I previously posted that the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards was meeting this week and would consider lifting a ban on gay rabbis and same-sex unions here. The two-day meeting ended yesterday and the committee has decided to wait until December to vote on ending the ban.

The four legal proposals on the table were sent back to their authors for “extensive revisions,” said Rabbi Joel H. Meyers, a nonvoting member of the law committee and executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, which represents the movement’s 1,600 rabbis.

Rabbi Ayelet S. Cohen, a Conservative rabbi at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, a predominantly gay synagogue in Manhattan that is not part of the Conservative movement, said, “I understand the need for the law committee to go through a serious halachic process, but this affects the real lives of real people, and for the people in our community there is real urgency.

“There are gay people who grew up in the synagogues and day schools and summer camps of the Conservative movement who feel the movement has turned its back on them,” said Rabbi Cohen, a member of Keshet Rabbis, a group of more than 200 Conservative rabbis who support full inclusion of gay men and lesbians. “There are people who want to become rabbis who can’t, couples who want the rabbis of their childhood synagogues to marry them, and they won’t.”

Rabbi Kassel Abelson, chairman of the law committee, said, “I’m saddened by the fact that there are people who are hurt by it, but I think we have to take seriously our process and follow it.”

Congregation Beth Simchat Torah may sound familiar if you’re a Transcending Gender reader. Jen posted about transgender naming ceremonies performed there back in January.