I contend that projective disgust plays no proper role in arguing for legal regulation, because of the emotion’s normative irrationality and its connection to stigma and hierarchy.
––Martha Nussbaum, From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law
I’ve been wrestling with Martha Nussbaum’s latest project: to eliminate disgust as a sufficient reason for rendering same-sex marriage illegal. Nussbaum is one of America’s leading public intellectuals, and her arguments are always worth considering.
Having distinguished herself as an expert in the philosophy of emotions with Upheavals of Thought, Nussbaum now turns to a single emotion: disgust. She challenges the conventional view that disgust is merely a visceral emotion unaffected by social learning. Here are the findings from the last twenty years of experimental psychology:
Disgust concerns the borders of the body. Its central idea is that of contamination: the disgusted person feels defiled by the object, thinking that it has somehow entered the self . . . . When people experience disgust, then, they are expressing an aversion to prominent aspects of what every human being is. They feel contaminated by what reminds them of these aspects, which people often prefer to conceal. Such aversions almost certainly have an evolutionary basis, but they still have to be confirmed by learning: children do not exhibit disgust until the ages of two or three years old, during the time of toilet training. This means that society has room to interpret and shape the emotion, directing it to some objects rather than others, as happens with anger and compassion.
Nussbaum makes an important distinction between disgust at primary objects (“feces, blood, semen, urine, nasal discharges, menstrual discharges, corpses, decaying meat, and animal/insects that are oozy, slimy, or smelly”), which she says is “usually a useful heuristic, steering us away from the dangerous when there is no time for detailed inquiry,” and projective disgust that is “shaped by social norms, as societies teach their members to identify alleged contaminants in their midst,” which she says rarely withstands rational scrutiny.
“Projective disgust (involving projection of disgust properties onto a group or individual) takes many forms,” she claims, “but it always involves linking the allegedly disgusting group or person somehow with the primary objects of disgust.” Jews were regarded as slimy by German anti-Semites, African-Americans as smelly by whites, and homosexuals as diseased and deadly by heterosexuals. In all cases, “projective disgust involves a double fantasy: a fantasy of the dirtiness of the other and a fantasy of one’s own purity. Both sides of the projection involve false belief, and both conduce to a politics of hierarchy.”
The next part of her argument is necessary to explain but graphic, so if you’re squeamish you may want to stop reading now and confess your “disgust-anxiety.” Nussbaum writes:
What inspires disgust is typically the male thought of the male homosexual, imagined as anally penetrable. The idea of semen and feces mixing together inside the body of a male is one of the most disgusting ideas imaginable – to males, for whom the idea of nonpenetrability is a sacred boundary against stickiness, ooze, and death. (The idea of contamination-by-penetration is probably one central idea, but the more general idea is that of the male body as defiled by the contamination of bodily fluids: and proximity to a contaminated body is itself contaminating.) The presence of a homosexual male in the neighborhood inspires the thought that one might lose one’s own clean safeness, one might become the receptacle for those animal products. Thus disgust is ultimately disgust at one’s own imagined penetrability and ooziness, and this is why the male homosexual is both regarded with disgust and viewed with fear as a predator who might make everyone else disgusting. The very look of such a male is itself contaminating – as we see in the extraordinary debates about showers in the military. The gaze of a homosexual male is seen as contaminating because it says, “You can be penetrated.” And this means that you can be made of feces and semen and blood, not clean plastic flesh. Thus it is not surprising that (to males) the thought of homosexual sex is even more disgusting than the thought of reproductive sex, despite the strong connection of the latter with mortality and the cycle of the generations. For in heterosexual sex the male imagines that not he but a lesser being (the woman, seen as animal) receives the pollution of bodily fluids; in imagining homosexual sex he is forced to imagine that he himself might be so polluted. This inspires the stronger need for boundary drawing.
If you’ve tracked with Nussbaum’s argument so far, congratulations. I regard Nussbaum as an unexpected ally of Christians insofar as a “politics of disgust” is not only bad reasoning, as she contends, but also bad witness-bearing. We should welcome her push toward a “politics of humanity.” Our motivation for restoring the human dignity of homosexual persons does not hinge on a shared animality and mortality, which is true enough, nor on a shared political tradition of equal respect, which is also true enough. Christians have an even deeper resource for practicing a politics of humanity toward homosexuals, namely a conception of all human beings – unrepentant sinners and repenting sinners – as image-bearers of God. Here, I must quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Life Together:
God does not want me to model others into the image that seems good to me, that is, into my own image. Instead, in their freedom from me God made other people in God’s own image. I can never know in advance how God’s image should appear in others. That image always takes on a completely new and unique form whose origin is found solely in God’s free and sovereign act of creation. To me that form may seem strange, even ungodly. But God creates every person in the image of God’s Son, the Crucified, and this image, likewise, certainly looked strange and ungodly to me before I grasped it. Strong and weak, wise or foolish, talented or untalented, pious or less pious, the complete diversity of individuals in the community is no longer a reason to talk and judge and condemn, and therefore no longer a pretext for self-justification. Rather this diversity is a reason for rejoicing in one another and serving one another.
In closing, I’ll sign onto Nussbaum’s project of eliminating disgust as a sufficient reason for rendering same-sex marriage illegal because, as Bonhoeffer says, “I can never know in advance how God’s image should appear in others . . . To me that form may seem strange, even ungodly. But God creates every person in the image of God’s Son.” Gay or straight is “no longer a reason to talk and judge and condemn, and therefore no longer a pretext for self-justification.” Gay or straight is no longer a pretext for the double fantasy of my purity and the other’s dirtiness. Nothing I have said here diminishes my view that same-sex marriage is a violation of the divinely ordained “one flesh” union between a man and a woman. But at the risk of sounding heterodox, it is worth asking whether the very presence of gays and lesbians in our community ought to be “a reason for rejoicing in one another and serving one another”––rejoicing not in their homosexual acts but in “God’s free and sovereign act of creation.”
This is a very thought-provoking article that points readers to a larger truth of our universal need for salvation and redemption. As one who has ministered to gay and lesbian people for the last twenty-five years with both the truth and mercy of the gospel, I often run into this phobia of ‘contamination’ concerning homosexuals. It is self-righteous phobia which demands our own repentance. This side of the cross, too many believers settle, short-sightedly and wrongly, on remaking sinners into ‘our’ image— usually nice and self-sufficient people.
Your ending thought is a radical one. The fact that homosexuals “are” obviously portrays both what exists as a result of our fallen natures and what God sovereingly allows to exist. I was once on staff of a large church which has a waist-high wall surrounding this center-city church property. After dark, the wall was often a gathering place where gay male prostitutes “shopped” their merchandise — themselves. Once a more senior pastor, having received a complaint by a neighbor, called me into his office. He asked I was going to do about getting rid of the prostitutes who lounged on the wall after dark. I responded, “I’m not going to do anything to get rid of them; perhaps God has them there.” The look on his face betrayed the fact that he hadn’t the foggiest of that which I was speaking.
JOHN: Thanks for sharing your experiences as a pastor who has ministered to gays and lesbians. I think there’s an unspoken but palpable disgust for homosexuals among many conservative Christians. So it’s worth entertaining the “radical” proposal that they are here, in our midst, for reasons maybe only God knows. The purpose of my post is to advance this claim: disgust turns human beings into beasts while rejoicing turns them into image-bearers of God.
It may be of interest that some older schools of Buddhism had specific meditation exercises where the meditator was instructed to sit in front of something ‘disgusting’ and meditate on it, such as a rotting corpse. Granted this is not so easy today as it was in India 2,000 years ago as we do a pretty decent job keeping the streets clean of dead bodies (human at least). But the lesson was that the emotion of disgust was premised on a false division. The same ‘purity’ you feel about your body was felt by the person who has died. The crap that sits on the edge of the toilet came out of your body (or an inconsiderate roommate), not some mysterious ‘other’. While these emotions have a valid and useful purpose in that they help us make our lives more enjoyable by keeping things clean and safe, we have to be aware that our mind will get carried away with it *unless* we put it in check.
In terms of the rest of the article, very interesting. I suspect that it isn’t so much the mixing of fluids but the penetration that bothers so many men. I distinctly remember when I was very young and learned that sex actually involved penetration (I think maybe it was 4th grade) I was a bit taken aback. Perhaps women here could chime in with their experiences but the idea is a bit surprising at first. I imagine most hetrosexual men find this the most disturbing for the simple reason that for them experiencing penetration is not part of regular sex. For example, I think the emotions Nussbaum describes would not be dramatically different if you introduced a condom or withdrawl so that no actual fluids were exchanged. I wonder if women feel the same way when they are younger and required some time to get used to the idea that sex involves pentration?
Wow Christ, great post man.
I agree, there’s no place for disgust. As a Christ-follower who has 3 homosexuals in his extended family, I can tell you that disgust will NEVER win them to Christ, nor welcome them to church!
I’ve done a couple of posts on homosexuality on my blog…
I Think I Love A Gay Man
and
Legalizing Gay Marriage
Grace is the killer app! Way to brave a tough topic Chris.
