If x = y, then y = x. It’s a law of logic. It’s universal. And yet an exception has been unearthed by no lesser personages than Lord Carey of Clifton, the 103rd Archbishop of Canterbury, and Andrea Williams, director of the Christian Legal Centre. It transpires that, if I am a christian and you are a homosexual, then my right to manifest my faith entails my right to deny you of your rights (to access information and services, for instance), and any attempt to deny me of my right to deny you of your rights constitutes a denial of my rights. In other words, my rights are not equal to your rights unless I am allowed to make your rights unequal to my rights. Or, more blatantly, if I am equal to you, then you are unequal to me. If x = y, then y ≠ x.
Laid bare, such “‘reasoning’” (to borrow the archbishop’s punctuation) doesn’t deserve a second thought. However, Carey made his case before the Court of Appeal (submission) and Williams made hers on BBC Radio 4’s Today program (15 April 2010, 8:39–8:45). Melanie Phillips, columnist with the Daily Telegraph, has warmed to the issue as well (column), as have others. So, how has such ‘reasoning’ managed to masquerade reasoning?
Carey, Williams, Phillips and others have most recently been goaded into action by the perceived injustice suffered by a psychosexual counsellor. Gary McFarlane was dismissed for refusing to counsel homosexuals, even though his employers’ equal opportunities policy stated that “It is not appropriate for the therapist to impose a particular set of standards, values or ideals upon clients” and that “The therapist must ... avoid discrimination, for example on grounds of religion, race, gender, age, beliefs, sexual orientation, disability” (emplaw). Given that McFarlane wanted to deny services on the basis of sexual orientation, the breach of the policy is clear. So, again, how has such ‘reasoning’ managed to masquerade reasoning?
The crucial fact is that McFarlane is a christian and he believes that his religion does not merely classify homosexuality as sin but also requires him not to provide homosexuals with his professional services. By preventing him from denying his services in this way, his employers were, it was argued, denying him of the right to manifest religion, a right guaranteed under the European Convention on Human rights (Article 9.1). The decision went against him (for sound reasons, emplaw) but is now itself under appeal. And this is where Carey and Williams come in. Carey wishes a specially constituted court to hear the case, one attuned to christian values, one whose members do not have a record of findings against christian values. Both further criticise judges for elaborating a new doctrine according to which “homosexual rights trump christian rights” (Williams) and thus entering the legislative domain that belongs only to Parliament. Both see the beginnings of a society in which christians are barred, because of their beliefs, from participation in “normal things of life” (Williams), it being “of course, but a short step from the dismissal of a sincere Christian from employment to a ‘religious bar’ to any employment by Christians” (Carey). Both are wrong.
Their case was quietly and comfortably demolished by Williams’ cointerviewee on the Today program, barrister Dinah Rose (link). To manifest one’s religion is a qualified right: the manifestation is permitted only if it does not impinge on others’ rights (Article 9.2). McFarlane’s treatment of homosexuals is not a legally sanctioned manifestation of his religion as it denies them access to information and services. So, the judges have merely upheld the law, not created it, nor did they “set aside the human Rights Convention” (Phillips). Christians are not subject to a ‘religious bar’: there is a difference between beliefs and behaviour, and beliefs about what is sin do not oblige discrimination. And if courts may be specially constituted in ways pleasing to christians, should we not also have courts specially constituted in ways pleasing to homosexuals? Or maybe we should just stick with ‘all equal before the law’.
So, what is sought here is not christian equality, but ‘christian exceptionality’, the entrenching of inequality in favour of christians. I’ll leave to a later posting why the assertion that we are a traditionally christian nation following a judeo-christian ethic is both wrong and irrelevant as a defence of christian exceptionality. Here, I wish to remain on the topic of how unacceptable the demands of christian exceptionality are. To do so, it is helpful to consider jews instead of homosexuals (as homosexuals are a group whose equality within society is a very recent advance, whereas jewish equality has a longer, if very maculate, history). An instructive incident comes from the life of Pope Pius XII, when he was merely Eugenio Pacelli, secretary in the Department of Extraordinary Affairs (Hitler’s Pope, pages 69–71).
In 1917, towards the end of the First World War, Pacelli received a request from German jewry to assist in lifting an Italian embargo that affected palms needed for a religious rite. Pacelli wrote to his superior that to accede “would be to give the Jews special assistance ... in a positive and direct way to assist them in the exercise of their Jewish cult”, making sure to delay processing of the Germans’ request (“I entirely approve,” responded his superior). Discussing this incident, John Cornwell writes: “Some Catholic canonists would defend his action to this day, arguing that he was under an actual obligation not to assist non-Christians in the practice of their religion”. In other words, McFarlane’s defence is identical to that of Pius XII: for both, their christian values lead them believe themselves obliged to deny services to particular groups.
If Pacelli, the psychosexual counsellor, were dismissed for refusing his services to jews, that is, for “discrimination ... on grounds of religion, race, gender, age, beliefs, sexual orientation, disability”, would the Christian Legal Centre have complained that jews’ rights had trumped christians’? Or would an ex-Archbishop of Canterbury, “his heart in anguish”, have decried that those striving for “the highest development of human spirituality” should be “but a short step from ... a ‘religious bar’ to any employment”? Would newspaper columnists, inspired by his example, “Thank God for the one man who has the courage to stand up to our ruling elite’s assault on Christianity”?
