Yes, that’s part of the reason I propose revising it, using the personal end (telos) of human happiness/flourishing instead – instead of the perhaps dubious ends of genitals and such.
I agree that there’s even more to it than that. But that’s part of the problem with the debate: The reasons that such acts are wrong ARE specific and multi-faceted, and lead one into other and deeper investigations. The problem in today’s society is how to bring those things into the discussion without losing people’s attention. Because we live in a society in which the more detailed or nuanced your argument–no matter how valid–the more likely people are to think: “Well if it takes that much explaining, you must just be grasping at straws.” At least that’s the sort of attitude I seem to have noticed.
I agree that there’s even more to it than that. But that’s part of the problem with the debate: The reasons that such acts are wrong ARE specific and multi-faceted, and lead one into other and deeper investigations. The problem in today’s society is how to bring those things into the discussion without losing people’s attention. Because we live in a society in which the more detailed or nuanced your argument–no matter how valid–the more likely people are to think: “Well if it takes that much explaining, you must just be grasping at straws.” At least that’s the sort of attitude I seem to have noticed.
Nonsense. People have been intellectually convinced that Jesus is Lord, that abortion is evil, that fornication is wrong. Now it’s true that they might continue to abort or fornicate after they’re convinced it’s wrong. But they CAN be convinced it is wrong.
Oh, absolutely! I don’t think arguing about the wrongness of sodomy is a good way to evangelize – far from it!
Did you read my whole post? I was criticizing the first argument I gave, not supporting it.
On this note, there is a VERY simple argument against gay marriage, an argument that hardly anyone is using:I agree that there’s even more to it than that. But that’s part of the problem with the debate: The reasons that such acts are wrong ARE specific and multi-faceted, and lead one into other and deeper investigations. The problem in today’s society is how to bring those things into the discussion without losing people’s attention. Because we live in a society in which the more detailed or nuanced your argument–no matter how valid–the more likely people are to think: “Well if it takes that much explaining, you must just be grasping at straws.” At least that’s the sort of attitude I seem to have noticed.
People have a tendency to think that the truer argument will be the simplest and quickest one (which is why simple slogans like “Gay people are equal to straight people [which is true] and therefore deserve just as much a right to get married to each other [which is false]!” work so well in the greater culture), and tend to think that the more nuanced argument must be flawed or else it wouldn’t need to go into so much detail. Reality doesn’t work that way, but it’s difficult to get anyone to pay attention, in the public sphere, to more nuanced arguments, no matter how sound those arguments are. Sadly.
That’s why, even though there are many deeper and more nuanced reasons why homosexual acts are wrong, it can still be helpful if we can try to investigate the rational basis for simpler arguments also.
Blessings in Christ,
KindredSoul
I rather like the argument, and I think it probably IS more useful in our current secular climate than the other. People tend to be more interested in the telos of the whole human being rather than the telos of individual parts.There is another natural law argument against homosexual acts, one that I’m not sure I’ve heard anyone but myself give. It heralds back to the first dawn of natural law theory, with Aristotle. Here it is:
Now, let me right off the bat respond to a few objections:
- Human beings have a distinctive telos, or purpose.
- Any type of action that tends toward the thwarting of one’s telos (or other people’s telos) is wrong.
- The telos of a human being is happiness.
- Homosexual actions tend to lead to unhappiness in oneself or others.
- Therefore, homosexual actions are wrong.
Objection 1: Premise #4 is false, or questionable.
I have sympathy with this objection. The jury’s still out on whether homosexual actions tend to lead to unhappiness. But if you read through histories about this stuff, even in pre-Christian cultures, authors generally connect homosexual activity (at least among men) with hedonism, and the modern link between homosexual activity and promiscuity suggests a similar connection.
Now, you might say “different people have different ideas of happiness”. But what does that matter? Happiness is a real thing. It is possible to thrive as a human being. And quite honestly, if I saw all the sexually active gay people I know thriving, I wouldn’t oppose homosexual activity at all. But I don’t see them thriving.
Objection 2: This argument is utilitarian.
