Author: mikeybear

JCCV not seeking law change | AJN

FAITH-BASED SCHOOL STAFF

JCCV not seeking law change

‘The JCCV is comfortable with the present legislative settings. In particular, we understand that the larger Victorian Jewish day schools have not expressed a desire to exercise this power or a need for it.’

By PETER KOHN
October 27, 2022, 10:24 am 

Opposition Leader Matthew Guy in 2017. Photo: Peter Haskin

THE Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) stated this week that it is satisfied with the provisions of the Equal Opportunity Act (EOA) that prohibit discrimination in hiring and firing practices of schools.

The roof body was responding to reports that Victorian Liberal leader Matthew Guy has committed a Coalition government to amending the EOA to allow faith-based schools to discriminate in selecting teaching staff who share the school’s values and beliefs.

Guy’s commitment to the change surfaced last week after he reportedly raised it during a meeting with the Islamic Council of Victoria, according to The Guardian Australia.

Contacted by The AJN, a Liberal Party spokesperson responded, “The Liberals will protect religious freedoms to allow Jewish schools to employ people who are aligned with their values. An individual’s sexuality, gender and ethnicity would also be equally protected from discrimination under these laws. Any proposed changes would only occur after broad consultation and would need to protect every Victorian from discrimination.”

Apart from some latitude in hiring religious education teachers, Victorian schools have not been allowed to discriminate when hiring teaching staff since June, after changes to the EOA which prohibit staff selection made on sexual, gender identity or marital status.

Contacted by The AJN this week, JCCV president Daniel Aghion stated, “The JCCV is comfortable with the present legislative settings. In particular, we understand that the larger Victorian Jewish day schools have not expressed a desire to exercise this power or a need for it.”

Approached for comment, Mount Scopus Memorial College principal Rabbi James Kennard told The AJN, “Mount Scopus does not mandate, and never would mandate, that teachers’ and students’ lifestyles reflect the school’s religious values. Therefore this proposed change would not affect our school.”

Bialik College principal Jeremy Stowe-Lindner reiterated his firm opposition to any form of discrimination in schools, which he had stated in his submission to the 2018 Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee inquiry into legislative exemptions for faith-based schools.

Independent candidate for Hawthorn Melissa Lowe stated, “Victorians have repeatedly shown that they don’t support discrimination based on gender or sexuality.”

Meanwhile, the Coalition stated it would provide an additional $3.3 million over the next four years to the Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria to enable it to better serve multicultural communities, as well as a further one-off $100,000, should its application for charitable status be successful.

Candidate statement: Lior Harel – Labor for Caulfield

The following political statement has been supplied by Lior Harel who is running as a candidate for Caulfield District in the 2022 Victorian State Government election.

Aleph Melbourne will endorse all political candidates who unconditionally support equal rights for LGBTIQ+ Jews and whose values align with ours.

26 October 2022

Michael Barnett
Co-Convenor
Aleph Melbourne

Dear Michael,

It was a pleasure catching up with you some weeks ago to better understand the work of Aleph Melbourne as a social, support and advocacy group for LGBTIQ+ persons who identify as Jewish or who have a Jewish heritage.

As we discussed, I remember first meeting you when you came to speak to a group of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students at a Winter Conference in 1999. Your longstanding advocacy for the LGBTQI+ community is to be commended.

I am extremely proud that the current Andrews Government was the first government in the world to formally apologise to people convicted under historical laws against homosexual sex. Since its election in 2014, this Government has introduced a raft of reforms to better the lives of the LGBTIQ+ community. Some of these reforms have included:

  • Expunging old criminal convictions for homosexual activity
  • Establishing a Commissioner for LGBTIQ+ communities
  • Allowing couples to adopt regardless of their sex or gender identity
  • Banning practices that seek to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity

I am especially proud of the release, earlier this year, of a landmark 10-year plan to drive inclusion for LGBTIQ+ communities, which was coupled with a $6.5m investment to make organisations safer and more inclusive for LGBTIQ+ Victorians, support the health and wellbeing of people with an intersex variation and continue peer support for trans and gender diverse Victorians. It is important that LGBTIQ+ Victorians have access to specialist and mainstream services that meets their needs, including healthcare services and mental health services.

The Victorian Pride Centre, opened in July last year, is exemplary of the current Andrews Government’s commitment to celebrate and honour all parts of the diverse Victorian community.

Whilst I do not wish to comment in any detail on the position of our political opponents on these matters, I note for the record my great disappointment at the Victorian Opposition’s recent policy pledge to wind back protections from discrimination in religious schools. I see this as an alarming step backwards for all Victorians.

As we discussed, I would be interested in hearing more about where the LGBTIQ+ community believes further funding and advocacy is needed, particularly in the healthcare space. It is my hope that if elected I can be part of an Andrews Government that leads the way in LGBTIQ+ equality, and the celebration of LGBTIQ+ culture and community.

