Whatever happened to courage????

They should not have pulled same-sex marriage notices...

A week after publishing a same-sex marriage announcement for the first time in its history, The Jewish Standard said Monday that it will not publish such announcements in the future because it received a "firestorm" of criticism from Orthodox rabbis.

The Teaneck-based paper decided not to publish gay marriage announcements because it is such a divisive issue within the Jewish community and the paper "has always striven to draw the community together, rather than drive its many segments apart," editor Rebecca Kaplan Boroson wrote in an editorial posted on the Jewish Standard's website.

But its decision not to publish same-sex announcements unleashed a new barrage of criticism on the paper from within the Jewish and gay communities.

"I certainly understand any publication needs to do what's in its financial best interest, but at the same time it was a cowardly move because to make a segment of the community invisible is incredibly painful and divisive," said Avi Smolen, 23, a former New Milford resident who had submitted the original announcement to the paper about his pending marriage to Justin Rosen, 24, of Syosset, N.Y.

"It's very disappointing," said Reform Rabbi Steven Sirbu of Temple Emeth in Teaneck. "I had just written a letter to the paper saying it was so nice they had broken down another barrier."

Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, said the Standard's new policy "is disgraceful and the paper has now turned into an abject embarrassment. It's ironic because they said they wanted to do this to bring people together, but I can't think of a more divisive policy."

Goldstein said the paper "has thrown three movements of Judaism — Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative — overboard in an effort to mollify the fourth, Orthodox."