For years now a culture war has raged between liberal rationalists and religious dogmatists over whether homosexuality should be treated equally by civil law. Having lost ground in recent years as young people grow up in a world far more familiar with the banalities of what it really means to be gay, the right wing has begun taking careful steps to re-brand its homophobia as a rational, secular position, instead of the sectarian prejudice that it is.
This is the latest project of the Princeton professor, Robert George, profiled in this Sunday's New York Times magazine. It's a dangerous trend, and a starkly immoral one, as credentialed, highly educated people who should know better lend their social science credentials to the sloppy thinking and outright bigotry of those who are unable or unwilling to challenge their own dogma.
George is a rising conservative intellectual, counselor to Catholic bishops and Republican presidential contenders, and chair of the board of the National Organization for Marriage, founded in 2007 to oppose the right of gays to marry. Most recently he penned the "Manhattan Declaration," a call to action for modern Christians to oppose abortion and gay marriage. It was signed by over 150 top Christian and conservative leaders. In this document and elsewhere, George roots his argument against gay marriage in what's called the "new" natural law--"invoking no authority beyond the authority of reason itself." But the only thing new about it is the brazenness of George's effort to claim a monopoly on human reason.
Natural law has meant different things over the centuries, but today it most commonly means deriving moral value by looking to nature. It doesn't mean that everything that occurs in nature is good, a common misunderstanding of natural law that's easily clarified by considering that disease, the cruelty of the jungle, and death are all natural but that doesn't make them good; but natural law does involve walking a rational path from empirical observation to moral valuation: we might observe that certain human goods are empirically desirable--friendship, knowledge, life itself--and reason from that observation to the assertion that they are therefore morally right, along with other acts that serve those ends. Since life is a good, the procreative act is morally right since it produces life, and so is an institution like heterosexual marriage, which blesses the procreative act. Using the body for anything else, or privileging a relationship characterized by non-procreative acts, becomes morally wrong by default.
If this sounds fishy to you, it's not because I'm doing an injustice to natural law theory, or even so-called "new" natural law. It's because a Princeton University professor has succeeded at pulling the wool over thousands of educated eyes by passing off his personal, religious beliefs as "invoking no authority beyond the authority of reason itself."
George and other proponents of natural law believe that nature endows humans with reason, and all you have to do is consult that reason to know that, just as a stone falls by gravity, homosexuality is morally wrong.
But there are (at least) two main problems with natural law reasoning as the basis of public policy. First is that it is utterly circular: it relies on broad agreement about what is a human good, from which natural law theorists deduce morally right action as anything that leads to that good; but how do we decide in the first place what is a moral good? Conservatives might posit that human goods include procreation or religion, while liberals might include tolerance, pleasure, or equality. That this latter good was Thomas Jefferson's top "self-evident" good when he wrote our founding natural law document, the Declaration of Independence, does not seem to convince conservatives like George that gay people should be included in the enjoyment of equality. Most of us may agree on friendship or knowledge as human goods, but the test of a good theory is whether it's applicable when the tougher stuff comes into play. Natural law fails this test, as it's totally incapable of actually answering the question of how nature or reason resolves the question of what is morally good.
The second problem is that the link that natural law makes between observation and valuation relies on privileging one natural act over another as your starting point, and insisting that act is supreme, to the exclusion of other acts that some view as good. Those like Freud and George, who apparently view the world through a telling prism of sexual fixation, choose the procreative act as supreme. They reason that this act is central to the "biological good of the whole," as George puts it, and is therefore morally good for individuals to engage in. (Of course, it's only deemed moral if you're married, and while I don't have room to address this here, note that conservatives use a bait-and-switch to toggle sloppily between marriage and sex, which really must not be used interchangeably.) The trouble is that urinating is also central to the biological good of the whole, because if we didn't eliminate waste, we'd all perish. But we don't hear much about this in natural law. Instead, we hear that the penis was naturally designed for procreation, so the only morally proper use of it is an act that leads to procreation (or resembles an act of procreation, if you're straining to give straight, infertile sex a moral pass). Yet since the penis was also designed for urination, why not claim its only moral use is anything that involves wetting the bed? By natural law reasoning, using your mouth to kiss instead of eat is unnatural and immoral, and should perhaps be illegal. Same for using your hand to shake someone else's, instead of restricting it to hunting, gathering, and feeding oneself. And so on.
Remember, it's not that anything that's natural is good; it's that nature provides humans with the tool of reason to know what's good and choose what's right. But this means we're back to square one. On what mystical "authority of reason" does George rest his claim that heterosexual intercourse is moral and homosexual intercourse is not? Indeed, where life gets tricky and tests natural law theory is when several things that our reason might judge to be "good" are in conflict. Once again our founding document, the Declaration, deems equality such a high good that it's first on the list and is considered worth killing for in a war of rebellion. So why is heterosexual intercourse, which is so messy, indulgent, and narcissistic (after all, what's more narcissistic than reproducing yourself?) a moral good, while equality for gay people is not? George waxes poetically about "bodily sharing," "sexual complementarity" and "one-flesh union," but he seems not to realize that his poetry is metaphor--could he actually be so confused as to think that heterosexual intercourse makes two people into one organism, literally? Could he really think that his own preference for male-female unions is an empirical fact that his own right reason recognizes while the rest of us are simply confused?
Pointing out the subjective dimension of morality does not mean resorting to anything-goes relativism. There are many other promising avenues of thought that might help us understand where our morality comes from and how we can strive to live moral lives, ranging from the genetic selection of altruism to faith in moral instincts. Reason certainly plays a role. But if we're going to use reason, let's use real reason, and not lean on our ivy-league credentials to pass off homophobia as genuine rationality.
Mohsen Yahyavi is the highest-ranked politician to admit that Iran believes in the death penalty for homosexuality after a spate of reports that gay youths were being hanged." http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311025,00.html
Probably not a "gay" rights support, that fella!
As many have pointed out previously, one would "naturally" come to the conclusion that the only people who would be permitted to marry in the Catholic Church are couples who would reasonably be expected to be fertile.
That is not the case because the Church believes in miracles and, as such, there is always the possibility that a clearly infertile couple will conceive.
The big problem with Mr. George's argument is that if natural law is a philosophy rather than an argument for Catholicism, it cannot be based on the belief in miraculous conception among infertile couples that is basic to the beliefs of the Catholic Church.
This makes as much sense as Justice Scalia supporting an eight foot tall cross as a national memorial to World War I veterans because the cross honors all who fought, not just Christians. Scalia actually said that a cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead. The attorney arguing the case pointed out that it is for Christians, but he never saw a cross honoring a deceased person in a Jewish cemetery!
"it is a plain matter of biological fact that reproduction is a single function, yet it cannot be carried out by an individual male or female human being, but by a male and female as a mated pair…."
"Imagine a type of bodily, rational being that reproduces, not by mating but by some individual performance. Imagine that for these beings, however, locomotion or digestion is performed not by individuals, but only by biologically complementary pairs that unite . Would anybody have any difficulty understanding that in respect to reproduction the organism performing the function is the individual, while in respect of locomotion or digestion the organism performing the function is the united"
Proffesor Herman Greiz
But thanks for proving my point. This isn't aobut marriage or children or anything like that. It is what it is always aobut: how much the very thought that gay people exist, and want only what hets claim they want, bothers, annoys, frightens, entices, and scraes the hell out of some hets, some who wanna be straight but ain't.


As far as physiological and psychological effects of sex go, the responses of all males is exactly the same, whether the man is married to a woman or another man. The neurological response of a female to sexual stimulation is the same whether she is married to a woman or a man. 

Intimate relations promote the most intimate sort of friendship. As John Lennon said “It’s handy to f--k your best friend.”
This is called legally the "cojucal act" or the marital act, or (in Biblical langauge) the "one flesh union."
