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new york | The Conservative movement’s decision to delay a vote on its approach to homosexuality is angering some members who want leaders to liberalize the movement’s stance on gays and lesbians. Other members say the delay is a result of careful deliberation, not stonewalling.

“It’s yet another disappointment,” said Rabbi Ayelet Cohen, associate rabbi at New York’s Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, a synagogue for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Jews. “It feels like yet another missed opportunity for the law committee to take position of moral leadership.”

During a two-day meeting of the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which ended March 8, authors of four rabbinic opinions on the status of homosexuality in the movement — two on each side of the issue — were asked to revise their opinions.

The committee will meet again in December and said it will vote on the revised papers then.

The decision means that the movement’s 1992 decision barring openly gay individuals from its rabbinical schools and forbidding its rabbis to perform same-sex marriages will remain in place.

The movement has repeatedly affirmed that it welcomes gays and lesbians in its congregations.

The debate during the past three years on amending the 1992 policy has highlighted difficulties Conservative Jewry faces in its approach to religious law.

It remains to be seen how the homosexuality issue will be resolved.

“The pain that so many real people are experiencing because of their love for tradition and their hope for a supportive community clearly hasn’t moved the Rabbinical Assembly as an institution to move more quickly,” said Rabbi Menachem Creditor, one of the founder of Keshet Rabbis, a group supporting gay rights in the movement.

But even for some supporters of a new approach, the outcome wasn’t all negative.

“I feel a little bit of ambivalence. On the one hand, I feel impatient — a move on this discussion is long overdue,” said Rabbi Alan Lew, the former rabbi of San Francisco’s Congregation Beth Sholom, who has been performing same-sex marriages for many years.

“But if they’re looking at the halachic position very thoroughly, I’m willing to accept a delay.”

Rabbi Elliot Dorff, rector of Los Angeles’ University of Judaism, is one of the co-authors of one of the responses recommending a more liberal approach to homosexuality.

“I understand that it’s frustrating, and there’s a piece of me that feels frustrated as well,” he said. “But in the end, I would rather have well-honed and clearly articulated positions that people can study and understand than positions that are not well-argued.

“The law committee set a deadline for this,” he said, referring to the announced December vote. “It’s not as if we’re delaying this forever. This is not ducking responsibility.”

In a meeting last April, the law committee met but took no action on the 1992 decision. In the aftermath of the latest meeting, Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the assembly, urged his colleagues to be patient.

“It was an intense yet respectful meeting in which we looked at many dimensions of the issue,” he said. “I am urging my colleagues who promote change to realize that there are an equal number of colleagues who are in favor of welcoming gays and lesbians in the Conservative community but who do not wish to change halachah.”

Although the committee is the Conservative movement’s central halachic authority, it is not a legislative body, Meyers said. Rather, it offers the movement guidance. As such, he said, Conservative institutions are free to decide whether or not to take this guidance.

Discussion on the papers reaffirming the 1992 opinion focused on what the status quo means: Would the committee change the tone, if not the substance, of the movement’s approach to homosexuality? If so, how?

The first of the two papers advocating change interprets the biblical verse forbidding homosexuality — “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman: It is an abomination” — as a prohibition on anal sex between men that could be read as allowing for other forms of homosexual congress. The other pro-change paper suggested removing the prohibition in the biblical verse altogether, on grounds that it’s unjust.