On Legitimate Intellectual Ends Not Being Forced
Thomas LyonsImagine you have a loved one who has a problem with a vice. Out of love for this individual, you decide to approach him or her, in the hopes of helping them see the issue and perhaps begin remedying it. Perhaps they accept your counsel, perhaps their pride blocks you; this is a risk you’re willing to accept because your love for the person is unconditional, and you only want to see what’s best.
Mainstream Christian thought is that homosexual acts are morally wrong, though the dignity of the practicer remains, and therefore must be loved and embraced always. The act is likened to any other sin (ought to be remedied), the actor to any other sinner (in need of God’s grace, a work in progress). Whether one agrees with that or not, it’s not going to go well for the homosexual when:
a.) the issue at hand, sexuality, is much more closely aligned with human nature than, say, drinking or gambling habits, and,
b.) those who practice homosexuality tend to self-identify as a homosexual person.
Reason b in particular puts an enormous amount of damage on any meaningful dialogue. And, of course, without meaningful dialogue, any well-intended intervention cannot progress. If the default is that a conversation’s progress can only be one-sided, then conversation is best left unstarted. Dialogue stalls before it even starts.
One would not hear someone say “I am a drug addict,” without an understanding that either:
a.) they really mean “I’m working on fixing an old drug problem,” or
b.) “I currently use drugs” though my identity is not defined by drug use.
And, as either of those tenets are a given, the potential for dialogue is not destroyed. Either the first is true, in which case the user recognizes a problem that warrants fixing. Or the second is true, in which case the potential end of drug use does not equate to the end of the person entirely.
The homosexual community replaces both tenets with:
a.) My existence is defined by the fact that I do what I do with members of my own sex, and
b.) If you’re going to love and accept me, you have to love and accept that I do what I do with members of my own sex.
Translation — we can’t talk about that thing you do over there, and I have to deal with it. Dialogue: over.
Currently, almost all homosexual chatter today is centered on to what extent ought society embrace those with homosexual inclinations. Wrong discussion. The resolution of society’s collective opinion – including a potential end of homophobia — will not happen whilst the debate centers on anything besides something along the lines of the existence of natural law, its potential application to sexual practice, and the (im)morality of said practice.
If, indeed, the traditional thinking of sexuality is proven incorrect, that natural law is wrong or does not exist, then so be it; the homosexual community and others attached to the homosexual lifestyle need fear nothing. That conclusion, though, cannot be forced. It can only be arrived at through the open discussion among everyone, percolating until the collective conscience is formed.
Legitimate intellectual ends cannot be forced. That they often are is the very inertia behind the creation of The Only Orthodoxy; this site asks you not to conform to pre-existing assumptions, only that you come armed with reason in support of your own. The current climate surrounding many sociopolitical issues, of which homosexuality is a great example, would do well to heed that lesson.
August 17th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Tom, that’s a great point, but it assumes that the homosexual community–or any other community formed around modern identity politics–is interested in legitimate intellectual ends. What if such communities by and large aren’t interested in legitimately considering questions of natural law? What if they are only interested in truth in its Pragmatic sense–in its “usefulness” to power?
If true, how does that affect the Christian duty to open a dialog?
August 19th, 2008 at 10:34 am
I think Goodell once offered the example of women’s suffrage. Today, that it is America’s opinion that women should have the right to vote is a closed case. Yet, it wasn’t always obvious to America that women ought to be able to vote. The classical feminists did not sue a state in federal court and take it to the Supreme Court; after all, there’s nothing in the original Constitution that says women can’t vote, right? Perhaps a Court of Living Constitutionists can weasel out some sort hidden right to vote for women out of the original text, no? What classical feminists did was engage society and eventually win people over, and the Constitution was legitimately amended. Their end in mind was legitimately obtained, and the end is sustainable for it. Had their stated end not met the litmus test of reason that conscientious voters should (and dare I state optimistically, often do) apply, their case would be rightfully dead.
