David Benkof

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David Benkof (born David Bianco in 1970) is an American journalist-entrepreneur. He was raised St. Louis, Missouri and then went to college at Stanford University, where he came out as gay his freshmen year. He served as the international president of United Synagogue Youth.^[1]

In 1995, he founded Q Syndicate, gay-press syndication service that provides columns, cartoons, crossword puzzles and horoscopes to about 100 gay and lesbian newspapers. In 2001, he sold a majority interest in Q Syndicate to Rivendell Marketing, and served as vice president for two years before selling the rest of the company.^[2] He is a prolific writer, publishing Modern Jewish history for everyone in 1997 and Gay Essentials: Facts for Your Queer Brain in 1999. In 2002 and 2003 he wrote the column “Over the Rainbow” for Q Syndicate.^[3]

In 2003, he announced that he was going to stop having sex with men for religious reasons, and that he was shedding the label gay, preferring not to label his sexuality.^[4] He continued on to say “I believe that within a couple years I’m probably going to be married with a growing family.”^[5] He has always been a devout Jew, and says that one reason he changed was because "Gay sex is just inconsistent with traditional religious life." To reflect his change in sexual identity, and to honor his grandfather, Julius Benkof, David Bianco changed his name to David Benkof.^[2] David identifies as bisexual, but abstains from having sex with men.^[2]

He has since become a strong opponent of same-sex marriage.^[6] In response to arguments for gay marriages, he wrote “This reasoning is not only flawed, it insults the millions of Americans whose traditional faiths call on us to defend marriage as a central institution in society defined as a union between a man and a woman.”^[7] Benkof has made it clear that his objection to same-sex relationships are based on his personal religious beliefs, stating, "I happen to believe that God has been clear to the Jewish people that we should be pursuing opposite-sex relationships, and particularly not having intercourse between two males."^[8]

Mr. Benkof spent the 2004-2005 year at Darche Noam/Shapell's, an Orthodox yeshiva in Jerusalem. He then studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem during the 2005-2006 academic year.^[9] Benkof is currently pursuing a PhD in American Jewish history at New York University,^[10] and researching the history of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.