Retired rabbi advocates for gays
By Carol Biliczky
Beacon Journal staff writer
Wendy Horowitz dropped a giant, neon, blazing hint when she told her parents she was joining the gay and lesbian organization at Ohio State.
Her father, retired Temple Israel Rabbi David Horowitz, thought it was great she was supporting her gay friends.
When his daughter eventually was blunter about her sexual orientation, Horowitz and his wife, Toby, were stunned. They cried and begged her to get counseling.
”I may need that,” Wendy told them, ”but not because I’m gay.”
Gradually, the Horowitzes adapted to the new reality and today are at the head of the national movement to accept gays and lesbians.
Last month, Horowitz became the national vice president of the advocacy group PFLAG, which stands for Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
He is working to educate clergy about gays. They and their parishioners can be the driving force to win popular acceptance for the movement, he said.
”I was a product of the civil-rights movement in the 1960s, and that movement didn’t gain traction until the white and religious communities got behind it,” he said. ”That’s where I’m putting my efforts.”
Grass-roots effort
PFLAG grew from the grass-roots effort of a mother to support her child at a Gay Pride Parade in New York City in 1972 to a national organization with 250,000-plus members and supporters and more than 500 chapters, including 13 in Ohio.
The largest family organization in support of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community in the country, PFLAG works to create equality in the workplace, marriage and military.
Horowitz credits PFLAG with bringing him and his wife out of the proverbial closet after Wendy broke her news to them in 1990.
An Akron PFLAG meeting gave him his first ‘’safe space” to admit he had a gay daughter and to help expel his major worries: that his daughter’s sexual orientation would affect his job as a clergyman and that she would face a terrible life, lonely and jobless.
”None of those things came to pass,” he said. ”Only good things.”
He found what he then viewed as surprising support in his reformed Jewish congregation of 750 families. Members of about 200 families shared the news that they, too, have gay and lesbian children, grandchildren or siblings.
Numbers like that might not be surprising, as perhaps one in 10 people nationwide is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender and one in four families has a gay family member, he said.
Horowitz advanced up the ranks of the local PFLAG chapter to become president. He joined the national board of directors and became national secretary in 2006. He speaks about two times a month on behalf of the organization and aspires to be president when his two-year term as vice president expires in 2010.
Giving support
Along the way, he demonstrated his support by officiating at commitment ceremonies for gay couples in Akron and at his daughter’s union to Julie Ann Bowers in St. Paul, Minn., where they lived, in 2003.
In 2005, Horowitz and his wife adapted yet again when their daughter’s partner announced she was transgender and would undergo surgery to become a man.
Perhaps predictably, Rabbi Horowitz’s first concern was for his daughter. How would this affect her? What would she do?
Very little, it turned out. She concluded she was still a lesbian, regardless of who was walking beside her. She decided she would stay with her partner, whose new name is Julian, because she loved him. They were married by their rabbi in Minneapolis in 2007.
Again none of that has been a problem for Horowitz and his wife. While he carries a picture of the female Julie Ann in his wallet, it is to put a face on the transgender person at his speaking engagements.
”I can’t even remember him as a woman,” Horowitz said.
”Life is as normal for us as it is for anybody else,” he said. ”With full equality for gays, America would not see any change in its moral fiber or its commitment to marriage.”
Okay this one has me baffled. It reads as a tv series or a movie of some sort but just ...
i love you ilove you i love you 
This was an informative article. I thought it was just me that couldn't use many facial creams, because even the ...
OMG!! You mean to tell me that they are not the same?! We have some educating to do. Even with ...
Hi,iam loanly,i want our comunity friend link. 