I would argue that Roe v Wade is a great example of what shouldn’t happen. The Constitution says nothing about a right to individual medical decisions, nor does it specifically define life vis-a-vis being born or unborn. The door was opened to the people hashing it out: what is a life, what is the government’s role in deciding one’s medical fate, when do we believe rights are conferred. While the collective percolation was happening, states’ rights would settle the nationwide tie until the Constitution was amended accordingly — one way or the other. We were robbed of that opportunity, though, by a Supreme Court overstepping its bounds; and the ‘resolution’ is anything but resolved in the public’s eye.
So, if in fact the homosexual community runs with the latter path, seeking instead the illegitimate route of imposing tolerance via judicial fiat, I suspect the result will be anything but the end of homophobia, hate crimes, and respect for the insitution of gay marriage. The debate that was suppressed will go on.
In short, they’ll have far less power than they think. It’s in their best long-term interest — provided their point of view is correct — that they follow the example of the classical feminists.
As for the Christian, all we can do is seek to engage, and engage when sought. For our side it cannot be forced, methinks.
August 20th, 2008 at 11:20 am
One quick point and then a response:
If you’re looking for the landmark case that opened the door “to people hashing it out” (instead of, presumably, interpreting the law as it was written) you have to look back before Roe. The case that started it all was Brown v. Board back in 1954. This is a radioactive position today, but look back at the reactions to Brown when it was first decided — even from the types of people who wholeheartedly support it today. The vast majority of people condemned how Brown was decided — not just on the merits of the law (which, unfortunately for decent people, were not as questionable as most people believe today) but on the effect segregation has on black children. Brown’s obvious moral correctness eventually won it near-universal support, but it overshadowed the fact that for the first time in a landmark case the Supreme Court relied on something other than the law or interpretations of the law to decide a case. The whole road from Griswold to Roe to Kelo more or less starts with Brown v. Board. (Not entirely, of course. Cases like Wickard v. Filburn — which justified the New Deal’s massive and unprecedented agricultural regulation — made it much easier to cede massive powers to the national government, but even then the justices pointed to economic effects theoretically within Congress’ authority to justify their decision. They said nothing about how lack of farm regulation made people feel.)
Now, as to the power that disciples of the Rousseauean/Marxist philosophy — which states that the acquisition and use of power are all that’s important, and that any actions taken towards that end, so long as they’re done on behalf of “the people”, are good and legitimate — it’s only as limited as we want it to be. Americans have increasingly gotten used to European-style government over the past 80 years: an ever-expanding state whose powers continually encroach more and more of their liberty in the name of safety, convenience, or security. People in power impose their view for how society should be run on their fellow citizens (as was done during the Progressive Era, for instance), and the citizens present when the changes are made complain or resist (as they did during the 1920s, undoing much of the Wilson war machine’s Progressive utopian policies).
If their resistance isn’t total, however, the changes remain in some form and the children who grow up with them accept them as normal. And so the encroachment continues — slow, inexorable. The pattern continues. What most of us today accept as just the way things are in terms of the state’s relation to its citizens would have been a cause for alarm (to put it mildly) a generation ago and would have been morally offensive and perhaps even a revolutionary causus belli a century ago. But, like the frog sitting in the lukewarm water which is slowly being brought to a boiling point, we tend to accept the current dynamic between state and citizen because the water’s not boiling around us — yet.
My whole point here is that unless we act against the feminists, progressives, “conservatives” (such as those in the current administration who want to make law through regulation), and all those who want to impose their preferred policies and views on society without others’ consent (through the courts, for example), they are not going to stop. Our resistance could take the form of rhetorical engagement or it could take the form of political action, but it must happen and it must be very effective or else one day we (or our children) will wake up to find that the water around us is boiling and we have no power to stop it.
