Lets discuss: Homophobia

[Elrohir]

Elrohir: They're comparable because they both rely on instinctive disgust (either of 'the other' (racism) or of 'the unclean' (male homosexuality)). Instinctive disgust is pretty strong, and is hard to overcome with logic.

They're also comparable in that both race and sexual orientation have a strong innate component. They also have a social component, don't get me wrong. But the innate aspect is pretty strong.

Neither homosexual behaviour nor race generate moral disgust. We don't observe them and say "hey, people are being harmed! Don't do that." Moral disgust kicks in when we observe abuse or violence or harmful hypocrisy. The disgust due to race or sexual orientation is instinctive and has decently obvious evolutionary connotations.

People will try to find moral reasons to find homosexual behaviour disgusting, and some of that reasoning is decently good (HIV transmission, for example, is a good reason to suggest that gay people abstain from sex unless they're in conditions of safety). However, the majority of these reasons are merely justifications: post-hoc justifications to correlate with internal instinctive disgust.

People also tried to find moral reasons to make racism acceptable too. "Take care of your own family first" still resonates, but we've all seen instances of people trying to suggest that other races were less moral and more deserving of poor treatment.

The OT Bible is a really good example of both. Kill homosexuals because God finds them disgusting is right there as if spoken by god, the instinctive disgust is rationalised with moral disgust. Or Kill the Canaanites because they're descended from Ham, is racism rationalised with moral reasoning.

So, racism and homophobia are similar because they trigger instinctive disgust and because they're about innate traits.

edit: , x-post with the above conversation about being disgusted!

To be perfectly blunt, I'm not buying it. There are definitely aspects of aversion to homosexual actions that are instinctive, but hardly all of it. Personally, I'm not particularly repulsed by, say, two attractive ladies going at it -- but I still think it's ethically wrong. I am pretty grossed out by male gay sex, but I'm more grossed out by certain sexual acts that straight people do, even though I'm willing to label the first wrong, but uncertain about the second. So for me, at least, there seems to be a wide spectrum of responses -- gay and gross, gay and not gross, not gay and gross, not gay and not gross. So even accepting that evolutionary reasons for finding teh gay gross are probably at play, I don't think it's fundamental (Or even particularly important) for the moral reasoning going on in my head -- faulty or not.

And I find it hard to believe that I'm special in this regard.

(Also, I think there's also moral disgust going on. And there's was no commandment to kill Canaanites based on them being descendents from Ham that I'm aware of. )

Don't suppose my motives. I don't want to be a jackass.

I wasn't trying to be offensive.

No, I'm not letting you off that easily. I'm not slow, El, I want to be precise in this conversation. If I couldn't ask for clarification, the interpretation I'm going with is just completely off the mark. I think we have different analogies in mind, which is why your post doesn't seem relevant. I don't want to rebut a case you haven't made.

No no, you misunderstand. I'm not asking you to rebut the argument that you didn't understand, I'm asking you to more clearly state the argument that my argument was directed against. More clearly: can you please state why you think racism and homophobia are similar to equivalent, and in what way? (You said that the comparison was apt, without going into detail: how is it apt? Is it inapt in any way? etc) I want to be precise as well, but I think it's best if we start with you being precise, so that I can make my own response even more precise.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

What the hell I care about risks others are willing to take --- in the context of this thread --- has to do with the spread of AIDS. If homosexuals being willing to engage in "risky sex" resulted in the risk of AIDS only to themselves then maybe I shouldn't be concerned. But that isn't the case, is it?

How do you figure two homosexuals in a long term relationship, neither of them having AIDS or any other sexual transmittable disease, having sex as being "risky"?

 

[Hitti-Litti]

No, para-gliding, mountain climbing, skiing, driving a car, crossing the street are not wrong; I've done all these things, as well as piloting jet planes in wartime.

What the hell I care about risks others are willing to take --- in the context of this thread --- has to do with the spread of AIDS. If homosexuals being willing to engage in "risky sex" resulted in the risk of AIDS only to themselves then maybe I shouldn't be concerned. But that isn't the case, is it?

In addition to the already mentioned fact that homosexuals are not limited to anal sex, your "only anal sex results in risks to other people as well" argument is quite weird. I mean, driving a car creates a risk for pedestrians, one just might lose control of his vehicle and create a real life version of Carmageddon. That's still no reason to consider driving a car wrong or immoral or something to be prohibited, just like a higher STD risk isn't a good reason to consider anal sex wrong or immoral or something to be prohibited.

 

[JollyRoger]

How am I expected to have fun with a purity ring girl if anal sex is off the table?

 

[El_Machinae]

To be perfectly blunt, I'm not buying it. There are definitely aspects of aversion to homosexual actions that are instinctive, but hardly all of it. Personally, I'm not particularly repulsed by, say, two attractive ladies going at it -- but I still think it's ethically wrong. I am pretty grossed out by male gay sex, but I'm more grossed out by certain sexual acts that straight people do, even though I'm willing to label the first wrong, but uncertain about the second. So for me, at least, there seems to be a wide spectrum of responses -- gay and gross, gay and not gross, not gay and gross, not gay and not gross. So even accepting that evolutionary reasons for finding teh gay gross are probably at play, I don't think it's fundamental (Or even particularly important) for the moral reasoning going on in my head -- faulty or not.

And I find it hard to believe that I'm special in this regard.

In my defense, my favored analogy is to left-handedness, not race.
You were raised with a moral aversion to homosexual behaviour, hence your distaste at female homosexuality. But the instinctive aversion is mostly due to aversion to male homosexuals. As I explained, instinctive aversion is what lead to moral aversion. We taught kids that homosexual acts were wrong. Racists who use moral justifications for their racism would feel the same moral disgust at the idea of their daughter marrying outside of their race.

Regarding Ham, my mistake

24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said,

“Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers.”

26 He also said,

“Praise be to the LORD, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem.
27 May God extend Japheth’s territory;
may Japheth live in the tents of Shem,
and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth.”

I misremembered. This OT text was used to justify slavery. Racism was disguised under a moral code.


It was the Moabites & the Ammonite against whom racism was acceptable. Their ancient king disobeyed God, and thus (Deut 23) "6Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever. "

It was institutional & generational racism disguised under moral law.

 

[Junius]

I misremembered. This OT text was used to justify slavery. Racism was disguised under a moral code.


It was the Moabites & the Ammonite against whom racism was acceptable. Their ancient king disobeyed God, and thus (Deut 23) "6Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever. "

It was institutional & generational racism disguised under moral law.

Well to be fair slavery was already going on. They were looking for excuses to justify what was already happening. I find it hard to believe that if they never read those passages plantation slavery would have ceased to exist.

 

[El_Machinae]

Yes, I know. My explanation is that the bigotry is already there, and that the text was used to create moral reasoning around the bigotry. But once the moral reasoning is created, it can (itself) create an aversion

 

[Elrohir]

In my defense, my favored analogy is to left-handedness, not race.
You were raised with a moral aversion to homosexual behaviour, hence your distaste at female homosexuality. But the instinctive aversion is mostly due to aversion to male homosexuals. As I explained, instinctive aversion is what lead to moral aversion. We taught kids that homosexual acts were wrong. Racists who use moral justifications for their racism would feel the same moral disgust at the idea of their daughter marrying outside of their race.

Well, I still don't think that's a particularly good comparison. We don't normally take left-handedness into consideration for any moral matters, or even in our everyday sexual choices. We do take gender and sex into consideration for our everyday interactions and sexual choices; it's a more substantial distinction in pretty much every respect. And while they used to care more about handedness, they didn't think about it as much as gender, or even race -- and I'd be surprised if there's any human society that ever has.

Let's look at this logically. Either instinctive aversion has moral relevance, or it does not. (This is tautologous) If it has moral relevance, then it's perfectly valid to say "I think it's gross, so it's wrong, or probably wrong," or something along those lines. (Few people would take this option.) If it has no moral relevance, then moral aversion connected to it it could not take any strength or validity from it -- but neither could the moral aversion be weakened by this link. But since moral aversion survives outside of instinctive aversion, that needs to be dealt with separately. Which means this entire track of argumentation doesn't actually solve anything.

Regarding Ham, my mistake

I misremembered. This OT text was used to justify slavery. Racism was disguised under a moral code.

It was the Moabites & the Ammonite against whom racism was acceptable. Their ancient king disobeyed God, and thus (Deut 23) "6Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever. "

It was institutional & generational racism disguised under moral law.

