[Editors Note: In the Spring 1998 issue of Serai, Volume 11, No. 1, Robert Lewis, in Confessions of a Heterosexual, took to task his own feelings about homosexuality and discovered that despite best intentions, he wasn’t as prejudice-free as he believed. His piece, however, elucidates on why it is in everybody’s interest to not only tolerate, but to encourage homosexuality as a legitimate life-style. Michael Little takes some exception to Lewis’ views, and they are presented below. At the end of Little’s critique is a reprint of the original article.]
In my capacity as reader, I took the liberty of perusing your recent submission, "Confessions of a Heterosexual." I must say that I found it a frank, thoughtful, engaging piece. The opening was powerful, and the discourse engaging. I hope you will not be offended if I share with you what were my chief objections to your argument. Know that my intentions are to get to the heart of the question, as I believe yours are, and I consider you not an opponent, but a companion in that effort.
For convenience, I will take up your points in the same order as presented, though this is not, in my estimation, the order of importance. First, I am surprised by your omission, in speaking of the orgasm as the great leveler, of the rapist, the pedophile, the incestuous, and the prostitute's john. It is true that if we exercise a reductivist hedonist rationalism upon these activities -- that is, we measure them by a rule of physical mechanism and evaluate them in terms of a physical pleasure, denying as irrelevant the interrelatedness of human mind and body in terms of perception and with that the contextual factors that contribute to experience--, they will belong to the same class. This allows you to belittle the real objection as one of a choice of "mere means" to an identical end. But this understanding is so devoid of moral force that even in your own argument you must to some extent abandon it in favor of the higher ground of "caring relationships," without laying out the implications of this beginning with respect to the rational equality of uncaring ones. This isn't a bad move rhetorically, but the inadequacy of carrying these two arguments in tandem is fatal in the eyes of those of us who are serious.
Second, you slight the problem that many orgasms which are not linked to homosexuality, even those in which members of the opposite sex are involved, are subject to a similar stigma. The consensus is that rape, prostitution, voyeurism (insofar as it is invasive), incest, bestiality, and public copulation/onanism (indecency) are criminal, while adultery, premarital sex, multi-partner sex, and especially onanism are shameful (and this from religious and non-religious perspectives alike). The physiological critique carries in its wake a much more radical critique of existing morality than you are willing to address here.
Your third movement is to change grounds to social expediency/utilitarianism: 'The more loving/caring relationships that exist in a society, the better off . . . that society will be.' In approaching this point, the non-fanatic conservative (whom you are trying in some sense to convince) must wonder whether the (public) emergence of homosexuality as a political/moral problem is not due to an overall sexual context or social condition the tendency of which is to undermine rather than support loving/caring relationships. If he is moderately well-read, he must acknowledge that homosexuality was quite open for example, in ancient Athens/Greece during the period of its greatest health/productivity, but he cannot help but see that the structure of homosexuality there its incorporation into the social system of education, through which a loving/caring homosexual relationship cultivated the Athenian youth was radically different from that which he faces in modern liberal society the divorce of sex from its moral/social role, and its affirmation in terms of individualistic gratification. A homosexual movement that emerges from the consciousness of women's liberation (chiefly as individualistic sexual liberation--bra-burning, the revolt against the traditional family), and one which does not blush to ally itself (as above) with voyeurism, bestiality, and onanism in order to press its claims. Is this constructive of loving/caring relationships, or are they to fend for themselves in a climate of indiscriminate gratification. What are the social benefits likely to be? What proportion of current homosexual relationships do studies show to be loving/caring/sustained? And will a difference between female and male homosexual relationships on this score justify a difference in policy/attitude?
In this context, your fourth stratagem--that the heterosexual, without experience of that which he judges, is slave to an "imposed category of understanding," almost begs the question, need we ‘practice’ bestiality, rape, sadism, invasive voyeurism, and other non-loving/caring methods or 'means' of orgasm before we condemn them? After all, the orgasm is universal.