August 21st, 2008 at 11:04 pm
The really insidious thing about the power-grab you mention, Paul–and that relates directly to Tom’s point about the intellectual dishonesty of the debate on homosexuality–is that the will to power exercised by these groups doesn’t operate in a straightforward way, by, for example, disarming opponents and denying them the physical ability to stop it (although gun control is a definite goal, apparently). It operates incrementally, by convincing people that they have no right to resist. It takes the essentially Christian narrative of self-restraint and perverts it, convincing people that they should suppress politically heterodox thoughts and actions.
Why engage in intellectual debate when you can successfully convince your opponent that they commit moral error by asking you to explain yourself?
August 25th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
I would like to challenge the idea that “all we can do is seek to engage, and engage when sought. For our side it cannot be forced….” It seems that in a war of the well-intentioned who find security in centralized power and regulations against the equally well-intentioned, but perhaps more insightful who recognize the negative ramifications of centralization of power, the former will almost certainly win out because theirs is an active approach while the other’s is passive. Your wisdom must be heard to have any meaningful impact, right?
Unfortunately, I cannot think of any way to be active other than “seeking to engage”, generally speaking. It seems that some kind of legislative approach would be committing the same error of process highlighted in the essay. I do not know what other avenues are available to engage in this discussion, other than as a one-to-one conversation. However, it seems that a passive approach to this type of scenario has led to some less than desirable outcomes, as mentioned above, though I cannot say what outcomes would have arisen from a more aggressive approach. Intellectual activism? Any ideas, Tom?
August 25th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
“Open discussion among everyone” is indeed a way to reach a society in which natural law is recognized, and homophobia is championed by a compassionate understanding that homosexuality is a psychological illness with lots of comorbidities such as anxiety, impulsivity, and a strong sense of emptiness. Imagine a group of people with an illness who all get together and deny their illness. Imagine a group of people with bulimia getting together talking about purging being an age-old way of life. There is nowhere more strong an example of co-enabling than in homosexual communities. It is a societal illness we face.
Legislation (forced ends) is not to achieve a society like that. It is to protect our children (our entire society’s children, progeny) from a society in which marriage is divorced from fertility, and children aren’t necessarily bound to grow up in a home with a) biological parents and b) opposite sex parents. The current understanding in developmental psychology is that the mother is the primary parent first, then the father takes up this role as children become older. Thus, same sex parenting, done on purpose, is developmentally debilitating.
August 25th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
“Open discussion among everyone” is indeed a way to reach a society in which natural law is recognized, and homophobia is championed by a compassionate understanding that homosexuality is a psychological illness with lots of comorbidities such as anxiety, impulsivity, and a strong sense of emptiness. Imagine a group of people with an illness who all get together and deny their illness. Imagine a group of people with bulimia getting together talking about purging being an age-old way of life. There is nowhere more strong an example of co-enabling than in homosexual communities. It is a societal illness we face.
But unfortunately… politically we must act both idealistically, and practically also! forced ends are still necessary. Legislation (forced ends) is not to achieve a healthy society described above. It is to protect our children (our entire society’s children, progeny) from a society in which marriage is divorced from fertility, and children aren’t necessarily bound to grow up in a home with a) biological parents and b) opposite sex parents. The current understanding in developmental psychology is that the mother is the primary parent first, then the father takes up this role as children become older. Thus, same sex parenting, done on purpose, is developmentally debilitating.
August 26th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Benjamin: Well, we’re not at a point where we need to physically go to war. Publishing essays here can’t hurt, as free speech is still legal. Circulating them might be better. That would be active engagement.
August 26th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
The position of liberty has to be passive, lest it be self-destroying. Violence–rhetorical or physical–can only be used to resist compulsion. You can’t compel people to be free; you can only compel them not to take your freedom.
August 27th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I subscribe to the wisdom of Saint Francis of Assisi, who said preach always, when necessary use words. That being said, I have to live with the fact that I constantly fail to live up to that goal.