibility of gay people within certain spheres of society has had the paradoxically adverse effect of reinforcing many of the straight male norms which cause so much pain for gay and straight men in the first place. Things don’t have to be this way.

Entering a gay bar in the French Quarter of New Orleans last week, my alternative spring break group was suddenly surrounded by (unfortunately tacky) gay porn on the walls. The situation, like so many others, made me wonder: what does it mean for straight people to truly “accept” gays?

A queer Jewish identity often necessitates a type of creative recreation of traditional identities and behaviors. Those pushed to the periphery are regularly the ones responsible for some of the most innovative creations in contemporary Jewish life.

V-Day isn’t just an issue of belittling the non-partnered among us. It symbolically institutionalizes traditional gender and sexual paradigms which often serve few of us and hurt many more of us. We would do ourselves and our national holiday of love a great, loving service by seeing through its limitations and reinventing it.

I desperately want to be a proud JTS student. In high school, I dreamed of studying at the joint program between Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary.