I went over to that blog to read the comments and I thought you did a pretty clear job of laying out a basic case. I think cases like this demonstrate two things about “reasoning”:

1. How much of our arguments can be boiled down to terminological disputes. What is “sexual orientation” exactly? How it is defined has a great deal to do with how it relates conceptually to acts. Any resonable interpretation will include acts in my opinion. But there’s that word “reasonable.”

2. The degree to which reason is a tool deployed in the service of our prior commitments. As Hume noted: reason is the slave of the passions. something that the “reasonable” sometimes forget.

It’s odd to say the least that one could be considered a homosexual in orientation, but refrain from acts. Its the acts that typically identify people as X. If I were orientated as a Christian for example, and went around saying Jesus didn’t exist, that God didn’t exist, refused to pray and give alms, and otherwise conducted myself as a staunch atheist, but defended my Christian orientation, I think many people would question the veracity of my orientation.

Not to say that acts are the only distinguishing feature of an orientation, but it seems to be a significant component to having the orientation (e.g. homosexuals in the closet who live a heterosexual life.)

Ultimately we have freedom to do both, have orientations, and engage in the acts that are consistent with the orientation. It wouldn’t be freedom of religion if you could simply have a stated religion of say Islam, and not be allowed to pray or engage in the religious rituals of the Islamic faith. The same should be the same with homosexuality. Should Christians defend their position, they are undermining their own freedom to practice their own religion.

Didn’t Jesus hang out with the whores and the publicans (bartenders)? It seems like the so-called Christian Colleges are taking the positions of the Pharisees, who Jesus criticized for their hypocrisy and squareness. By the way, if we eliminate homosexuals from the history of philosophy, we are going to lose a lot of key players like Socrates and Wittgenstein, probably Nietzsche. And then there are all those life-long bachelors who strangely never married or showed any interest in the opposite sex
like Spinoza and Kant. Was Kant a closet case?
Why don’t the so-called Christian colleges move to Iran? They would fit in well there.

Shouldn’t the Bible be due for a new updated edition? Would anyone teach a college course using an introductory text that was 10 years old - not to mention 2000 years old? Don’t we need updates on evolution, slavery, women, homosexuality to name a few?

1.Rightly or wrongly, just as it is unreasonable for Christians to demand a Christian government in a country that does not, for the most part, share their beliefs, it is unreasonable for we non-Christians to expect them to run their institutions as if they shared our beliefs. Many Christian universities believe very strongly that sex outside of marriage is categorically wrong, AND that marriage can only occur between a man and a woman. While we may not share that belief, it is a biggie in Christianity and it is unreasonable for us to expect them to change it. The same institutions would also contend that “real” Christians abstain from willingly going against those beliefs, and would take homosexual practice, like adultery, as a sign that one never was or is no longer a Christian, which takes us into the type of discrimination that IS permitted.

2. The same contracts that require one to abstain from gay sexual activity also require unmarried people to abstain from straight sexual activity. In a way, heterosexuality IS treated as moral pathology.

3. Jean paints a picture of a lonely, dejected gay professor (alone on Christmas, perhaps) in the midst of gleeful sexually and emotionally fulfilled straight colleagues, ignoring the fact that there exist, of any orientation, many voluntarily celibate people (like Kant and Spinoza. . .), many involuntarily celibate people, and many people who have paired off but are miserable. Sexual activity and romantic bonding are not considerable determinants of true happiness (if philosophers are right, anyway), and it seems like an appeal to emotion to suggest that gay people can’t be happy without partners. Is it “creepy” to suggest that straight women can be happy without husbands?

4. Amos, a publican is a tax collector, and Socrates was praised by Alcibiades for his lack of sexual interest in beautiful youths. I don’t know about Spinoza or Kant.

5. Michael, the writings we have about Socrates are more than 2000 years old, although much of the Bible is older than that, so maybe your point still holds.

Pat: According to my Webster’s Dictionary, a publican can mean a tax collector, as you affirm, or the licensee of a public house or pub. According to my Collin’s English dictionary, a publican is the keeper of a public house or pub. There are several Platonic dialogues where Socrates gossips about his interest in beautiful youth: he never shows much interest in women. I don’t if either Kant or Spinoza were voluntarily celibate, closet gays or just had bad luck with the opposite sex. Still, one wonders. Wittgenstein was gay. Nietzsche too, according to recent biographies. However, let’s go to the heart of your argument. The fact that many Christians believe that sex between two members of the same sex (or gender) is wrong doesn’t justify anything. There are many racists who believe that sex between two members of different races is wrong, and that certainly doesn’t justify any discrimination against people who have sex or marry people of another race (yes, I know that races are social constructs, as in fact, are gender identities). I just don’t know why Christians, when they are bigots, have some kind of special status which the KKK or the SS doesn’t have.
As to Jean’s picture of the lonely gay professor, the Greek word for friendship, “philia”, covers a lot more than playing tennis together, and according to Aristotle, friendship (philia) is one of the keys to a good life.

error: the sentence should read: I don’t know if Kant or Spinoza were voluntarily celibate, closet gays or just had bad luck with the opposite sex. Schopenhauer too. Descartes? Actually, not too many males are voluntarily celibate, at least not before they reach the age of Viagra.

Amos,many racists do indeed believe that sex between different races is wrong, and if there were avowedly racist universities we shouldn’t be surprised (regardless of whether or not we agreed with them)if they sought to hire committed racists and used the race of one’s sex partners to determine the depth of one’s commitment. Luckily, there are no avowedly racist universities, so we don’t have this problem. The only way to make the problem in question go away is to eradicate Christian universities, which is currently legally impossible and probably not road we want to start down.

As for whether or not Christians are bigots and therefore comparable to racists (I’m sure you aren’t suggesting by your SS/KKK comparison that the hiring policies of a University are ever comparable to genocide or lynchings), while there are undoubtedly many Christians who sincerely hate and are disgusted by gay people, there are certainly a considerable number who hate no one and make a sincere moral objection to homosexual activity, just as they object to much heterosexual activity. By declaring all objectors bigots, one avoids having to actually debate the moral question and may actually beg it. If we had some conclusive proof that there was never any reason to doubt the morality of gay sex and that the only objection to it was based on disgust then your broad strokes would be entirely justified; regrettably, arguments for the morality or immorality of pretty much anything are usually less than conclusive.

As for “philia”, I’m no linguist, but I’m certain that while the word indeed covers more than just “playing tennis together” it does not cover sex (with anyone). I am less certain, but still pretty sure, that Socrates, in the Platonic dialogues at least, expressed an aesthetic appreciation for beautiful youths but stopped short of sexual interest. Please correct me on this point if I am wrong.

PS: “Publican” as used in the Bible means a sort of general civil servant and tax farmer. Jesus didn’t need to hang out with bartenders. He could make wine whenever he wanted to.

Pat, Did I mention Christmas? No. But you do have to think concretely about what we’re talking about here. It’s is a huge thing, and completely bizarre, to expect gay faculty to throw out their partners, in order to take a job. There’s no principle that says a professional association must tolerate anything that goes on in religious colleges. We’re not talking here about the more challenging issue of the federal government stepping into the matter. It seems well within a professional association’s rights to say some ways of running a school are beyond the pale. Some racist church school cannot require all the black faculty to be celibate, surely. A sex-crazed church couldn’t require that female faculty participate in weekly orgies or have sex daily with the church chaplain. Sure, some tolerance for religious diversity is well and good, but not everything has to be tolerated. It is the opinion of the vast majority of APA members that prohibiting gay sex is beyond the pale–just crazy, like mandatory orgies would be crazy. On that basis, I see no reason why the APA shouldn’t withhold support for these schools.

Jean:
Reading over the blog ‘prosblogion’ I thought that you might have done better. Your arguments were weak, analogies weren’t apposite. The pleading and leading at 6:43 was I thought let down gently by Andrew Moon at 8:31. You seemed not to be as sharp as you usually are, nor well prepared. It is an attitude that defeats the liberal intelligentsia time and time again. ‘These people are stupid, no right thinking person would hold these views, I can’t be bothered to give it any mental room etc.’ It think that it is significant that Federal Law as it stands today lags behind the religious institutions that say ‘nature ok, practice not’. Yes I understand that you consider this distinction frail beyond rational consideration but your interlocutors were able to proffer the analogy of the sober alcoholic which underlined the validity of profound orientation that remains
unexpressed .

You philosophers with your crazy questions! [sic] I don’t have much legal advice on this one because the federal laws (that my agency enforces) do not protect workers based on their sexual orientation. Yes, under federal law, you can tell someone, “I won’t hire you because you are gay.” But certain cities (180 in 2006) have such laws and many states (15 in 2006) prohibit such discrimination.. ENDA, the federal law against sexual orientation discrimination (spearheaded by Ted Kennedy) has been stuck in Congress for years. That will mean it’s against the law everywhere, and people will be able to prosecute it in federal court.

These epithets, creepy, sly, mean-spirited are (a) unjust (b) bad politics. There are some ideologues on that list, Prusss channels Pope Benedict but Moon seems decent. Brandon is sound .

There’s a book by Angus Wilson who was openly homosexual (pronounced in the upper class manner homa.segs.shoe.elle) called The Middle Age of Mrs.Elliot.
It’s a classic portrait of a beautiful, brave woman, what befalls her and how she copes. Warm, sympathetic and not in the least strained. Her brother who is gay runs a large garden centre with his lover, an intensely religious person (Anglican) that insists on a companionate relationship. The brother kept to his mode of abstainance but the lover has been a bit promiscuous in the past. Now however he is dying of cancer. A grown up read from the late 50’s. Seize it if you find it in the barrows.

If the APA feels that it should be ahead of the Federales, go with it, but hey we need to stop thinking in terms of ‘steenkin baches’.

By the way Ted do not accept a knighthood from the Queen. The nationalist people of Northern Ireland that you supported resolutely over the years will hold you in contempt.
Arise Sir Ted
Get out of bed
And plow the rocks of bawn.

Just because a specific act is not itself a clear case of discrimination is not enough to determine that it is acceptable. Consider the case of racial slurs. No one would argue that it is impossible to use such words without them actually being discriminatory, it surely is. However, it is generally accepted that any usage, no matter how innocuous, is at the very least extremely questionable, and it’s probably best to just have a blanket avoidance (certainly in the case of ‘official’ language). This is because of their historical usage in many many cases of genuine discrimination.

I would think a similar argument could be advanced here. Even if the Christian Colleges had managed to very carefully word their rules to be actually non-discriminatory (which I don’t accept, and just advancing for the sake or argument), given the long historical (and contemporary) practice of genuine discrimination against homosexuals via the criminilisation of sexual acts, this sort of thing is still very suspect, and simply not something society should be willing to accept at the moment.

Pat: Since in the past, although not recently, Christians have burned to death heretics, sodomites, Jews and other personas non gratas, I see no problem comparing them to organizations like the KKK when they regress to attitudes of bigotry.

“Philia” can refer to a relationship between lovers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love

Anyway, “philia” seems to refer more to a type of relationship than to whom you have it with. “Eros” is a relationship of desire; “philia” of sharing, of the meeting of true minds. “Philia” is the type of relationship found in a successful marriage, straight or gay, after the passion has calmed. For purely sociological reasons (people move more than they did back in ancient Athens; people work more and have less time for friends), “philia” in contemporary society is more likely to develop in a long-term love relationship than in a conventional friendship, although it can develop in the latter. The so-called Christian colleges, in denying gay people the possibility of having sexual relationships with members of their own sex, are therefore limiting the possibility of philia in their lives, philia being classed as essencial to a good life by Aristotle, by Epicurus and by most contemporary psychologists.

Michael, Actually, I agree. I wasn’t that much on my toes over there. I was, truth be told, just trying to see my way with these things. It took me a while to figure out what I really thought about the matter as a whole. I’m happier with what I wrote here.

I do think the Christian conservatives are being devious when they press the act/orientation thing. We all know that the intent of anti-discrimination statutes is to stop gay people from being treated as second class. So it is devious of the Christians to press the idea that these statutes are consistent with treating gay people like they were pedophiles, alcoholics, felons…and thus as second class. It comes off as a desperate search for a loophole. And then you start wondering why they want the loophole so badly. How can they really strive for a situation in which gay people must throw out their partners as a condition of employment? It’s ugly.

But sure, to them it’s not ugly. It’s kind to help these disordered people get themselves back in order. Yes, the folks over at Prosblogion are calm and clever and nice, but I’m afraid they are also naive. They seem to have lots and lots of gay friends, all joyously finding God by denying themselves sex and companionship. I very much doubt this stance is going to work for these people over the long haul. But in any event, what does it matter that some gay people are willing to go along with the model of themselves as alcoholics, felons, pedophiles, etc? The question here is whether anyone should be required to adopt that attitude as a condition of employment.

I think the strongest argument these folks could make does not involve the sly act-orientation maneuver, but just plain old religious pluralism. As in–it’s a church, so literally anything goes. But then, the APA’s just a professional association, and does not owe it’s support to any and all institutions. I rather liked my example of the sex-crazed church, above at 11:33. I don’t think the APA should assist them in finding female faculty, if they’re going to be required to participate in the school’s sex rituals. That’s beyond the pale. By the same token, it’s beyond the pale to regard homosexuality as being like alcoholism, or any other disorder, and then make the lives of gay people miserable on that basis.

Re: Ted. I say he should turn it down because we don’t “do” knighthood over here. “Sir X” strikes us as medieval.

Jean said somewhere earlier that the APA is a professional association and can do what its members want, which is true. So practically there doesn’t seem to be a question here at all. Put it to a vote and go with the numbers.

But morally, the attitudes involved here seem reducable to “The APA is right because homosexuality is not wrong” and “Christian colleges are right because homosexuality is wrong.” The Christian Colleges think homosexuality is wrong because God told them so, in one way or another. It’s hard to talk someone out of that viewpoint, so for Christians, the matter is settled. I am confused by how settled the matter is for the posters here, who clearly have some moral knowledge that I do not. So help me. Can someone here, without resorting to appeals to emotion, Nazi comparisons, or the muddling of “legal” with “moral”, please explain how we KNOW that sex between adults is morally neutral, if not right. Make it its own post, if need be. I would greatly appreciate whatever clarification anyone can provide.

Lets say, for the sake of argument, that we don’t know. Given that we don’t know one way or the other, what basis do we have for restricting homosexuality? Should we restrict on the basis of “it might be wrong, but it also might not?”

Because someone said that they DO know because they read it in a book? They haven’t proved their case, so given that the question remains open, we have no basis to restrict freedom.

The Bible says we should stone adulterers. How do YOU KNOW that we shouldn’t stone adulterers. You tell me. I would greatly appreciate whatever clarification you can provide.

Faust, 3 points:

1. Under your argument we have another draw. You say we should allow acts of unproven morality, I (tentatively) say we should restrict them, and we are back at the impasse. You go on to suggest that the only reason anyone might object to homosexual activity is because one is a Biblical literalist. I am not a religious person, but I am interested in moral reasoning and I find “There is a God, so don’t” just as convincing as “No there isn’t, so go ahead”, which is to say: not very.

2. I don’t know that we shouldn’t stone adulterers, but the basis for restricting freedom in open moral questions -could be- ease of reversal. (Could be)

If we are unsure about stoning adulterers, would it not be best not to stone them, since we can always stone them later if new information comes to light (since the Bible doesn’t tell us exactly WHEN to stone them)? After all, if we are unsure and we stone them, we can’t undo our actions if it turns out we were wrong (which is bad, assuming we want to minimize the number and gravity of our wrong actions). The analogy is admittedly imperfect, since either having stoned them or not having stoned them could turn out to be immoral (as either not having hired someone or having hired them could turn out to be immoral) but it is something to consider.

3. Thanks for the paraphrase of my request for clarification, but it causes me to fear you may think my request was less than serious or somehow snide. I really am interested in how people have settled this question (which seems totally open to me in the absence of any divine revelation) so conclusively.

Amendment: I don’t exactly tentatively say we should restrict acts of unproven morality (since it seems to me that every act is of unproven morality) but that it is not unreasonable to restrict them.

Pat, You ask a good question. My take on it is that it’s up to the critic to say what’s morally different about gay and straight relationships, since on the face of it they are no different. Many possible answers to this question don’t hold up under scrutiny (I won’t go through all the possibilities–there are many). Of course, “God disapproves” is one answer, but if I think there’s no God, or don’t think he disapproves, I have no reason to be impressed with that. Since you want to know how people really have settled this for themselves, I’ll confess that many moon ago I didn’t have quite such a liberal take on these things. I came to my current outlook in precisely the way I’ve described.

Jean, your response is basically the equivalent of answering “why not?” to the question “why,” taking the rightness of the act as a sort of article of faith just as much as those who take its wrongness the same way.

But if the burden of proof does rest on the critic, it seems important to me to note that the first humans likely practiced heterosexual sex (as evidenced by the existence of second humans), so the original critics or dissenters were those who first defended gay sex and whose arguments I am searching for here.

A big problem here (or maybe it’s just my problem) seems to be the definition of morality and the framing of the debate in terms of “relationships.”. You said that the critic must outline “what’s morally different about gay and straight relationships,” but can we even describe relationships as moral or immoral? Are those designations not reserved for specific acts? Unless you were using “relationship” in a sexual sense, in which case biology might require us to consider Kant’s formula of universal law (if we have any duty to posterity).

Lastly, it isn’t clear to me how you came to your present outlook. Do you mean you arrived there after considering the objections that don’t hold up under scrutiny?

(Sorry for taking this post off topic)

(But not sorry enough to stop)

Pat: I see it this way. Loving relations between human beings (consenting adults) are good and in addition, hard to find, scarce: it’s a cold, cruel world. Therefore, loving relations between two members of the same sex are good. Even if the relations only involve giving and receiving physical pleasure, pleasure is also a good.

Pat, I can see how “right” and “wrong” might not seem applicable–maybe “good” and “bad” are better.

The burden does seem to be on the critic to say “why not?” since gay relationships have a lot of pluses, at first glance. They are similar to other relationships I deem good. They involve love, friendship, pleasure, etc., all of which are good “ingredients.” They are the preference of the people involved in them, and that’s some prima facie reason to approve. They don’t seem to harm or hurt anyone, at least any more than straight relationships. So, with all that going for them, the initial judgment has to be “good”…or at least “not bad.” It’s up to the critic to dispel this illusion of innocence, if it really is an illusion. And then you go through all the possible arguments, and it turns out they’re all terrible.

Being a sort of traditional, conservative person at heart, I’ve actually been through this thought process, especially with respect to gay marriage. Once upon a time I was not convinced, then I became convinced because I couldn’t think of any good reason “why not?”

Amos, only moral pleasures are good (aren’t they?), so your point about pleasure is question-begging, and I doubt that you really consider relations loving if they only involve exchanging physical pleasure (and since unrequited love is still love, the physical pleasures presumably need not be exchanged so much as merely transferred, and that would automatically make prostitutes, masseuses and ice-cream scoopers the most loving people in the world).

Nevertheless, I think I know what you meant. Reciprocally loving relations between any two people (adults or otherwise, although perhaps a child cannot really love an adult in the way we’re thinking of here) are good if anything is, but is that goodness transferable to any act that follows from those relations? Killing for love is frowned upon because we take most killing to be immoral.
Giving to charity out of love is approved of because we accept true charity as being moral. Shagging for love seems to be ignored because we take shagging to be morally neutral, but for all three of these examples I have read no solid arguments for or against their morality (moralities?). The question is not whether love is good, but whether the individual acts it inspires are, and your post doesn’t really address that convincingly (although it is brief; maybe you could post a more detailed version)

Pat: Most of what you say is true, but it applies to straight loving relations as well as to gay ones. Straight people kill out of “love” too. I could narrow the definition of “love” to what Erich Fromm talks about in “The Art of Loving”: relations based on knowledge of the other, care and respect (if I recall his terms correctly), and say Fromm-type love is good. However, I have no reason to believe that there is any more or less Fromm-type love in straight than in gay relations. So let’s take a normal loving relationship (neither Fromm-type nor “I killed her because she was mine”), gay or straight, and we have to decide whether it is good or bad that John found Mary or John found Bill and that they both call it “love”. Most of us in daily life tend to find it good that John and Mary form a relationship, don’t we? We rejoice at weddings, because in general we see it as good that John and Mary find each other and want to be together. Why isn’t it good that John and Bill form a similar relationship?

Pat,

1. Under your argument we have another draw. You say we should allow acts of unproven morality, I (tentatively) say we should restrict them, and we are back at the impasse.

Um no. We are not an impasse, and you insist on going round in circles. We should allow acts about which we have no proven moral result rather than restrict them because FREEDOM is a good that we allow up to the point where it has harmful effects.

To restrict a behavior means we are doing something to someone, we are reducing their freedom. In order to justify a restriction we have to give a reason. If the reason we give is indeterminate, if we cannot make a strong determination of good or bad, right or wrong, then we have insufficient reason to restrict freedom.

If you have a good reason to restrict the behavior of homosexuals and prevent them from freely expressing their desires then by all means lay it out, otherwise there is nothing further to discuss.

I’m not sure that the analogy to muslims works here. What is a “muslim orientation”? It seems to me that religion is entirely about acts. Discrimination laws are meant to prevent things like me not hiring you because I don’t like muslims, or other prejudices that are totally unrelated to the job.

In the case of Christian colleges, however, it has a direct impact on the job. The people who go to such colleges have the expectation of being instilled with Christian values there. In order to actually practice homosexual behaviors means to believe such actions are moral, which is to reject Christian teaching. Let’s not forget that heterosexuals have been afftected by such policies, too (for example see http://www.catholiccitizens.org/platform/platformview.asp?c=30764 )

We also must not forget that Christian positions on sex and sexuality don’t just come from thin air but are based on a long-standing philosophical tradition, and the APA disallowing such philosophies might be discriminatory in itself.

I think being a Muslim is an orientation, until you act on it. I don’t see a problem there.

As to job-relevance.

Further up in the comments, I suggested we imagine a sex-crazed religion. Faculty are expected to participate in weekly orgies in the church. It might be argued that these are job-related requirements, because the students wouldn’t get properly inculcated with the sex-crazed religion if there were resistors on the faculty. Must the APA support such a school, advertising its positions? Of course not. Likewise, the APA can decide the Christian colleges are expecting behavior that is beyond the pale, no matter how rooted in some tradition.

Asking for marital fidelity from heterosexuals is one thing, but asking for celibacy from homosexuals is completely different. Conservatives tend to bank on a similarity that’s due to the contingent fact that gay marriage is illegal, so that gay partnerships are always out of wedlock. But that just obscures a huge difference between expecting fidelity and expecting celibacy. There’s a huge difference in costs to well-being. It saddens me to see smart people willfully ignoring this difference, as in here. (see point (a))

Orientation implies some predisposition that is out of our control. People can and do change religions all the time.

Just because a tradition exists doesn’t mean there are valid philosophical underpinnings behind it. It’s hard to discuss the sex-crazed religion in detail precisely because it’s hypothetical. The APA can choose anyone it wants to advertise, of course; it would just be odd to dismiss the scholastic school as not being philosophical.

Not everyone in the world is going to marry, therefore some people are expected to be celibate, including heterosexuals. I consider both to be fulfilling and actually am actually on the path to lifelong celibacy myself. Arguments based on the legality of marriage gets circular, but homosexual sex and heterosexual sex are intrisically different, on the same level that men and women are intrinsically different. The two are not interchangable.

Please explain how homosexual and heterosexual sex are intrinsically different. Several genetic/developmental conditions exist which make this moot. For instance, testicular feminization arises from a mutation that makes tissues unresponsive to androgens. These individuals are chromosomally male, but phenotypically female with breasts and a blind vagina. They cannot have children. With whom should they be allowed to have sex?

Don’t try to fall back on procreation unless you want fertility tests before marriage.

The world is not black and white.

We are talking about a decision made by two consenting adults - what is the basis for not allowing them to make their own decision?

Of course sex is about procreation; it’s silly to deny such a simple truth. Not every act of sex has to result in procreation, however. An infertile couple can still acknowledge that what they do is ordered toward procreation.

Fertility isn’t the issue as much as the actual marital act is physically impossible between two men or two women (and yes, impotence would be equally problematic in the case of a heterosexual couple as well)

Of courseeveryone is free to make their own choices, whether they be right or wrong. Remember, though, we’re not talking about a universal ban on sexual acts or anything of the sort, just whether certain religious institutions need be permissive of them and if not whether that is discriminatory.

Tolkienan

Orientation implies some predisposition that is out of our control. People can and do change religions all the time.

I don’t think the changeableness is really very pertinent here. However, if it’s up for debate, then I’d take issue with your contention that religion is so changeable. I’d also point out that the conservative crowd tends to see sexual orientation as changeable. They want to correct the disorder of homosexuality, not just contain it.

As to what the issue is here, you say–

We’re not talking about a universal ban on sexual acts or anything of the sort, just whether certain religious institutions need be permissive of them and if not whether that is discriminatory

But the issue is even narrower. It’s whether a professional association has to support the hiring endeavors of these Christian colleges. The debate would look quote different if the issue was whether the feds should step in.

I’m going to repeat what I’ve said before: why is bigotry acceptable in so-called Christian colleges and not in other institutions which are bigoted. Why is Christian bigotry somehow sacred and to be respected and not the bigotry of a racist college or an antisemitic college? Bigotry is bigotry and it is wrong, whether done in the name of Christianity or of
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It amazes me that intelligent philosophers, in this blog, can defend discrimination against gays. Perhaps it’s a matter of testing their wits against Jean, but aren’t there better ways of testing one’s wits? Computer chess is great.

I don’t think the changeableness is really very pertinent here. However, if it’s up for debate, then I’d take issue with your contention that religion is so changeable. I’d also point out that the conservative crowd tends to see sexual orientation as changeable. They want to correct the disorder of homosexuality, not just contain it.

If we’re talking about that level of conservatism I don’t think they would make the orientation/behavior distinction to begin with– but I digress.

The importance is in the fact that we discriminate on the basis of chosen behaviors all the time. One might even say that screening resumes is itself a form of discrimination. But this is an accepted discrimination because the resume tells something about who the person is by the accomplishments one has made. Things that are considered unacceptable to discriminate over are those that do not define us as a person because we have no control over them– eye color, skin color, etc. There is zero correlation between these and our actions and accomplishments. A religion is a little different, as it actually does say something about yourself and I would argue is defined more by behavior (A muslim is one who does not eat pork, prays 5 times a day, etc). Sometimes people are rejected on the basis of religion for irrelevent, bigoted reasons (”I just don’t like muslims”) but sometimes there can be a legitimate conflict of interest (a hindu working at Burger King). The orientation/behavior distinction is important because the orientation falls in the skin color/ eye color category but the behavior does not.

But the issue is even narrower. It’s whether a professional association has to support the hiring endeavors of these Christian colleges. The debate would look quote different if the issue was whether the feds should step in.

True. I already gave the short answer as they can do whatever they want, but by rejecting their advertisements on the basis of unfair discrimination brings up the question as to whether they are truly being unfairly discriminatory.

And if you believe in miracles, homosexual sex might lead to procreation; two eggs just might fuse and create a zygote.
Do you believe that colleges could tell a married couple with a female without a uterus or ovaries or male who could not produce sperm to not engage in sex?

Tolkienian,

I don’t think the act/orientation business helps you make your case.

What if a school had rules against “black” behavior. So–no listening to black music, no black diction, no black-associated fashion. The reason for this is that the college has a white supremact outlook. They think everything black is bad, to be suppressed and corrected as much as possible. Maybe they even expect people to apply skin creams, a la Michael Jackson. Yet, they actually welcome black students and faculty, as long as they comply. Indeed, they’re even eager to have them, because that gives the supremacists a chance to erase and correct their bad black characteristics.

I think somebody could make arguments analogous to yours that this is actually not at all discriminatory. After all, the rules relate to things that are within people’s control, and relevant to the school’s mission. And the white students aren’t allowed to wear black fashions or listen to black music either, so it’s all perfectly equitable.

This may just squeeze between the cracks of an anti-discrimination statutes (a technical legal question), but it is obviously a gross violation of the spirit of these statutes The intent of anti-discrimination statutes is surely not just to stop people being treated based on traits they have no control over, but to give diverse people the same opportunity to flourish. That’s what anti-black U. doesn’t do, and that’s what these Christian colleges don’t do.

Certainly, in the minds of people at both places, there’s a rationale for all that is done. But for outsiders, looking on, there’s nothing but grotesque intolerance and bigotry. I feel a little sympathy, in the sense that it must be painful not feeling understood. But not that much, since that’s nothing compared to the pain that these kinds of policies cause to gay people.

Jean,

Your analogy actually does well for my point. You set up a (false) notion that there exist black “behaviors” that stem from a black “orientation.” But maybe the black students like Chopin and Weird Al? Does that make them somehow less black? Similarly, can’t a homosexual believe homosexual behaviors to be immoral and be committed to a celibate life? It actually comes across as equally disturbing to expect certain people with certain traits to invariably yield certain behaviors. Meanwhile I hold everyone to the same high standard regardless of who they are. That to me seems more in line of the ideals of civil rights– to be treated no differently than anyone else.

Tolkie: Are you for real? Why should a homosexual believe that his affective and sexual life is immoral? Should he or she hate him or herself for what he is, especially since being gay harms no one?
Tolkie, baby, a long time ago a gay man remarked to me: everyone’s gay until proven otherwise and there’s no proof. What about you, Tolkie, baby?
Even Freud, hardly a homosexual, noted that those who most objected to homosexuality were repressing their own homosexuality. So, Tolkie, sweetie, honey-pie, what are you repressing?

Tolkienian, Nope, you can’t evade my analogy by pretending there is no black culture, no set of activities and behaviors that blacks often enjoy.

Jean, Sorry, but your tastes are not dictated by your skin. The fact that so many of the same skin color share the same tastes has to do with a shared history, experience, and geography, and much of that history involved racial demarcations. Also remember that the morality of the black culture is a subject of dispute within the black community itself. When a black leader criticizes the lewd lyrics of a black rapper, he obviously isn’t taking a position against blacks but on the merits of the song itself.

Tolkienian,
Why do you insist on all homosexual acts being immoral? How did you come to that conclusion? Why should an accident of development sentence someone to a life without sex?

Here are four cases - should Christian Colleges not hire or, if hired, fire these individuals for their behavior?

a) a woman falls in love with another woman and she spends the rest of her life in a monogamous relationship based in part on love, mutual respect and sex with this woman.

b) a woman falls in love with a man, they marry and during a rough patch she has an affair. She remains married to the same man her entire life.

c) a woman falls in love with a man, they marry, but they grow apart and divorce. She remarries later and never has sex outside of marriage.

d) a woman falls in love with a man, they marry and maintain a monogamous relationship for their entire lives. They only engage in oral sex.

