As more and more members of the general public are being turned off by the Christianist refrain that the Bible condemns homosexuality, the far right is looking for additional arguments to support its homophobia. One of the justifications - which relies in part on the Roman Catholic Church's 13th century view of the "natural law" - is a movement to depict same sex attraction as "unnatural" and against the "natural law." Objectively, there is nothing to support this anti-gay premise, especially since science has found hundreds of species where same sex relations occur, but the homophobes never let the unbiased facts get in their way. Likewise, the argument ignores the findings of legitimate mental health experts who see homosexuality as "normal" for a certain segment of the populace and as some that is not changeable. Hence the APA's condemnation of "reparative" therapy earlier this year. One of the "high priests" of this approach is Princeton professor, Robert George, profiled in this past weekend's Sunday's New York Times magazine. Regardless of how the anti-gay pig (i.e., religious based bigotry) is dressed up or given lipstick, it remains a pig and efforts to disguise religious based discrimination as something "scientific" is disingenuous at best. Nathaniel Frank has a post a Huffington Post that looks at this latest manure being disseminated by anti-gay Christianists. Here are some highlights:*
For years now a culture war has raged between liberal rationalists and religious dogmatists over whether homosexuality should be treated equally by civil law. Having lost ground in recent years as young people grow up in a world far more familiar with the banalities of what it really means to be gay, the right wing has begun taking careful steps to re-brand its homophobia as a rational, secular position, instead of the sectarian prejudice that it is.
*
It's a dangerous trend, and a starkly immoral one, as credentialed, highly educated people who should know better [than to] lend their social science credentials to the sloppy thinking and outright bigotry of those who are unable or unwilling to challenge their own dogma.
*
George and other proponents of natural law believe that nature endows humans with reason, and all you have to do is consult that reason to know that, just as a stone falls by gravity, homosexuality is morally wrong. But there are (at least) two main problems with natural law reasoning as the basis of public policy. First is that it is utterly circular: it relies on broad agreement about what is a human good, from which natural law theorists deduce morally right action as anything that leads to that good; but how do we decide in the first place what is a moral good?
*
Most of us may agree on friendship or knowledge as human goods, but the test of a good theory is whether it's applicable when the tougher stuff comes into play. Natural law fails this test, as it's totally incapable of actually answering the question of how nature or reason resolves the question of what is morally good.
*
The second problem is that the link that natural law makes between observation and valuation relies on privileging one natural act over another as your starting point, and insisting that act is supreme, to the exclusion of other acts that some view as good. Those like Freud and George, who apparently view the world through a telling prism of sexual fixation, choose the procreative act as supreme.
*
Remember, it's not that anything that's natural is good; it's that nature provides humans with the tool of reason to know what's good and choose what's right. But this means we're back to square one. On what mystical "authority of reason" does George rest his claim that heterosexual intercourse is moral and homosexual intercourse is not? . . . So why is heterosexual intercourse, which is so messy, indulgent, and narcissistic (after all, what's more narcissistic than reproducing yourself?) a moral good, while equality for gay people is not? . . .
[I]f we're going to use reason, let's use real reason, and not lean on our ivy-league credentials to pass off homophobia as genuine rationality.
For years now a culture war has raged between liberal rationalists and religious dogmatists over whether homosexuality should be treated equally by civil law. Having lost ground in recent years as young people grow up in a world far more familiar with the banalities of what it really means to be gay, the right wing has begun taking careful steps to re-brand its homophobia as a rational, secular position, instead of the sectarian prejudice that it is.
*
It's a dangerous trend, and a starkly immoral one, as credentialed, highly educated people who should know better [than to] lend their social science credentials to the sloppy thinking and outright bigotry of those who are unable or unwilling to challenge their own dogma.
*
George and other proponents of natural law believe that nature endows humans with reason, and all you have to do is consult that reason to know that, just as a stone falls by gravity, homosexuality is morally wrong. But there are (at least) two main problems with natural law reasoning as the basis of public policy. First is that it is utterly circular: it relies on broad agreement about what is a human good, from which natural law theorists deduce morally right action as anything that leads to that good; but how do we decide in the first place what is a moral good?
*
Most of us may agree on friendship or knowledge as human goods, but the test of a good theory is whether it's applicable when the tougher stuff comes into play. Natural law fails this test, as it's totally incapable of actually answering the question of how nature or reason resolves the question of what is morally good.
*
The second problem is that the link that natural law makes between observation and valuation relies on privileging one natural act over another as your starting point, and insisting that act is supreme, to the exclusion of other acts that some view as good. Those like Freud and George, who apparently view the world through a telling prism of sexual fixation, choose the procreative act as supreme.
*
Remember, it's not that anything that's natural is good; it's that nature provides humans with the tool of reason to know what's good and choose what's right. But this means we're back to square one. On what mystical "authority of reason" does George rest his claim that heterosexual intercourse is moral and homosexual intercourse is not? . . . So why is heterosexual intercourse, which is so messy, indulgent, and narcissistic (after all, what's more narcissistic than reproducing yourself?) a moral good, while equality for gay people is not? . . .
[I]f we're going to use reason, let's use real reason, and not lean on our ivy-league credentials to pass off homophobia as genuine rationality.
No comments:
Post a Comment