Jay
Jay
Just so that you know, I think I have disgust anxiety, at least according to your definition above. Apparently this also means that I’m not “with it” enough to recognize the weakness of the long-standing position of Western Christianity I am steeped in. Dang. */end sarcasm*
In all seriousness, I don’t see why Christians have an ally here at all. The burden of proof rests with the challenger to the Christian status quo, not the other way around. As Nussbaum attests, we get our sense of disgust from two sources – primary objects and projection. Since homosexuality has been historically described (by the church) as disgusting on both counts, it remains to be shown why our cultural teaching (vis-a-vis gay sex) needs to be changed. And, of course, anal sex is a prima facie primary disgust generator by her own criteria.
Now, it may be bad witness bearing to let our disgust override our ability to commune with someone. And/or it may be that wallowing in our disgust is always inappropriate, especially when we are talking about people we are trying, ostensibly, to love. However, this does not really say anything about the feeling of disgust, per se. It only means that once you have felt a particular repulsion, you are not “off the hook” for anything. Leprosy, tropical skin diseases, oozing sores, pedophilia, etc. all generate similar responses (at least they have in me) but if you are loving enough to tolerate those feelings for the sake of the greater love of Christ, then we open up the door to all kinds of healing and grace to flow in.
But this doesn’t mean we should go on a rampage trying to abolish feelings of disgust. This seems similar to the argument I hear all the time about tolerance – you’re not tolerant unless you think that every idea is equally valid. I say, you’re not tolerant unless you disagree with someone AND choose to love them. Similarly, I don’t think you are being loving (to God or each other) unless you acknowledge the protective value of disgust AND choose to go beyond this safe zone for the sake of a greater love.
Finally, in what way could homosexuality be grounds for rejoicing? Your title seems deliberately provocative (to this audience) and I am deeply suspicious of your motives here. I can only hope that you are equally open to dialogue with the traditional perspective within your own tradition (I assume you are a Christian) as you are with non-traditional, “emerging” trends in culture. Dialogue, as I’m sure you’re aware, demands that all parties involved put aside their assumptions regarding where a particular conversation will end. This entire thread, then, fails the test for dialogue and becomes something else. In this case, I would say it’s pretty clearly a debate. You have your position and we have ours.
Great for you, if that’s what you feel like this blog is for. I, however, preferred the prior tenor of the site where sincere dialogue won out over the apologetic newishness endemic to the blogosphere. Good luck trying to become the first ever Orthodox-Provocateur. I’m sure Chesterton’s watching with great anticipation to see how this goes.
Meyer,
I think the issue is not trying to abolish ‘feelings of disgust’. Like most feelings, disgust is a very transitory feeling. If you lived in the leper colony as a doctor, you soon would loose your feeling of disgust for open sores. If you worked in a sewer like Ralph Kramdon, you would probably cease caring about feces. Cat owners live with their litter boxes every day….yet there is something disgusting about choosing to pick up poop every day and put it in the trash.
As such disgust by itself is not useful for most decisions beyond very basic ones (you don’t eat the chicken that has a ‘disgusting smell’). But nothing is disgusting in its own right. Disgust is your reaction to something that is outside of you. Look all you want at the cat box or the people having anal sex you will never find ‘disgusting photons’ emanating off them. The disgust, if you feel it, is generated by your own brain.
That doesn’t take you to moral approval. On the contrary, your disapproval may even increase with a dispassionate examination. But whatever your judgement of the thing in question, it should be kept in mind that ‘disgust’ isn’t part of the thing you are judging its part of you. If you intend your judgement to be objective instead of subjective then you should disregard it.
Not sure what else to say than I disagree about the role of disgust in helping us make decisions. I don’t subscribe to the (arbitrary?) separation between “basic” decisions and complicated ones. And I certainly don’t agree that “disgust is being generated in my brain”. Bad chicken seems to be actually disgusting. Bad actions can also seem actually disgusting. I will reiterate my previous claim that it remains for the challenger of the normative practice to prove that disgust is actually being made up in my head. Most people, in most places, most of the time have agreed with the concept that certain bad things have, as one of their characteristics, disgusting qualities that can be sensed by our bodies.
Natural law comes in handy here because in it we find guidance for helping us determine if it is more likely that we are creating the feeling of disgust or if it is permeating from the object in question. Look around, take a poll of people that seem to be flourishing, and see if they are disgusted by something.
Now, I’m not prescribing what we do with this information, once we have determined that something seems disgusting. But I do think it’s dangerous to get too far away from the intuitive non-cognitive responses that we would otherwise use to determine right and wrong. Are they sufficient to determine moral behavior? No. Are they helpful? Obviously. So what good will it do us to exclude from our morality-determining-faculty a tool (disgust) that tries to guide our actions? Not much it seems. And what harm could it cause? It could make it more difficult to determine what is right and wrong. This, it seems to me, is too high a price to pay for too little gain.
Not sure what else to say than I disagree about the role of disgust in helping us make decisions. I don’t subscribe to the (arbitrary?) separation between “basic” decisions and complicated ones. And I certainly don’t agree that “disgust is being generated in my brain”. Bad chicken seems to be actually disgusting. Bad actions can also seem actually disgusting.
Well the phrase was that basic disguest was a useful hueristic for situations when there wasn’t enough time to make a more detailed examination. In other words, if the milk smells sour, you might as well not drink it. The worse that will happen is you’ll waste some good milk. The positive side is you may have avoided getting sick. But this only works some of the time. As you probably have experienced with new children, this instict to find food you’re unfamiliar with disgusting causes a huge array of problems on its own.
But disgust is indeed generated in your brain. There is nothing about the chicken that makes it disgusting. It’s your reaction to it. An animal with a different physical set up, such as a scavenger or insects, detect nothing disgusting from it. (And, of course, animals and other people may find things disgusting that you find delightful).
Consider the difference between disgust and temperature. A hot stove is a hot stove. If you put your hand on it you will burn it. Maybe you won’t fell pain. Maybe you’ve trained yourself to disregard pain. But whatever your feelings about burning skin, your skin will burn. Yet disgust is clearly not like this. Food you used to think was disgusting isn’t anymore. How can that be if disgusting resides outside of you? The nature of sushi or creamed corn or liver hasn’t changed since you were little.
Natural law comes in handy here because in it we find guidance for helping us determine if it is more likely that we are creating the feeling of disgust or if it is permeating from the object in question. Look around, take a poll of people that seem to be flourishing, and see if they are disgusted by something.
I’m sure most are, and likewise most that flourish are no doubt doing something that’s disgusting too. How does that help us?
Now, I’m not prescribing what we do with this information, once we have determined that something seems disgusting. But I do think it’s dangerous to get too far away from the intuitive non-cognitive responses that we would otherwise use to determine right and wrong. Are they sufficient to determine moral behavior? No. Are they helpful? Obviously.
I’m not sure you’ve demonstrated the usefulness to moral behavior. For example, you find anal sex disgusting. How is that useful? From moral behavior I don’t think it is. Since you find anal sex disgusting, you will probably turn down opportunities to have anal sex.
This, of course, assumes your concern for determining moral behavior is so you can behave morally. I suppose the story is different if your concern is primarily focused on judging how moral everyone other than yourself is behaving.
Therein lies the problem. The immoral stuff you do probably doesn’t feel very disgusting. The porn you look at, the anger you feel at the idiot you work with, the contempt you feel for that liberal sister-in-law of yours who you know you’re twenty times smarter and better read but your wife insists you don’t fight with her when she visits even though she never misses an opportunity to bait you….all that doesn’t feel very disgusting when you do it. It feels quite appealing, even enjoyable. Sure maybe you feel disgust after. The feeling after downing a whole cake is pretty disgusting after, but when we’re gobbling it we don’t feel disgust and that’s when it would be useful to feel wouldn’t it?
This is the problem then even if your concern is judging others. You feel disgust for their anal sex, but they don’t find it disgusting. They feel disgust for your arrogant stance towards your sister-in-law but you feel you’re only acting on your inherently superior nature. In fact, they don’t even have to find something you’re actually doing to be disgusted by you. They can simply imagine something. They can imagine you’re a secret homosexual who publically bashes homosexuality. You can imagine they hate Christians. Now how is disgust not generated by the brain if a huge portion of the disgust people feel for other people is coming from things that aren’t even part of the nature of ‘other people’?
Of course, I don’t think you can make an easy case that our society (or any society for that matter) suffers from too little judging of others. It is human nature to chronically over judge others and underjudge ourselves and disgust is a very deceptive emotion that helps faciliate that.
CHRISTOF: Yes, my title is “deliberately provocative.” Provocation is a way of facilitating conversation, as Jesus did in Palestine and Socrates did in Athens. I don’t subscribe to your notion that dialogue “demands that all parties involved put aside their assumptions regarding where a particular conversation will end.” The aforementioned interlocutors often led the conversation to particular ends. To suggest that we can put aside all our assumptions strikes me as an unexamined assumption, owing to the Enlightenment myth in the neutrality of reason.
