Time for Serious Gay Debate
The
Jamaican Gleaner, December 5, 2004
By Ian Boyne
HOMOSEXUALITY IS one subject which
demands attention to philosophy and most people’s incompetence in this area
is excruciatingly and agonisingly evident in the puerile discussion which
usually takes place on the subject.
The most philosophically incompetent, of course, fall
back on prejudice, bigotry, received tradition, culture and religion to argue
their case. Others simply argue from their own physiological urges and
desires, narcissism and anti-religious biases. Most of the arguments I hear
for and against homosexuality are facile, preposterous and glandular. It is
not just the flaming Fundamentalists and culturally prejudiced anti-gay
persons, but gay persons themselves are usually given more to emotive
argumentation rather than reason.
Yet, if one is dispassionate and detached, it is evident
that the discussion really turns heavily on some deep philosophical issues and
can’t be resolved without examining epistemological foundations. In simple
terms, how do we know what we know? How do we determine right and wrong? How
do we establish ethics? For most of the rabid anti-gay people, right and wrong
are determined by the Bible. God has spoken infallibly and authoritatively in
the Bible and the Bible condemns homosexuality, so argument done. It’s an
abomination, a stench in the sight of God (and man) and homosexuals must
repent.
WHO IS RIGHT?
Even many non-Christians appeal to the Bible as the
source of their opposition to homosexuality. But who says the Bible writers
really represent God? How do you know God inspired the Bible? You simply
accept it on faith without evidence? Is that good enough for everyone? And how
do you know the Bible is any more the authoritative word of God than the
Muslim Koran, the Hindu Bhagavad-Gita, the Moonies sacred book The Divine
Principle, Joseph’s Smith’s Book of Mormon or the sayings of Confucius? If
you can have faith in the Bible without concrete scientific evidence why
can’t someone else express faith in those other sacred books?
If the Bible is the major source of people’s opposition
to homosexuality, then the authenticity of that source is very relevant and
poignant. And what about the Bible’s equal condemnation of fornication and
adultery, which are not criminalised in Jamaica? Shouldn’t they be
criminalised also if we are to be consistent with biblical ethics? Some people
don’t know that it was not just homosexuality which attracted the death
penalty under Israel’s theocratic laws, but also fornication and adultery.
To argue against homosexuality based on the Bible requires a whole set of
apologetics and justification of the Bible itself.
FAITH
As one homosexual wrote me this past week, “Having
faith in God and faith in the Bible is not synonymous with each other. I
believe wholeheartedly in God but not necessarily that God is limited to the
God of the Bible.” He goes on to needle the Fundamentalist: “I cannot use
the Bible, which is the foundation of Christianity and by extension moral
values, to substantiate any code of ethics where sexuality is concerned.
David’s copulation with Bathsheba was deemed wrong only because she was the
wife of Uriah, for if she were single she would have been regarded as just
another of David’s concubines. Solomon was more promiscuous than he was
wise, a nature that ostensibly God had no problems with. Numbers Chapter 31
speaks to the genocide of the Midianites as instructed by God which resulted
in every Midianite man, boy woman, suckling cattle being murdered, but
frighteningly, every virgin girl spared.” These kinds of arguments pointing
to the alleged moral incongruities in the Bible itself are becoming popular
among gay apologists.
Others say nature itself shows that homosexuality is
unnatural and perverse. First, they say that homosexuality threatens the
species. Clearly, same-sex relationships do not produce offspring so humanity
would be extinct if all of us were gay. But this argument misses the point.
Gays have never claimed that everyone should be gay and that heterosexuality
should be stamped out. They have simply said, let’s “live and let live”.
Nature could still conceivably be overwhelmingly in favour of heterosexuality
while still leaving room for homosexuality.
If nature is all there is and there is no transcendent
Being, then how could you convincingly argue that nature does not allow for
any expression at all of homosexuality? After all, the fact that some persons
have homosexual desires and began experiencing those feelings without
consciously choosing them could indicate that nature, indeed, allows for
this variety in sexual expression. (For those who only read a few paragraphs,
let me say that my personal position is that homosexuality is wrong, sinful
and cannot in any way be harmonised with the Bible. But that is because I
accept the Bible as authoritative. So don’t run off and misrepresent me
or shoot me!).
UNNATURAL
The atheists, agnostics and Bible-bashers who stoutly
oppose homosexuality have a hard time justifying their opposition to
homosexuality. Talking about how the human anatomy is constructed and the
natural use of this or that part of the human body strikes one as the kind of
thinking which once lead many to condemn oral sex. We can’t construct an
ethical edifice on that kind of shoddy foundation. Bible-bashers like
Mutaburuka say people don’t need the Bible or any religious document to know
homosexuality is wrong. But how would he know? Can he argue on sociological
grounds? How?
Besides, there is evidence of some homosexuality in
nature in animals. The Christian can say that came through the fall of man,
but Muta has no such answer for homosexuality among some animals. If nature is
not uniformly heterosexual, only predominantly so, how can Muta and other
Bible-bashers deny the allegedly 10 per cent of the world’s population who
are gay the legitimacy of acting out their orientation?