Tolkienian, Of course. Tastes are not dictated by your skin color. But you said that if rules are aimed at behavior people can change, then they’re not discriminatory. All the rules at my hypothetical White Supremacy Univerersity are aimed at stuff people can change. Plus, WSU very equitably applies the same rules to all. Yet it’s a hideously racist place. I think that shows that you’re working with an overly narrow notion of discrimination when you defend Christian colleges, which are analogous in relevant respects. Relevance is important here. Just pointing out this or that dissimilarity doesn’t undermine the analogy or the argument I’m making by using it. But I’ll leave it to you to ponder and either agree or disagree.

Jean:
We need to distinguish between an analogy and a homology or parallel. In an analogy the likeness is narrowly focussed, in the homology the likeness is global. My irascibility that I’m working on by not expressing is like the homosexual behaviour that is not being expressed in just that one aspect alone. There is no global symmetry. Having an irascible predisposition is a bad thing just because it is something that I can deal with. In short the differences between the two conditions are multiple, the likeness is single.

I know that you have trouble with the distinction between a fundamental predisposition and the expression of that predisposition. You perhaps hold that humans are absolutely subject to their predispositions in a behaviouristic way. Perhaps it is also a case of logic. One cannot act without having a predisposition to that act, it can’t come out of nowhere. Not to have acted is not to have had that predisposition. Therefore the distinction between predisposition and act is notional and not real.

Tolkenian:
When worlds collide. Shock, horror, gasp, splutter. That was a good point about fair and unfair discrimination. One imagines the headlines: APA chief slams ‘last redoubt of Thomism’.

Michael, I don’t see your point. The similarity between White Supremacist University and one of these Christian Colleges is partial, but sufficient for purposes of examining the defense being offered for the Christian Colleges.

It matters not that gayness is more clearly a propensity for certain activities than Africanness is a propensity for certain activities. What we are testing out is the claim that it is not discriminatory to forbid activities, especially when they are forbidden for everyone.

In the Christian case, the activities are sex outside of marriage, which encompasses all gay sex in a society where gay marriage is illegal.. In the WSU case the activities are all those that blacks find expressive of their identity. Don’t complain that there aren’t any such things–there simply are. (This is particularly obvious in the US, so put WSU in the US.) At WSU, as I described it above, these activities are prohibited for both blacks and whites.

There’s a further parallel I emphasized. Just as Christians say they welcome gays, but not gay behavior, we could easily imagine that at WSU they welcome blacks, but not “black” behavior. In fact, they’re eager to have blacks on campus because it gives them a chance to eradicate some “black” behavior. They hate the sin, not the sinner. They find it an interesting challenge to cure blacks of their tendencies.

There is enough of a parallel that this does allow us to examine the claim at hand–that as long as just activities are prohibited, and they’re prohibited for everyone alike, then nothing discriminatory is going on. Certainly the spirit of anti-discriminatory laws is being grossly violated.

By the same token the APA’s attempt to defend gays from discrimination is violated at Christian colleges, if not in letter, than clearly in spirit.

One more thing: while I don’t accept that gay behavior is immoral, let’s suppose that it is. Now, there are lots of immoral behaviors: littering, polluting, not returning your library books, lying, breaking promises, not avoiding splashing water on pedestrians when you drive your car in the rain, not cleaning up your dog’s execrement on the side-walk, etc. Do the Christian colleges expressly state that they exclude people who may commit the whole list of immoral behaviors or do they single out gay behaviors? And if they single out gay behaviors, what evidence or arguments do they have that gay behaviors are more immoral than not avoiding splashing water on pedestrians when you drive in the rain?

Amos, But they don’t “exclude” people who engage in gay behaviors. They hire them, but tell them to quite the behaviors. “Welcome gays, no gay behavior.” That “having it both ways” is what creates room for debate here and makes the whole thing interesting (to me, anyway).

Jean: Ok, but of all the things considered immoral in this world, from not covering your nose when you sneeze in a crowded room to lying to yourself to making cruel jokes about people with weight problems, why do they single out gay behavior (after being hired)? Do faculty members have to take daily lie detector tests to make sure that they haven’t made any cruel jokes about fat people, that they haven’t engaged in malicious gossip about other faculty members, that they haven’t coveted someone’s wife or car? That’s why I consider the so-called Christian colleges to be a case for Dr. Freud. Why are they so frightened by gay behavior? They say gay behavior is immoral. In what way is it immoral? Is there a Kantian, consequentialist, virtue theory or care-ethics argument which shows that there is anything immoral about gay behavior? Is there any evidence that gay philosophers are less able to teach philosophy than straight ones? By the way, a gay philosopher, Wittgenstein, is leading Leiter’s poll of the greatest philosophers of the last 2 centuries? And a philosopher who is thought by many to be gay, Nietzsche, is number two?

Indeed. Maybe they should make people sign oaths and promise to give more to the poor. They are obsessed with sex because…well, because they are obsessed with sex.

Leiter’s polls are fun.

Jean wrote:

Michael, I don’t see your point. The similarity between White Supremacist University and one of these Christian Colleges is partial, but sufficient for purposes of examining the defence being offered for the Christian Colleges.

Jean:
My point is a technical one. An analogy is not, nor does it purport to offer, a global similarity or parallel or homology. You seem to think that an analogy is only effective if it carries a large range of likeness. The ultimate perfect analogy would then be in that case identity. Which is absurd.

Some glitch in delivery made me miss the WSU post which is, I suppose, a figment. Not persuasive and even in an unconscious way legitimising stereotypes. Will they be forced to take up ice-hockey those WSU African Americans? Being the person that you are black, white or beige comes with your typical character and propensities some of which you may choose to express and some not. You appear to be have a behaviouristic concept in which people are determined to act by their make up. That is not true. Many heterosexual people do not marry, have companionate marriages or have sex on the lunar eclipse as a definite thing. An open homosexual in Ireland who is a Senator and self described as “Ireland’s stately homo” claims to be an inert volcano.

You have not shown nor can you show that propensity and action cannot be separated. Now I’m going to watch Woody H. in A Prairie Home Companion the America I like not this politically symmetrical compost activator.

Jean, Why is it a given that WSU is white supremacist? For example, say it is rap music that it has banned. The reason for this is that their lyrics contain profanity, womanizing, and drug use. News of this policy travels around, the context being lost along the way. Some people at the APA assume they mean to “supress black identity” and petition to have WSU advertisements removed from their publications. I think this is a far more accurate analogy to the matter at hand.

amos, Homosexual acts go against the nature and purpose of sex as understood by the natural law and scholastic thought. Thus it offends the dignity of the human person. It is a conclusion drawn from a philosophy you may disagree with, but you cannot say it is bigotry, that is an irrational prejudice.

I think that the reason homosexuality and other issues of sex gets more air time than littering, lying, etc. is that these things are generally understood to be immoral, even by the people who commit them. The failure to acknowledge an action as immoral is perhaps more a concern to the Christian than the action itself because it prevents repentance. It is not in my view that Christians are sex-crazed as it is that most rest of the world is sex-crazed and are bringing those views to the gate; the Christians are simply on the defense here.

Tolkienian, You’re bringing it back to very conservative Christian values being imposed, whereas I’m trying to get you to picture unusual colleges that have other rules for behavior, coming from other sets of values. So you have to just take WSU as I described it. By your criteria, I don’t think it could be called discriminatory, yet common sense says it is.

But if you don’t want to think about WSU, maybe you’d care to comment on Atheist U. At Atheist U, Christians are hired and even welcomed, but their propensity for Christian behavior is suppressed. Faculty are expected to sign contracts promising not to wear crosses, pray, enter churches, and the like. Suppose the APA has a rule prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion. Should it be concerned about Atheist U? Should it advertise positions there?

It’s really not the details of my analogy that are important, I simply mean to show that actions can be critiqued without being discriminatory.

I certainly have no objections to an Athiest U. There are sound philosophical arguments for the virtues of a godless society and the faculty is being asked to be a living example of this. As long as it is critiquing religion on its own merits when religion is discussed I see no discrimination in that. Of course theists would feel very uncomfortable in such a school, but I would imagine they would just voluntarily not apply in the first place. The APA by allowing such advertisements would be giving the full spectrum of philosophical viewpoints.

Disanalogy between sexual orientation and being a Xian, Muslim, Jew etc. There is a seamless unity between being a Xian, Muslim, Jew and the behaviour, code etc appropriate to the religion you belong to. Being a Christian is ‘Christianing’ and thus ‘Jewing’, ‘Musliming’. It’s, ideally anyway, a total commitment, a soul thing, so therefore seamless. Insisting on construing it as a propensity thing assumes there is a division where there is none.

Causal explanation can be misleading. He goes into church, blesses himself with holy water, genuflects etc.
Why?
Because he’s a Catholic.

So being a Catholic causes all this, and there’s an implicit separation between being a Catholic and all those sorts of expressions. No, I’m afraid we have a category error on our hands.

Thinking it over, I need to make an alteration to my last post. People of all beliefs attend and work at religious schools, and they all must adhere to the code of conduct. If their own beliefs are less restrictive than that code, no harm done as it is no violation of morality to not do something that is morally permissable. If their own beliefs are more restrictive, they can certainly do so. An atheist school would have to follow the same setup (and I would imagine their code of conduct would be less restrictive than most)

Tolkie: We do a lot of things which aren’t natural like driving in cars, typing on computers, using antibiotics, feeding babies with bottles, none of which are immoral or non-ethical. Why is gay sex, which is probably more “natural” than any of the above acts since other primates are observed to engage in it, considered to be immoral? Why do you consider what is natural to be good and what is not nature to be bad? It may be natural for an adult male to want to have sex with underaged teenage girls. Is that good? It may be natural for a step-parent to favor his own biological children over his step-children.
Is that good?

Anti-discrimination rules and laws are a way of accomplishing something. They have a history. The goal is equality, equal opportunity, fairness, protection for diversity. This is one tool in the effort to help gay people have all the same chances for a full life that heterosexuals have. It’s a way of getting beyond the situation where gay people are regarded as abnormal and stopped from having the same kind of lives other people do. These Christian colleges are trying to recreate that old repressive world. I’d just say that if they are, technically, in compliance with the APA’s anti-discrimination rule (I don’t think so), then it needs to be tightened up and amplified.

Jean:

I’d just say that if they are, technically, in compliance with the APA’s anti-discrimination rule (I don’t think so), then it needs to be tightened up and amplified.

Jean:
If the smart people down at APA have to move from argument to edict or if they can’t find a way to technically express what they want to achieve in a water-tight way then they have admit defeat at the hands of those devious, creepy, cunning Christians. If they change their rule now it will seem ad hoc and politically pointed. Either way they’re in a cleft stick.

Liberals are getting restive and feeling their Obama oats.

Well, but….The Christians are making much of the word “orientation,”, imagining that the APA elders — so to speak — never meant to protect gay activity. But I bet this is not true. If the rule has to be rewritten to more exactly reflect the elders’ intentions, then so be it. That would be ad hoc only in the sense of being necessitated by the inventiveness of the DCCCs.

Jean:
Why wasn’t the actual wording of the APA statement regarding inclusion of advertisements in Jobs for Philosophers (JFP) given in the OP? When you actually read it you find that like it or not the APA recognises the special collegiality of those Christian institutions and that what you would like them to enact is a massive swing away from that. Is that absent minded when you do it? The remarks of Mark C Murphy seem to me intelligent and persuasive or cunning and a devious undermining of my rational faculty.
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/murphym/APAStatement-Murphy.htm

Michael, In my first paragraph I explain the APA policy against discrimination. In my third paragraph I mention their policy recognizing that religious schools are entitled to seek faculty with a particular religion. I note that this is quite different from saying colleges are entitled to control faculty sex lives. So I haven’t hidden anything. To get the exact wording of the two policies, you just had to follow the links. Read more carefully, and you won’t be tempted to find me absent minded.

I don’t find Mark Murphy the least bit persuasive. Here’s one of the most absurd arguments he makes. (See item (a) in his letter.) He says the Christian colleges are being quite equitable, since they forbid non-marital sex for all. It just so happens that this means different things for gays and straights. No partners at all for gays, just one marital partner for straights. But it’s–supposedly–equitable.

This is just silliness and bad reasoning. Murphy and his buddies are banking on the contingent fact that gay marriage is illegal, something that they’re determined should stay that way. They’re exploiting this inequitable state of things–using it to give the anti-gay policy the veneer of being non-discriminatory. But most people are smart enough to see through this.

Think of a rule on an antebellum plantation forbidding sex outside of marriage. Since there was no legal marriage for blacks, this would have meant marital sex for whites and no sex for blacks. In that context, would a rule forbidding sex outside marriage be equitable? Obviously not.

Or imagine a voting literacy rule in the antebellum south. You could have a rule that nobody can vote, unless they can read. This would have meant voting for many whites, and no voting for most blacks, since it was against the law for blacks to learn to read. it would have been devious to argue that a voting literacy rule was not discriminatory.

After gay marriage becomes legal int he US, if Christian colleges want to prohibit sex outside of marriage, I won’t complain. It really will be equitable, instead of sham-equitable, which is all that it is in the present state of things.

Jean: By the way, sex outside marriage is not necessarily adultery. Sex outside marriage includes not only sex between gay couples, but also sex between unmarried straight couples. Do Christian colleges also prohibit sex between unmarried straight couples? Is their definition of sex the same as Bill Clinton’s (I did not have sex with that woman) or do they use a broader definition? After learning about the Christian colleges, I’m beginning to appreciate Clinton’s sense of humor.

Here’s the text of the APA policy:

The American Philosophical Association rejects as unethical all forms of discrimination based on race, color, religion, political convictions, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identification or age, whether in graduate admissions, appointments, retention, promotion and tenure, manuscript evaluation, salary determination, or other professional activities in which APA members characteristically participate. At the same time, the APA recognizes the special commitments and roles of institutions with a religious affiliation; it is not inconsistent with the APA’s position against discrimination to adopt religious affiliation as a criterion in graduate admissions or employment policies when this is directly related to the school’s religious affiliation or purpose, so long as these policies are made known to members of the philosophical community and so long as the criteria for such religious affiliations do not discriminate against persons according to the other attributes listed in this statement. Advertisers in Jobs for Philosophers are expected to comply with this fundamental commitment of the APA, which is not to be taken to preclude explicitly stated affirmative action initiatives.

The APA Board of Officers expects that all those who use the APA Placement Service will comply with the letter and spirit of all applicable regulations concerning non-discrimination, equal employment opportunity and affirmative action.

Jean:
This really is different to my eyes from the very partial and prejudicial account and reading of it that you gave. Your illustrations that purport to be analogies only underline your summary judgement and are merely a rhetorical vehicle. Murphy’s arguments are made from a position opposed to yours so you should not agree with them. You do not give as much weight as the APA does to the idea of special collegiality that pertains to a religious institution. They have an ethos to maintain as they see it. You deplore that ethos and would deny them the right to maintain it. The APA to their credit allows them that. Your special interpretation of what the APA really want is just that, special to you. The behaviouristic psychology that informs your judgement that you cannot separate orientation from action is plainly false.

Michael, I think you’re entirely wrong to see my account of this policy as partial or prejuducial. Just completely off base. I didn’t discuss every line of it, but anybody could have read it–there were plenty of links.