I made it clear that I oppose same-sex marriage. The point of my post was to agree with Nussbaum that projective disgust is not a sufficient reason to render same-sex marriage illegal. The operative word here is “sufficient.” Christians ought to be using other reasons in the public debate than disgust.
Please provide evidence for how “homosexuality has been historically described (by the church) as disgusting on both counts.” I’m obviously aware of how homosexuality has been biblically described as a “sin” and an “abomination,” but not as “disgusting.”
You asked, “in what way could homosexuality be grounds for rejoicing?” I can do no better than encourage you to read the last three paragraphs again with special attention to the last sentence. The nuances are important.
Christof, you’re aware that we can “let our disgust override our ability to commune with someone” and “when we are talking about people we are trying, ostensibly, to love.” I noticed how you interpolated “ostensibly” in that sentence, which suggests that Christians aren’t really trying to love homosexuals as their neighbors––and projective disgust may be (partially) responsible for that lovelessness. Projective disgust has been responsible for lovelessness before, in the case of Jews who were regarded as slimy by German anti-Semites and African-Americans as smelly by whites.
In short, how we view a person shapes the way we love or don’t love a person. On secular grounds, Nussbaum defends the humanity of homosexuals so that we can show sympathy to the other, recognizing that projective disgust is socially conditioned. On Christian grounds, Bonhoeffer defends the dignity and diversity in humanity so that we can rejoice in the other, recognizing that God’s image takes a new and unique form in others that “may seem strange, even ungodly.”
You asked, “What good will it do us to exclude from our morality-determining faculty a tool (disgust) that tries to guide our actions?” My answer: much good if greater sympathy and love are exhibited to the other.
Christopher,
It seems like we’re not really dialoguing here. This is the point of my first comment regarding real dialogue vs. opinion lobbing/debate/apologetics/etc. Note that I am very interested in those other three things (debated in college, spent a lot of time at Speakers corner in London, etc.) My comment was meant to be an encouragement to put aside our assumptions about where our conversation would end. If you have already determined where the “dialogue” will end, I’m not sure what role I have to play? Unless you intend to be impacted by the conversation yourself, and perhaps end up somewhere you hadn’t imagined, in which case we have a true dialogue indeed. Too much of the tone of the blogosphere is framed in terms of a debate, speech, or diatribe, too little of it is set up in a genuine desire to hear the Divine Logos speaking through the mouth of our interlocutor. I have (clearly) taken part in this unfortunate paradigm… To which I have nothing more to say than I am ashamed by own contributions.
I will try to change my tone here.
It seems like I should put my own presuppositions on the table so that you can have a better chance at understanding where I’m coming from.
1. There are no homosexual people
2. Homosexual acts are bad for people (even if they seem good)
3. There are some behaviors we should be disgusted by
4. If we are not disgusted by these behaviors (especially when we see them in ourselves) we should pray and ask God to fix our disgusting faculty so that we are better guided towards right actions in the future
5. I am generally not disgusted by pornography, homosexuality, or a wide array of other things that I think I should be. This shows how corrupted I am by sin.
That wasn’t a sequential argument or anything, by the way.
Where to start? I guess the biggest thing is that people should never disgust us. If this is all you are saying (above) than I agree and I suppose we are done. It seem like, however, that part of Nussbaum’s argument that you might have swallowed accidentally/intentionally is that the acts define the person. In other words, since homosexuals are indistinguishable from the “disgusting” acts they do, and this often leads people to consider homosexuals disgusting people (which can’t be true if they are made in God’s image – see Bonhoeffer) then we should get rid of the category of “disgusting people” so that we are more able to see just a person… like God does.
This is one way of dealing with the (real) problem of homosexuals often not being seen as God’s creatures by the Church.
Wouldn’t it also be possible to solve this same situation by separating the disgusting action from the beautiful person – made in God’s image?
I am aware now, after reading your post that you and I are arguing from different vantage points regarding your word “rejoicing”. I guess I just meant to say that I find it hard to imagine how someone could determine that the appropriate response to homosexual acts (as described above: anal sex in particular) was rejoicing. You, I assume, mean to say that when we see someone who does homosexual things we should rejoice that God made them?
Finally, you ended by saying that it would do us much good to remove our sense of disgust from our faculty of decision-making because this might make us more sympathetic and capable of loving people. This made me think of a man I once helped in a rainstorm in New York. I have never smelled a more terrible human being. In every sense of the word he was disgusting. However, as I carried him to the sidewalk I remember thinking, as I began to cry, that he was a person just like me and I was not worthy to untie his shoes – given the things I had just been thinking about. Don’t you think that it would be weird to try to say that his condition wasn’t really disgusting? In any case I would like to hear your explanation for how the removal of my disgusting-sensor would somehow make me love him more. Oh, and one more thing, my disgusting feeling in that situation caused me to want to help him clean up, get him sober, and take him to a shelter. Couldn’t my disgust at someone’s homosexual behavior motivate me to want to help them change their life around, reorient their sexuality, and experience the abundant life? I know several ex-homosexuals, and they all speak of the way they felt like no one cared enough to show them a vision of the future where they were both a. still themselves, and b. flourishing as a Christian human being.
p.s. I think I agree that disgust should play no role in the public conversation about the legality of homosexual unions
CHRISTOF: We are dialoguing if “dialogue” means “a discussion between two or more people or groups, esp. one directed toward exploration of a particular subject or resolution of a problem” (New Oxford American Dictionary).
Yes, I wrote my blog post with an end in mind, namely (1) to shift from a “politics of disgust” to a “politics of humanity,” (2) to eliminate projective disgust as a sufficient reason to render same-sex marriage illegal, and (3) to call for a rejoicing of homosexual persons insofar as “God creates every person in the image of God’s Son, the Crucified,” however “strange and ungodly” that image may seem to us.
You still have a role in the conversation because you can disagree with my line of reasoning, expose hidden assumptions, and offer an alternative argument.
I agree that “too much of the tone of the blogosphere is framed in terms of a debate, speech, or diatribe, too little of it is set up in a genuine desire to hear the Divine Logos speaking through the mouth of our interlocutor.” Believe it or not, my post was inspired because I heard “the Divine Logos speaking through the mouth” of Martha Nussbaum––an unlikely ally of Christians. Where Professor Nussbaum supports same-sex marriage and I oppose it, we both agree that projective disgust is not a sufficient reason to render it illegal. That’s what I regard as providential bridge-building. We may not be able to go all the way with our secular neighbors, but we can go part of the way. Christians and non-Christians alike should advance a “politics of humanity.” Cultural warriors on both sides have coarsened our public discourse.
It appears our dialogue is making headway because we agree on the major point: projective disgust is not a sufficient reason to render same-sex marriage illegal.
Wherein lies our difference? Well, you seem to think acts and actors can be neatly separated whereas I think they are in a complex relationship. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that “acts define the person,” but they play a significant role in shaping personhood.
I recently listened to a conversation with Ted Haggard, who has now started a new church in Colorado Springs that welcomes everyone, “Democrat, Republican, gay, straight, bi, addicts, tall, short.” You may recall that Haggard was a pastor of a megachurch (New Life Church) and president of the National Association of Evangelicals when a “scandal” (his word, not mine) broke out: he was engaged in sexual activity and drug use with a male prostitute. Three and a half years have passed since the scandal. During that time he has undergone extensive therapy. According to Haggard, his same-sex acts were largely a byproduct of unresolved childhood trauma. The same-sex attraction has diminished since the trauma was resolved. Notice, he didn’t say that it has disappeared.
When asked about his sexuality, Haggard doesn’t say he’s “gay,” “straight,” or “bi.” Instead, he says he’s pursuing sexual wholeness in his marriage. When asked about the evangelical ethic to “love the sinner and hate the sin,” he replied that it’s incoherent because the sinner and sin are inseparable. In addition, this ethic is problematic with regard when applied to homosexuals because Scripture does not address homosexual orientation directly but focuses on homosexual behavior. Consequently, it behooves us to refrain from condemning homosexual orientation as a sin. A person can still be “homosexual” if he or she is not engaging in the behavior. Put differently, the same-sex attraction might (and often does) persist in the absence of same-sex acts.
Haggard said that what he needed during his time of struggle was someone who would love him in his sinful condition. The preposition is all-important here: to be loved “in” our sinful condition not “because” of it. Haggard wasn’t looking for a love that gave moral approbation to his sin, but a love that showed him compassion, gentleness, kindness, forgiveness, and patience––the ingredients to healing. He said fear and shame kept his sin hidden, gaining potency. We need to create environments that help people to reveal their sins and weaknesses rather than conceal them. Love is what gives people permission to open up––a love that does not flee when the “sins” are confessed but fights for holiness and wholeness.
While the Haggards are a deep source of ambivalence for me, I am persuaded that the evangelical ethic––”love the sinner and hate the sin”––belongs to a vacuum when we need an ethic that is practicable in our workplaces, churches, homes, and neighborhoods.
What might it mean for me to rejoice in my homosexual neighbor? If two gay men move into a nearby house, I could begin by getting to know them as persons with aspirations, emotions, values, and projects rather than recoil in disgust at their sexual practices. I like cooking, so I could make a dessert or invite them over for a BBQ. Along the way, we might discover common interests. Perhaps I would invite the homosexual neighbor to join my book club or to hike a “fourteener” (a mountain that exceeds 14,000 feet––we have over 50 here in Colorado). In the context of friendship, I could earn the right to speak “truth in love” (Eph. 4:15). Lest this become an asymmetrical relationship, where I have a corner on the truth, I would try to develop a receptive posture, learning from the neighbor because all truth is God’s truth. Perhaps, along the way, these neighbors would come to church with me. Perhaps one or both would desist from their sexual practices because the Holy Spirit has convicted them––not because I assumed the mantle of “holier than thou.” I really don’t know if it’s God’s will for every homosexual to become a heterosexual. What I do know is that Jesus Christ came to set the captives free, and his grace is available to those who struggle, whether that’s as celibate homosexuals, homosexuals-turned-heterosexuals, or, in the least desirable scenario, monogamous homosexual partnerships.
Christof,
4. If we are not disgusted by these behaviors (especially when we see them in ourselves) we should pray and ask God to fix our disgusting faculty so that we are better guided towards right actions in the future
Why? If, say, I have no particular interest in anal sex but I am not disgusted by it why is it of special importance I insist that my body evoke a particular sensation similiar to what happens when I drink spoiled milk? I think the reaction you are seeking is not quite disgust but maybe something else… moral disapproval.
Thank you, though, for supporting my assertion that disgust lies in the brain and not the object.
Wouldn’t it also be possible to solve this same situation by separating the disgusting action from the beautiful person – made in God’s image?
Indeed but herein lies the issue I raised. Disgust is not a reliable emotion. I’m disgusted by your sins, I enjoy mine. There are things that disgust me that aren’t wrong, there are things that don’t disgust me that are wrong.
How about flipping a coin. When faced with a moral question flip a coin and heads is wrong, tails right. Of course we can’t trust just the coin but we’ll use the coin when it agrees with us.
Thats the problem. You’ve decided gay sex is wrong. Maybe you used valid reasoning, maybe not. But you want to back up that conclusion with “and I’m disgusted by it which just adds to the list of reasons”. Well that’s about as reliable as saying “and I flipped the coin and it said heads so add that too”.
But in some ways flipping a coin might be better. At least its neutral in its wrongness. AS Nussbaum’s piece points out, even if we assume you are correct and gay sex is wrong its quite possible for feelings of disgust to be nutured for reasons that are wrong. For example, Nussbaum cites digust as motivated by the feeling that only an inferior entity would ‘receive’ a bodily fluid like semen. If that’s the basis for your ‘disgust’ with anal sex then you’re operating with a serious delusion.
Christopher
You said it well. You’re saying you’re also receptive to your hypothetical gay neighbors pointing out shortcomings you may have and be unaware of…..ones straight friends and family might be blind too as well. The problem with disgust is that it leads directly too “Those people are BAD” and that carries with it the direct implication “And that means I’m GOOD!”
BOONTON: Yes, you nailed it:
This is what Nussbaum calls the double fantasy of my purity and your dirtiness. Simply put, I don’t think it’s possible to love my homosexual neighbor if I view him or her as disgusting. Disgust puts distance between people. Love demands proximity.
While I recognize that “sin” is not in the vocabulary of the Buddhist, I am concerned, as a Christian, that I don’t call fair foul or foul fair. The Word of God guides what is named “righteous” and “sinful.”
To assuage the anxieties of Christof, I should be clear: a proposal to eliminate disgust toward homosexuals should not be conflated with a proposal to call homosexuality something other than what it is unequivocally called in Scripture, namely a “sin.” But why, I ask, should the sin of my homosexual neighbor be more pronounced––or disgusting––than my own sin? The words of Jesus ring in my ears:
What to keep in mind about Buddhism is that it often thinks of things in starkly different terms than most other religions. A good expression I heard is that it measures with the plumb line rather than the ruler. Where you are is as important as where you think you may be going. Strictly speaking you will find any answer you want out of Buddhism to the question of homosexuality. Tibetan Buddhism is pretty strict on chastity. Gay sex is out, despite pleas to the Dali Lama. Zen probably doesn’t care one way or the other. I have no idea what the other numerous sects and schools would say across Asia but I suspect you’d find a lot of mirroring of local views. I think most Western sects are inclined to support it.
So one way to approach the question is to ask is homosexuality a sin and bring in all the theology, all the different takes on scriptures and other texts. Another way is to ask why am I asking this question? Am I seeking the right thing to do? Am I seeking an advantage over others? Am I tying to be declared a winner in some argument? Am I gay and need to know the right thing to do? Am I dealing with a lot of gay people and want to give them the best help I can? Often questions like this get sidelined because the academic debating question is supposedly more worthwhile. But when do these questions really get addressed? There are consequences to ignoring them.
Let me make an observation. As the question of homosexuality has gotten more and more play among evangelicals, I’ve noticed a lot more laxity about traditional marriage. Rockefeller was supposedly denied the GOP nomination decades ago because he was divorced. Reagan’s divorce, though, never once seemed to tarnish his image with the religious right. Nowadays stuff that would normally have triggered a culture war seems happily overlooked. Senator Vitter is a known customer of prostitutes. Little in the way of a grand revolt. The gov. of S. Carolina seems like he will keep his job despite his strange extramarital trip that had a nation briefly worrying that a state governor had gone missing. Sarah Palin’s illegitimate grandson was apparently celebrated, I suppose, because her daughter didn’t have an abortion. Well 16 years ago Murphy Brown didn’t have an abortion either but that didn’t win her any credit from the then Republican Vice President. Maybe it’s not too unreasonable to speculate that immorality is using the debate about homosexuality as a red herring to draw attention elsewhere. Isn’t it interesting that the states making the biggest deal about banning gay marriage are ones where we least expect gay marriage to ever pass yet they also seem to have above average rates of divorce and illegitimacy?
BACK to Disgust:
So here’s an interesting observation. Lesbian sex to many people seems to run the line from interesting to non-threatening. Even among women I’ve spoken with, many are not disgusted by lesbian sex. A few are, many are indifferent to it, many are aware it is a common heterosexual male fantasy. But in general I find few women are as disgusted by the idea as straight men are disgusted with the idea of gay male sex.
But from my conversations with women, gay male sex is, if not often seen as disgusting, a major turn off. So it would seem one type of gay sex (males) is viewed by many as ‘naturally disgusting’ while another type of gay sex (females) is viewed as either enjoyable or at least neutral. If we were to go by disgust as a guide to natural law this would imply that gay male sex is a major sin but lesbian sex is a minor sin or not a sin at all.
Yet, correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not aware of any Christian theology that has concluded a difference in wrongness between gay sex and lesbian sex. That would seem to indicate there is a major issue with trusting our ‘instincts’ toward disgust as a guide to natural law or morality.
Christopher,
You have said above, as a request of Christof, to ‘Please provide evidence for how “homosexuality has been historically described (by the church) as disgusting on both counts.” I’m obviously aware of how homosexuality has been biblically described as a “sin” and an “abomination,” but not as “disgusting.”‘
I must say, though I do hate to run and point at dictionaries, that the first definition for abomination in the oed is ‘A feeling or state of mind of disgust and hatred; detestation, loathing, abhorrence.’
And I suppose that abomination may not perfectly translate the biblical term, but having no access to the original languages, I thought to provide as good a definition as was available to me.
As I understand Christof’s position, though disgust or revulsion is by no means a clear measure of sin, it is a measure somewhat, or intended to be a guide to natural law. Assuming we grant that every faculty of man is distorted and bent in some way by the Fall, it should be little surprise when disgust at our sinful hearts fails and disgust at others’ sinful actions comes with ease. That isn’t to say we should wholly distrust our disgust, or dismiss it as non-reliable, or call it irrational and other names, but rather that we should seek and ask God to repair that faculty, in the same manner we should ask for the repair of our wills, reason, etc., etc.
Is the proper course of action not to bring our desires in line with those of God? To feel after Him, think His thoughts after Him, etc.?
Of course, I do not mean to say that we should recoil in fear at homosexuality. It is a curiosity that we have in the post, at the least, given definitions of dialogue and abomination, but not disgust. Perhaps someone may propose one?
Still, as I understand it, the proper gesture is not to become less disgusted with these or those sinners, but to become more disgusted with ourselves. As Boonton said, ‘The problem with disgust is that it leads directly too “Those people are BAD” and that carries with it the direct implication “And that means I’m GOOD!’ That should never be the case if we are indeed following our duties of introspection. Thus, the right utterance, when we see sin, should be: Those people are bad; I as well.
So I say, more disgust! More! Disgust and mourning are good responses to sin and sinfulness, within ourselves and within the world. No shame. No guilt. Disgust and mourning, though.
BOONTON: You observed, “Lesbian sex to many people seems to run the line from interesting to non-threatening.” Here’s what Nussbaum says in her book:
MICAH: We would need to know how “abomination” is defined in the Hebrew language and applied in the Hebrew Bible. We would also need to know whether the list of abominable things in the Hebrew Bible remains abominable in the Christian Scriptures. I’ve read on this topic before, but I would need to refresh my memory.
