Governor of Hawaii Consults Rabbis on Civil Unions
“Why don’t you just talk to the rabbi?”
Jewish Republican governor of Hawaii Linda Lingle seems to be heeding this advice — a favorite of my mother’s. A bill legalizing civil unions in Hawaii is on her desk, and her deadline for deciding whether to veto it is drawing near.
According to an article by the Associated Press, Lingle earlier this month said Hawaii’s small Jewish community was divided on the issue, and invited rabbis Itchel Krasnjansky (Orthodox) and Peter Schaktman (Reform) to talk to her about their divergent opinions.
The Hawaii Supreme Court’s 1993 decision in favor of gay marriage led to significant backlash, including passage of the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 and Hawaii’s own ban on gay marriage in 1998. The current bill — which would legalize civil unions only — does not revive the marriage issue or overturn any previous legislation.
Krasnjansky, the director of Chabad of Hawaii, said that the Torah shows that homosexuality “is not something that should be condoned or should be legalized.” Schaktman, the leader of Honolulu’s Temple Emanu-El, disagreed, saying civil unions were a matter of law, not religion.
The debate creates a new twist on an old adage: three Jews, two opinions, and only one governor with veto power.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO