First Published at Between the Lines on January 23, 2003
OVER THE LAST MONTH I’ve been exploring various attempts to show that homosexuality is morally wrong. Not surprisingly, I’ve concluded that these anti-gay arguments don’t hold much water.
At this point in the debate opponents usually try to change the subject. “Oh yeah?” they say. “Well what about incest or bestiality?”
The proper response to this so-called argument is an incredulous stare. “Excuse me,” you should say politely but firmly, “but I have no absolutely idea what the hell you’re talking about. For I was talking about homosexuality, and now you are talking about incest, and I don’t see what one thing has to do with the other. You might as well ask me about tax fraudor nuclear proliferation — equally irrelevant topics to the issue at hand.”
Many gay-rights opponents seem to think of the “What about incest?” argument as a kind of trump card. Their idea is that if one accepts homosexuality, one gives up on the idea of drawing moral lines altogether.
Nonsense. Gay people, like everyone else, can make judgments about which kinds of relationships are conducive to human well-being and which aren’t. Besides, unless one assumes from the outset that homosexuality is immoral, there is no more reason to group incest with homosexuality than with heterosexuality: after all, there is far more heterosexual incest than homosexual incest.
Why, then, do critics continue to press this objection? Perhaps it’s because accepting homosexuality requires them to give up their favorite argument: it’s wrong because we’ve always been taught that it’s wrong. This “argument from tradition” has an appealing simplicity. It is easier to accept the status quo than to make fine-grained, well-reasoned distinctions between those sexual acts which contribute to human well-being and those that do not.
But easier is not always better. And in this case, the cost of simplicity is too high: it involves denying fulfilling relationships to gay and lesbian people without any better reason than “that’s how we’ve always done things.” This is moral complacency, and it deserves not merely to be rejected but to be harshly condemned. If one is going to condemn people for the loving, affectionate relationships in their lives, one had damn well have a better reason than that. The same reason was once used to oppose interracial relationships: it was a lousy reason then and it’s a lousy reason now.
The so-called moral case against us is in fact deeply immoral. There’s something rather perverse about condemning people because of whom they love. And the effects of such condemnation — the pain and suffering and fear, the talent and energy wasted by the devastating oppression of the closet — are a far greater moral tragedy than consensual sex could ever be.
Please remember this: morality is not the exclusive domain of our opponents. Exhausted by the mistaken moralizing of Dr. Laura, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the like, gays and lesbians are sometimes tempted to reject the practice of moralizing altogether. And then we start to believe the fallacy that “Morality is strictly a private matter.”
This is a serious mistake. Whatever morality is, it is not “strictly private.” It’s about how we treat one another. It’s about fairness and justice. It’s about what matters most to us — not just as a personal preference, but as a standard for public behavior.
The problem with our opponents is not that they make moral judgments. Everyone makes moral judgments, and those who think they don’t are either confused or depraved. The problem with our opponents is that their moral condemnations of homosexuality lack good grounds. Insofar as this mistake involves misinformation or confused reasoning, it is a logical error. Insofar as it involves indifference to the experience of gays and lesbians, it is a moral one. It is high time we stood up and identified it as such.