“It now has the effect of precluding same-sex marriages, of course, and that may be a significant reason it has not changed in recent years, but I don’t think the lack of civil marriage in Israel was done in order to avoid same-sex marriage.”
Your point is fair. I would probably re-state this a bit with some history.
There are a lot of people who are “Jewish for the law of return” -— for example, I have a good friend who had three Jewish grandparents, but his maternal grandmother was ethnic Russian with an invalid conversion. So, he was not Jewish under Jewish law, although perfectly acceptable for aliyah. (He subsequently underwent an Orthodox conversion in the IDF, which 99% of people in his situation do.)
A lot of secular “Jewish-for-aliyah” Israelis like in my friend’s situation want to marry a Jewish person or another secular person like themselves -— and cannot do so (although there are ample secular co-habitation agreements available that have the legal effects of marriage for all purposes).
Anyway, a lot of people want to resolve the above issue, but don’t want to go through a conversion, because they have no intention of living an Observant life -— a decision I respect, actually, and I appreciate they don’t want to make a mockery of conversion.
That said, no resolution is going to happen because of the gay lobby pushing for civil marriage.
So, yes, that is a long way of saying “I agree it didn’t start that way, but the problem (and similar problems) was foreseen so it’s not going to change.
Understood. I’m familiar with the bare outlines of the issue, but frankly haven’t paid too much attention as I have no current plans to make aliyah (or enter into a gay marriage, for that matter), so I appreciate the explanation/clarification.