Community Building and Sexual Morality

Years ago, I wrote about sexual morality from a Kantian perspective, arguing that sex outside of a relationship such as marriage violated the categorical imperative to see others as ends and not as means. I have also written about community building in the contexts of the Ender series and the Twilight series. More recently, I have written about the musical Rent and its depiction of community being built out of individuals whose very morality renders them incapable of being part of a community in a meaningful sense. In my most recent post, I wrote about Calvin existing in his own head without the moral sense that he is obligated to parents and future generations. In this post, I would like to explore sexual morality from a community perspective.

For a community to meaningfully exist it cannot simply be a collection of individuals cooperating together at a given moment but must also operate within time. A community that does not produce a next generation will not survive. As such, how this next generation comes into being is a central concern to the community to such an extent that each individual’s attitude toward this question serves as a useful means to measure their commitment to the community as a whole. Since sexual intercourse is the primary means by which human beings come into this world, there can be no community that can survive in the long run that does not take some interest as to who people are sleeping with. To be clear, a healthy community is likely to recognize that, considering the fact that reality is messy, there is often a need to play ignorant and not go kicking down the doors of people violating the sexual norms of the community.

There are many plausible strategies for trying to ensure a future generation for the community. If you are the Shakers, you forgo physically reproducing children and rely completely on outreach. This has proven to not be an effective strategy for the Shakers and they have just about all died out. To their credit, the Shakers were a victim of their success at getting their adherents to actually follow the tenets of the faith. If only the Shakers were a little more “accepting of human weakness,” they might have survived.

If you are the Catholic priesthood, your celibacy is one of the main things that tie you to the wider Catholic community and stops you from breaking away from those “sinful” lay Catholics and creating a “purified” Catholic Church. You are relying on all the non-celibate Catholics to be fruitful and multiply so there can be a next generation of priests.

On the other extreme, cults will often allow for a surface sexual liberation. This is something that makes them attractive to potential believers. The irony of such sexual liberation is it comes to serve as one of the primary means of cutting people off from any sort of traditional morality that lies outside of the cult. This opens the door for the cult leader to become a tyrant as there is no outside standard by which to judge him. Furthermore, even the supposed free love turns out to be illusory. Instead, what you get is a hierarchy where those at the top are liberated to prey on others and those at the bottom will find sexual norms enforced upon them. It is precisely this ability to brazenly abuse others and get away with it that becomes the mark of their place in the hierarchy. As such, they are incentivized to become sexual predators and everyone else must “humbly” accept this.

Traditionally most societies have operated on a system of polygamy and slavery founded upon male covetousness. One has the male lord with his property such as cattle. This creates a political system where people submit themselves to the lord of the household as his bondsmen in order to eat the food he provides. This logic of lordship extends to women and the lord is able to have relations with those women under his domain. This allows the lord to produce lots of sons to continue his line, with the favored son becoming the next lord and his brothers serving under him. Daughters can be sent to neighboring households to cement alliances with other lords.

This order is further reproduced through the servants. They do not have access to the lord’s harem so they do not have women of their own. This is solved through warfare. The lord leads his servants against neighboring households. Upon victory, the servants take male members of the defeated household to be their slaves and help themselves to the women as well. Thus, the servants become minor lords themselves under their lord. The most successful practitioner of this sort of politics was Genghis Khan and a significant percentage of the world’s population are his descendants.   

We can see this sort of thinking in the Bible with Abraham even as Abraham was, perhaps, a less evil practitioner of these norms. He owned herds of animals and with that came servants. When he was unable to produce a son with Sarai, she agreed to allow him to take up with Hagar. This produced Ishmael. When Isaac was finally born, this created a problem as it was not obvious which son was going to inherit the leadership role from Abraham. Abraham made war upon the four kings after they took Lot and the people of Sodom into captivity. Clearly, it would have been Abraham’s right to take all of these people as his slaves, but he returned them to the king of Sodom without accepting any gifts in return. (Note that taking a gift from the king of Sodom would have indicated that Abraham was submitting to the king of Sodom as his lord.)

Later in the Bible, we are introduced to the concept of the Captive Woman (Yifat Toar). The Bible places limits on what can be done to her, but one cannot ignore the brutal reality that this law underscores. One of the purposes of going to war in the ancient world was to gain captives, including female captives. Similarly, in Judges, we have the Song of Deborah where she imagines Sisrah’s mother wondering why he has not come home and assuming that he has been delayed because he is dividing up the female captives. When one hears of the horrors of what was done to women on October 7^th, it is important to recognize that, historically, such behavior has been the norm in war.

I would argue that the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian exile radically changed Judaism. Among other things, it may have given rise to the beginning of what we might think of as the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic. In a world in which Jews did not have power, being the lord of a household and spreading one’s seed through slavery and warfare stopped being practical. As members of a minority religion faced with the twin threats of extermination and assimilation, Jewish survival depended on a father’s willingness to not only have lots of offspring but to invest in raising them as Jews. This meant that Jewish men were going to need to be made to settle down and marry Jewish women. Note that it is precisely when we get to Ezra that we see Jewish men being denounced for taking non-Jewish wives not as a matter of this leading to idolatry but because intermarriage itself suddenly became a problem.  

Women leaving Judaism were not nearly as serious a threat. A man might want to leave Judaism in order to move up in society and become someone with power. This did not apply to women as we are still dealing with patriarchal societies. A woman who left Judaism would simply be exchanging the relatively mild Jewish patriarchy for a gentile patriarchy enforced through explicit violence. 

Since it was primarily men who needed to be kept in line, the key feature of the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic became the regulation of male sexuality. In Judaism, this has manifested itself in taboos against looking at women dressed in a manner deemed immodest or listening to women singing. This has the practical purpose of setting up no-go spaces for men. This serves as a useful proxy for avoiding places and the sort of people who are not practicing a similar sexual ethic.  

Furthermore, the rabbis cleverly made use of the ban on sexual relations with a menstruating woman to render all sex outside of marriage to be sinful. Unmarried women are kept from using the mikvah. As such, all unmarried girls above the age of puberty are legally in the state of niddah and men cannot touch them let alone sleep with them. As strange as this sounds, it has been worth it for Judaism to allow its members to fall into grievous sin by engaging in pre-marital sex without immersing in the mikvah rather than allow unmarried girls to use the mikvah. If unmarried girls were allowed to use the mikvah, rabbis would no longer have a coherent argument as to why pre-marital sex should be regarded as a sin.

To be clear, the main problem with sex outside of marriage is not that it harms individuals but that it harms the community. As such, the community needs to greatly limit such behavior and inculcate in its members a deep loathing for such behavior. The problem is that people are not likely to think in terms of the needs of the community and sacrifice for it. As such, the solution is to simply label pre-marital sex as sinful by the legalist workaround of making unmarried girls ritually impure.

Admittedly, the main tool for regulating male sexuality has been regulating female sexuality. If women face a stigma for sex outside of marriage they will insist on marriage. As more women take themselves out of play men will conclude that their only hope is to get married.  As long as men are not supposed to be looking at women dressed in a certain fashion, it becomes the implicit obligation of women to dress in a manner that will allow men to look at them. To be clear, this still requires the Jewish community to come after men who sleep with gentile women. 

At first glance, the lord of the household and the Judeo-Christian sexual ethics will appear similar. Somewhat counterintuitively, the former will usually enforce stricter modesty codes on women. The reason for this is that the consequences of female infidelity are greater. A woman who is unfaithful calls into question the paternity of her children and their future claim to rule, thus undermining the entire system. From this perspective, honor killings of women on the mere suspicion of infidelity become a reasonable response. This demonstrates that the men are in charge and can guarantee the parentage of their children. By contrast, Jewish survival is far more threatened by male indiscretions than female ones as this would create a situation where men stopped being committed to raising their kids as Jews.   

The practical distinction between the two models is what they mean for male sexuality. In the lord of the household model, restrictions on female dress or their ability to leave the house do not mean restrictions on men. On the contrary, restrictions on women are meant to demonstrate that they are the property of a man. This divides women into those within the community. They are the property of a husband lord and are not to be touched by bondsmen. Then there are outside women who are fair game. By simultaneously being willing to kill women within the community for walking in the street dressed immodestly and assaulting women who are not part of the community simply for walking in the street, one demonstrates that the community is powerful and that everyone should submit themselves to it. (On the implications of this sort of thinking for Muslim men in Europe, see Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Prey.)

By contrast, the primary purpose of the Judeo-Christian ethic is to restrict men. Men are the ones who are easily tempted and need to be kept in line. As Jews lacked power, they did not need to demonstrate that they had power over their women. On the contrary, Jewish survival has relied on keeping men within the community and not assimilating into the wider society despite Jewish lack of power.  

 

The Unwritten Constitution: Why Roe Matters

 

I was at my wife's grandmother's place in New York when I saw a news flash on my phone that Roe vs. Wade had been overturned. Even as I had been expecting this result ever since the opinion leak, this still came as a shock to me. Throughout my life, Roe was one of those facts about American political life. Yes, Republicans dreamed of getting rid of Roe, but there was no way it could actually happen. As someone who has moved around a fair bit along the choice vs. life spectrum over the course of my lifetime, I have long found the passions aroused by abortion to be mysterious. Consider the no longer hypothetical situation we are in now with the end of Roe, what has actually changed about abortion law in America now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe? In truth, almost nothing. Here in California, abortion is as legal as it ever was. For those women living in states that are now banning abortion, what has changed for them is that they might have to spend a few hours on a Greyhound bus. Getting rid of Roe is not going to stop anyone from having an abortion so why did liberals and conservatives spend nearly fifty years fighting over Roe?

The key to understanding the importance of Roe lies in thinking of it in terms of an "unwritten constitution." No one ever interprets a text without a set of assumptions that serve as interpretive lenses for how to read the text. Conservatives are certainly correct in pointing out that, unlike the right to guns which the Court just protected, the Constitution never says anything about a right to abortion. That being said, this does not necessarily mean that it should be easier to buy a gun than to get an abortion. It all depends on what sort of unwritten constitution you believe in. If one does not approach the Second Amendment with the assumption that gun ownership is essential to citizenship in a free society then the right to bear arms becomes nothing more than a quaint text that should not be allowed to get in the way of public safety. From there it is easy to say that the Second Amendment only refers to members of militias carrying Eighteenth-century-style muskets. 

On the flip side, if you assume that the purpose of the Constitution is to allow people to pursue their own happiness in defiance of established sexual mores, then it does not matter if the Constitution never actually says this, this is what the Constitution really is. (Note that the Constitution says nothing about a right to pursue happiness. That is in the Declaration of Independence.) 