Heck their even called "reproductive organs"
Its elemental biology
This final paragraph sums up the flaw in Frank's thinking and article as he tries to do a handstand and cover his butt. If we cannot rely on human reasoning for showing us objective morals, than Frank's opinion is as subjective and relative as anyone else.
There must be some core values that we percieve through the world and that's what we relate in our minds to different situations in time and space.
I must have been reading the wrong book. Theo ne not written by God.
And if you think sexuality is a choice, please enlighten us with your choice. How did you go about choosing who to be attracted to? Did you do research? Surveys? Double-blind testing in a laboratory?
You don't care about centuries of prejudice we have endured, jailings, beatings, murders, castration, villification, lies, hatred, all for the crime of being different. You probably support the fear-and-lie based campaigns that debase our political discourse and that only we gay people are subjected to, the degradation of our democracy and our constitution by basing those campaigns on cherry-picked Biblical passages instead of, of, say FACTS, compassion, reality, truth, justice, and the American way.
So no, I do believe you don't hate me. you're just vciciously indifferent, and really, where's the hate in that?
I will love to hear from 76 about this. You up for it?
There are many, however, who specifically oppose gay marriage but who are not anti-gay or homophobic. How to treat those people?
You have a goal you wish to attain. Start at the goal and make a path from there back to where we are now. How could that most likely come about? Is it really plausible that you can snarl people into joining with you? Gay folks have been snarled at for decades and it has never made one straight, lol! Snarling isn't going to make any straight person support gay marriage either!
Find a better way. Find a way to make those who support gay rights, with the exception of marriage, welcome. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water! Don't make it an "all or nothing at all" scenario That has never proven to be effective.
I don't think you hate me. That would require too much of your attention and commitment. You just think were less than, not as good as, something wrong with, not as important as. You believe that heterosexual privilege trumps legal recognition.
I don't think you give much of a damn about me one way or the other. You don't really care that my government treats me and the person I share my life with differently-- and not as well-- than you, though we are both of us tax paying, contributing, law-abiding, productive members of our community, well thought of by family, friends, and colleagues.. You don't think that the same-sex relationships, no matter how noble, no matter how long in duration, no matter how better-or-worse, have the same value as the relationship between any man and woman, no matter how base or mercenary, who met five minutes ago, are legally eligible, have $50 for a marriage license, and enough alcohol in them to think it is a good idea. You don't give a small crap about legally disadvantaging the children and families of gay people, whether biological or adopted from the legions of cast-off children created by irresponsible heterosexual reproduction, but i'm sure you'll say "Think of the Children (TM)". Just not those children.
If it isn't too Pollyanna-ish, I'd like to acknowledge that despite differing points of view, and the ease with which polarization can occur when we aren't always sure of just where those with whom we exchange them are coming from, civil communication can take place, during which ideas and knowledge are shared in a spirit of good will and humor. That's always appreciated.
Gotta go; Hayley Mills is complaining I've stolen her gig.
Yes, I oppose gay marriage. That doesn't mean that I am anti-gay or homophobic any more than supporting gay marriage makes one anti-straight or fearful of the opposite sex! The fact is that I support every gay right which has been proposed with the exception of marriage.
So, what shall we do? Might I suggest that we begin by refraining from name-calling and stereotypes. People are too complex to be put into a box. Let us build upon what we have in common rather than focusing on differences.
A good process can bring about good results. Let's seek to establish a healthy, mutually respectful process and a real dialogue rather than shouting at each other. No one has ever walked through a closed door! ;-)
Now: waddya mean, you oppose gay marriage...wha...huh?
Seriously, would you do some candid examination of your reasons for that, keeping in mind that legal recognition would mean so much to many thousands of same-sex couples such as my 28-year partner and I - every bit as much as your (presumed) union doubtless means to you - and the effects it would (or wouldn't) have upon your life...and mine?
That's all I can really ask, because I'm aware I can't change anyone's mind for them - they can only do that themselves.
ALL PERSONS ARE ENTITLED TO EQUAL PROTECTION OF THE LAW. Regardless of your religious/moral/social views.
They probably don't hear that very much.