Noa Evron's historic identity card
Photo: Motti Kimchi
We are the future
Op-ed: Rulings in the Family Court requiring two lesbian mothers to both feature on their child's birth certificate don't surprise Orna Oshri; her 16 year old's identity card already shows both her mothers as 'mothers'; the unofficial war between LGBT people and the religious in Israel has kicked up a notch.
The good news reported here doesn't surprise me: My 16-year-old daughter Noa already has her two mothers listed as "mothers" in the identity card that she received a month ago.
On Ohad's—my son, the solder—identity card, one of us is still listed as the "father," and Ohad will have to take the trouble to go to the Ministry of the Interior at some point in the future to fix that mistake-not-mistake.
This news particularly gladdens me now, against the backdrop of the recent commotion surrounding the Pride parades in Be'er Sheva and Jerusalem and against the backdrop of the parade of rabbis who have allowed themselves to stand on stages and say into an open microphone the most abominable things about me and about members of the LGBT community. Just on Sunday, I heard from my daughter, Rabbi Rami Berechyahu—the candidate for rabbi of the Israel Police—said that people mustn't rent apartments to single-sex couples.
Noa Evron receiving the first identity card in Israel in 2014 with two mothers on it, both as 'mother' (Photo: Motti Kimchi)
It's hard not to perceive that the unofficial war between LGBT people and the agents of religion in Israel has gone up a degree recently. It's happy now, I think, because the two communities have attained a significant degree of strength—and from that comes the frontal confrontation, with many battles still ahead. Who will win this war? It's hard to say.
One the one hand, I try to encourage myself, we're displaying the power of life, the will to be, to love, and to have children. We're the future. The solution in appearing on our children's identity cards is another small-large success in an extended fight.
On the other hand, I'm also worried. G-d's subcontractors in our country will neither sleep nor slumber until all of us toe the line set by the Shulchan Aruch and stand in a line ready to greet the Messiah. I wonder if their drunkenness with power comes from years of political extortion that always works, or if they know something that I don't. Time will tell.