As strange as it may sound, it is the unwritten constitution that carries the greater authority. You can argue with a written text and attempt to limit it in all sorts of creative ways. The unwritten constitution is meant to be so thoroughly embedded in the thinking of society that it should be impossible for members to think in any other way. In fact, what is not written can serve as bait to draw out the heretic into revealing that they do not share the fundamental assumptions of the rest of society. For example, do you believe that the First Amendment establishes a "Separation Between Church and State?" If you said yes, you are factually incorrect. The Constitution says no such thing. As with the pursuit of happiness, that was Thomas Jefferson, who was not even part of the Constitutional Convention. If you are of a liberal disposition, this fact should not matter. On the contrary, the conservative who points this out has simply demonstrated that fail to appreciate the "soul" of the Constitution, i.e., they do not accept the unwritten liberal constitution. 

The battle over Roe was never really about abortion but the unwritten sexual revolution constitution that, following in the footsteps of Griswold, it furthered. In essence, the Court was saying that it was an essential right for young women pursuing college and a career to be able to have pre-marital sex without having to worry that, if something were to go wrong, they might have to choose between marrying the father or becoming single mothers. If you are committed to building a society where there is no stigma attached to women pursuing careers and having pre-marital sex then it is going to be necessary to remove the stigma attached to abortion by not just making it legal but enshrining it as a constitutional right in a similar sense as being able to stand outside the White House waving signs.  

When I last visited DC, I made a point of taking my son to see the wide variety of people protesting. It did not matter that I personally disagreed with many of these people. I accept that all of them, even the "smelly weirdos," were doing something positive. It is essential for me that we live in a country where it should be thought of as perfectly normal and uncontroversial to stand outside the White House and say bad things about the president. Note that if you were to tell me that none of this is in the Constitution, which only says that people can assemble to seek redress but not to insult politicians, you would be correct but you would also be demonstrating that there is a larger "soul" to the Constitution that you do not comprehend. 

Being able to publicly say bad things about elected officials (as opposed to strongly implying that you would not be particularly bothered if they were murdered) is part of my unwritten constitution. The idea that the secular state must be backed by a broadly religious society with strong families and a conservative sexual morality is also part of my unwritten constitution. By contrast, the sexual revolution is not part of my unwritten constitution.        

An easy way to see the role of the sexual revolution constitution in Griswold and then Roe is to consider what should be an obvious question. If people have the right to make decisions with their own bodies and in consultation with their own doctors, why is there no constitutional right for drug use or to sell their organs? To accuse people on the left of hypocrisy is, in a sense, to miss the point. There is no deep narrative entrenched within the mainstream left where drug use and organ selling become essential to who people are and to take their place as citizens. By contrast, birth control and abortion have this larger narrative that is more important than any technical legal arguments, which only serve to justify the sexual revolution constitution after the fact. 

Similarly, one can point to the claim of protecting women's rights. The Constitution does not offer special protection for women. The sexual revolution constitution, by contrast, does. In the narrative of the sexual revolution, women are a group oppressed by traditional sexual mores. In order for the Constitution to remain legitimate, it must be read in terms of the sexual revolution. Anyone who argues that the Constitution has no category of women's rights may be factually correct but they have also demonstrated that they are not embedded within the assumptions of the sexual revolution. 

It should be noted that it is possible to want abortion to be legal to a large degree without wanting it to be a constitutional right. I would consider myself to be within this camp. There are lots of things that I want to be legal but not to be expressed directly as constitutional rights. For example, I want adultery to be legal and oppose any attempt by the government to punish infidelity. Similarly, I want marijuana and even heroin to be legal. That being said, I do not wish for them to be declared constitutional rights. To do so would be to accept an unwritten constitution where extra-marital sex and drug use are accepted as positive actions in the same sense as peaceful protesting. 

I am fine with the Supreme Court saying that the federal government has no authority over what people do with their bodies as long as they are not causing physical harm to others. The right of people to pursue their own good in their own way as long as they are not causing physical harm to others is part of my unwritten constitution. This will lead to the de facto legalization of adultery and drug use. Once this has been accomplished, we can discuss whether this constitutional right to bodily autonomy includes abortion or whether fetuses, in some sense, count as living beings with a right to not be murdered.      

Certainly, in the short run, I do not expect the number of abortions nationally to drop. The importance of the Dobbs decision is that it takes away the moral high ground from the left. They no longer have the grounds to claim that abortion is a constitutional right. That being said, I do not expect leftists to back down and soften their rhetoric. On the contrary, we should expect an all-out attack on conservatives for daring to not accept the constitution of the sexual revolution and upon the legitimacy of the Supreme Court for acknowledging that there can be another framework for reading constitutional law. With the overturning of Roe, the stakes have been raised over the sexual revolution constitution. Either we must accept that a group of Gileadists has conspired to take over the Supreme Court and destroy the Constitution in order to enslave women into marriage and motherhood or that the Supreme Court was taken over in the mid-20th century by leftists who rewrote the Constitution in order to enshrine the sexual revolution and that this unwritten constitution has now been rejected. Either way, I expect that there will be little room to make the practical good-faith compromises that might create a workable legal framework for abortion

 .       

We the Few Who Never Accepted the Sexual Revolution: Treading the Line Between a Conservative Sexual Ethic and Hating Homosexuals (Part II)

(Part I)

The second point is that if one is going to defend a conservative sexual ethic, there needs to be a clearly thought out theory and set of principles as to what is to be accomplished. Without that, we are left with the fear that some "Puritan" in the sky will burn people in Hell simply for enjoying themselves. So, when I talk about a conservative sexual ethic I primarily mean rejecting the notion of being true to oneself and that love has any ultimate importance as the means by which one finds this self. 

