Same-Sex Marriage as Kiddushin, Responsum 5774.4 (Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2014)

This 2014 CCAR responsum concludes that "same-sex marriages therefore meet the long-standing Reform definition of kiddushin as a mutual and egalitarian marital covenant between two Jews," identifying three commitments a same-sex couple can fulfill on the same terms as an opposite-sex couple: establishing a Jewish home, mutual support, and raising children as Jews where applicable. It reviews the CCAR's own history from a divided 1996 responsum, whose majority held "only heterosexual relationships qualify as kiddushin," through the 2000 resolution affirming rabbinic officiation, to this 2014 conclusion resting on the Reform movement's own egalitarian interpretation of marriage developed since 1869.