Here’s a brief passage from Judith Balswick & Jack Balswick’s Authentic Human Sexuality: An Integrated Christian Approach:
Another book that I’ve found helpful is Homosexuality and the Christian Community, edited by Choon-Leong Seow. See these chapters:
• Choon-Leong Seow, A Heterotextual Perspective
• Patrick D. Miller, What the Scriptures Principally Teach
There’s one more resource worth mentioning: Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture, edited by David L. Balch. The following chapter can be read on Google Books:
• Phyllis A. Bird, The Bible in Christian Ethical Deliberation Concerning Homosexuality: Old Testament Contributions
I did provide definitions in my post:
Obviously, we disagree. You say “more disgust” and I say “no disgust” or at least “less disgust.” When one regards a homosexual person as disgusting, one reduces that person to his or her sexual activities, as if there is nothing more to the person than what he or she does in the bedroom. That kind of reductionstic view of the human being will impede the Christian from loving the homosexual neighbor.
Christopher,
I believe that Nussbaum’s distinction is, perhaps, helpful, but doesn’t provide a definition of disgust, rather providing two categories of disgust. And I cannot say that those categories exist in a meaningful way. It is unfortunate that I do not know more of Nussbaum’s work, for then I would have a more substantive understanding of her larger picture. Something I may try to amend.
Yet, I think it best to proceed whilst making some assumptions of Nussbaum’s thought, given the quotations provided. Firstly, her first category, that is, ‘disgust at primary objects,’ is likely founded in materialism especially with respect to natural selection (that is, cognitive imperatives like ‘avoid feces because there is a probability of disease). Secondly, ‘projective disgust’ is a socially learned disgust, emergent from the primary material base, which is why her argument for disgust at male homosexuality relies on disgust at the physical mixing of feces and semen.
Whether or not she adheres to tenets of materialism or natural selection is unimportant, but it is important to note that the foundations of her claim do suggest a presupposed naturalism. However, if we can agree that naturalism is the framework for the category of ‘disgust at primary objects,’ and that category the base for secondary societal disgust, then perhaps we can agree we are not discussing the same thing.
Now, I should stop for a moment and voice a disclaimer: given my ignorance of her entire book, if she does not function from a naturalist/materialist frame, then my arguments henceforth are irrelevant.
Nussbaum’s argument is something like this: If projective disgust is a cultural and conceptual apprehension of disgust at primary objects, and disgust at primary objects is irrational, then projective disgust is irrational. There is little reason, in naturalist perspective, to deny this argument. I would be inclined to agree, save that I believe social dimensions do not have a strictly material base. Disgust, via naturalism, can have no other sources than physical objects. From that perspective, to speak of disgust at behavior-as-behavior or attitude-as-attitude is to be uttering nonsense. Thus, for Nussbaum, it must be behavior-as-mixing-objects-of-primary-disgust. Or so I understand it as presented me.
But accepting humanity as a creation in God’s image denies the possibility that humanity is a rather thoughtful animal whose actions and attitudes are inherited responses to physical objects such as urine or blood. Those actions and attitudes are indeed a part of who we are, but humanity in light of its created state introduces a moral dimension that cannot exist solely in a material base. Nussbaum’s socio-moral projective disgust cannot accept this, and thus rings false to my ears.
And this is why I desired a more thorough definition of what we mean by disgust. Nussbaum’s projective disgust seems false because I believe disgust is not simply revulsion at bad tastes and smells which become projected on people that are different than me. If we allow the referent of ‘disgust’ to indicate a feeling or emotion of a certain type which may be a response to something physical or moral or social, then we have come closer to the word as I used it previously when I said we need more disgust. Disgust along physical schema only, as Nussbaum says, ‘rarely withstands rational scrutiny.’ But I do not think that is the only manner in which disgust functions, nor the most important.
That is to say, when I say disgust in this context, I refer more to a moral revulsion, a visceral and reactive dislike of sin anywhere it may be found. That does not suggest I should not love gays, or the self-righteous, or murderers, or myself. Should disgust at myself cause me to love myself less? I think not; it seems the proper attitude toward myself, both disgust and love, for that is a better reflection of that which I am: a glorious ruin, just as those around me.
So, if we are speaking of different disgusts, then we have been talking past each other. But I do think that Nussbaum’s definition has a number of assumptions that should complicate it for us.
Thank you for your previous comments, and your work. This is for me, as I hope it is for you, a very interesting discussion.
Thus, the right utterance, when we see sin, should be: Those people are bad; I as well.
Yes but is this possible really? Take the context of gay male anal sex. The person who feels disgust at it probably has no desire to do it. With no desire to engage in anal sex how can one really feel they are just like the person who does? While verbally one might say “he’s disgusting, but my sins are disgusting too” but one’s heart will still say “he’s having disgusting anal sex, I’m just sleeping late for church now and again, fudging my taxes, looking at some soft porn now and then….pretty normal stuff that’s understandable”. Just as boozing it up distorts your judgement, I’d say disgust is highly likely to distort your ability to face yourself with honesty.
Which leads to the question of why is this being asked. Chris’s fantasy of having gay neighbors who he gradually befriends and maybe tries to lead away from gay sex is that, a fantasy. The hard reality is you will most likely not convince any gay people not to be gay or not to have gay sex. You have no control over others but you have total control over yourself. While it may be necessary to judge others and their actions you can’t escape the fact that doing so distracts from judging yourself. You are in a car driving fast towards your death. Maybe you have to take your eyes off the road to play with the radio or stop the kids from fighting in the back seat but make no mistake you are taking a risk by taking your eyes off the road. You’re not inside the body of your gay neighbor friends, you’re inside your body. Paying attention to the road you’re on should be your top priority. If its not you’re making a serious error.
But accepting humanity as a creation in God’s image denies the possibility that humanity is a rather thoughtful animal whose actions and attitudes are inherited responses to physical objects such as urine or blood. Those actions and attitudes are indeed a part of who we are, but humanity in light of its created state introduces a moral dimension that cannot exist solely in a material base. Nussbaum’s socio-moral projective disgust cannot accept this, and thus rings false to my ears.
I’m not sure her examples of primary disgust are irrational. They are rational in that they are a time saving way to minimize risk at low cost (with a non-zero chance of error in either direction). We have the ability though, to either cultivate digust or neutralize disgust. A doctor or sewer worker or corner can all neutralize their feelings of disgust for blood, feces, or corpses. Likewise we can cultivate feelings of disgust far beyond ‘primary objects’. Air headed teens, for example, can cultivate the same feels of disgust for out of fashion cloths that people often reserve for only feces or blood or rotting corpses. I’m highly skeptical that the disgust felt by many towards gays has anything to do with a general ‘disgust for sin’ generated by natural law. It has to do with seeing oneself as radically different from the ‘disgusting person’. This is why I’m skeptical that disgust can be cultivated in the way that the quote at the top would lead us to believe.
Consider how society desensitized whites against racial disgust at blacks. Early on blacks were depicted as sympathetic victims (look he didn’t do anything wrong but is getting beaten!). Then, in non-threatening ways, as someone ‘just like us’. (For example Bill Cosby’s family orientated humor). Then finally accepting that blacks are different in that they have unique cultural and historical perspectives but are also not different in that we are all people. The generational ‘program’ to reverse disgust is premised on whites feeling blacks were radically different from them and slowly acclimating them to the idea that they aren’t. I think by its very nature disgust is premised on ‘being apart’. We are disgusted at the spoiled meat because we don’t want it to ‘become part’ of us by accidently eating it. We are disgusted by feces because we want it not to be part of us, we get rid of it when it forms inside of us and we have no interest in being near other people’s feces. Disguest is therefore premised on “not me”. To be disgusted by sin therefore is to assume you are not sinful. Maybe you’re not making this assumption intellectually but at some level I think you are making it.
MICAH: Having reading several other books from Martha Nussbaum, I can assure you that she is not a materialist or naturalist.
Clarification: Nussbaum doesn’t say that disgust at primary objects is always irrational. On the contrary she says it is “usually a useful heuristic, steering us away from the dangerous when there is no time for detailed inquiry.”
BOONTON: You wrote:
I’m a little impatient with the above passage because, first, my name is Christopher––not Chris; second, I entertained a hypothetical scenario––not a “fantasy”; and third, I don’t assume that “reparative therapy” will be desirable or successful for all homosexuals, as I said in my comments: “I really don’t know if it’s God’s will for every homosexual to become a heterosexual. What I do know is that Jesus Christ came to set the captives free, and his grace is available to those who struggle, whether that’s as celibate homosexuals, homosexuals-turned-heterosexuals, or, in the least desirable scenario, monogamous homosexual partnerships.” From my Christian point of view, you’re overlooking who is the real change agent in this process: the Holy Spirit. So, yes, no man can change another man, but he can be used as an instrument of grace, healing, and righteousness.
Sorry about the name Christopher, I knew I should have checked backwards before quoting you….my fault.
It was a hypothetical you presented, but also a fantasy. You were imagining the good you could help do in such a situation and demonstrate how your ideas about tolerance would work. My point was that your ideas would indeed work, but odds are almost totally against the fantasy. Few things turn out as we expect them too. It very well may be that a whole lifetime will result in nothing being addressed with the hypothetical gay neighbors. Or it might even be that they may be the ones who will faciliate you being the one ‘taught’. There is a tempting illusion of control that people fall victim too all the time. I think we agree that that is something we have to give up and yield to a higher power.
I think grief a better option than either you have suggested (although I heartily agree that disgust is not a sufficient reason for rendering same-sex marriage illegal and am curious who has suggested that it is such a reason).
Tex: Pretend, for a moment, that you’re a homosexual man. How would you feel if grief was the emotional response elicited by your very presence? Should we grieve over someone whose orientation (not behavior) is largely if not entirely beyond his choice? The homosexual condition strikes me as tragic because it seems fated rather than chosen. But Christians don’t affirm a universe controlled by fate. Instead, we affirm that the universe is governed by a merciful and just and often mysterious providence. It seems to me that homosexuals – for reasons beyond my understanding – belong to that providence merely because they exist. As such, should we recoil in disgust at them? No. Should we grieve over them? No. I propose, following Bonhoeffer’s view, that we rejoice for them because “God does not want me to model others into the image that seems good to me, that is, into my own image. Instead, in their freedom from me God made other people in God’s own image. I can never know in advance how God’s image should appear in others. That image always takes on a completely new and unique form whose origin is found solely in God’s free and sovereign act of creation. To me that form may seem strange, even ungodly. But God creates every person in the image of God’s Son, the Crucified, and this image, likewise, certainly looked strange and ungodly to me before I grasped it.”
I agree in rejecting grief. Instead of ‘there for the grace of God go I’ you’re basically saying ‘there goes someone who I’m above, I shall pity him in public thereby showing how kind I am while in private I’m using him to praise myself’.
@Christopher: You have been one of the most patient interlocutors I have ever met in the blogosphere so I hope my continued disagreement with you is taken as it is meant: to come to greater clarity and avoid error while discovering and persevering in the truth.
I tried your thought experiment on for size, and found I didn’t have to move too far from reality to do it (and, I think, invalidate your conclusion in the process). You asked me to pretend I’m a homosexual man who elicits grief in people I meet. I substituted “sinner” (generally) and then some of my own sins specifically (sorry, not gonna share details in this public space…but let your imagination do its worst) and continued with the thought experiment. How would I feel to know that others who knew of my sinful inclinations (not behavior) grieved for my sin? Well, if I didn’t think it was sin I’d be offended (perhaps, especially if I was insecure about my inclinations) or, what’s more likely, I might take a patronizing tone towards them when I heard that they grieved over something about me that I happened to like and think was good. However, if I respected and loved them then I would most likely be sad to know that I caused them grief but not likely to try and change my orientations or inclinations. If, on the other hand, I thought that my inclination was sinful AND I respected the godly character of the person grieving over me, I would be inclined to spill my heart to them, grieve with them, and ask them for help.
However, I think your questions gets the whole issue off on the wrong foot. Why should the first question be how the homosexual person might feel about the emotions his behavior elicited within me? This is an interesting question and relevant at some point in the conversation, but not a first order question and certainly not the right question to ask in determining our answer to the question of what sort of emotional response the homosexual person ought to elicit from others.
Then, too, you might consider your statement that homosexuality seems tragic because it is a fated condition rather than a chosen condition. But stop for a moment and ask yourself if you might not be inclined to say the same thing about the doctrine of original sin. However, clearly, God in His providence has allowed men to sin. This allowance (taken as hard or as soft as your theology might allow) does not conclude in an imperative to rejoice in the falleness of mankind. God grieves over sinful men, Jesus grieves over sinful men, godly men grieve over sinful men. (God, Jesus, and godly men also, incidentally, are enraged by sinful men…but we can leave that out of the discussion for the moment, if you like).
Bonhoeffer’s quote is interesting but wrong if the implication or conclusion is that the sin in men is part of them being made in the image of God. This is not the orthodox Christian doctrine and cannot be true if God is sinless (sin cannot be the image of a sinless being).
I’ve gotten a bit wordy so I’ll stop here and wait for your comments and take my lumps, if required.
Tex: I’m happy to be patient with a worthy interlocutor. First, your thought experiment immediately got off to the wrong start, in my opinion, when you substituted “sinner” for “homosexual,” as if the person with a same-sex attraction is entirely reducible to his sexual concerns. Because I currently belong to an Evangelical Presbyterian Church, I will quote a relevant section from its position paper on homosexuality:
Second, the experiment continued to go wrong when you substituted “sinful inclinations” for “same-sex orientation.” Let’s compare the inclination toward anger with an inclination for the same-sex. Some would say that the former is a choice whereas the latter is not a choice. In my view, both inclinations are due to our fallen nature. The condition of sin (the deterministic aspect) inclines us to sin (the volitional aspect). We are responsible for what we do with our inclinations.
I affirm that heterosexuals and homosexuals alike should pursue sexual wholeness in their lives. Because the causes of homosexuality are a combination of nature and nurture, we should be very careful about grieving over someone who may have little or no choice in his same-sex attraction. Redemption from homosexual behavior is available because of the atoning work of Jesus Christ. Redemption from homosexual orientation, however, is not always available for reasons known only to God.
The Roman Catholic Church has done a commendable job of negotiating this delicate issue, arguing that same-sex attraction is not necessarily sinful; it is “disordered” insofar as it can tempt a person to act sinfully. Temptations beyond one’s control should not be considered sinful. Here I quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church because it strikes the right tone:
Two final points of clarification. First, the main purpose of my blog post was to argue, with Nussbaum, that disgust at homosexuals is not a sufficient reason to render same-sex marriage illegal. Beyond this narrow point, I also contend that the rule of law should govern our conduct toward homosexuals, not an irrational emotion like projective disgust. Second, I invoked Bonhoeffer to celebrate the image of God in homosexual persons – not to rejoice in their sin. Hopefully these remarks move us further along in the conversation.
Do you grieve when you meet a man who is sexually attracted to women? Why not? If we were tallying sins in all of human history using orthodox Christian standards this by far outranks homosexuality. OK you argue this is good because it motivates marriage and children. That’s nice but the fact remains if you factor in masturbation, a typical heterosexual man probably commits 100 ‘acts of sin’ motivated by his attraction to woman for every single act that creates children. This figure probably goes up if you consider many go through at least a few sexual relationships before settling down to marriage.
Likewise it is also absurd to argue that nothing good can come from a person being homosexual. Is that really so? Assuming a gay person accepted the argument that they must refrain from have the sex they want to have, is there nothing that is gained? No insights? No contribution from seeing things from a different POV? Nothing of value? That leads to a contradiction since if that were true gays would be valuable to you in that they give you something you can say you are better then.
So go ahead and grieve if you see a man who is gay. But if you don’t grieve when you see a nun taking religious orders, a couple getting married, a newborn baby you are to some degree a hypocrite.
@Boonton: I don’t grieve over the heterosexual inclination of humans because it is the inclination they were intended to have (though I do grieve over a great many of the acts that such an inclination results in). I grieve over the homosexual inclination of humans because it is the distortion of the heterosexual inclination.
As you point out, we cannot judge the moral value of an inclination or orientation by the results it produces because the morality precedes (and gives meaning to) the specific actions.
Finally, I am not arguing that sin (in this case, homosexuality) can not be redeemed (or, as you would have it, be instrumental in bringing about good). To do so would be to undermine the center of the Gospel, the good news that the murder of an innocent man (sin) was an instrumental cause in bringing about the salvation of many (a good). I am suggesting that we ought not rejoice at the existence of sin as sin simply because it can be made the instrument of some good by God’s providence.
@Boonton: I’m disappointed by your suggestion that grief is nothing more than self-congratulation. Godly sorrow is motivated by love for the other person, not by a desire to improve one’s own standing. Think of Christ grieving over Jerusalem and find in His example a deep love that would lead to self-sacrifice for the sake of those for whom He grieved. This is grief, not some sort of cheap empathy that allows one to feel good about his superior moral position. Grief is distress over the loss of another, in this case, of a human brother to the destructive results of sin.
Tex you seem to be equating homosexuality with sin, but not heterosexuality because one was not intended by God and the other was. What evidence is there for this? If God didn’t intended homosexuals to exist then how are they here? Likewise if heterosexuality is intended then are the numerous sins committed by heterosexuals that are directly caused by their heterosexuality also intended? Here I’m not talking about the rather obvious rapes and sleeping around but the numerous sins even by what would on the surface pass for ‘good family men’.
More to the point, why assume a person who is homosexual is any more inclined to sin then anyone else? That seems to be the assumption you are making which is a stance of superiority. You are assuming the heterosexual is less inclined. What merits that? Because there’s a Orthodox Christian pathway for the expression of non-sinful heterosexual activity? OK but there’s also plenty of added opportunity IMO for falling short of that ideal. The argument for superiority seems to be resting on a false sense of security.
