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What Gay activists and the media do not understand about morality and choice.
Last week’s publication of a survey of hohe relevant scientific literature regarding gender identity and the biological basis if any for homosexuality has reignited the debate over whether homosexuality is a moral choice or an inborn trait analogous to race. The survey found that there is no conclusive evidence that being gay or transgendered has a genetic origin. The gay rights community has falsely claimed the survey places the burden on those who are skeptical of the claim, as if the burden of proof is on those skeptical of a proposition to disprove the contention rather than the reverse. More importantly, however, even if it were true that sexual preference is genetic, that would not take homosexuality out of the realm of moral debate the way gay activists claim it would.
First, gay activists are trying to flip the burden of proof onto the skeptics. If homosexual preference is the result of some genetic or other physiological process, it is observable. The debate over whether homosexuality is genetic is a physical rather than metaphysical debate. Physical processes and characteristics are observable and predictable. If no one has yet found some predictable and observable process that results in people having a sexual preference for the same sex, then the default answer is that it homosexuality is not the result of a genetic or physiological phenomenon. If something can be seen but is not seen, we don’t assume it is there until we see it. So the burden of proof lies with those who claim that sexual preference is somehow genetically driven.
Does this study rule out the possibility that sexual preference could be genetically driven? No it doesn’t. You can’t prove a negative. It may be that every choice is driven by our genes. What this study does do, however, is show that based on the evidence we have there is no reason to believe that it is.
Even if it is someday shown that sexual preference has a genetic cause, that would not mean what gay activists are claiming it means. The entire point of claiming being gay is genetic is to remove homosexuality from the realm of moral debate. The essence of morality is agency. We don’t have moral debates over things which we don’t control. This is why someone’s physical characteristics like their height or the color of their skin is not the subject of moral debate. A person can’t control or act upon their height or the color of their skin and thus cannot be morally judged for such in any sensible way. The fallacy of the “you can’t help but be homosexual” camp is that it forgets the distinction between preference and action.
Understand by preference, I mean our base physical preferences; those things that for whatever reason give us pleasure or make us happy. I do not mean our choices. In a very real sense “because I preferred it” is always a sensible answer to the question “why did you do that?”. I do not mean preference in this more abstract sense. Preference in this context is the concrete I like this but don’t like that sense.
When understood in that context, it is obvious that no one can choose any of our preferences. I love rice pudding and loath anise. My wife is just the opposite. Why? Who knows. But even if we did know why, it wouldn’t matter, since neither of us chose to have those preferences. Could I decide that rice pudding is not worth eating because it makes me fat or because the smell of it puts my wife in a bad mood? Of course I could, but it wouldn’t really change my preference for rice pudding. It would just be me putting my preference to be thin and for my wife to be in a good mood ahead of my preference for rice pudding. Rice pudding would still taste good to me and be something all things being equal I preferred.
That no one controls their preferences is especially true with regard to base physical desires like sex. No one ever wakes up and consciously decides they find a certain body type or sexual act to be desirable. It just happens. Indeed, no matter how unattractive you find a particular body type or how disgusting you find a particular sexual kink, a five second search of the internet will reveal people who find only that body type attractive and that kink to be worth pursuing. None of those people made a conscious choice that those things appealed to them. They just do.
Yet, we still hold people accountable and think that it is acceptable for people to discriminate based upon how someone acts on those preferences. Just because you can’t help but find something desirable does not mean that it is okay to act on that preference. Whether it is or not is the entire point of moral debate. If people didn’t in some cases find immoral actions to be preferable, there would be no immorality and no reason for moral debate.
One of the unsaid assumptions of this debate is that a personal preference is necessarily a good thing and that if someone prefers something no one has a right to claim that preference is wrong. This is completely false. People prefer and find pleasure in all kinds of immoral and awful things. The gangster Jimmy Burke of Goodfellas fame was said to derive intense pleasure from stealing. Even if he had money that he had made honestly, he preferred to use money he had stolen because the knowledge that it was stolen made spending it that much more desirable. Some people are sadists and derive pleasure from inflicting pain. You could no doubt give all kinds of psychological explainations for why someone like Burke loved stealing or someone like the Marquis DeSade loved inflicting pain. Those explanations, even if valid, would not change the fact that neither DeSade nor Burke ever made the conscious choice to find such things pleasurable.
This is not to say that all preferences are bad or that homosexuality is the same thing as stealing or sadism. It does, however, show that just because something makes someone happy or is desirable to them doesn’t mean their acting on it is beyond moral question.
Indeed, this is why pedophilia presents such a problem for the gay community. Pedophilia is a sexual preference. In response to gays claiming that they cannot be morally judged because they can’t help their sexual preferences, pedophiles have not unreasonably demanded the same respect. The response of the gay community has been to claim that being gay is not the same as being a pedophile. That of course is true. It also, however, gives away the game. Being gay is not the same as being a pedophile because it doesn’t involve victimizing children and is thus not on the same moral plain as pedophilia. Saying that, however, places homosexuality into the realm of moral conduct, which defeats the entire purpose of claiming that being gay is genetic.