Except, there isn't really much evidence that wholesale tribes were captured as slaves by the Israelites. It was more of a nationalistic thing -- "see, those guys have always sucked!" rather than an actual justification for slavery, because remember, they had Hebrew slaves as well. They didn't need to justify a racial or ethnic separation because there was not such separation for them. It was only with America's racialized sort of slavery that these passages really became a justification for racial slavery.

Also, you should be careful with your terms. I don't think it's really appropriate to refer to any sort of ill will (even genocidal ill will) against the Moabites or Ammonites as "racism," since their ideas about ethnicity and race were quite different from our own. It was less about race and more ethnic, religious, and political identity all rolled into one. Calling it racism just doesn't get at what was really going on, and is both inaccurate and incomplete.

 

[phoenix_sprite]

Many will disagree with you. Gays should deserve the right to marry without any obstacles. What's the purpose of marriage within the federal and state governnment? The only thing that comes to mind are tax codes and census statistics.

The benifits of marriage should also be extended to gays and lesbians who seek them. If you don't want to extend them the benefits, then the government should have no business in marriage in both straight and gay parings. Most people don't care weather or not gay marriage is right in God's eye.

The bottom line is that marriage rights and benefits in both the federal and state level should be extended to gays and lesbians or none at all.

This pretty much summarizes my feelings on marriage.

 

[El_Machinae]

We don't normally take left-handedness into consideration for any moral matters, or even in our everyday sexual choices. We do take gender and sex into consideration for our everyday interactions and sexual choices; it's a more substantial distinction in pretty much every respect. And while they used to care more about handedness, they didn't think about it as much as gender, or even race -- and I'd be surprised if there's any human society that ever has.

That's why I like it. It's an innate trait that can be suppressed (or 'not practiced'). It used to inspire bigotry, sometimes on religious grounds, and now it doesn't matter.

Homosexuality only really matters because of instinctive aversion coupled with manufactured moral aversion. The manufactured moral aversion to left-handedness didn't survive, because of how stupid it is. The manufactured moral aversion created around racism also didn't survive, because of how stupid it is. There's no reason why homophobia can't go the same way.

But since moral aversion survives outside of instinctive aversion, that needs to be dealt with separately. Which means this entire track of argumentation doesn't actually solve anything.

Your moral aversion was taught, right? And it was taught along moral grounds. Of course you feel an aversion!

But the original aversion was regarding male homosexuality. That's the thing that bothered people, and why moral rules were invented. We're a logical people, it's logical to plop female homosexuality in for balance. That fact that moral justifications were expanded is no surprise, we do that all the time. A good example is animal rights activists who originally cared about cute mammals (because of empathy), but who now care about fish and lobsters (because they've expanded their thinking).

Also, you should be careful with your terms. I don't think it's really appropriate to refer to any sort of ill will (even genocidal ill will) against the Moabites or Ammonites as "racism," since their ideas about ethnicity and race were quite different from our own. It was less about race and more ethnic, religious, and political identity all rolled into one. Calling it racism just doesn't get at what was really going on, and is both inaccurate and incomplete.

If you have a better word than a generational commandment to abuse a people based on their heritage, I'm all for it. Yes, its cause was tribal/political. The commandment is racist. Unless you want to call it 'heritagist' or 'ethnicicist', or whatever.

It's what I said earlier, instinctive racism is later justified as moral teachings. It's what happened with Western slavery, and it's what's happened before.

As to the utility of finding a putative cause of instinctive disgust for a moral teaching, we can deliberately look to see if the moral teaching survives excision of moral disgust. Homophobia, imo, doesn't. The other dumb moral teachings, which don't generate instinctive disgust, were easy to overcome and ignore. Instinctive disgust will help homophobic moral teachings alive, though.

 

[Elrohir]

That's why I like it. It's an innate trait that can be suppressed (or 'not practiced'). It used to inspire bigotry, sometimes on religious grounds, and now it doesn't matter.

Homosexuality only really matters because of instinctive aversion coupled with manufactured moral aversion. The manufactured moral aversion to left-handedness didn't survive, because of how stupid it is. The manufactured moral aversion created around racism also didn't survive, because of how stupid it is. There's no reason why homophobia can't go the same way.

Unless you're suggesting that biological sex become as irrelevant as handedness, the comparison is inapt.