Your attempt now to sweep all of my arguments away by making an overarching diagnosis just will not do. I don’t think my analogies are rhetorical, don’t have any “behavioristic pschology,” don’t think anything I’ve said turns on not separating orientation from action, and don’t think my interpretation is “special to me” (1200 petition-signers agree with me, and a handful of religious philosophers with you).

i think this conversation has reached it’s natural end. It’s time to just agree to disagree, without a huge flurry of insults.

Michael: Jean’s post marked 9:33 AM, March 8 says it all. This is a struggle about values. Which side are you on?

Which side are you on?

http://www.ocap.ca/songs/whichsid.html

“It’s time to just agree to disagree”

Jean,

Is that really what you think? You don’t seem to be saying that it really is time to agree to disagree. You seem to be saying that it is time to stop the Christian Colleges acting the way they are. To say that they are wrong and their behaviour is unacceptable, and their arguments dishonest. You even advocate rewriting the rules if necessary.

Surely the issue is not whether Christians are in fact wrong on this issue, but whether they might have a legitimate complaint.

It is not inconceivable that homosexual practice is immoral. You might have a good argument that it is not and the weight of evidence may well be on your side, but that is separate from the issue of how to treat the Christian Colleges.

I am genuinely here for calm and level-headed discussion. I hope that no one interprets what I have said as an attempt to stir up trouble or to upset.

Kyle

Socrates loses job because of sexual orientation.

http://drjon.typepad.com/jon_cogburns_blog/2009/03/plato-ending-of-early-socratic-dialogue-charmides.html

Kyle, You’ve misunderstood. My last contribution was at March 8, 4:52. Instead of responding to it, Michael made all sorts of personal accusations. For that reason, it’s time to stop.

Besides that particular problem, lots and lots of arguments have been made, and we’re now at the point where everyone will probably be repeating themselves. At some point, people just have to amicably bring a debate to an end. That’s what the expression “agree to disagree” is about.

Amos, Thanks for the link. Pretty funny.

Jean,

You say

“He says the Christian colleges are being quite equitable, since they forbid non-marital sex for all. It just so happens that this means different things for gays and straights. No partners at all for gays, just one marital partner for straights. But it’s–supposedly–equitable. This is just silliness and bad reasoning. Murphy and his buddies are banking on the contingent fact that gay marriage is illegal”

This is not quite true. You suppose that marriage is a legal thing, but this is not how a Christian would view it. For a Christian marriage is a public agreement between a man and a woman. The law cannot change that. If the state made it illegal for people with blue eyes to marry, that would not change the Christian understanding of marriage. It just so happens that the legal understanding of marriage is still close to the Christian understanding, but Christians are not making arguments based on legal contingencies.

Also, I think your analogy of a White Supremacist University (WSU) is unfair. The WSU is using discrimination against black behaviour as an excuse to discriminate against black people. That is not the situation we have here. The Christians do have a genuine moral objection to homosexual practice, it is not simply an excuse.

As for the muslim example, I don’t think being a muslim could be described as an orientation. If you asked a muslim why they do they things they do, it will come back to certain belief like ‘I believe the Quran says we should do that’. In the case of homosexual practices, the participant is unlikely to give reasons for their practices in terms of belief - What beliefs would they be?

I think you are too quick to dismiss the act/orientation distinction. We can and do make the distinction all the time. For example, some people have an orientation to steal, but we can and do discriminate against the act of stealing without discriminating against the orientation.

Kyle

Re: marriage. The rule that says “no sex outside of marriage” is equitable. That’s what the defenders of the Christian colleges would have us focus on. But wait, that rule has hugely different consequen\ces for gays and straights, because gay marriage is illegal. Now you want that to be considered equitable too.

Hmm. First the idea was that one rule for everybody is equitable. OK, I can see that. But now the idea is that different rules for different orientations is equitable too. At some point, don’t you think you’re really stretching the notion of equitableness?

It’s one thing to have your own way of looking at sexual morality–sure, you do, and I understand it. It’s another to say your way actually comports with liberal values, like equality and non-discrimination. That’s where things get very, very implausible.

As to WSU, you just have to take my word for it. It’s my thought experiment. The White Supremacists actually do disapprove of expressions of black culture. And no, they’re not trying to drive out the black students and faculty. As the Christian goody-goody Ned Flanders said on The Simpsons last night, “If you want to be a saint, you have to live among the lepers.” In my thought experiment, WSU wants blacks on campus, for just the sort of reasons the Christian Colleges might welcome gays. In both cases, it might be viewed as a wonderful challenge, an opportunity to “hate the sin and love the sinner.”

Think about it. A gay philosopher has a partner of 30 years and two children with that partner. Her only job offer is at one of these colleges, but she’s expected to separate from her partner as the price of accepting it. A straight philosophers is also offered a position, without the price tag. That’s not discriminatory? In your mind, it’s not. In the minds of most APA members it is. Obviously we each have to arrive a position depending on the arguments that persuade us.

I think it would be helpful to imagine these Christian colleges being more common than they are. Suppose 20% of colleges had these kinds of rules, making job opportunities for unrepentant gays much scarcer. If you imagine that, it becomes easier to see that the situation is not equitable for gays, and not something that the APA meant to allow, under its various policies.

“Re: marriage. The rule that says “no sex outside of marriage” is equitable. That’s what the defenders of the Christian colleges would have us focus on. But wait, that rule has hugely different consequen\ces for gays and straights, because gay marriage is illegal. Now you want that to be considered equitable too.”

Jean, you are assuming that marriage means the union of two adults. That is not the Christian understanding. The Christian understanding of marriage is that it is a public agreement between a consenting male adult and a consenting female adult. To a Christian gay marriage just isn’t marriage. They are not trying to bar anyone from marriage, they are simply saying that a union between same-sex couples is not marriage.

“As to WSU, you just have to take my word for it. It’s my thought experiment. The White Supremacists actually do disapprove of expressions of black culture. And no, they’re not trying to drive out the black students and faculty.”

In that case it is misleading to call them White Supremacists. This is a school that thinks rap music is morally wrong, or something similar. Let them make that argument. If they can make the argument in a way that is plausible (not convincing) and does not suggest that they are simply looking for excuse to discriminate against black people then that is fine. But this is nothing to do with White Supremacist ideology, and I expect it is almost impossible to do.

Kyle, I can put myself inside the conservative Christian’s shoes and see things as he/she does. In fact, I think it’s a good exercise to do so. But once in those shoes, I do not think I’m seeing gays and heterosexuals as equals. I think you just can’t really have it both ways–that gays have a problem and must not be permitted to flourish as gay. But those who want to cure and contain them are good liberal champions of equality and non-discrimination.

You don’t want to object to WSU, but the question is whether blacks are treated in an egalitarian, non-discriminatory manner there. I should think not. There’s a rule that applies to all, but it falls on different shoulders extremely unevenly. Blacks will surely not want to attend WSU, so the jobs there are not in any real sense open to all.

I have given this thread all the time I have at the moment. I don’t see new ground being covered, so I’ll leave it there.

I’m sorry to press you on this when you feel that the discussion is getting repetitive.

The main thing that I think you haven’t made clear is why you think a distinction between discrimination against orientation, and discrimination against practice cannot be made?

I assume you would be in favour of discriminating against those steal, but not those who have an orientation to steal?

Michael et al:

APA policy noch einmal:

The key passage in the APA statment seems to be this:

so long as the criteria for such religious affiliations DO NOT DESCRIMINATE against persons ACCORDING TO THE THE OTHER ATTRIBUTES listed in this statement.

The APA does acknowledge “ethos” and it places the non-descrimination policy ethos of the APA over and above the ethos of the religious affiliations that it allows. I’ts unclear to me how one can interpret the text any other way.

This brings us back to the primary argument as it has been proceeding, i.e. “what the APA really means by “sexual orientation,” specifically, can orientation be seperated from acts, if so was it the intent of the APA to allow the two to be disconected from each other, and so forth.

