The following political statement has been supplied by Alicia Walker who is running as a candidate for Brighton 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.
1 November 2022
Kindness, equality, rationality and non-violence are the core values of the Animal Justice Party.
Our party values and my personal values align very well with the values of equality and dignity at Aleph.
Our current MP, Andy Meddick has been working tirelessly in parliament to create more LGBTQIA+ safe spaces in Victoria particularly for the youth community in areas like Geelong and Ballarat.
I assert that more LGBTQIA+ safe spaces are required throughout Victoria including in the District of Brighton.
I strongly support LGBTQIA+ organisations in our community.
I am a proud parent of a child who has several close friends who identify as belonging to the LGBTQI+ community. We as a family are passionate about advocating for a kinder world for all.
I will support and prioritise the LGBTQIA+ youth voice if elected.
As a party, the Animal Justice asserts that:
Gender and sexuality equality is a fundamental human right and that the health, safety and wellbeing of women, girls and gender-diverse people is paramount.
Reforms are essential to address the causes of gender and sexuality inequality and to protect people against gender and sexuality based violence.
Women and gender-diverse people must be supported, encouraged and empowered to be present and/or prominent in all areas of society, including politics.
Everyone must be supported in informed decision-making with respect to gender and sexual identity;
There must be zero tolerance of sexism, homophobia, queerphobia, transphobia, misogyny and all types of violence (including gender and sexuality based violence) and we must work toward gender and sexuality equality and respect in all areas of society.
The following political statement has been supplied by Asher Myerson 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.
1 November 2022
Kindness, equality, rationality and non-violence are the core values of the Animal Justice Party.
Our party values and my personal values align very well with the values of equality and dignity at Aleph.
Our current MP, Andy Meddick has been working tirelessly in parliament to create more LGBTQIA+ safe spaces in Victoria particularly for the youth community in areas like Geelong and Ballarat.
I assert that more LGBTQIA+ safe spaces are required throughout Victoria including in the District of Caulfield.
I strongly support LGBTQIA+ organisations in our community.
I am a high school teacher and am proud that I attend a student run lunch club, Q+A (Queers and Allies) to listen to what LGBTQIA+ youth and their needs.
I will support and prioritise the LGBTQIA+ youth voice if elected.
As a party, the Animal Justice asserts that:
Gender and sexuality equality is a fundamental human right and that the health, safety and wellbeing of women, girls and gender-diverse people is paramount.
Reforms are essential to address the causes of gender and sexuality inequality and to protect people against gender and sexuality based violence.
Women and gender-diverse people must be supported, encouraged and empowered to be present and/or prominent in all areas of society, including politics.
Everyone must be supported in informed decision-making with respect to gender and sexual identity;
There must be zero tolerance of sexism, homophobia, queerphobia, transphobia, misogyny and all types of violence (including gender and sexuality based violence) and we must work toward gender and sexuality equality and respect in all areas of society.
Preacher Abu Bakr Zaoud: Legalising homosexuality is “the hands of the Sheitan [Devil] at work” (YouTube screenshot)
The popular Australian Muslim Facebook page, followed by 2.5 million people, has in the past promoted extremism, antisemitism and martyrdom. On Aug. 29, the page published a lecture by an Australian Muslim preacher, praising it with the words: “A brilliant lecture on LGBT from a tradi[ti]onilist Islamic view in accordance with the Quran and Sunnah [Islamic traditions] and not in accordance to liberalists or secularists or modernists who want to compromise and water down their beliefs.”
The preacher so warmly recommended is none other than Abu Bakr Zaoud from the extremist Ahl As-Sunnah wal-Jama’ah (ASWJ, “the family of those following the ways of the Prophet and his companions”). This local branch of an international fundamentalist Salafi organisation is regarded as one of the most radical Muslim groups in Australia. In 2018, and again earlier in 2022, AIJAC exposed the antisemitism, calls for jihad against Israel, and radicalism of ASWJ generally and of Zaoud personally.
The title of Zaoud’s English-language lecture this August at a Sydney mosque was “From illegal to legal and the untold dangers of homosexuality”. The video of the lecture was uploaded online accompanied by an apologetic message: “DISCLAIMER: Those who challenge the normalcy and equivalence arguments of LGBTQ advocates are predictably met with the jamming tactic of being labeled [sic.] bigots, haters, and homophobes so as to pre-empt reasonable debate. Disagreeing with LGBTQ sexual practice is neither an enticement of harassment, phobia, nor violence, but the expression of opinion firmly grounded in medical literature.”
As far as publicly known, Zaoud is not a medical professional. And examining his words in the lecture, it is hard to see how they can be understood in any other way than as not-so-disguised homophobia and hatred.
Homosexuality is “the opposite of intellect”
Zaoud opens his speech by what sounds like welcoming gay people in the audience. “I am aware that there could be among us homosexuals that are sitting or people that have these urges. And I say to these people that you are more than welcome to stay with us,” he says. But his true intentions are quickly revealed as quite different: “We want to educate you on this topic. We want to share intellectual points and proofs from the Koran and the word of [the prophet Muhammad]… this knowledge that we share gives you the ability to make correct decisions in life.”
Speaking about the different gender identities generally accepted today in the West and about same-sex marriage recently becoming legal in several countries (including Australia), Zaoud argues that today “Sexual deviation has become a widespread matter.” He later protests that “the rest of us are slowly being forced to accept all of this and to support all of this as well.”
