07.28
Last week, a Mormon friend of mine posted a link to Facebook about the suicides of Todd Ransom and other gay Mormons. A discussion ensued. There were a number of ridiculous statements, but the following comment was especially beyond the pale.
So here we have a person comparing gays to “suicide bombers” and “animals with urges.” I know several Mormons who either support gay marriage or are sympathetic to LGBT concerns, but comments like the one above remind me of just how socially conservative most Mormons are.
I won’t bother to explain why what she wrote is offensive. I doubt I need to. Let’s instead focus a couple of unintentionally hilarious typos in the comment. (Because sometimes levity is the best response to hate).
First, she claims that gay suicides are terrorizing Mormons by making them “feel quilty.” Not guilty, mind you. Quilty. And then she asks that we “bridal the natural man.” Wait, we’re supposed to take the natural man as our bride? I didn’t think that was kosher in her religion. She meant to say “bridle the natural man,” of course, but that’s arguably more sexually deviant—kinky, even. 
I wondered if that actually said quilty or if the “g” looked like a “q” because of the red line. That is awesome.
To be fair, Mormons are probably as familiar with feeling guilty as they are with feeling quilty.
There’s social conservatism, and there’s hate speech. Her comments are the latter.
The church is never wrong. Ever. EVER EVER EVER. You’re a terrorist for thinking the church could ever be wrong. Also you’re a terrorist if you’re depressed.
1) This person got her “knowledge” of depression and suicide from the church. An “institution” known for it’s “expertise” on pretty much “everything”. Because it’s as a “direct link” to “god”. That’s why they own so much real estate and spend all their time trying not to think about sex.
2) This person is making a dramatic statement to induce guilt in people who have committed suicide because their suicide made her feel guilty.
2) Mormons are very fashionably ironic. (And they don’t even know it!)
The entire LGBT issue is going to be the undoing of all forms of conservative Christianity, ironically for exactly the kind of Natural Law reasons that Kleiner is so fond of. Homosexuality is a natural state of humanity; you cross or attempt to suppress it at your peril. The time has come for the reckoning. Put a bottle of beer in the freezer and it’s going to explode, sooner or later.
It is interesting that Hunt uses the language of “natural states” here. Is Hunt admitting that “natural states” are normative? If so, that starts to sound a lot like the natural law! How about that?!
The natural law, at its most basic, says that we can derive from the “natural states” of man certain moral laws which are valid everywhere (as opposed to, say, mere customs or positive law). Vince has suggested a natural law argument, very briefly, in support of homosexual acts on this blog before. Hunt seems to be gesturing in that direction here. What is fascinating is that Hunt and I are on the same page here — you can only deny nature for so long. But Hunt and I have a very different conception of “nature”.
I don’t care to get too much into it here, but there is nothing inconsistent with saying that homosexuality violates the natural law and granting that people are “born gay”. I am more than happy to admit that homosexuality is most often an innate desire (that people are “born gay”). In fact, it seems foolish to me to deny such a thing (as a gay friend of mine once told me, ‘Why the hell would I have chosen to be gay? Being gay has caused me lots of pain and problems!’). It does require admitting that human beings are often born with unnatural desires and inclinations. I find this claim difficult to dispute. I think greed, selfishness, intemperance, fury, etc all violate the natural law even though some people may be born with those character inclinations. In fact, I think we are all born with disordered inclinations of various sorts. Just look at a 2 year old for proof!
The natural law only seems to come up on questions of homosexuality, but the natural law is the account of morality I would give across the board. It does not just concern sexual ethics. Lying is wrong because man is by nature a social animal and lying is ruinous to social relationships. Failure to have any of the virtues proper to man can frustrate the actualization of man’s proper end. For instance, lacking courage will mean that a moral life will be all but impossible for you – moral principles are of little use if you don’t have the courage to stand up for them. That is why courage (fortitude) is one of the cardinal virtues (cardinal means to hinge, all of the other virtues hinge or depend on having the cardinal virtues). I find that some people staunchly opposed to the natural law because of the association of the view with a certain view on homosexuality find that the natural law looks a lot more attractive in other contexts (for instance, you can derive a ton of our moral norms from man being a social animal, as Aristotle does).
Anyway, it is this reality of the presence of both natural and unnatural desires in man that drives so much ancient wisdom on virtue. Human beings are this very strange creature for whom what is natural does not necessarily come naturally. Giraffes cannot hijack their own actualization of their proper telos, but human beings can frustrate their own proper ends through their choices (this comment is a general one, I do not have homosexuality in mind in particular here).
Even some gay rights advocates think the issue of whether or not people are born gay (have that innate desire) is beside the point. See philosopher and gay rights defender John Corvino, who criticizes both liberal and conservatives for investing so much in the question of whether or not people are born this way. There are lots of dispositions that people are born with that we find morally objectionable, and there are some dispositions that we are not born with but choose but do not find morally objectionable at all. In short, settling whether or not people are born gay really does not prove much of anything for either side.
Point is, identifying “nature” with how we are born is a pretty shallow way of thinking about the natural law, though not a surprising reduction from materialists.
Interesting that you would mention Dr. Corvino. I just encountered some of his articles for the first time last week.
