sentences:  This state of affairs has imposed terrible suffering and indignity on gay and lesbian people, their families, friends and communities.Rabbis Nevins, Dorff and Reisner demonstrated that the biblical prohibition is limited to anal sex between men, whereas the broader prohibitions on gay and lesbian intimacy were instituted by the rabbis in Midrash Sifra.Although Maimonides and the Tur/Shulchan Arukh viewed the resulting prohibition as biblical, Nachmanides argued that it is a rabbinic interpolation.