So, it doesn’t matter if the elusive “gay gene” is found. That won’t mean anything that we don’t already know; namely that people don’t consciously choose what at a base level appeals to them. People can’t help it that they are attracted to others of the same sex. Since no one chooses what appeals to them, that doesn’t make being “gay” any different than not liking to get up early in the morning or liking bread pudding and no anise or any other preference.
Moreover, the claim that because gays cannot help that they are attracted to the same sex means that being gay is like the color of someone’s skin rather than like every other preference is profoundly dehumanizing to gays. I can’t help it I like attractive women in their 20s. If I act on that preference, however, my wife is still justified in divorcing me and my boss, if he is a moralizer, can still fire me because adulterers are not a protected class. Just because I prefer something doesn’t mean I am compelled to act on that preference such that doing so is just some kind of immutable part of who I am and beyond moral judgement. To say otherwise is to deny my moral agency and reduce me to the level of an animal. Taken on its face, gays are dehumanizing themselves with this argument.
The argument that being gay is genetic probably shouldn’t be taken at face value. Gays who make this argument do not view themselves as dehumanized animals that cannot be expected to have moral agency. Instead, gays are disguising a moral argument as a scientific one.
The purpose behind the claim that sexual preference is genetic is to compel the government to legislate morality. Many people rightly or wrongly find homosexuality to be morally objectionable. Others, find it morally acceptable. The second group wants the government to legally compel its moral view onto the other side. The gay rights community and its supporters do not admit this fact however because admitting it would require both admitting that they intend to legislate morality (something they falsely claim only the other side does) and engaging in an honest debate over the morality of homosexuality (something they consider to be beneath them). Instead, they hide their moral claims in scientific claims and the language of race and civil rights.
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Right now the vast majority of people who work with or provide goods or services to the public have to pretend or at least not flaunt that they aren’ t using race, gender, religion, etc.. to determine who to provide goods or services to. I get the argument…. do away with this anti-discrimination law stuff, let people openly discriminate, then people can pick and choose through the open free market whom to reward with their business. The assumption I think is that most people are good and will reward those don’t discriminate. I am not sure that will be the outcome. I could see a situation where business balkanized among the different groups.
not sure i accept that premise at all….
stop the personal attack
Yes, please do stop with the personal attack.
As for preferences never being choices, we can choose to educate our preferences to some degree. At any one instant we just like what we like, but over time, there is in fact some choice involved.
Equality does not make straight people gay – no matter how enticing the concept.
I think Kluge here is trying to take choice/preferences etc. out of the argument.
Frankly there is a lot of hypocrisy when it comes to homosexuality on both sides. Many people that object to homosexual fornication don’t object to heterosexual fornication. While the encouragement of monogamous homosexuality is good for society, I feel that SSM has mainly resulted in justification to persecute religious people for their conscience. As an agnostic, but moral traditionalist I feel that the sexual liberalization over the past 60 years has caused more harm than good. It certainly has made many homosexual lives easier. But for me the biggest harm has been the prevention and delay of family formation. America is in decline because we aren’t forming families anymore.
That is a good question, and one that would require a thorough philosophical debate.
My own view is that the blue states wandered into murky territory when they re-defined the word “marriage.” We fought over that in a series of extensive posts here at Ricochet, especially 2012 through 2014.
The Leftist meme that ‘traditional Christian morality is nothing but a sham that is used by hateful Christians to cover overt anti-gay bigotry’ took hold with our Leftist Supreme Court. They voted for a majority opinion that holds that voters who were motivated by traditionalist Christian moral teachings are “irrational hateful bigots,” and on that basis they swept aside a voter-passed measure. In so doing they accepted as factual some really shaky claims (and shady claims) that were put forward as “science.” The incompetent defense team never bothered to criticize the science on the basis of scientifically unsound practices, methodological shortcomings and overblown statements of the findings.
Perhaps not. But, in the American “blue states,” your side has gone so far now that Big Education is teaching the kids that Christians are irrational hateful bigots, and outlawing the expression of the opinion that gay sex is self-destructive to the participants.
The Blue State Left agrees with Herbert. So, a Christian baker is not allowed to practice Christian morality in his bakery, and a Christian florist is not allowed to practice Christian morality in her shop, and a Christian photographer is not allowed to practice Christian morality in her shop, and, in a different fight, over abortion, a Christian pharmacist is not allowed to practice Christian morality in his pharmacy. The Supreme Court refused to hear the pharmacist’s appeal, so we know where this is all headed.
It appears that Herbert is on the winning side here.
I would argue with this. Sexual preference is a spectrum and many people with weak homosexual preferences, but raised with traditional morality, often ended up marrying and having children. Often this later led to pain as these people broke up their families to pursue their other preferences, but children and family are good things and in today’s culture more often those families and children would have never formed.