I see people as individuals with rights and outside of any a priori claims from social groups. This is the source of rights in the sense that the needs of the individual trumps that of the "public good." That being said, while humans may have some kind of metaphysical soul, I do not accept that humans have some kind of essential characteristic unique to themselves that they must discover and be true to. Such talk is an attempt to distract from the view of man as a rational being. Reason is the one true inheritance of all people as it is the only part of your mind truly accessible to others. It is to the extent that I believe that you are a rational being that I can offer you a social contract and recognize that you have rights. Anything less and we are stuck in Hobbesian Warfare and I have no choice but to kill you as I would a rabid dog.

Even if you had some true nature, it is hardly obvious that there is anything virtuous or merit worthy about it. On the contrary, it should be rejected as the inner savage that, if not chained by civilization, will lead us to destruction. This is quite the opposite of what we are taught by modern entertainment. We are so regularly told to be true to ourselves that unless we have access to some alternative value system (through exposure to some combination of an intellectually serious traditional religion and lots of classic literature) we are unable to question it.  

This Romantic notion of the self becomes particularly toxic when that self is assumed to be sexual. Humans may desire sex, but sex is not what defines us as rational beings and plays no inherent role in granting dignity and legitimacy to our lives. This does not mean that sexuality is evil and I am personally quite fond of love as a literary concept. That being said, sexuality can be granted no special sanction for the individual. Clearly, food is more important for daily human thriving and happiness than sex. If Judaism is justified in placing taboos on food, such as pig, then Judaism can place a taboo on gay sex. The fact that far more people have committed suicide over sex than over food says nothing about the importance of sex beyond that it tends to bring out the pathological in people.   

While there can be people who desire gay sex, there cannot be a meaningful category of homosexuals in the sense that restrictions on gay sex can be seen as a denial of their personhood. A gay person born into an Orthodox community would have no better grounds to complain than an Orthodox pig lover. Both should be treated with charity and it should be recognized that they both may not be a good fit for an Orthodox lifestyle and may be better off leaving. They have done nothing wrong; it is Orthodoxy that lacks the resources to handle them. Those who choose to stay should be acknowledged as heroes. That being said, neither group can claim that their being has been denied to them since neither of them are sexual or food beings but rational beings.   

It should be acknowledged that the gay rights movement is a product of Romanticism's reinterpretation of human nature that culminated in the Sexual Revolution. More than society becoming more tolerant about pre-marital sex in the face of growing numbers of women entering college possessing the pill and intent on delaying marriage, the Sexual Revolution marked a principled shift in social values in which pre-marital sex was incidental. Coming from Romanticism's emphasis on the individual's search for love as a defining part of their true being as opposed to their role in society, there ceased being any attempt to hide the fact that sex was at the center of this quest for love and essential to it. To object that a boy or girl was violating some taboo that historically had been honored more in the breach than actually practiced was to deny the very essence of that couple's being. Thus, the moral imperative was flipped from defending social standards in the face of temptation to not allowing social standards to stand in the way of pursuing one's "true self." 

  

If you wish to understand how nearly total this Romantic capture of how we think has been, in addition to its conception of self, consider every time you hear a song or watch a movie in which love is considered some kind of all-powerful self-justifying end in itself in a way that is not supposed to be even controversial. This should be even more obvious in things like the end of the otherwise excellent Wonder Woman film in which the lovely Gal Gadot could, after spending the entire movie being this generation's embodiment of awesome, spout utter nonsense and end it with something along the lines of saving the world for love. It is taken as a given that sexual love is so essential to our lives and the center of our actual religion (regardless of what we officially call ourselves) that we would nod our heads and pretend that this was something other than lazy writing.  

Even most conservatives who oppose the Sexual Revolution's practical conclusions regarding pre-marital sex have accepted its narrative of humans finding their true selves through sexual love. This is quite easy because social conservatives can still pretend that the demands of sexual love as the fulfillment of one's personhood can be fulfilled within marriage. This ignores the fact that the high of sexual love for one person is not something that can be maintained. Its focus must switch from person to person in a never-ending quest. Thus, if sexual love is to be pursued as the end goal of life, monogamy must be rejected. 

Keep in mind here that none of this can be blamed on homosexuals. Their only part in this wreckage of traditional values has been to come in, after the fact, and, very reasonably point out that if one is going to be logically consistent about sex as central to one's true being then, yes, they must be included. Just like heterosexuals, they are capable of using sex to pursue meaningful loving relationships. If the pursuit of such relationships is central to human thriving then the failure of society to actively approve of same-sex relationships or, even worse, to express any disapproval of gay sex is to deny homosexuals their very being. 

In this sense, the gay rights movement has been a good thing. Since the vast majority of people in our society, including most conservatives, have implicitly accepted the basic premise of the Sexual Revolution, it is right that gay marriage should be the law of the land and that society actively promotes the notion that homosexual relationships are the equal of heterosexual ones. In fact, homosexuals have the moral advantage that their pursuit of their sexual identities has an honesty unavailable to heterosexuals as they had to overcome real obstacles that tried to prevent them from becoming their "true" selves. This leaves those of us in the minority who have not accepted the Sexual Revolution in a bind.    

To be clear, there is nothing about a conservative sexual ethic, as I have described it, that prevents one from being fully supportive of gay rights. Furthermore, nothing that I say here should diminish the importance of offering members of the LGBTQ community full libertarian tolerance. Adults have the right to engage in whatever consensual behavior they wish in the privacy of their own homes. That being said, if you are operating within the intellectual framework of a conservative sexual ethic, the standard non-libertarian arguments for gay marriage and LGBTQ tolerance make no sense. 