And not to belabor the point, but I do believe the past two decades has seen a dramatic falling off of evangelical criticism of heterosexual sexual practices as homosexuality has become a more heated and partisan issue. Even issues that were seen as part of the ‘culture war’ two decades ago (say Murphy Brown’s illegitimate child on TV) are casually accepted today by many self-styled ‘values warriors’. I don’t think its unreasonable to ask if gay bashing has become a substitute for self-examination for many on the right.
Boonton:
Areas of agreement:
1. “Gay bashing has become a substitute for self-examination for many on the right.” Not knowing your political orientation, I’m curious to hear what you think has become a substitute for self-examination on the left.
2. A homosexual person is not more inclined to sin than a heterosexual person. Both are sinners. It’s idle to get in the business of saying who sins more or less.
Areas of disagreement:
1. What evidence is there for the claim that God intended heterosexuality? A blog post isn’t the place to rehearse the evidence. If you’re really interested, I encourage you to read the relevant content on homosexuality in Judith & Jack Balswick’s Authentic Human Sexuality: An Integrated Christian Approach and Lewis Smedes’ Sex for Christians: The Limits and Liberties of Sexual Living. These are my favorite Christian treatments on sex because they are adequately complex and charitable. Robert A. J. Gagnon’s The Bible and Homosexual Practice is generally regarded as the most authoritative scholarly text, but I find it cumbersome.
2. No one is making the claim that God doesn’t intend homosexuals to exist. God permits all kinds of sinners to exist, but that doesn’t mean he gives moral approbation to our sins. Why do all sinners exist? So that they might know Jesus Christ because “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
Christopher
I’m curious to hear that you think has become a substitute for self-examination on the left.
I’m not sure what you’re asking. In general I agree politics often becomes a distraction from self-examination. But no I don’t think homosexuality has had the draw for the left that it does for the right….or did just my sense of things is that its becomming less of an issue.
A homosexual person is not more inclined to sin than a heterosexual person. Both are sinners. It’s idle to get in the business of saying who sins more or less.
I’m glad we agree but it seems grieving that someone is gay only makes sense in context that being gay somehow makes one more inclined towards sin. As you say this is probably idleness which is often underestimated as a problem as idleness distracts us from honest self-examination.
Disagreement on God’s intentions:
I see we are equating homosexual with sinner yet we do not do that with other types. We don’t equate businessman with sinner, writer with sinner, or heterosexual with sinner. Again the key fact here is that homosexual certainly exist. Existence is very important, very rare, a very unique gift.
One of the primary causes of suffering is a type of egotistical arrogance where we set ourselves up mentally as God and bemoan that the world isn’t what *we* think it should be. Leaving aside the question of whether or not homosexuals can have nonsinful sexual relationships, Asserting that homosexuals shouldn’t exist, that everyone should be a heterosexual and aspire only to heterosexual marriage or possibly religious orders is a challenge to creation. How do we know that? Because homosexual’s exist in creation, creation is bigger than you and in a fight between my ego and creation or your ego and creation always put money on creation winning.
Now clearly you are not the type who would ever endorse threatening homosexuals existence as some would. But IMO the idea of grieving that another exists is along the same lines. Yes I suppose a Christian can pity that another person will have serious challenges to leading a nonsinful life, but unless that person is an asexual (yes they do exist, but we rarely hear much from them as they are a small portion of the population and don’t speak much about sex since they aren’t all that interested in it), they are in the same boat. If you want an analogy then maybe think of two soldiers in a fox hole taking incoming fire from both snipers and infantry. Imagine one of them turning to the other and grieving that the other guy’s life is in danger. I’d say the grieving fellow is more delusional than noble.
Boonton: My question was straightforward: What has become a substitute for self-examination on the left?
Here are two proposals. First, white guilt. See Shelby Steele’s perspicacious analysis in White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era. Second, anti-Americanism. See Bruce Bawer’s Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom and Andrew McCarthy’s The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.
Here’s a syllogism to understand biblical anthropology and sin:
1. The human being is a sinner.
2. The homosexual is a human being.
3. Therefore, the homosexual is a sinner.
This syllogism applies, of course, to heterosexuals.
If you’re sincerely interested in understanding why Christians believe God’s norm for human beings is heterosexuality, I hope you’ll check out the resources I mentioned rather than persist in your psychologizing of Christians.
To repeat, I have not claimed “that homosexuals shouldn’t exist, that everyone should be a heterosexual and aspire only to heterosexual marriage.” Why don’t you reread the last three paragraphs of my blog post and my replies to John Freeman, Christof Meyer, and Tex.
I look to the fact that some of the Creator’s creatures are marked by a same-sex attraction and insist that we remember, as Bonhoeffer says, “God does not want me to model others into the image that seems good to me, that is, into my own image. Instead, in their freedom from me God made other people in God’s own image. I can never know in advance how God’s image should appear in others. That image always takes on a completely new and unique form whose origin is found solely in God’s free and sovereign act of creation. To me that form may seem strange, even ungodly. But God creates every person in the image of God’s Son, the Crucified, and this image, likewise, certainly looked strange and ungodly to me before I grasped it.”
I felt rage and disgust the first time I saw black people hosed down by whites in the South. I was only 11 years old when I watched that on Television.
Was I irrational absent an argument?
The first time I read the story of Christ in Scripture, I was deeply moved by not only his words of wisdom, but the manner of his death and the way that he was betrayed by both friend and foe.
Should God have communicated his message in a more rational way? Perhaps giving us a series of syllogisms in symbolic logic? Or was the bloody crucifixion just a wee bit too subrational?
When I first heard of what happened to Matthew Shepherd, I was outraged and disgusted. I was disgusted by a society that nurtures murderers. I did not care if Shepherd identified himself as a homosexual. What concerned me was that Shepherd was an innocent child of God mutilated to death by wicked and evil men. Should I have restrained myself from that judgment if I did not have a moral argument immediately available?
And finally, there is Nathan and David. Nathan, apparently, should have not manipulated David with the story of the poor man’s sheep being taken by the rich fellow. He should have given him an argument based on the categorical imperative or something issued by the Vulcan high command.
Sometimes emotions tell us the truth.
Hello Professor Beckwith. Thanks for stopping by. Yes, “sometimes emotions tell us the truth.” And sometimes they don’t. When people of faith and social conservatives invoke the “wisdom of repugnance” to argue against same-sex marriage, I believe they are relying on the normative irrationality of projective disgust, which should have no role in the public debate and no role in our personal conduct toward homosexual persons. It’s bad argumentation and bad witness-bearing. Notice I used Nussbaum’s precise definition of projective disgust rather than your capacious definition. Projective disgust, she says, “always involves linking the allegedly disgusting group or person somehow with the primary objects of disgust” (e.g., “feces, blood, semen, urine, nasal discharges, menstrual discharges, corpses, decaying meat, and animals/insects that are oozy, slimy, or smelly”).
Christopher,
Fair enough on self-examination on the left. I think the race relations area is worthy of quite a bit of criticism. I think on Islam the right’s valid criticism of deference in the name of multiculturalism goes overboard in their own desire to see the War on Terrorism in the same terms as the Cold War.
I also acknowledge that you do not call for homosexuals to not exist. But I disagree that God’s norm for a human being is relevent in this discussion. The norm is an average. Your normal posts are pretty good. Some are exceptionally vapid, others exceptionally insightful. The norm is for a human to have two legs. A person with one leg, though, is abnormal only in the sense that his condition is a deviation from the average. It’s a stretch to try to say that his condition is outside God’s intention, though. After all he clearly exists, clearly has one leg and if God’s powers are half of what his adherents say they are it would be a trivial matter to revert the fellow to the norm. It’s more sensible to say that human populations as a norm consist of individuals with two legs, some portion with one and some other with none. In that sense something outside the norm would be a ‘person’ who is a disembodied cloud of talking energy (as sometimes appeared on the original Star Trek series).
In this sense homosexuals exist as a norm of the human condition. The processes that produce populations who are, say, 90% or so heterosexual also produce a minority population that are not.
If one leg is normal in this sense then why would we take efforts to avoid people being born with one leg if we can avoid it? I would say the answer comes from examining pity. Pity is unhappiness that someone doesn’t have something he should have. A person born without legs looses the ability to enjoy all the things that can be done with legs. Hence if some drug out there ensures that such a birth defect is corrected we’d embrace it.
One does not pity someone for having something. You don’t pity the sighted person because they have eyes and don’t experience blindness. You likewise don’t pity a baby girl because she isn’t a boy (although some men do pity themselves for not having a son!). Likewise you don’t pity a man for being a man….even though it means he will never experience childbirth barring some sci-fi innovation.
I don’t think sexual attraction is inherently bad. Leaving aside reproduction (which comes far down the line after our eye first catches someone who we find attractive), it allows us to see the beauty of the well formed body in others. This is of course a very powerful and dangerous gift, a lesser analogy I can think of is alcholol, which can be greatly appreciated but is very likely to bite you very hard if you aren’t careful with it. But it nonetheless is a gift. A man then who is gay has the gift of seeing ‘sexiness’ in other men. Granted he is mostly blind to the ‘sexiness’ of women who most other men are not blind too but as I said you don’t pity someone for having something.