I would like to quibble with the word equality also. SSM is not about equality, if that were the case then incestuous marriage, polygamy, etc would also be a matter of equality.
Suppose person x has the view that homosexuality is wrong. What should be limits on the actions person x can take to support that view?
It hasn’t been all that long ago that homosexual sex acts were illegal in most states.
So, as “Person X” who has the view that homosexual sex acts are sins, I teach in my home and in my church that this is the case.
If I had a business that was a simple retail emporium, I would sell my wares to homosexuals.
But if I had a business that provided services that were common for special events, I would want to refuse to provide my services to events that celebrate these sins.
If I worked for an employer who favored homosexual sins, I would expect to keep my mouth shut, for the sake of the employer’s business relations and reputation. But if I worked for the government, I should not have to feel similarly muzzled, except to the extent needed to preserve a reasonably open working environment.
If I had a business that marketed itself as “family friendly,” then I should be able to fire an employee who made a habit of swishing and flouncing about in an exaggerated caricature of himself, in order to preserve my business’s identity.
Etc.
do you agree this was improper? That government should not have passed laws that punished gays or prevented them from getting married to each other? If not on what basis is it proper for government to make such laws?
I fully support a prohibition — at least in public schools — on teaching that gay sex is destructive to the participants. The stigmatization of gay people has done a lot more damage than the sex ever could. The state should not be in the business of emotionally abusing gay children.
I thought it was a bad idea to make these acts illegal. I also thought the blue laws about businesses closing on Sunday and no Sunday alcohol sales were similar bad ideas.
I did not and still don’t have a problem with discrimination in hiring.
As far as marriage goes, Herbert, you were a sometimes participant in the many posts where we discussed Same-sex “marriage.” Are you trying to push some old buttons? Or are you just still gloating over your victory in the courts?
In any case, I am firmly in the camp that says it was a bad idea to re-define the word “marriage,” and we still have not learned the extents of the bad unintended consequences of that redefinition.
Hiring and Firing, correct? People can be hired or fired at will of the employer, without recourse?
I would like to see a lot less sex education of all sorts in the public schools. Sex Ed is dominated by the libertine Left, which starts out with the presumption that kids will start sex early and that this is good for them.
And I think PFLAG is guilty of enticing kids into self-destructive behaviors and should be bounced from the schools.
Are YOU trying to push some old buttons MJ?
My “marriage” is a marriage, pursuant to both duly enacted legislation in my state of residence and the opinion of the SCOTUS. I’ll thank you to stop putting it in scare quotes.
I’m kind of on the fence about sex ed being a school function. But you’d need to be specific about PFLAG’s supposed doings for me to form an opinion of their activities. As a general proposition, it’s an organization I deeply respect.
By the way, I think teaching “gay is ok” in school – even if Sex Ed were abolished — would be entirely appropriate. Schools may or may not have a duty to teach sex ed, but they undeniably have a duty to address bullying and mistreatment of students in their charge, a huge percentage of which centers around sexual orientation or perceived (by the bullies) sexual orientation. Steps to prevent that by teaching respect for kids who are different – whether gay or something else – is central to school functioning.
They may be respectable in Chicago. As far as I know, they are not a problem in Memphis. I have heard some really troubling anecdotes from the East Coast, esp. MA, NJ, and FL.
I am more worried about what they are up to in Washington.
Personal respect, dignity of the individual, making allowances, putting the best construction on things. These are all prized values that should be supported in all schools.
I know it makes you cringe. That just comes with the culture war turf.
I am determined to keep putting “scare quotes” on Same-sex “marriage” until I am no longer seeing scare quotes on “religious liberty.”
We’re not going to resolve this–we all know that, right? MJ Bubba vs. Cato are the top of the line for their respective positions, so this as refined as this fight is going to get. This isn’t “Perry Mason”. Nobody’s going to break down on the witness stand and confess they were wrong.
BTW, I am amazed when someone posts on a political discussion site and acts shocked and angry that people disagree. The nerve, right?
This is actually still the case. Nothing is stopping you from bringing up gay children this way. The only thing that’s changed is that the Govt doesn’t (always) back it up for you – if that’s a crisis it’s not a persuasive case for the strength of traditional morality.
To note – gay people in gay relationships also have children. Apparently you didn’t need to condemn them to loveless, deceitful marriages – or their children to unhappy homes – to achieve that. Who knew?
It’s the equivalent of FGM, no exaggeration.
Stop misquoting my argument. It is not a personal attack. It is pointing you that the commenter completely misunderstands my point. If that comes across as person, well make better points because I have no patience for irrelevant ones.
Telling a fellow member that he “lacks the reasoning skills” necessary to comment on your post is a personal attack. In contrast, criticizing his comment as poorly-reasoned, etc. makes the same point without attacking the person.
MJ, the first time around I let it go figuring you just didn’t want to take the time or have the space. But this is vague innuendo #2. Either you’ve got something on them, or you don’t. It is starting to sound like you just don’t trust them because they’re nice to gay people.