Take the statements "love is love," "all love is equal," or "love wins" as examples. As a social conservative, love, particularly sexual love, has no supreme value. Love justifies nothing. Since I have never raised love, heterosexual or otherwise, on a pedestal, all love is equal in not being particularly valuable. Since love has no moral standing (in contrast to things like reason, truth, and justice), there is no particular reason why we should want it to win. One might as well celebrate the victory of the meek inheriting the Earth. 

Since these arguments only make sense for someone who accepts the Sexual Revolution, the minority of us who reject the Sexual Revolution are forced to actively reject them. Failure to do so would mean allowing a world in which it is impossible for anyone to see things but from the perspective of the Sexual Revolution. On the other hand, to make this about homosexuals also dooms the fight against the Sexual Revolution as it distracts from the key issues that would still be with us even in a completely heterosexual society. This requires intellectual discipline to hold one's ground and not attack until the opposition actively makes a non-libertarian LGBTQ acceptance argument. 

As I said before, it is only right that people who accept the Sexual Revolution should go all the way with mainstreaming LGBTQs. They are only being consistent and, as rationalists, we should honor that. LGBTQ supporters only make themselves vulnerable when they fail to realize that the Sexual Revolution is not the only intellectually serious way to understand human beings and that there are people who operate outside of that framework. The moment they accuse us of being intolerant, they throw away their moral high ground and we have them. They are no longer fighting for tolerance but are using the issue of LGBTQs to marginalize those of us outside the Sexual Revolution. They are the ones being intolerant and trying to take away our rights. We are, hereby, exempt from compromising with them or any need to seek out their goodwill.    

Being actively tolerant of homosexuals as individuals and avoiding conflict with them while openly defending a conservative view of sexuality sounds like a paradox. In truth, they feed into each other. The act of showing kindness to homosexuals as individuals keeps a conservative sexuality within the realm of principles, untainted by personal animosity. Being open about one's conservative values keeps one's personal tolerance from turning into a Trojan Horse to undermine traditional sexuality. The Sexual Revolution may have captured society but it is still possible to uphold conservative values in our homes and communities. If we do so with love and intellectual honesty, we might even succeed in passing them on to our children. 

Jack’s Last Battle: Some Final Thoughts on Lost and C. S. Lewis

This past week saw the series finales of two of my long-running favorite shows, Lost and 24. Without them, I will probably get more work done. So here are some final thoughts of these two (usually) brilliant and revolutionary shows.

To deal with Lost first, I have long cherished the fact that they included C. S. Lewis in the guise of Charlotte Staples Lewis among the great philosophers such as Locke, Rousseau, and Hume to be named on the show. So I was particularly intrigued by the fact that they chose to pull off an ending reminiscent of how Lewis ended the Chronicles of Narnia with the Last Battle. Lewis famously (or infamously) had almost all the major human characters from the series killed off in a train accident and taken off to Aslan's kingdom where they all live happily ever after. Keep in mind that we are dealing with a series of kid's books. Most infamously of all, Lewis has Susan left behind, because she had abandoned "belief" in Narnia for her adult cares, mainly nylon stockings. Many have argued that nylons were meant as code for sex and that Lewis was telling kids that if they have pre-marital sex they will go to hell.

Anyone familiar with Lewis' wider body of work, not just Narnia, would tell you that, for Lewis, it really is about the small things, such as nylons, to such an extent that if Lewis had written that Susan was not going to be saved because of her sex life, sex is really code for all the petty vain things, like nylons, that are really at the heart of the matter. In Lewis' theology, it is always the small sins that are important and which damn us. The big sins are merely the end result of all the small sins. For this reason, it is of little importance that, in Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Edmund betrays his siblings to the White Witch. The real issue at hand was Edmund's pride and jealousy, present from the beginning of the story. A chastened humble Edmund is a savable Edmund, regardless of the consequences of his misdeeds. On the contrary, having to live with the consequences serves all the more as a chastisement to cure the original sin. The real problem with sex is not the act itself. The real issues (at least potentially) at hand are the pride that led one to think they are above conventional morality, the desire, not so much for physical pleasure, but to be part of the inner circle of people in the "know" and the rebellion against conventional morals. As Lewis points out in his essay, the Inner Ring:

Freud would say, no doubt, that the whole thing is a subterfuge of the sexual impulse. I wonder whether the shoe is not sometimes on the other foot. I wonder whether, in ages of promiscuity, many a virginity has not been lost less in obedience to Venus than in obedience to the lure of the caucus. For of course, when promiscuity is the fashion, the chaste are outsiders. They are ignorant of something that other people know. They are uninitiated. And as for lighter matters, the number of people who first smoked or first got drunk for a similar reason is probably very large.

A person could easily come to regret a sexual action, in of itself, and repent. It is not so simple to repent from the pride that led to it. Without facing the issue of pride there can be no meaningful repentance for sex and the deed will be repeated and worse things will follow.