Your moral aversion was taught, right? And it was taught along moral grounds. Of course you feel an aversion!

But the original aversion was regarding male homosexuality. That's the thing that bothered people, and why moral rules were invented. We're a logical people, it's logical to plop female homosexuality in for balance. That fact that moral justifications were expanded is no surprise, we do that all the time. A good example is animal rights activists who originally cared about cute mammals (because of empathy), but who now care about fish and lobsters (because they've expanded their thinking).

I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying. Even if we accept that instinctive aversion is instinctive aversion is not good grounds for moral judgment, that doesn't mean that what was disliked is moral (or immoral). It doesn't imply any sort of moral connection at all, and it means it has to be assessed on other grounds. The problem is that plenty of people, myself included, believe we have those other grounds. So I repeat: I don't think this does what you think it does.

If you have a better word than a generational commandment to abuse a people based on their heritage, I'm all for it. Yes, its cause was tribal/political. The commandment is racist. Unless you want to call it 'heritagist' or 'ethnicicist', or whatever.

It's what I said earlier, instinctive racism is later justified as moral teachings. It's what happened with Western slavery, and it's what's happened before.

Long-term warfare? National rivalries? etc.

And for the final time, it wasn't instinctive racism, because it wasn't based on race. They may have been repelled by the Ammonites because of, say, their pagan religious practices, but that's a conflict of culture and values, not race.

As to the utility of finding a putative cause of instinctive disgust for a moral teaching, we can deliberately look to see if the moral teaching survives excision of moral disgust. Homophobia, imo, doesn't. The other dumb moral teachings, which don't generate instinctive disgust, were easy to overcome and ignore. Instinctive disgust will help homophobic moral teachings alive, though.

How exactly are you defining moral disgust, then?

 

[El_Machinae]

Unless you're suggesting that biological sex become as irrelevant as handedness, the comparison is inapt.

Like Lucy, I can't really tell where you're going with this. Gender is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Who cares how important sex is to people? That's merely a scale of intensity, along which the analogy rides.

And for the final time, it wasn't instinctive racism, because it wasn't based on race. They may have been repelled by the Ammonites because of, say, their pagan religious practices, but that's a conflict of culture and values, not race.

Racist instincts are the same instincts as tribalistic instincts. They're generated from the same evolutionary mechanisms. They fought with the Ammonites because of tribalism. Tribalism partially exists because of racism. Er, or the other way around.

The heritigal tension against the Ammonites was extremely long lasting, and the commandment was a source of ongoing tension. Even if the Solomon-era Israelites were waring against the Ammonites, the ethnic (which, seriously, is not all that different from race) tension forbidding co-mingling and peaceful co-existence was still an issue ~500 years later. The commandment, written hundreds of years earlier, was used for centuries to justify mistreatment.

How exactly are you defining moral disgust, then?

Disgust you feel when you think something is immoral. These are taught, or generated from moral principals (such as empathy, etc.).

If you've been to a sausage factory, you feel instinctive disgust at the idea of eating a hotdog (because of the association with other disgusting things). If you've been raised a Muslim, you feel moral disgust at eating a hotdog. The instinctive disgust generated a law, which became a moral law, which then can be taught to generate moral disgust.

And I do understand what you're saying. What I'm saying that the moral disgust is taught, but that it thrives due to the instinctive disgust. Yes, instinctive disgust has no real affect on whether something is actually moral or not. But our urge to justify, one way or the other, is psychologically biased by the instinctive disgust. The traction that homosexuality gets in the religious moral thinking is due to instinctive disgust.

 

[Flying Pig]

Unless you're suggesting that biological sex become as irrelevant as handedness, the comparison is inapt.

Not biological sex, dear. Sexuality, and yes, he is, and yes, it should.

 

[timtofly]

If it is a moral aversion, why do non-religious "bullies" carry out criminal acts and religious people tend to be more tolerant? America is secular and it is not the norm to antagonize others. It is also a place where people are allowed to voice their opinions even if others take offense. The majority of religious have either embraced and accepted it or they tolerate it. Trying to compare today with history is about as productive as thinking that if one does not study history one is bound to repeat it.

 

[Elrohir]

Like Lucy, I can't really tell where you're going with this. Gender is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Who cares how important sex is to people? That's merely a scale of intensity, along which the analogy rides.

I don't think it's just a matter of gender; biological sex would be more accurate. Heterosexual and homosexual are terms that refer to sex, not gender.

Racist instincts are the same instincts as tribalistic instincts. They're generated from the same evolutionary mechanisms. They fought with the Ammonites because of tribalism. Tribalism partially exists because of racism. Er, or the other way around.

The heritigal tension against the Ammonites was extremely long lasting, and the commandment was a source of ongoing tension. Even if the Solomon-era Israelites were waring against the Ammonites, the ethnic (which, seriously, is not all that different from race) tension forbidding co-mingling and peaceful co-existence was still an issue ~500 years later. The commandment, written hundreds of years earlier, was used for centuries to justify mistreatment.

There was a whole host of factors -- religious, social, cultural, political, martial, etc -- that led to conflict between the ancient Israelites and their neighbors. The same could be said of almost any conflict. But saying it was a racist response doesn't make sense solely because there are similar instinctual roots to both. I'm not saying they're completely, 100% separate -- I'm saying describing their conflict as racist, or the tension as based on race, is inaccurate.

Disgust you feel when you think something is immoral. These are taught, or generated from moral principals (such as empathy, etc.).

If you've been to a sausage factory, you feel instinctive disgust at the idea of eating a hotdog (because of the association with other disgusting things). If you've been raised a Muslim, you feel moral disgust at eating a hotdog. The instinctive disgust generated a law, which became a moral law, which then can be taught to generate moral disgust.

Then how can we "look to see if the moral teaching survives excision of moral disgust"? And why would we want to? Getting rid of moral disgust in order to test moral ideas seems like a rather odd way of testing them. We can conceive of a society where immoral action is so normalized that no one responds to it -- say, a society that practices ritual human sacrifice. Yet the mere absence of moral disgust (Or of moral prohibitions in the absence of that disgust) doesn't really say much about the actual validity of the moral rules that we're talking about. Why is it different here?

And I do understand what you're saying. What I'm saying that the moral disgust is taught, but that it thrives due to the instinctive disgust. Yes, instinctive disgust has no real affect on whether something is actually moral or not. But our urge to justify, one way or the other, is psychologically biased by the instinctive disgust.

I can't speak for everyone, but I don't think so, as far as I go anyway. Personally, it'd make my life a lot easier if I could accept that biological sex plays no role in the morality of sexual interactions, yet intellectually I can't get myself to accept that. It's not an instinctive position, it's a regretful intellectual one. I don't feel a psychological urge that I need to rationalize. I have an ethical view that I can't seem to shake.

Not biological sex, dear. Sexuality, and yes, he is, and yes, it should.

I don't know what you're talking about, but what we're talking about involves biological sex, not sexual orientation. To this particular point, actual orientation is irrelevant.

 

[choxorn]

If it is a moral aversion, why do non-religious "bullies" carry out criminal acts and religious people tend to be more tolerant?

We non-religious people find this offensive, and demand a source for this statement.

 

[El_Machinae]

No wonder! I meant "excision of instinctive disgust". Sorry.

restated: As to the utility of finding a putative cause of instinctive disgust for a moral teaching, we can deliberately look to see if the moral teaching survives excision of instinctive disgust. Homophobia, imo, doesn't. The other dumb moral teachings, which don't generate instinctive disgust, were easy to overcome and ignore. Instinctive disgust will help homophobic moral teachings alive, though.

And the Ammonite thing doesn't matter. It was supposed to be an example of racism disguised as moral teaching. American slavery justifications are a much better example of the concept anyway, and it's just an example of instinctive urges of disgust being re-written as moral teachings, to show that it can happen.

 

[Hitti-Litti]

If it is a moral aversion, why do non-religious "bullies" carry out criminal acts and religious people tend to be more tolerant?

oh god

America is secular

USA is culturally way more religious than most European countires.

 

[Arakhor]

"Religious people" are only more tolerant if their belief system makes them so. The Golden Rule is fundamentally incompatible with homophobia, racism, sexism, genocide and so on, but that doesn't stop "religious people" from doing those things.

I'd agree that the United States, an allegedly secular country, is far more institutionally religious than the United Kingdom with its own state faith has been in a long time.

 

[Junius]

USA is culturally way more religious than most European countires.

I don't think anyone would deny that. However the USA is still secular. Not as secular as europe certainly, but still legally secular.