Next, it seems nature, especially animal nature, is an inadequate ground for the political and moral questions raised by human Eros and sex broadly. Male gorillas rape the other males in their group to establish dominance, proving that even in nature, the purpose of sex need not be either orgasmic pleasure or loving/caring relationships. This does not touch the question of support for sustained monogamy or some form of stable nuclear family structure. Further, since animal nature/physiology cannot provide an 'ought' on this issue, the existence of a stable minority of homosexuals in the population, no more than that of a stable minority of pyromaniacs, pedophiles, rapists, or even geniuses serves as a guide in our moral orientation toward said population.
The natural 'telus' or purpose of sex that you advocate at the conclusion, the augmentation of the "interdependence between 'pleasure and bonding'," seems to fail by your own opening physiological standard (cf. onanism). The loving/caring standard, which is your strongest ground of appeal and might support an austere social position condoning some homosexual relationships as it does some heterosexual ones, cannot embrace your scientific/naturalist/hedonist argument.
On "The Tyranny of Numbers." That God and nature allow for the existence of homosexuality is not in itself a proof. God, if we believe in the Christian one, allows for the existence of sin, but this does not justify it. On the other hand, is anything that exists by nature, anything in short that we ‘can’ do, therefore ‘permissible’? No one, I think, denies the existence of cruelty, violence, or tyranny, only their incompatibility with happiness.
A Final Note.
Should we succumb to the 'normal' or majority understanding of the term 'Homophobe'
according to which homosexuality in all its forms and historical manifestations
is not only morally neutral or harmless but actually positive and enriching,
and all reservations against it are motivated by a blind irrational prejudice
which at bottom is a manifestation of a phobia or unhealthy and psychologically
corruptive fear?
Is it not possible that homosexuality like heterosexuality and some if not all other 'sexualities,' has different manifestations, contexts, and psychological effects, and while it may be incorporated into a society in a healthy manner and take an over-all positive form for both society and the individual, there is a danger with it as with other forms that certain manifestations can be destructive of society and the individual. Must we not expand our thinking to embrace an investigation/critique of sexuality itself and its manifestations? Even, for example, if one believes that the 'normal' manifestation of onanism in society is not unhealthy or wrong and may in fact serve a positive purpose, does it make one an 'onanophobe' to believe that the tensions between city and man relegate onanism, properly, to an essentially private sphere, and that a don't ask/don't tell policy with respect to onanism in hiring and social relationships is a better policy than a masturbator's political action committee or a masturbator's art festival?
I think there is as good a logical argument for the responsible homosexual relationship as for the responsible heterosexual one, but let's not ignore that the rational argument is still revolutionary, for it is not clear that our current social institutions/standards--marriage and the traditional family cannot stand the scrutiny of a strict rationalism (the prevalence of divorce, adultery, and the single-parent family are only evidence of the extent to which the split of pleasure from bonding implicit in the sexual revolution/individualist critique have undermined that structure). A new social order will be necessary for the liberal rationalism to prevail, and the question of what will provide the foundation or cement for that order is as yet unanswered. The conservative disposition is attentive to the frailty of social order and the danger of experimentation in politics or the implementation of the untried, especially in a matter as pervasive as this. The serious, thoughtful (not knee-jerk) conservative will not be persuaded by this rhetoric. Even the liberal conservative, like myself, who understands the limits of the political and therefore staunchly defends the sanctity of the private sphere and the sober advancements of a regime which is dedicated to moderate as opposed to radical liberty, cannot but see this argument as finally, an unsatisfactory wedding of ideas through thin rhetoric.
I hope you will not think my comments are hostile. I truly do not mean them to be. I am not polemic, and I do not see homosexuality as naturally/morally/rationally wrong. But I see the issue of homosexuality and liberal sexual morality as complicated, and our order as a result as one in crisis. I think we need to look at the alternatives with open eyes, and not assume that freedom and order are easily reconciled. Nor do I think that a return to the traditional family is practically possible or necessarily at the ideal/most eligible level most desirable or best. I merely think that we ought to proceed with the utmost caution. If god, scientific reason and nature are ambiguous standards, this proceeding ought to be prefaced by very serious thinking about the foundations upon which to do it.
Yours (sincerely), Michael A. Little
P.S. Thank you for making me think. That is the greatest service of friendship.
THE END