The major mystery with Lost in the final season was what to make of the alternative parallel universe, populated by versions of the main characters, that came into existence, seemingly after Juliet Burke set off a nuclear bomb on the Island at the end of season five. I was hoping for Desmond Hume to bring back John Locke from the alternative universe to save the Island from the smoke monster, who had taken the form of Locke. (Hats off to Terry O'Quinn for the range he showed over the series, playing the noble John Locke with his struggles with faith in the Island for four seasons, the smoke monster pretending to be Locke for one season, and the utterly satanic yet chillingly charming smoke monster this last season. Whatever qualms I may have with the quality of the writing of this show at times, I cannot stress enough how talented a cast of actors Lost had.) The alternative universe Locke would be followed by the rest of the people in the alternative universe, who sacrifice themselves and the happier existences of the alternative universe to cross back over and save the Island.

I was always far more of a John Locke fan than a Jack Shephard fan. Shephard might be important as the political leader of the survivors, establishing a community, but it was Locke, who confronted the big questions of meaning and the purpose of the Island. (I never cared about the Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle.) I would compare the relationship between Shephard and Locke to the relationship, I once discussed, between Peter and Ender Wiggin in the Ender series. Instead of letting this play out, the writers decided to let Jack take on what should have been Locke's role as the faith leader to save the Island.

To top it all off, in the end, the alternative universe ends up playing no role in the final conflict with the smoke monster. It is a gateway world where all the characters who died during the show along with the characters who survived but will one day die have been gathered together to fix their relationships before moving on together. The "Jew" Benjamin Linus is even given a truly moving repentance scene that Lewis would surely have approved of. Linus asks Locke for forgiveness for trying to kill him; the sin he focuses on is not murder, but the jealousy that drove him to it. That being said, this gathering together was a cop-out that dodged the major issues and failed to give six seasons of mystery the ending it deserved. Whatever else you can say about what Lewis did to Narnia in the Last Battle, and it certainly is the most difficult of the seven books, at least his narrative made sense.

Porno Theaters and Aryan Coffee Shops: The Libertarian Case for Legalized Discrimination (Part I)

(The Nazi girl's youth group, the BDM, served to corrupt the morals of German girls all around. In addition to indoctrinating adolescent and teenage girls in racism and anti-Semitism, girls were also actively encouraged to get pregnant out of wedlock to produce children for the Reich.)  

I do not think it will come as a big shock that, as a believer in civil liberties, I support the right to buy and sell pornography in person and online. I do not personally support pornography, either ideologically or monetarily. Pornography violates my religious beliefs as an Orthodox Jew. As a rationalist, I believe anything that objectifies human beings as sexual objects is a threat to society. I cannot agree with my friend Clarissa that there can be any legitimate exploration of sexuality for its own sake. I would even go so far as to say that this form of behavior, in practice, particularly harms women. I am even willing to grant that the presence of a porno theater in a neighborhood will attract potentially "undesirable" elements and indirectly cause an increase in crime. That being said, I am willing to put myself out in support of the producers and consumers in this industry, despite my personal contempt for such people. This is what it means to support liberty. I am willing to protect the right of anyone to do anything that does not cause direct physical harm to other people without their informed consent. This includes those whom I oppose with all my heart. As a libertarian, I am willing to go even further, in the name of ideological consistency, in this regard to things that regular liberals will usually back down from. I believe in a right to prostitution and drug use without any interference from the federal government. Since I accept the rational validity of engaging in extramarital sexual activity even prostitution, I cannot accept the legitimacy of any laws barring minors from engaging in sexual activity, pornography, and even prostitution.  

There is one safety mechanism that I would put into play. I recognize the right of individual cities, acting solely for the material benefit of those living there, to regulate businesses, including the sex trade. Having a house of ill repute next door affects the value of my home and thus crosses the line into my direct physical interest. In contrast to this, I cannot make a plausible case that sinful women in Nevada are causing me direct physical harm through their existence and that the federal government owes it to me to "protect" me from these women. I am not even allowed to raise the issue of zealous patriarchal deities out there that might smite the nation if we allow such ungodly behavior in our midst. Cities and neighborhoods would be able to regulate and even ban the sex trade as long as they are acting in good faith only for the material benefit of its residents. Members of the local government cannot pass such laws out of any desire to protect the morals of residents or out of any personal opposition to the trade. That would violate the rights of the producers and consumers in the sex industry. Personally, despite my libertarianism, I have no desire to live in a neighborhood in which the trade is being practiced and can lobby my local government not to allow such activity. I can tell the producers and consumers to put their faith in the free market and try setting up shop in the next town.      

This will likely get me into trouble, but I support the right of individual stores and even individual cities to practice segregation. What if someone wanted to set up an Aryan coffee shop so that middle-class white supremacists can come to relax, sip $4 lattes served by pretty white waitresses and not have to be bothered by the sight of any black or Jewish faces as they discuss the latest in racial theory and Holocaust denial? What is the difference between this and a strip club or even a brothel? Obviously, I am no supporter of racism. I would even go so far as to say that my personal distaste for racism exceeds my distaste for the sex industry and that I have an easier time giving such people the benefit of the doubt than I would for racists. As an Orthodox Jew, I believe that racism is a denial that human beings are all created in the image of God. (I recognize that there are plenty of Orthodox Jews who are racists. There are also plenty of Orthodox Jews looking at dirty magazines.) As a rationalist, I believe that racism denies the power of reason to save all human beings through its grace. Defining human beings by race denies reason as the primary characteristic of human beings. I even believe that racist institutions will attract the "wrong" sort of people and indirectly lead to violence. (If you question my sincerity on this point, I will ask you to keep in mind that there are people who would question my sincerity in opposing various sexual taboos because I will not support laws banning such activity either.)   

