Members of the local LGBT and ally Jewish community have recently been mobilizing to press an area newspaper to overturn its policy toward coverage of same-sex couples.
The Jewish Exponent has a long-standing policy barring it from printing wedding or civil-union announcements of same-sex couples.
Lee Rosenfield, a longtime reader of the newspaper, undertook a letter-writing campaign earlier this month to urge the Jewish Publishing Group of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia — the paper’s publisher and the body that makes policy decisions for the publication — to revisit this rule.
Rosenfield acquired signatures from 45 area rabbis from the Reconstructionist movement on an e-mail letter he sent to the Jewish Publishing Group late last month, detailing why the policy is harmful to the Jewish community at large.
“At least 5 percent of Delaware Valley Jews, using the most conservative estimates, are LGBT,” the letter stated in part. “If you add their families and friends, as well as those who see them as part of the community, the Exponent’s failure to recognize their life-cycle events is a blow to most Jews in the Delaware Valley.”
Rosenfield said he’s planning to send a similar letter in the next week or two with about 50 signatures from Reform rabbis, and anticipates he will also garner support from leaders in the Conservative and Orthodox Jewish communities.
Rosenfield said many of the rabbis and other LGBT and ally Jewish individuals from the area have also sent their own messages to the Jewish Publishing Group about the issue.
Dr. Rebecca Alpert, an openly lesbian religion professor at Temple University, said she added her name to the petition because “same-sex couples want and need recognition and support from the Jewish community when they make a commitment to creating a Jewish family.”
Bennet Aaron, chair of the 16-member Jewish Publishing Group, said he was “very much aware” of the campaign.
He declined to speak about the reasons for the policy, but said the board will address the issue during its Sept. 23 meeting.
“This item will be on the agenda for that meeting, and the board will have a discussion and take some appropriate action,” Aaron said.
Rosenfield noted that he and others first approached the newspaper’s leadership about their LGBT coverage about 15 years ago when he was working for the Jewish Federation. At that time, the paper was not mentioning same-sex partners in obituaries or publishing birth announcements for children of same-sex couples — two policies the publication has since discontinued.
“To their credit, they did address some of our concerns at the time, but where they fell short was gay marriage and unions,” Rosenfield said, noting the paper also does not publish personal ads for gays and lesbians.
He said his fight to overturn the policy was recently renewed after what he saw as a lack of adequate coverage in the Jewish Exponent of last month’s double murder at an LGBT community center in Israel.
The newspaper’s brief write-up about the incident was an “aberration,” as the Exponent is “usually very good to the community,” said Rosenfield.
“I think times have changed and we stand at a different place now than we did 15 years ago,” he said. “The issue [of gay marriage] is getting more coverage, and I think the paper should reflect that change.”
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].