I look forward to catching up again soon!

Kind Regards,

Lior Harel
ALP Candidate for Caulfield

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B’nai B’rith Speakers Forum: Gender Diversity

Join an incredible panel of experts as they discuss Gender Diversity in the 21st century, moderated by Rebecca Forgasz.

– Dr Debi Feldman, Paediatrician specialising in gender services at RCH
– Tania Grunfeld, Clinical Psychologist
– Marc Light, Principal – King David School

7:30pm Sunday 23 October
In-person @ Beth Weizmann Jewish Community Centre

Click here to register.

Aleph vs Lamplighter | AJN

[Background: Caulfield Chabad Lamplighter editor Mendy Rimler recycles homophobic drivel in time for Yom Kippur]

Australian Jewish News – October 14 2022 – page 5

‘HOMOPHOBIC DRIVEL’

Aleph vs Lamplighter

ALEPH Melbourne has hit back at Caulfield Chabad Lamplighter editor Mendy Rimler after he recycled what Aleph convenor Michael Barnett called “homophobic drivel”.

Late last week Aleph Melbourne, a support and advocacy group for Jewish people who identify as same-sex attracted, trans, gender diverse, and intersex (LGBTIQ+), published an article on their website denouncing Rimler and Caulfield Chabad.

The article explained that both Rimler and Caulfield Chabad should “take a more responsible approach to the content they run in their Lamplighter and avoid stigmatising vulnerable minorities”.

“Doing so feeds into the alarming rates of self-harm and suicide for people who are forced to hide or feel bad about same-sex attraction.”

The criticism is due to the use of a 15-year-old piece written by Yossy Goldman that Rimler repurposed for the cover of the September 30, 2022, Yom Kippur edition of Lamplighter.

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“Thinking of becoming a Dad? Start planning now.” | Growing Families

A message from Growing Families, an inclusive surrogacy service.

Melbourne seminar – Saturday November 5 – 12pm to 6pm

Tom & Ofir

Thinking of becoming a Dad? Start planning now.

It is alarming how fast the rainbow family-building landscape has shifted in the past decade. Ten years ago, there was a large cohort of gay couples and singles who flocked to India to chase their dream of family; a similarly large group did the same in Thailand a few years later. Smaller numbers built families in Cambodia and Nepal. One by one those countries closed as governments wised up to the challenges that a lack of supportive laws posed.

Amidst all this, surrogacy here in Australia have steadily grown in popularity -with a caveat. The lack of structured support, screening and compensation for Australian surrogates means many fall over before they even get to the embryo transfer stage. 

The lucky amongst us have a sister or friend who might step forward to offer her eggs, or even to carry our child. But most look further afield – to the US or Canada – stalwarts of the surrogacy landscape – and more recently to programs in Colombia or Argentina to create family. There are pros and cons to all these options which are vital to understand.

Jewish couple Ofir, a high school maths teacher and Tom, a software engineer, met on Facebook.  Both come from close families with three siblings each. Tom had dreamt of parenthood for a long time. Around four years into their relationship they attended a surrogacy conference to understand their options. A seed was planted for Ofir. He kept thinking about the possibilities, imagining becoming a parent.

They knew this pathway would be expensive. Moving in with Ofir’s parents to save money, the couple were drawn to altruistic surrogacy in Canada. Good friends had a child via surrogacy in Canada and helped the pair with their research. (Their story features in a new book Surrogacy Stories).

Cross-border surrogacy can be an arduous journey with a myriad grey areas. So start planning early. If you think you want to be a dad in three years time and do it without financial hardship – now is the time to start gathering information, saving funds and getting yourself on agency wait-lists. 

Between 5 – 8 November, at seminars in Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth – singles and couples will share their journeys to parenthood here in Australia, in Canada, the US and Colombia, including how they planned, budgeted and survived the hurdles. The seminars bring together surrogates, intended parents and experts from around the globe.  They are a great opportunity to get educated on the options available, the risks and ensure you can look back on your family building journey with pride. Go to www.growingfamilies.org/all-events 

Caulfield Chabad Lamplighter editor Mendy Rimler recycles homophobic drivel in time for Yom Kippur

Disappointingly, the editor of Melbourne’s Caulfield Chabad “Lamplighter” Mendy Rimler has chosen to plaster the cover of his September 30 2022 Yom Kippur edition with a 15-year-old piece of homophobic claptrap by Rabbi Yossy Goldman.