According to Zaoud, these processes result from humanity losing its modesty. Someone in this state “is a person whose heart has died. As a result, you will find him doing whatever he pleases and whatever his desire calls him to.” After presenting several quotes from Islamic scriptures and traditions, Zaoud concludes that the Prophet was worried and concerned about “homosexuality spreading among his Ummah [Islamic Nation].”
“The first point is how did homosexuality go from being illegal and a crime punished by law,” asks Zaoud. “How did it go from that to becoming decriminalised, and became legal, and now it’s legally recognised by the majority of the world. How did this happen?”
His answer: “First and foremost, keep in mind this, any evil that goes from evil to something good, there is definitely the hands of the Sheitan [Devil] at work.” The Devil, explains Zaoud, “decorated the sin” of homosexuality by firstly “chang[ing] the name. Homosexuality is called love. Love is love with a rainbow colour, he decorates the deed, decorates the sin and people bit by bit find themselves immersed in these kinds of sins and acts.”
The next stage is to normalise the sin. “It’s continuing. This normalisation process does not stop. Everywhere you go, and in schools, it’s in your face. This is all part of the normalisation process.” Supporters of gay rights are “patient upon their falsehood. They are patient upon the evil. […] every single year there’s a pride March!” laments Zaoud.
“In Islam”, explains Zaoud, homosexuality is referred to as “the immoral shameless vulgar act and deed.” It is “THE immoral deed, meaning all the meanings of immorality are found in homosexuality. All the meanings of vulgarity are found in homosexuality.”
Moreover, in the Koran, continues Zaoud, there is a reference suggesting “a link between this deed and the intellect of a person.” Quoting Islamic traditions, Zaoud describes homosexuals as people “immersed deeply into a drunken state of confusion. They are blinded by their drunkenness, with drunkenness affects what? It affects the intelligence of a person.” It is “the complete absence of the intellect, when the mind is not thinking rationally. And this happens when a person allows his desire to overcome his intellect. A person has a desire and has an intellect, and when the desire overrides and it overcomes the intellect. Now a person is in a state of drunkenness.”
“And this is the case of the homosexuals. The mind is not thinking rationally. They would commit the immoral … based on their Shahowa [lust] and not based on the intellect.” Since male and female private parts are designed for reproduction, “anyone who uses his organ for other than the purpose [for which] it was created, you’re not using your intellect,” concludes Zaoud. When homosexuals are using these and other organs (talks about the anus) not for their biological purposes, “there is confusion. There is misguidance. There is deviance.”
Hating gays
Zaoud reviews the history of recent changes in legal and social norms that led to homosexuality being normalised, being consistently critical of gay rights advocates. For example, describing the 1969 Stonewall Riots by pro-gay activists in the US, Zaoud says that “the one who’s upon falsehood doesn’t have an intellectual argument. If he doesn’t get what he wants, he’s going to get it with violence.”
Protesting what he describes as acceptance and advertisement of homosexuality among Muslims, Zaoud warns that “in Islam, the deed is Haram [forbidden] and supporting the deed is just as bad.”
Homosexuals are dangerous because they are sexually insatiable and know no borders, says Zaoud. “He doesn’t have a limit, a person who commits homosexual sexuality. Just one doesn’t satisfy him. You find two, three, four, or five, perhaps on the same night, this is what Haram does. And you will never be satisfied and you’ll never be fulfilled no matter what a person says.”
Zaoud complains bitterly that respect for single-gender families is taught and promoted at schools, sports events etc. “I’m not a lawyer. I’m not here to advocate your cause and I’m not here to defend for your rights. I don’t support this. I don’t believe in this.”
“As a Muslim, how do we feel about homosexuality? Very simple”, explains Zaoud quoting from Islamic traditions: “I have passion, an extreme hate for your sin” (he does later sanctimoniously say that hating does not justify violence).
Next on Zaoud’s agenda: “the untold dangers of homosexuality […] There are major sexual and psychological health risks that a person needs to be aware of if he was to engage with the action of homosexuality.”
“Did you know that anal penetration is the most riskiest (sic) form of sexual behaviour that a person can conduct? It is the most riskiest [sic] form of sexual practice.” Zaoud lists at this point diseases such as hepatitis, HIV, HPV, STD, anal cancer and even monkeypox that he argues are mostly related to homosexuality.
To warn people of the dangers of homosexuality, Zaoud ‘jokes’, “I believe that on every rainbow flag [the LGBTQI+ flag], there should be a picture up the top… of a person with anal cancer,” and the crowd bursts out laughing. “This is serious”, smiles Zaoud. “This is a warning… there should be a picture just to warn the people as to what will happen, what you are going down in. This is a path of no return. There is no cure. There is no treatment for these matters.”
In addition, cautions Zaoud, there is “the punishment of Allah, the curse of Allah, the punishment that a person exposes himself to in the grave, in the afterlife before Allah… These people distorted the natural disposition of the human being.”
In the conclusion of his speech, Zaoud ridicules divisions and disagreements within the LGBTQI+ community as proof that this group is being weakened. “This won’t last. It will not last so long as we have believers upon the truth.”
ASWJ’s Abu Bakr Zaoud is spreading hatred of the other and fear against members of Australian society. His messages are clearly not acceptable or in line with Australian values of respect for the other and social cohesion, and he needs to be clearly marginalised for his extremism.
Dr. Ran Porat is an AIJAC Research Associate. He is also a Research Associate at the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University and a Research Fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Reichman University in Herzliya.
Content warning: extreme homophobic and transphobic intolerance
‘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.’
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
“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.”
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.
