JustASC

The NY Times covers the Jewish Standard same-sex announcement debacle, quoting yours truly:

So there was some sympathy for The Standard’s plight.

“This is one where they almost couldn’t win,” said Andrew Silow-Carroll, editor in chief of The New Jersey Jewish News, which serves a much less Orthodox readership. Mr. Silow-Carroll said his publication ran its first same-sex wedding announcement in January and received no response. “The Orthodox community has huge economic clout,” he said. “If they put out the word that their members shouldn’t be reading or advertising, it could be crippling for a newspaper that size.”

I hadn’t heard many people speaking to the economic pressure (or ”extortion“, as FailedMessiah alleges) the Standard might have been under, so I’m glad they quoted me to this effect. We print same-sex announcements because it is the right thing to do, but I know how vulnerable papers like ours can be to such threats.

(And just to clarify, when I was talking about Orthodox economic clout, I meant specifically in Bergen County.)

Which isn’t to say, of course, that we don’t respect Orthodox perspectives, or that we weigh the “rightness” of a position based on the size or influence of a constituency. If you are striving to be pluralistic, which we are, you have to listen and respect the voices across the spectrum.

For example, some Orthodox readers and leaders tell me they can’t have our newspaper in their homes, or their schools, because of the subjects we treat as normative. Some are disappointed when we profile or merely report on a public figure whose own religious practice is obviously thin or non-existent, is intermarried, or whose accomplishments are in fields considered immodest (e.g., risque entertainment) or antithetical to their halachic values (e.g., the environmentalists who push an ”eco-kashrut” that is more organic than it is technically kosher).

Other subjects likely to give offense are the liberal movements’ more welcoming attitudes toward interfaith marriage, the Reform movement’s adoption of patrilineal descent, the ordination of gay rabbis, and gender egalitarianism. It’s not merely that some readers disagree with these positions — they see it as our responsibility as a Jewish newspaper to either ignore them or condemn them.

But there does come a point when, after respectfully hearing all sides of an issue, you have to make a decision, and someone is bound to feel disappointed that their position has not been adopted. And to the chagrin of the Orthodox, our commitment to pluralism leads us to treat as normative things that will offend them. 

 We try to be a forum where all community perspective and norms are fairly reported, and respectfully represented, along with the views of those who might object.

But in the end, we’re trying to present the community as it is, not how any one side wants it to be.

Happily, most of our readers, including a welcome number of Orthodox readers, accept this role.