Even if we’re to say that the cause of homosexuality is irrelevant, that still leave unanswered the question why you think it is “disordered” or unnatural. Whether it’s innate or developed or not, one thing for sure is that it’s a human proclivity. It has been with us for recorded history and probably since the inception of our species–and perhaps before, depending on whether you give any weight to apparent “homosexual” acts in the rest of the animal kingdom. (I don’t; I think the issue rapidly becomes ridiculous outside humanity.) Does an inherent proclivity mean this is a natural state? I’d have to say yes, it does. If it doesn’t positively prove it then at least it shows that it’s very probably the case. I would argue that greed, intemperance, anger, selfishness are all too natural for us as well. That, unfortunately, is our predicament. To avoid the temptation to say that our natural tendency is universally negative, and condemn homosexuality too, it is also true that love, affection, respect, empathy, altruism… also compose our nature. Where, then, do you place homosexuality, and why? There has to be a metric that you use to judge this tendency. What is it? I think you’re going to run into trouble if you take the traditional “reproductive function” route. Would that then mean a sterile man should not have sex with his wife?
Hunt, this will sound like a cop-out, but I have dished on this issue so many times on this blog that I don’t care to do it much more. Believe it or not, I never talk about this issue outside this blog. I have my views about homosexuality, but I am really not that overheated about it. That I discuss it so much here may give people the impression that I am some kind of anti-gay crusader. I really am not. I just take up the argument here. I should probably back off, there is little hope for movement here I think. Plus I am in hostile territory, it is astonishing how many LGBT readers there are on this blog! When it comes to sexual ethics, I spend far more time going after contraception (usually trying to convince Catholics of Catholic teachings!).
I am always amazed when people raise this sterility argument as if they had a “gotcha”. What do you expect me to say here: “Oh shit, Hunt. I (or anyone else in the long intellectual tradition of the natural law) never thought of that. You got me. I was all wrong about that whole natural law thing.” Come on.
I could, and have, develop this argument much more fully. Search the SHAFT blog and you will find it. Very briefly: We make moral judgments about acts, the sorts of things that are within our control. Contracepted sex, sodomy, and homosexual acts intentionally subvert the reproductive function of sexuality. Sterility, lack of fertility during the natural menstrual cycle, etc, are not intentional subversions of one of the primary ends of sexuality. It is a matter of immediate and further intents, and a question of the KIND of act rather than the particularity of each individual act. Not every sexual act must or will result in conception, not every sexual act even need aim at that in terms of further intents. But the sexual act is the KIND of act that could be potentially life-giving, so in terms of immediate intent we ought not subvert that end.
I know that was too dense. Search the SHAFT blog, I developed this argument quite extensively sometime during the last academic year on this blog. Or read some Robert George or Elizabeth Anscombe, you’ll find some stuff by both of them online.
But I think we are on the same page on one thing – we have some desires that are good (properly ordered) and some that are not good (disordered). Not all “inherent proclivities” are morally laudatory. Some are and some are not. So it is a matter of sorting out which “inherent proclivities” are good and which are not. I can’t really imagine how we might proceed in sorting that out without introducing, in a fairly serious way, teleology in human nature. So, yes, I have a “metric” for sorting this out – human nature and human goods. I don’t think it makes much sense to speak about “morally rightness” outside of a discussion of goods. This is the drum I always beat – we’ve got to do serious philosophical anthropology so we can get clear on what man is and what is good for him. I am convinced that most of the moral errors I see on this blog arise from an inadequate (or sometimes plain wrong) anthropology.
For those new to this sort of an investigation, read the first two books of Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics. Don’t be scared off by it because a theist suggested it. Many atheist philosophers I know think it is pretty hard to improve on Aristotle ethics, even if they don’t want his metaphysical baggage.
Re: sterility, lolz, I had no idea that had canned-objection status. I honestly just thought of it off the top of my head. Sure, maybe there is a subtle argument that would take me considerable study to glimpse. I have a strong intuition it would also require more than a few assumptions that I would be unwilling to make in the face of simpler arguments to the contrary. This is probably the best I can do to sway you to my side, and btw, it doesn’t matter, but I’m not gay. I do sympathize with their community. I would ask you to ponder why you don’t get very heated about the matter. Perhaps you recognize that it doesn’t really have a lot of moral consequence at all. Generally speaking, fundamental arguments about right and wrong tend to be quite simple, not abstruse. Each additional page of moral calculus introduces potential errors. I see a condition that doesn’t harm anyone, and brings joy and fulfillment to many. On a slight tangent, I have interacted on blogs with people who actually argue that there is something wrong with homosexuality based solely on (dubious) statistics on mental illness, STD rate, and completely bogus theories of rampant homosexual pedophilia. There are many, many nutty arguments against homosexuality, and most of them are consequentialist, or based on the current state of medical science, etc. Or they are outright lies and distortion. They do not address the fundamental position that gay sex is equivalent to straight sex; it’s just that the two participants have the same gender. The fact that a sterile man or woman can enjoy sex with their spouse buttresses that opinion, I would say, quite strongly. Each concession like that makes the simple position more sensible, and, frankly, your position more vague, more open to casuistry.
[...] from the playful, we wander into the territory of the seriously offensive. Suicidal gay people are terrorists? Christians burning the Quran because it’s supposedly sending people to hell (note the [...]