A lot of the arguments by non-religious people against
homosexuality are pathetically weak and flawed. The Bible, even more so than
other sacred writings in the world religions, is the greatest obstacle to the
homosexual movement. This is why a concerted, vitriolic campaign is being
waged against the Bible at least conservative notions of it. The line of
reasoning (for want of a better word) of gay people is also pitifully weak and
intellectually soggy.
Gay apologetics is simple and simplistic: “I am born
this way. It’s natural. Sex is like breathing and eating so why should you
heterosexuals have it and I can’t?” If culture, custom and the democratic
will of the people stand opposed to homosexuality, by what moral authority
does the homosexual assert the inviolability of his sexual practice? If the
majority of Jamaicans want homosexuality to remain criminalised, on what
philosophical or political ground do you as a gay person demand its repealing?
The natural world (human and animal) is overwhelmingly heterosexual.
Civilisations and cultures throughout history have been universally
heterosexual (in terms of being predominant). So what gives you, the gay
person, the inalienable right to the expression of a sexual orientation which
the majority deems unacceptable? Only the sovereignty of your urges and
desires. Nothing else. The philosopher David Hume says “Reason is the slave
of passion”, and nowhere is that more apt than in listening to gays justify
their sexual practice.
NO HOMOSEXUAL GENE
Suppose I have a powerful, overwhelming desire for young
girls. I find a bright, precocious 14-year-old who consents to have sex with
me. What would be wrong, apart from the fact that the society believes that a
man in his 40s should not be having sex with a 14-year-old? There are some
people who have an overwhelming, overpowering desire for sex with
eight-year-olds. Pedophiles have strong sexual desires, too. How is your
strong homosexual desire different in substance from the strong sexual desire
of the pedophile? Don’t raise the matter of consensual sex. For who says sex
has to be consensual? What if the majority opinion is just backward and
oppressive?
[The notion that consent in sex is
ethically irrelevant is astounding. The casual dismissal of the consequences
of a person's actions means that the author is unprepared to deal with the
subject. -Bob]
You say I am arguing as though we can’t have ethics
without God. Not saying that. But I am saying that the notion of ethics
can’t be just personalistic. It has to be determined by the larger
community. Any group of rapists and pedophiles could come together to
reinforce themselves in their ‘ethics’ but would that make it right? They
have particular strong desires, too just like the homosexuals. The homosexual
previously quoted went on to say, “Unfortunately for the world, I don’t
feel I have anything to justify.” My life is my life, in other words, my gay
correspondent says. But so could the pedophile and the rapist say, and don’t
tell me about breaking the law for there are oppressive laws, just like the
one criminalising homosexuality, in your view.
There is no homosexual gene. The 1991 study by Simon
LaVay did not establish that, nor did the 1993 study by Dean Hamer. Hamer’s
team did not locate a chromosomal marker for lesbians and bisexuals. Genetics
does influence sexuality, but it does not determine it. Scientific studies
have shown that genetics influences criminal behaviour but not in a
deterministic sense. Yet people would not generally suggest that criminals are
not responsible for their actions.
Says the 1998 book, The Perspectives of Psychiatry:
“That genes have a role in behaviour can be demonstrated; that behaviours
are influenced by other forces is also certain. Studies demonstrating a
genetic factor in criminality have also acknowledged cultural/environmental
influences shaping the behaviour.” Says Neil and Briar Whitehead in their
1999 book My genes Made me Do It: A Scientific Look at Sexual Orientation:
“Science has not yet discovered any genetically dictated behaviour in
humans, far genetically dictated behaviours of the one-gene-one-trait variety
have been found only in very simple organisms.”
I could quote an abundance of studies debunking the gay
propaganda myth of a genetic determination of homosexuality. This does not
mean people choose their homosexuality. Why would most gays in a homophobic
world? Many desperately want to change and find it hard. There are a number of
early factors responsible for homosexuality. It’s a complex issue and not as
simple as either the gay bashers or the irrational, desire-driven gays make
out.
The most comprehensive account of the social construction
of homosexuality from the earliest times to the present has been done by David
Greenberg. In his highly-acclaimed cross-cultural work, The Construction of
Homosexuality, he rejects the view of those who see homosexuality as an
unchangeable, genetic condition: “Where social definitions of appropriate
and inappropriate behaviour are clear and consistent with positive sanctions
for conformity and negative ones for nonconformity, virtually everyone will
conform, irrespective of genetic inheritance and, to a considerable extent,
irrespective of personal psychodynamics.”
Gays just want to have sex and lots of it like most of us
heterosexuals. They feel it’s unfair that we should have it and they should
have none. When you really press them (oops!), they have no intellectually
unassailable defence. It goes back to the sovereignty of their irresistible
desires. They are just helpless slaves to their passions. Their reasoning
violates every rule in even naturalistic ethical construction.
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