The most challenging arena of human conduct, the one that really tests the mettle of our morality, is not how we behave in the synagogue but how we behave in our bedrooms. […] In a world of ever-changing, relative morality where gay marriages and Euthanasia have become acceptable, the Torah does indeed seem rather antiquated. […] So we read that adultery was forbidden in Moses’ day and it still is in ours. So is incest. But it wouldn’t shock me at all if the same forces motivating for new sexual freedoms soon began campaigning for incestuous relationships to become legal. And why not? If it’s all about consenting adults, why deny siblings? Given the slippery slope of our moral mountains, nothing is unthinkable any more.

Rabbi Yossy Goldman

Hardly fresh “news”, this opinion piece about sexual immorality runs the tired slippery-slope trope of “if gays can get married people will want to marry their siblings next”. This conveniently overlooks the slippery slope starting with heterosexual marriage, not gay marriage. One could easily argue that if heterosexual people want the right to get married, those in other consenting relationships might want the same legal protections as well. As for marrying one’s sibling, perhaps a wild fantasy of Goldman’s, but I don’t see anyone lobbying for such a reform.

Rimler and Caulfield Chabad should take a more responsible approach to the content they run in their Lamplighter and avoid stigmatising vulnerable minorities. Doing so feeds into the alarming rates of self-harm and suicide for people who are forced to hide or feel bad about same-sex attraction.

Unless Rimler and Caulfield Chabad want to publish material shaming the private sex lives of their heterosexual congregants, dwelling on their various peccadillos and fetishes, it would serve them well to stay clear of material that obsesses on the private sex lives of same-sex attracted people.

Gay and bisexual people are easy targets for the likes of Rimler, Goldman and their Chabad masters. My best advice for them, if they can’t find it within themselves to say anything positive about LGBTIQ+ people, is to say nothing at all. We are human, we have feelings, and we hurt when people abuse us.

Rimler, Goldman and Chabad don’t need a lesson on how it feels to be targets of hate. They ought think twice before publishing intolerant content in the name of their religious values.

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“Activist for Life and Enlightenment” by Geoff Allshorn

Geoff Allshorn writes about the life of Holocaust Survivor and humanist Halina Strnad:

Activist for Life and Enlightenment

“As a cultural Jew and Holocaust survivor, she wrote to a Jewish community newspaper some decades ago calling for the inclusion of an LGBT Jewish group within formal Jewish community networks; one of her last attempts at activism came early this year when she offered to participate (as a longtime supporter and ally of LGBT rights) within a Rainbow Humanist group marching in Melbourne’s Pride March – an offer which sadly was ultimately unable to be taken up due to understandable caution over public transmission concerns regarding COVID in crowded spaces.”

AJN June 11 1999 Letters Halina Strnad
Australian Jewish News
June 11 1999 page 16

I WRITE to express my dismay at the JCCV’s decision to reject the Aleph gay group as an affiliate member.

As a consequence of prejudice and intolerance, Jews, gypsies and homosexuals were persecuted and, during the Holocaust, slaughtered wholesale.

Deemed ‘undesirable elements’ and separated only by barbed wire in extermination camps, these groups of people were brutally eliminated because in some ways they were not quite like the majority.

As a former undesirable Jewish ‘element’ but a survivor, I hoped that more than any other attitude, tolerance would be imprinted on the collective Jewish psyche.

Halina Strnad
Box Hill South

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Pride in the Ultra Orthodox Community, With Rabbi Mike Moskowitz | The AUJS Pod

This episode is deeply moving and hopeful, as Rabbi Mike Moskowitz walks Tanna and Paris through the ins and outs of being a member of the LGBTQ+ community, whilst also being ultra orthodox.

Initially, they briefly discuss Rabbi Moskowitz’ personal journey to becoming the Scholar in Residence at the Beit Simchat Torah Congregation, before diving into the attitudes held by so many in conservative, orthodox communities.

From discussing specific verses often used to justify transphobia, to an analysis of conversion therapy, to predictions about same sex marriage, Rabbi Moskowitz covers a wide range of questions that many onlookers have wondered about over the years.

Rabbi Moskowitz also touches on the recent negative media attention that his community has been receiving, and demonstrates that despite several significant imperfections, the ultra orthodox community is full of beauty, charity, and love.

Pride in the Ultra Orthodox Community, With Rabbi Mike Moskowitz – The AUJS Pod (Sep 19 2022)

Mount Scopus Memorial College Child Wise Report 2022: The LGBTQIA+ Recommendations

Mount Scopus Memorial College

Recommendations from Child Wise Report 2022

17. Cultural and language diversity, gender, LGBTQIA+, disability, accessibility and inclusion of students is acknowledged within policies and procedures and training across Mount Scopus and includes references on how to make reasonable adjustments to improve the safety and wellbeing of students.

18. MSMC staff, leaders and Board members should receive diversity training (to include culturally and linguistically diversity, LGBTQIA+, disability and additional educational needs).

[Letter to Old Collegians] / [Recommendations]

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