I do find it humerous that some people think it would be somehow in poor taste for the APA to sharpen its language to preculde any fancy footwork re: appeals to broader societal norms (e.g. hooking normative policies to broader (descriminatory) societal norms as Mike Murphy does). This is quite within the APAs rights as its own policy setting entity. If it decides that it needs to render its intent more explicit to ensure that its ethos is recognized then how else would it do it other than to clarify its intent since such clarification is clearly required?

Michael writes: “If they change their rule now it will seem ad hoc and politically pointed.” What do you think is going on here? A Sunday stroll in the park? Of course it would be politically pointed, the entire list of non-descrimination policy is politically pointed. Do the apologists for the christian universities think that the voters of California were “ad hoc” and “overly politcally pointed” when, by a simple majority, they altered the constitution of the state of California? My guess is no.

Mike Murphy cries out in indigination “What would be involved in changing the APA’s policy with respect to these Christian colleges is that the APA would be taking an OFFICIAL stand, speaking on behalf of ALL of its members…”

I see that Mr. Murphy is devoted to the consenus model. I imagine he thinks that a similar model should be applied to the proposition system in California. No changing the constitution without 100% agreement of the citizenry! I imagine he is filling a friend of the court brief with the Supreme Court of California even as we speak to suggest they overturn the tyranny of the majority.

It’s a culture war always and it comes down in the end to the power of groups to assert their values. The APA is such a group and they may certainly make their “ad hoc” and “politically pointed” response to the “ad hoc” arguments that have been marshalled against the policy as it stands. Whether they will do so is at this time seems to be an open question.

In strong agreement with Amos’ comment #3. There is something odd about the insistence of a distinction between orientation and act on the part of Christian institutions from both the perspective of Jesus’ solidarity with the marginalized and downtrodden of his time and his apparent insistence on precisely orientations and dispositions (i.e. just looking at one’s neighbour’s wife, etc.). Arguably he is making a point by setting the bar impossibly high - but it is no less high for straights than it is for gays. One may base on Paul the notion that, under grace, we refrain from sins despite a sinful disposition - but Paul wrote to a small sect in the immediate expectation of Jesus’ return. (Leaving aside the question of how well-founded. Biblically, the traditional Christian condemnation of gays is).

I am suspicious of any Christianity conventionalized enough to be adopted as the guiding principle of an educational institute. Kierkegaard had some worthwhile stuff to say about that in the other thread.

Aside from that, I’m torn between two thoughts: that 1) granted the Christian institutions in question may discriminate against gays all they want (and that is what they want: either prohibiting one to ‘act out’ one’s sexual orientation has very serious effects on one’s self-realization as a human being, or “orientation” is meaningless), but the APA likewise has the right to dissociate from those institutions or 2) in the interests of pluralism and institutional autonomy (which I think is a good thing), the APA should let things lie.

As a straight Christian (albeit heterodox) I would probably not apply at the institutions concerned. Doubtlessly they would find other faults with me than gayness, and besides I don’t like the idea of my employer rooting about in my private life. Then again, one may make the point that with jobs in humanities disciplines thin as they are, gays are de facto disadvantaged here.

Faust et al:
It was nice to see attention being paid to the actual document itself and not edited highlights based on subtle intimations or vibes. Does the APA have an ethos? I would say not.

SOD defn:

After Aristotle Rhetoric 11. xii-xiv: The prevalent tone or sentiment of a people or community; the genius of an institution or system.

The APA is much too heterogeneous for that and besides they are an artificial ‘entity’ without a lot of that interpersonal interaction that is the basis of ethos.

What their document says is at the same time , the APA recognises the special commitments and roles of institutions with a religious affiliation. Now clearly playing in their minds is the need to counter the secularist claim that their first position of the rejection of all forms of discrimination is set at naught by religious institutions. Their answer to this is it is not inconsistent with the APA’s position against discrimination to adopt religious affiliation as a criterion in graduate admissions or employment policies when this is directly related to the school’s religious affiliation or purpose,

What I take from this is that if you are a confessed, committed and practising member of a certain creed then it follows that you accept the tenets of that creed in all aspects, great, small and inconvenient. If you are a Jain you abjure the use of ‘Flit’.

Anyone that thinks that a same sex civil marriage alone or plus a ceremony performed by a priest or minister would get over the sexual relations within marriage clause for a religious institution that takes a traditional line on Christian marriage has not bothered to investigate the basics and has ruled themselves out as a credible commentator.

Michael,

You do a good job of quoting half a sentence. You give as their answer:

it is not inconsistent with the APA’s position against discrimination to adopt religious affiliation as a criterion in graduate admissions or employment policies when this is directly related to the school’s religious affiliation or purpose,

without fully contextualizing this answer with the follow-up clause:

SO LONG AS these policies are made known to members of the philosophical community and so long as the criteria for such religious affiliations do not discriminate against persons according to the other attributes listed in this statement.

So please address what you think this latter bit means. Clearly you don’t think much of it.

Faust:
Yes good point and here’s an answer. In .22 seconds (dial up) I was able to find the mission statement for Wheaton College which has been mentioned in despatches. To my chagrin I find that I would not fit in there or be acceptable to them on any grounds but I am like Voltaire who said ‘I disagree with everything you say but I will fight to the death for your right to say it’. Because life is short and I don’t want to inflict myself where I’m not wanted theologically in the nicest possible way, I sigh and turn away.

Faust et al.,
Can sexual morality come to a moral-neutral position?
The assumption underlying the moral-neutral position in this issue is that people’s attitude and value judgement may change with time, custom or culture. In some ancient culture, for instance, it is considered very immoral if a girl speaks to a boy, let alone physical contact between the two persons. But today, it is quite natural for different-sex people to shake hands, to hug, even to kiss. With this kind of “cultural evolution,” can we reasonably believe that one day, sextual activity may become as natural and casual as shaking hands (with no emotions being involved), so that sexual morality can come to a moral-neutral position?
One prior question to be addresed is whether sexual activity can be equated with shaking hands. Shaking hands does not point to any significant purpose (except for the purpose of greeting), and involves very little risk (except in the relatively rare contagious-disease case). But sexual activity is very different. It basically serves the purpose of procreation (as observed by other posters in this thread), and so has a moral and ethical dimension. Even if birth-control measures can be taken, it still risks consequences more severe than any other physical-contact activity. Also, the nature of sexual activity is such that it involves more reciprocally emotional, psychological exchange, so much so that participants may be more emotionally and psychologically vulnerable than in the case, say, shaking hands.
Because of its special characteristic, sexual morality can never come to a moral-neutral position, i.e., it is an either/or judgement. Either it is moral, or immoral. Personally, I think homosexual (even if it is legal) as well as any kind of sex outside of marriage is immoral (albeit platonic love involving no sex is not), but this might be another discussion. As for the distinction between orientation and act (a good arguing point made by Smit), I think the key point, whether in Jesus or Pauline teaching, is that sinful motive should be prevented and willingly rejected before it has any chance to be acted out (the motive is no good as it is big obstruction of spiritual freedom and happiness).

I’m glad you brought this into a blog of itself, because after seeing it on the link to the Plantinga v.s Dennet talk, I was both surprised and dismayed at the APA. I signed the first petition, and I’m not a member, not even an American. The petition doesn’t state you have to be?

Also with regard to the Christian schools, doesn’t it depend on what denomination the school is to whether or not they would admit homosexually-active staff? Not all branches of Christianity have the same views on gay people as the Catholic church. Regardless, the anti-homosexual views of the Church have so little Biblical evidence to stand on, I’m astonished that anyone holds those views as part of Christian theology at all.

I think the comparison of what you do defining who you are i.e. your acts determining your label is interesting when using the cases of the labels homosexual and Christian. i.e. Am I a Christian if I don’t partake in Christian acts like going to church. Am I gay if I don’t have sex with someone of the same sex? Also I think this might lead into questions about public and private language?