If x = y, then y = x. The equality of homosexuals cannot be less than the equality of jews and the equality of christians cannot consist in the denial of the equality of others. Equality is equal for all and religious rights cannot demand the denial of the rights of others.
Showing posts with label Vatican. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vatican. Show all posts
Friday, April 23, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
New book about science and sexuality
I’ve just been listening to an interview with Jacques Balthazart about his new book The Biology of Homosexuality. The book marshalls much evidence, particularly in relation to embryos and hormones, to the effect that homosexuality is a naturally occurring form of biological variation, not, as some would have it, a choice, a vice, a perversion, an abomination, ... In addition to contributing to scientific understanding, Balthazart hopes that scientific understanding will affect moral understanding, undercutting the “argument” that homosexuality is wrong and that the persecution (or more mildly, denial of rights) of homosexuals is justified. I wish he were right. And he is, partly. However, there are two difficulties with his position as expressed in the interview (I haven’t read the book yet). The second one will be the subject of a separate blog (link). Here, I’ll concentrate on whether the book can affect the moral advance that its author hopes.
In my opinion, Balthazart overstates the effect that proper scientific understanding can have on our ethics. Sure, there are circumstances under which you can call on Balthazart to win certain debates about ethics. For instance, consider the Vatican’s recent huff about not being allowed to discriminate against homosexuals when hiring in the United Kingdom. The Vatican objects to equality for homosexuals because ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered’ and ‘contrary to the natural law’ (vatican.va). Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan believes that ‘one is not born homosexual, but becomes it’ for reasons of ‘education’ or ‘not developing one’s proper identity over the course of one’s adolescence’ (lemonde.fr). Well, you wave Balthazart’s book at these claims and sure enough they go away: the scientific evidence is exactly the opposite of what the Vatican wishfully asserts it to be.
But the problem is: mere truth is insufficient to upset the Vatican’s and others’ opinions. What comes first is their wish to believe that homosexuality is wrong and they simply use whatever “facts” there are to hand to make their belief appear reasonable, rational and well-founded. If the foundations collapse, they don’t change their beliefs. They just look for new “facts” to dress their prejudice up in. (This is the classic “because” charade that I’ve chosen to name my blog after: what follows the word because isn’t the reason for what precedes the word because. It’s just a sham, to avoid revealing the real motivation.)
Where Balthazart’s contribution might have some effect is in places like Uganda, which has recently been considering instituting some of the most draconian anti-homosexual laws in the world (dream on Taliban!). In the context of lawmaking, where one can demand actual discussion of actual facts, people such as Uganda’s ethics minister, James Nsaba Buturo, can be called out for saying, e.g., that homosexuality ‘is not natural in Uganda’ (msnbc) (to which Balthazart retorts: only if Ugandans’ wombs don’t work like everyone else’s). Equally due for a good dose of “factage” is the characterization, inherited by Uganda from the British Penal Code, but strengthened in 1990, of homosexual acts as ‘carnal knowledge against the order of nature’ (afrol.com). If you want to know about nature, you ask a natural scientist, and, as soon as you do, up pops Balthazart and one leg of this debate collapses. (Though who actually believes that Buturo and pals’ motivation is their understanding of natural law, rather than having something to do with the delegation of christian ultra-cons who came to tea a while before the law was proposed (msnbc)? Another “because” charade...)
But leaving aside the abuse of science by the Vatican, the Ugandan legislature or the British Penal Code, let’s return to the stronger claim that Balthazart wants to make, against anti-homosexual persecution in general. Here, he’s overreaching. Simply put: natural isn’t ethical. If it were, we would decide the legality of rape based on whether rape was at some point an adaptive, evolutionarily advantageous behavior for our ancestors (the latter apparently was the case and the former in no way should be; see A Natural History of Rape). Arguments about what’s ethical have to turn on consideration of an action’s consequences, not on what is, or isn’t, natural.
And when we turn ask the people who want to persecute homosexuals to explain what harm homosexuality causes, the case is startlingly threadbare—so much so, that I again suspect that we’re looking at another “because” charade. The opponents of homosexual equality rally under the banner of family “values” and it’s for the good of families that homosexuals are to be persecuted, or, at the least, denied rights. However, what’s never clearly spelled out is how homosexuals are meant to harm families. I just cooked lunch for my mother who turned up unannounced after an early exit from a Sunday service (don’t know why it says Friday at the top of this post). She didn’t look particularly harmed when she left. The truth is, there’s no sense in which homosexuality harms families. The only families that have ever been damaged because of homosexuality are those whose family values were so contemptibly low that they rejected one of their own members on the basis of sexual preference. Or putting it another way: homosexuals don’t harm family values, homophobes do. (family “values” blog)
But, like I said, I suspect that people who play the family values card are just engaging in another “because” charade. Either they don’t know any homosexuals, or are only aware of what they take to be egregious ones, or else that think that god wants them to dislike homosexuals. Which are feelings they’re perfectly entitled to, so long as they remember that we’re not living in a (theocratic) dictatorship and personal taste is what you exercise in the privacy of your own conscience, not what you attempt to inflict on others.
