The Chavruta - Religious LGBT organization has strongly criticized a position paper published this week by Rabbi Yaakov Meidan, dean of the Har Etzion yeshiva, relating to the LGBT issue.
"We are distressed that specifically Har Etzion yeshiva put this document out," they wrote, despite the fact that Rabbi Meidan went out of his way to stress in his paper that he was writing as a private individual and not as the yeshiva's dean. "This document," Chavruta continued, "includes more distortions than the propaganda produced by the hate-lobby organizations."
According to Chavruta, Rabbi Meidan "connects the pride flag to Egyptian culture according to a distorted quote by the flag's designer, regards bisexuals as confused, distinguishes between those who transgress the prohibition of mishkav zachar and those who do not, and encourages harmful conversion 'treatment.'
"How disappointing that a rabbi who met with the community many times and said completely different things has now chosen to publish a document like this, which merely hints that it is forbidden to murder LGBTs," they added. "Instead of taking action against LGBT-phobia in his yeshiva where it flourishes under his very nose, the rabbi has chosen to persecute LGBT students in his yeshiva."
The Center for the Battle against Conversion added a statement of their own: "Yet again we are seeing acceptance of these damaging conversion 'treatments' in order to help people fit into society. Anyone who compares the mental torment, deceit, and sexual exploitation of conversion, to gender reassignment for transgender people done in a controlled and supervised manner and recommended by the professional community, does so not out of concern for LGBT people, but out of hatred and a desire to eradicate them. Conversion practices are not 'treatment' in any way, and any country that restricts the activities of conversion agencies is to be congratulated."