Anti-Gay Authority on the Rocks

I apologize for the sarcastic tone here. It's just been very exasperating these last few weeks to see the Catholic church turning against social change. As a dismayed liberal Catholic advocate put it when the church decreed that merely attempting to ordain women is a "more grave delict," just like pedophilia: "It tells us that the church still understands itself as an environment dominated by men." Very disappointing.

Against nature

On the other hand, Natural Law suffered a crushing defeat with the breakthrough for legal homogamous marriage in Argentina this week.

One Argentine senator protested: "Marriage between a man and a woman has existed for centuries, and is essential for the perpetuation of the species." But surely that depends how many centuries you're talking about. I am pretty sure there were centuries in which the species survived without the benefit of marriage between men and women. And that's just our species.

I'm no expert on either, but history does not appear to be Natural Law's best subject.

Recently, University of Illinois Adjunct Associate Professor of Religion Kenneth Howell found himself in hot water over an email he sent to his students, explaining "utilitarianism and sexuality." He wrote:

NML [Natural Moral Law] says that Morality must be a response to REALITY. In other words, sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same. How do we know this? By looking at REALITY. Men and women are complementary in their anatomy, physiology, and psychology. Men and women are not interchangeable. So, a moral sexual act has to be between persons that are fitted for that act.

If that logic is hard to grasp, consider his history. "In the last few centuries," he wrote:

We have gradually been separating our sexual natures (reality) from our moral decisions. Thus, people tend to think that we can use our bodies sexually in whatever ways we choose without regard to their actual structure and meaning. This is also what lies behind the idea of sex change operations. We can manipulate our bodies to be whatever we want them to be. If what I just said is true, then this disassociation of morality and sexual reality did not begin with homosexuality. It began long ago.

Ah, so the downward moral slide didn't begin recently - when homosexuality was invented - but long ago. That must have been back before masturbation was discovered. Just to be clear that his moral conclusion was not dependent on religion - which some people might consider inappropriate - Howell clarified, "Catholics don't arrive at their moral conclusions based on their religion. They do so based on a thorough understanding of natural reality."

The other foot

Sometimes authority's shoe is on the other foot. Dean Dad writes that, about once a year, a student complains to him about a gay professor. When pressed, these students clarify, "I don't care what you do at home, but you shouldn't wave it around in my face." Here in the Dictatorship of Moral Relativism, sometimes religious professors feel they are treated the same way with regard to their religion.

Who would have thought that such feelings of persecution would be nowhere so strong as they are among the Catholic church hierarchy, which finds itself scurrying from port to port in search of shelter for its cargo of precious pedophile priests. Strange times indeed.

 

Comments

[JeremiahA]

12:09 PM on 07/18/2010

If you want to read the full email written by Professor Kenneth Howell who was fired by the University of Illinois, a taxpayer-funded university, please view it here. Anyone who has taken a philosophy course will recognize the terms used...and will also recognize that most philosophy professors will also have to be fired across the nation for teaching utilitarianism and natural moral law.

www.news-gazette.com/news/religion/2010-07-09/e-mail-prompted-complaint-over-ui-religion-class-instructor.html

[BeninOakland]

06:08 PM on 07/16/2010

If you want to talk about what is observable in reality and must therefore be NATURAL LAW:

Homosexuality is observable in every single human society. some are happy. some are not. Some live in wonderful relationships, some don't. Some are accepted by their fmailies, some are not.

Gay people live the same kinds of lies that heterosexuals do. Some have children, some don't. Some even repoduce their own, when they are not busy adopting the unwanted cast-offs of irresponsible heterosexual reproduction, which is STILL going strong-- 7 billion strong.

Natural law is another way of saying: "This seems right to me, and I'm too damned morally and intellectually lazy to think the proposition through, let alone figure out how my own biases might be influencing what I'd like to think of as reality.

It is observable in a large number of mamllian and bird species-- 400 to 500 at present count.

[miamorphos]

07:58 PM on 07/16/2010

I agree. "Natural law" generally refers to a body of abstractions that someone then claims is sourced by a greater abstraction called "nature," a word which refers, more or less, to nothing in particular. Thus, the so-called natural law position can say anything it wants to, and then claim it to be authorized by the great big abstraction.

Clearly they aren't talking about observing material reality and collating data based upon observable trends in nature-defined-as-reality. They're talking about the contents of their own ideology, which seem natural enough to them. Bah, natural.

It reminds me of the scene in EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY where Gina Davis has aliens visit her house. She must feed them, so she offers them food: "Here, have some sugar-free Pop-Tarts. They're all-natural!"