There are consquences to this. From the orthodox Christian perspective he will not be able to have biological children. Will not be able to even exercise his sexuality to furition with others. That’s rough but if you take the orthodox position seirously most heterosexuals would have to modify at least a majority of their sexual behavior during their lives.
Beckwith
Sometimes emotions tell us the truth.
I agree they always tell the truth about what we are feeling. In the larger reality, though, I think the problem with emotions is the word “sometimes” in your sentence. Sometimes is not enough. But I also agree that emotions cannot be divorced from truth in some type of Vulcan manner.
BOONTON: Of course you disagree that God’s norm is relevant in this discussion because you’re a non-Christian. If you were interested in understanding why Christians believe heterosexuality is God’s norm you might read the chapters in the books I mentioned. But it’s clear that you’re not really interested. Instead, you like playing semantic games. You’re using a secondary definition of “norm” as a “general level or average” whereas I’m using the primary definition as “a standard, model or pattern.” It’s this simple: for every norm there’s an exception. But please don’t go around and call the exception a norm. I sense that our exhanges have reached a point of exhaustion. I’ve written other blog posts where I invite you to opine. Peace.
“When people of faith and social conservatives invoke the `wisdom of repugnance’ to argue against same-sex marriage, I believe they are relying on the normative irrationality of projective disgust, which should have no role in the public debate and no role in our personal conduct toward homosexual persons. It’s bad argumentation and bad witness-bearing.”
You are, of course, correct that revulsion ought not to be the whole story. But I, for the life of me, cannot figure out who you are talking about in the real world. No one that I know who believes that homosexual conduct is disordered merely appeals to their own repugnance as the grounds by which they reject that conduct as immoral. That’s why I think that Nussbaum’s case is one big literary straw man. Wouldn’t be the first time, by the way. Her recent work on religious liberty elicits at least one several eye-rolls. (see Stephen D. Smith’s First Things review here: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-33720358_ITM )
Here’s my advice: Like Smith, turn your critical faculties on Nussbaum and start being as skeptical of her account as she is of the traditional Christian account. Shift the burden to her and start giving your brothers and sisters in Christ the benefit of the doubt. This, by the way, is a way to avoid a very bad habit that I find among many young Christians. They always assume that once a secularist says Christians are bad in some area that the secularist is presumed correct. Why begin by assuming the inferiority of your own tradition and its practitioners? Is that a deliverance of reason or just repugnance?
However, suppose you meet someone who has that repugnance, but is not gifted enough or interested in the complexities of the arguments to produce a rational brief against homosexual conduct. Do you think it is wise to disabuse that person of that repugnance? Suppose you berate him for being a “bad witness,” and for that reason, he cowers whenever the issue of homosexual conduct comes up for fear of being called names or ridiculed?. Is that person now better off because you have set him straight on being a “bad witness”?
Be careful when you employ the weapon of reason. Not everyone has the time nor the inclination nor the native gifts to review these matters in a detached and impartial manner. If I know of someone who is so overwhelmed by the wickedness of the Holocaust that he commits his life for the cause of religious tolerance, I am not going to suggest that he has not made his judgment with enough “reason.” To do that is cruel and not very Christian. Sometimes beliefs are appropriately formed but are not the consequence of your understanding of reason even though they are perfectly reasonable to hold.
Professor Beckwith: Maybe no one you know “believes that homosexual conduct is disordered merely appeals to their own repugnance as the grounds by which they reject that conduct as immoral,” but Nussbaum says disgust has “had some highly respectable and influential defenders in the law,” including Lord Patrick Devlin (a British lawyer in the 1950s) and more recently Leon Kass (chair of the President’s Council on Bioethics). “Nor are these positions merely academic,” she writes, “they are in tune with widespread social forces. Today, large segments of the Christian Right openly practice a politics based upon disgust. Depicting the sexual practices of lesbians and, especially, of gay men as vile and revolting, they suggest that such practices contaminate and defile society, producing decay and degeneration. Like Kass and Devlin, they believe that disgust is a reliable guide to lawmaking.”
To support her claim, Nussbaum turns to Paul Cameron (“founder and head of the Family Research Institute, which publishes voluminously on this topic and has submitted amicus briefs in several of the key gay rights causes”), Will Perkins (“the primary proponent of Colorado’s Amendment 2, the law that was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Romer v. Evans”), Peter LaBarbera (president of Americans for Truth), and Rev. Bill Banuchi (“executive director of the New York chapter of the Christian Coalition, said that gays should be legally required to wear warning labels, like those on cigarette packs”). I don’t know if this evidence is sufficient for the claim that “large segments of the Christian Right openly practice a politics based upon disgust.” Regardless of whether it’s large or small segments of the Christian Right, I submit that we should find such argumentation and witness-bearing disquieting.
I encourage you to read the first two chapters of Nussbaum’s book before you hastily dismiss her case as “one big literary straw man.” Just as you point out “a very bad habit” among young Christians who “always assume that once a secularist says Christians are bad in some area that the secularist is presumed correct,” I’ll point out another very bad habit among Christians of all ages who exercise a hermeneutics of suspicion when they should be exercising a hermeneutics of love (cf. Alan Jacobs, A Theology of Reading). I don’t sense that you’ve been charitable with Nussbaum, unlike David Novak at the University of Toronto who wrote a blurb for the book even though he disagrees with her position:
Finally, I haven’t assumed the inferiority of my tradition and its practitioners because I uphold that tradition’s consensus on homosexuality while imploring us to practice the law of love, which is irreconcilable with projective disgust.
You’re using a secondary definition of “norm” as a “general level or average” whereas I’m using the primary definition as “a standard, model or pattern.” It’s this simple: for every norm there’s an exception. But please don’t go around and call the exception a norm.
I don’t think this is a semantic game. You’re saying an exception to the norm is part of its definition. Therefore an exception is part of the norm. Which boils down to the exception being part of the intention of creating a norm in the first place.
This would seem to be in contrast to “norms” for which there are no exceptions. For example, “all humans are made of matter”. There are no exceptional humans who are fuzzy clouds of pure energy. I don’t know what term we’d use for a norm that has no valid exception so I just put “norm” in quote marks.
I suppose you’re right we have exhausted this so I’ll try to move onto other interesting blog posts here.
Having watched this discussion now for the past couple of weeks, I am more convinced than ever that we are not having a dialogue. Mr. Benson pre-determined where the conversation would end, and then invited participation. Participants, from the very first post, either supported his thesis or militated against it (myself included). I do not doubt that there is very strong case to be made for discussions, debates, soliloquies, etc. but in this particular instance I am a bit sad to not have the opportunity for dialogue. In truth I have many questions regarding this (very important and notoriously thorny) issue.
However, when Benson uses claims like “the law of love… is irreconcilable with projective disgust” in order to support his thesis: “Christian love does not allow for projective disguest vis-a-vis homosexuality” it is clear that there is no room for real participation here.
Since we’re opining here, I will throw in a final thought. It seems clear that in giving up our sense of disgust at homosexuality we open up the possibility of being perceived as more loving by homosexuals. Indeed, I grant that jettisoning our sense of disgust for any particular behavior will cause us to view the person behind the behavior with more empathy. This seems in line with the thesis in question. However, what has not been adequately addressed thus far, is the danger that could be caused by desensitizing oneself to this emotive response. One can become immune to the horrors of just about anything, but this doesn’t make it wise. It seems prudent in this case to assume the safe option (regarding human flourishing I take this to mean ‘human sin that seems to be disgusting is, in fact, dangerous’). This places the burden of proof in the lap of the anti-emotive-disgust camp. And since I already know that I can be disgusted at homosexuality AND simultaneously love homosexual people (family members, friends, etc.) I see no reason to accept this proposition. I might be interested in changing my position if I could be assured that the new position was better. But for now, I just don’t see the wisdom in exchanging a known good (my position has worked for most of Christian history AND continues to work for me in the po-mo era) for an unknown probably-good.
Christof: I don’t know what you’re looking for in a blog dialogue, but in my experience it’s unusual for a blogger to dignify nearly every comment with a response. Do you think the purpose of a dialogue is to persuade the other of your own position? A modest goal is to interface with others, discovering our own unexamined assumptions, challenging the unexamined assumptions of the other interlocutor, and always working toward greater clarity of expression and thought.
Where you have pointed out “the danger that could be caused by desensitizing oneself to this emotive response,” I’ve tried to point out the danger that is caused by showing projective disgust toward image-bearers of God (e.g., Jew, African-American, homosexual). Both dangers should be avoided if you mean that we should be on guard against diminishing sin. Where you “can be disgusted at homosexuality AND simultaneously love homosexual people,” I’m able to regard homosexual behavior (not orientation) as a sin AND simultaneously reject disgust at homosexual persons. Interestingly, you think your position is consistent with “most of Christian history” as do I. If someone were to monitor our conduct toward the homosexual neighbor, my guess is that our conduct would appear similar even though our thinking follows slightly different trajectories.