(To be continued …) 

Toward a More Spiritual Meaning of the Homosexuality Taboo: My Response to Dr. Lively III

Evan Hurst did a post, commenting on my original encounter with Dr. Scott Lively. He also pointed me to a video of Dr. Lively blaming the Rwandan genocide on homosexuals.



I have no problem acknowledging that homosexual individuals took part in the genocide. I do have a problem with linking the genocide to Homosexuality. You are free to make your own judgments as to whether this is a call for mass murder. Can someone like Dr. Lively truly play innocent in urging the mass murder of homosexuals when saying things like this? Is this not a matter of saying: "Homosexuals should not be killed (wink wink), but they are responsible for all the world's worst blood baths (wink wink) and you need to do everything necessary (wink wink) to protect yourself."

I would like to point you to a recent op-ed by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of England, in the Times. He takes a similar position to mine, though he is a much better writer, in regards to homosexuality and freedom of religion. Do take a look at the comments. The rabid venom of some of these secularists is simply frightening. These people do not have a meaningful notion of what rights mean and they actively seek to be able trample over the liberties of people of faith. Such people need to be kept as far as possible from government.





Mr. Chinn,


Thank you for your change of tone.  


I'm not defending Igra regarding Shaw.  I'm actually now questioning whether it was even Shaw that Igra implicated in his book based the violence on your reaction to the idea. You certainly know much more about the Protocols than I do.  I don't have any notes on this question in my files because the issue was irrelevant to my research at the time -- and I cannot be confident in my fading memory of that book.   However, I didn't give you the tip because of Shaw's connection, but primarily because it related to the Protocols. In any case, I agree that evidence is the necessary prerequiste to deciding whether to entertain a theory, which is all the more reason why you should not have dismissed Igra.  You haven't yet seen the evidence. 


Just to play Devil's Advocate, let us assume I remembered correctly and Shaw was Igra's subject.  Is it really so implausible that he could have written the Protocols?  He was morally capable such an act, wouldn't you agree?  He was certainly artistically capable of writing it in the persona of its purported author.  By analogy, good actors can play bad actors when the script calls for it. And if Shaw, a reportedly "celibate homosexual" was a close friend of the "out and proud" translator of the document, you have what any good prosecutor would call probable cause for a search warrant: motive and opportunity. I'm not saying it's enough to persuade a jury, or that I am personally persuaded, but it's not a crackpot theory in the vein of Mormon "theology". 


You may be surprised to learn that I completely agree with your arguments in paragraphs 3 and 4.  I, too, prefer a secular society.  I too would be unwilling at accept any current religious leaders in any sort of theocratic rulership.  That said, I strongly disagree with your premise that secularism can be "religiously neutral."  Every legal or governmental system necessarily rests on moral presuppositions which in turn assume an ultimate source of moral authority.  This is why atheism in not only morally bankrupt, but literally irrational, in the truest sense of the word.  By definition it denies G-d, whose existence is the only possible "prime reality" in logic (a "prime reality" being the logical presupposition that does not itself depend on any other presupposition) and thus, true atheists (as opposed to confused thesists just looking for a way to escape accountability) cannot accurately perceive reality.    


The enlightened secularism achieved by the founders rested firmly on Biblical presuppositions.  The founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence and Constitution reflect a distinctly Judeo-Christian world view, and the historic record is replete with admonitions from the framers of those documents that to deviate from their world view would lead to disintegration of the nation.  Their "secularism" held (for example) the Ten Commandments to be objectively true and inviolable moral precepts, and viewed religious freedom as a matter of tolerance for views that deviated from unarguable truth NOT the system of religious pluralism we're suffering today in which every theological notion, however foolish, is deemed equal.  


If you really want a study in absurdity, ponder the question of what religious neutrality by government actually means when atheism and theism are granted equivalence.  It is Aristotle's logical impossibility:  A cannot be Not A.   If A is theism and Not A is atheism government is presented with the impossible task of holding contradictory premises at the same time.  This explains the schizophrenia of our government since the 1940s when "religion" was redefined by the Supreme Court to include atheism.  Atheism must logically win in such a contest since it has no prescriptions of its own but is only a contradiction of theism's prescriptions.  Yet, only theism has rational prescriptions for human needs and underlies the only workable portions of our public policy.  Thus, the literal insanity of our age and the explanation for the so-called "culture war." So how do we restore/achieve a sane and workable secularism without veering into theocracy?  Through the stewardship of individuals with the ability to understand and apply Biblical principles to civil society and the maturity to do so for the greater good and not personal (or sectarian) advantage. 


This brings me to your 2nd paragraph.  I take the Bible at face value and accept its absolute authority, but I believe the greater lessons of Scripture are not in the letter of the law, but much more in the spirit of it.  I seek the principles of the Bible by attempting to discern G-d's meaning and purposes within, beneath and behind the Scripture.  Thus, for example, I do not want to apply the letter of the Mosaic law to homosexuals because I perceive that the letter of the law was meant (and was appropriate) for the nomadic tribal society it was unveiled to and is not intended nor appropriate for today.  However, underlying that law are numerous easily discernable principles (including but not limited to) the importance of heterosexual duality, their sanctification of sex only in marriage, the predictability of harmful consequences for deviating from G-d's design, and the necessity of social/governmental affirmation of G-d's standards. I believe that while the letter of the law is subject to modification in its application, the principles of the law are eternally constant and binding. 