It’s not, though. The argument does not evaluate individual actions on the basis of their actual or expected results. The argument evaluates action types on the basis of one result: happiness. The argument is consequentialist, in some broad sense, but not utilitarian. I follow Aristotle and Aquinas in believing that good actions tend to have good consequences, and bad actions tend to have bad consequences. (Thus, I reject Kant entirely).
I love the way this scripture compliments your argument!
Beats me too!
Obviously, that’s a bit of a different debate than the one you have in this thread, so my reference to it was just an example. But needless to say, I agree emphatically with this argument, of course noting the necessity of filling out and proving Premise# 2, which I think can be easily done (and have probably seen you do before, somewhere around these forums).
You probably can predict some of my objections. You have already addressed premise (3), so I will respond to the remainder of the argument.I dislike the word “purpose” because it suggests intentional behavior. We don’t know whether our bodies were “intended” to do anything. They may very well be intended for something, but it’s also possible that we are the result of non-sentient laws of physics governing inanimate matter. Just because something is useful or advantageous doesn’t mean it was intended from the outset.
Even if our organs were intended to be used in a particular way, that doesn’t mean we must be slaves to our master. I could have a child for the sole purpose that they become, say, a pop star, but there is no moral imperative for my child to actually become such a thing. In other words, it doesn’t follow that, just because a deity wants something, they should get that thing. There are clearly immoral purposes that can be imagined.
Excellent. Which is exactly where Pope St John Paul II began in his Theology of the Body.
The concept of “purpose” didn’t suggest intentional behavior, to Aristotle. He thought that things could have purposes, regardless of whether someone created them that way. (Remember, Aristotle didn’t posit a creator god.)
I agree, actually. I don’t think it is sufficient to say that a person should pursue their purpose unless their purpose is identical with their good – with the way they will best thrive as a person. But Aristotle and Aquinas claim that our purpose and our good are identical; indeed, they claim that we can know a thing’s purpose by looking to how it prospers. A ship’s purpose isn’t sailing simply because we make it for sailing; it’s because that’s what a ship is good at.
I didn’t say homosexuality leads to unhappiness, so I don’t have to defend that claim. I don’t even believe that claim.
There maybe a tiny solution to that, gay couples who adopt children could have a female or male nanny which could help balance out the male/female structure. Or just have close female/male family members.
Would we be requiring them to do this by law? Then we would be establishing different standards for different kinds of marriage – a sort of a caste system. That would never fly.
Some people have been brought up as child prostitutes and never felt deprived. Feeling deprived is not the measure of justice.
I have sympathy with this train of thought. But is it always wrong to make pleasure an end in itself? That question gives me pause. It seems like sometimes pleasure IS an end in itself. (Eating an ice cream cone, for example). And if that’s right, then why is seeking pleasure for its own sake wrong in the case of sex but not in other cases?
It’s this “thwarting” business that always puzzles me. If I use my coaster as a frisbee when I’m not drinking anything, that doesn’t thwart the purpose of a coaster. It would only thwart the purpose if I never used my coaster for holding cups. So why does using one’s genitals for other pleasurable activities thwart the purpose of the genitals, if one can use the genitals for their proper purpose another time?
This seems like a highly obscure notion of “purpose”. Could you define it?
When scientists use the word “purpose”, it has several asterisks attached to it (and some are philosophy savvy enough to note this). To say an animal has a purpose within an ecosystem is to say it is necessary for that animal to be there for the ecosystem to function as it does. No one is making any claims that the animal should be there or that the ecosystem should function as it does, however. No prescriptive or teleological claims are actually being made with such a usage of “purpose”. Nor is anyone saying that nature “cares” in any sense about what happens to the ecosystem.
I’m not sure what this extra level of abstraction is really doing for us though. Can’t we just talk about what’s good for us (because, as you say, that is easy to tell just by looking in many cases) rather than guess about purposes based on theology? If they truly are identical, and the good is easier to recognize than purposes, then why not just work with the good?
Okay, rereading your premise, I see you specified that homosexual actions were the culprit. My apologies, but the claim still seems equally baffling.