As a cognitive scientist, I’m interested in all aspects of the interplay between biology and behavior. So, I’m very glad that Balthazart has written this book. And I don’t see any grounds to question either his science or his ethics. What I question is only the soundness of his step from the science to the ethics. The implications of this science for the debate about homosexual equality are more limited than he hopes. The real argument against legalized discrimination is that it harms precisely what its proponents purport to protect: the integrity of the family, the value of relationships, and the dignity of the individual.
In my opinion, Balthazart overstates the effect that proper scientific understanding can have on our ethics. Sure, there are circumstances under which you can call on Balthazart to win certain debates about ethics. For instance, consider the Vatican’s recent huff about not being allowed to discriminate against homosexuals when hiring in the United Kingdom. The Vatican objects to equality for homosexuals because ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered’ and ‘contrary to the natural law’ (vatican.va). Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan believes that ‘one is not born homosexual, but becomes it’ for reasons of ‘education’ or ‘not developing one’s proper identity over the course of one’s adolescence’ (lemonde.fr). Well, you wave Balthazart’s book at these claims and sure enough they go away: the scientific evidence is exactly the opposite of what the Vatican wishfully asserts it to be.
But the problem is: mere truth is insufficient to upset the Vatican’s and others’ opinions. What comes first is their wish to believe that homosexuality is wrong and they simply use whatever “facts” there are to hand to make their belief appear reasonable, rational and well-founded. If the foundations collapse, they don’t change their beliefs. They just look for new “facts” to dress their prejudice up in. (This is the classic “because” charade that I’ve chosen to name my blog after: what follows the word because isn’t the reason for what precedes the word because. It’s just a sham, to avoid revealing the real motivation.)
Where Balthazart’s contribution might have some effect is in places like Uganda, which has recently been considering instituting some of the most draconian anti-homosexual laws in the world (dream on Taliban!). In the context of lawmaking, where one can demand actual discussion of actual facts, people such as Uganda’s ethics minister, James Nsaba Buturo, can be called out for saying, e.g., that homosexuality ‘is not natural in Uganda’ (msnbc) (to which Balthazart retorts: only if Ugandans’ wombs don’t work like everyone else’s). Equally due for a good dose of “factage” is the characterization, inherited by Uganda from the British Penal Code, but strengthened in 1990, of homosexual acts as ‘carnal knowledge against the order of nature’ (afrol.com). If you want to know about nature, you ask a natural scientist, and, as soon as you do, up pops Balthazart and one leg of this debate collapses. (Though who actually believes that Buturo and pals’ motivation is their understanding of natural law, rather than having something to do with the delegation of christian ultra-cons who came to tea a while before the law was proposed (msnbc)? Another “because” charade...)
But leaving aside the abuse of science by the Vatican, the Ugandan legislature or the British Penal Code, let’s return to the stronger claim that Balthazart wants to make, against anti-homosexual persecution in general. Here, he’s overreaching. Simply put: natural isn’t ethical. If it were, we would decide the legality of rape based on whether rape was at some point an adaptive, evolutionarily advantageous behavior for our ancestors (the latter apparently was the case and the former in no way should be; see A Natural History of Rape). Arguments about what’s ethical have to turn on consideration of an action’s consequences, not on what is, or isn’t, natural.
And when we turn ask the people who want to persecute homosexuals to explain what harm homosexuality causes, the case is startlingly threadbare—so much so, that I again suspect that we’re looking at another “because” charade. The opponents of homosexual equality rally under the banner of family “values” and it’s for the good of families that homosexuals are to be persecuted, or, at the least, denied rights. However, what’s never clearly spelled out is how homosexuals are meant to harm families. I just cooked lunch for my mother who turned up unannounced after an early exit from a Sunday service (don’t know why it says Friday at the top of this post). She didn’t look particularly harmed when she left. The truth is, there’s no sense in which homosexuality harms families. The only families that have ever been damaged because of homosexuality are those whose family values were so contemptibly low that they rejected one of their own members on the basis of sexual preference. Or putting it another way: homosexuals don’t harm family values, homophobes do. (family “values” blog)
But, like I said, I suspect that people who play the family values card are just engaging in another “because” charade. Either they don’t know any homosexuals, or are only aware of what they take to be egregious ones, or else that think that god wants them to dislike homosexuals. Which are feelings they’re perfectly entitled to, so long as they remember that we’re not living in a (theocratic) dictatorship and personal taste is what you exercise in the privacy of your own conscience, not what you attempt to inflict on others.
As a cognitive scientist, I’m interested in all aspects of the interplay between biology and behavior. So, I’m very glad that Balthazart has written this book. And I don’t see any grounds to question either his science or his ethics. What I question is only the soundness of his step from the science to the ethics. The implications of this science for the debate about homosexual equality are more limited than he hopes. The real argument against legalized discrimination is that it harms precisely what its proponents purport to protect: the integrity of the family, the value of relationships, and the dignity of the individual.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)