University alleges group broke agreement to promote sexual morality
A pro-LGBT club at a Jewish university in New York has once again been shut down by school officials.
Yeshiva University shut down the briefly approved club called “Hareni.”
The school says a March settlement with the club required it to not promote the LGBT agenda. A May 9 letter from the school’s attorney said the students broke the agreement by portraying Hareni as a “continuation of the Pride Alliance.”
The March settlement required the club to “operate in accordance with the approved guidelines of Yeshiva University’s senior rabbis” and “in the spirit of a collaborative and mutually supportive campus culture,” according to a joint statement. The statement also said the club would “seek to support LGBTQ students and their allies.”
The battle is the latest development stretching back until at least 2022, when disputes over recognition of the group made it all the way up to the Supreme Court.
The group’s recent social media messages have violated “rabbinically approved guidelines,” according to the university’s attorney. Hareni, the letter alleges, violated the settlement by not operating under the guidance of a rabbi.
The letter stated further:
Your clients also specifically refused to include on posters and communications the rabbis’ required acknowledgement about sexual morality— calling the rabbis’ directive “egregious.” Your clients then expressed their own theological disagreement with the substance of that acknowledgment, writing that the rabbis’ simple call for maintaining “traditional halachic standards of sexual morality” improperly “equat[es] an identity with sexual immorality” and thus “sexualizes students and forgets every other aspect of them as a person.”
The LGBT club has a different perspective, as explained in a May 8 letter to the university.
The letter accused Yeshiva officials of “animus and hostility” toward the students.
According to the letter, school officials criticized LGBT ideology, calling it a “heretical, nihilistic philosophy that champions and celebrates all forms of sexual deviance.” School officials also said the settlement requires the club to publicly affirm sexual morality.
According to the group’s attorney, these statements “threaten the safety and well-being of LGBTQ students on campus” and violate the settlement agreement.
Each side also disputes whether Hareni is allowed to host events and who it ultimately reports to.
While both attorneys requested a letter to work out their differences, one conservative commentator who has been following the story is skeptical there will be a resolution.
“Because, no matter what new name they give it, the LGBTQ club is a ‘pride’ club,’” Jane Coleman wrote for Legal Insurrection. “And for YU, whether ‘pride’ is allowed under Jewish law is ‘quintessentially a religious question, one that must be decided on an ongoing basis by the Roshei Yeshiva’—not by college undergrads.”
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: The logo for Hareni; YU Hareni/Instagram
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