Ron Jacobsohn Meets the People behind the Gay Fathers Association

 

We are at the inaugural event for The Association of Israeli Gay Fathers, who has taken upon itself to assist the hundreds of gay families in Israel to be protected under the law, and it is unmistakable that the phenomena of gay families has taken off big time. Lets face it, at the end of the day as a Jewish society in which having children is something sacred and no Jewish mom will voluntarily give up the chance of becoming a grandmother even if her son or daughter are gay.

Ron Jacobsohn, JN1 Correspondent:
We are at the inaugural event for The Association of Israeli Gay Fathers, who has taken upon itself to assist the hundreds of gay families in Israel to be protected under the law.

Nitzan Horovitz, who is the first openly gay member of the Knesset, wants to help the “new” kind of families get their civil right too.

MK Nitzan Horovitz, Meretz It is a very important event. We have a whole new phenomenon in Israel which is already a few years in place, where we have new kinds of families: with two fathers, two mothers, gay families, we call them in Israel “Rainbow Families” and we’re here to help them to gain equal rights for surrogacy, for marriage, for adoption, for state subsidies etc etc. It’s time for the state to recognize these new families and top help them.

Udi Ledergor, a gay dad himself and the chairman of the new association, talks about huge baby boom the LGBT community in Israel is experiencing.

Udi Ledergor, Chairman, The Israeli Gay Fathers Association:
We just started a couple of months ago, so this is entirely new organization.Basically, what we were founded for is to fight for our legal rights in Israel for equality in parenting our children, there’s still many many legal limitations on how we can bring children into the world and how we’re allowed to raise them and how long it takes to get through all the hurdles and paperwork that the government makes us go through and there are a lot of other things that we want to do like what we’re doing now in the media, showing that our families are no less equal or worthy, just like any other family in Israel or in the world, and this is how we’re going to kick-start the whole thing.

Ranny and Yaron Rosen are dads to four-year-old Rotem and 9-month-old, Daniel, who claim being a gay dad in Tel-Aviv is not something that really stands-out.

Ranny Rosen and Yaron Rosen (with the kids Daniel and Rotem):
I don’t think that in Tel- Aviv is that hard because first of all, it’s becoming very popular in Israel, especially in Tel- Aviv. You can see a lot of Gay dads all over, sometimes in several places you feel a bit like in “Gay-Land”. When we brought Rotem four years ago, it was less common but I think to be gay, not to be a gay dad in Tel-Aviv is very common, very popular so we don’t feel that people are watching, looking at us, or something like this.

Shosh Pinkas calls herself the first “Israeli Gay Grandma. So she decided to help future generations of gay grandchildren and wrote a children’s book, The Dads of Gal and Noa, which explains how gay families are unique and the same as other families at the same time.

Shosh Pinkas, Author and Gay Grandma:
I felt the need to write not so much about the experience, rather my goal was to help those people that are being asked how the kids can have two fathers and no mother, and as a matter of fact we too had difficulties with that same question, so I decide to try and write this book. It’s a book for children where the narrator is an adult. It’s a book that begins with a child’s story but turns into a book that describes all the process, and in fact is very similar to the popular Israeli children’s book which we all grew up on.

Ron Jacobsohn, JN1 Correspondent:
It is unmistakable that the phenomena of gay families has taken off in Israel in recent predominantly because at the end of the day we are a Jewish society in which having children is something sacred and no Jewish mom will voluntarily give up the chance of becoming a grandmother even if her son or daughter are gay.
For JN1 i am Ron Jacobsohn at the Gay Centre in Tel-Aviv.

About Ron Jacobsohn

World renowned, award winning, correspondent, Ron Jacobsohn, brings from his very entertaining world to Ron's World.

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