Letter to the Editor: A Clarification

To the Editor,

In light of some of the feedback I have received on my most recent article, “The Ghosts Have Become Alive,” I would like to provide a clarification:

Over the years, the leadership of Yeshiva University has made it clear that they viewed the formation of an LGBTQ student group or club of the type sought now as incompatible with YU's core mission. My article was premised on that view, as it is the position of YU’s leadership.  Whether this view is correct is a different conversation which I did not have in this article and which I am not having now.  Furthermore, from my perspective, YU is free to reconsider its view. The article aimed to provide a legal analysis of YU's various options given the pending case mentioned in the article. I had no intent to discuss what YU’s religious agenda should be.

Of course, I very much empathize with and do not wish to minimize the pain felt by the LGBTQ members of YU (and in general), both as a community and as individuals. I have been and continue to be a staunch defender of civil rights for the LGBTQ community for 30 years (you can see this in my article in Jewish Action from 1993 entitled “Bullets that Kill on the Rebound: Discrimination Against Homosexuals and Orthodox Public Policy” which advocated extending civil rights protections to the LGBTQ community, and the response to it by Rabbis Marc Angel, Hillel Goldberg and Pinchas Stolper, as well as the 2019 blog post linked to in this article). My more thorough analysis of the relevant halakhic issues can be found here.

But this was not the focus of the article. The focus of the article was YU’s legal structure.

Michael J. Broyde