I conclude that G-d's proscription of homosexuality is of greater concern to Him than other things like eating pork or even civil crimes like theft by the way these issues are addressed throughout Scripture.  G-d's emphatic condemnation of homosexuality predates the Mosaic law, is expressly named and clarified in the law in a way that few other sins are, is specifically addressed throughout the historical books -- always in the context of this conduct/lifestyle bringing severe spiritual and sociological consequences -- and is specifically and repeatedly re-affirmed in the New Testament, even while many other Old Testament proscriptions are deemed fulfilled by Christ or otherwise changed. In my reading, only idolatry is treated in Scripture more harshly, but even in this, homosexuality is frequently implicated as an essential aspect.  


(If I am "obsessed", it is with my desire to align my mind with G-d's.  I honestly would love not to deal with the homosexual issue at all and spare myself all of the hate from the Left, but as one of the few people in the West today with both broad knowledge of the issue and the courage to articulate it unapologetically without regard for my personal reputation or safety, I have a responsibility to do so.) 


Contrary to your apparent belief, Biblical law and civil law are not separate and distinct realms regulating believers and non-believers respectively.  Sure, the law related to Jewish ritual may be so, but what we call civil law is almost entirely derived from the Biblical law.  Take a look at Blackstone's Commentaries on the Law of England sometime and you'll see just how much this is true.  You cannot and should not attempt to divorce the criminal law from its true source, which is the mind and will of G-d.  Apply your logic regarding sodomy to other Biblical criminal proscriptions such as murder and you can see it isn't sound or workable.   


I challenge you to consider how much your arguments for minimizing the threat of homosexuality may be rooted in the fear of being ridiculed as "absurd" by your politically-correct peers. Your generation has been subjected to a culture-wide campaign of propaganda on this issue to such an astonishing degree it is a wonder that any of you are still willing to call homosexuality sin.  I respect you for that, but as for your conclusion that homosexuality is a harmless lifestyle alternative outside the scope of secular civil regulation I think you are allowing yourself to be ensnared in an irrational contradiction to your faith and to good public policy.   


Respectfully,


Dr. Scott Lively      






My response: 


Dr. Lively
…

In regards to Shaw and Ingra, I see you are yielding on that front. I will take that as a win. As to why Shaw did not write the Protocols, I would say it is about as likely that he wrote Huckleberry Finn. Shaw, like Mark Twain, was one of the great masters of wit in the English language. Maybe Shaw was experimenting with writing in a more American style? The Protocols first show up in Russian newspapers around 1905. We do not know for certain for actually wrote it, but we can be pretty confident with a profile of a conservative Russian aristocrat.

I do not see a problem with a secular state, properly understood, and see no reason why government cannot be something outside religion. Take your garbage man or highway patrolman; is there a religious way to collect the garbage or hand out speeding tickets? I have no reason to doubt that atheists would be able to collect the trash from my curb or hand out tickets to people driving eighty miles an hour. The government is the sum of all of these little jobs. A government that keeps crime at low levels, defends the borders and handles monetary disputes all while allowing me to pursue my own good in my own way in the privacy of my own home is an effective government. None of this has anything to do with religion or private morality. Rudy Giuliani was a good mayor and I think he would have made a good president. As a human being, he may be an absolute scumbag and I would certainly not want him on the board of my synagogue.

I was particularly interested in how you made that "Christian" turn of turning toward the "spiritual" message of the ban on homosexual sex. I also believe that biblical commandments have a spiritual component underlying them, but that the physical commandment is still real and valid and that the spiritual message must be approached through the physical commandment. It would seem that you operate with a Protestant sola scriptura approach to religious authority. As an Orthodox Jew, I operate within a religious framework that Catholics would empathize with. Religious authority comes less from my personal reading of the Bible and more on rabbinic authority and the Jewish legal tradition. If you wanted to prove something to a Catholic about his faith you would not quote verses from scripture. Instead, you would hand him Augustine, Aquinas, the Fourth Lateran Council, and Vatican II. Similarly, with rabbinic Judaism the most important text is not really the Bible. If you wish to prove something you need to turn to the Talmud, Maimonides, and Rabbi Joseph Caro.

While you can talk about every man being allowed to decide things for himself, if you wish to have a religious community you need to have some sort of final human authority for the buck to stop by. This has nothing to do with this human authority being infallible. A Catholic would tell you that whatever he may personally think of abortion and contraceptives, in order to have a community of Catholics there is a need for someone to set official Catholic policy and that man is the Bishop of Rome. One could personally believe that the Pope is wrong in his ruling and still be a religious Catholic and bow to his rule. Someone had to make a decision and even the wrong decision is better than the Church falling into schisms. The problem with Protestants is that they have no system of authority so every disagreement risks schism. If my neighbor reads scripture differently than I do then he must be a servant of Satan trying to undermine God's True Church and we must break away from him. (I study sixteenth century history; that is Protestantism for you in one sentence.) Protestant movements are only able to succeed by hypocritically bringing in religious authority (whether Luther or Calvin) and hoping that no one will notice that they are adopting "papist" thinking.

I believe in the importance of each person having their relationship with God in their basement or on a hilltop. The moment you wish to have a religious society then you are going to need to agree to some form of religious authority and submit to it even in those situations where you disagree with the religious authority. Just as I am willing to split public politics from private religion, I am also willing to split a personal private spirituality from public established religion. Each one is legitimate within its own particular sphere.

Regardless of this general objection to your approach to religious authority, your application of this approach to homosexuality only ties the noose all the tighter in terms of homophobia. You understand the spiritual meaning of the ban on homosexuality as "the importance of heterosexual duality, their sanctification of sex only in marriage, the predictability of harmful consequences for deviating from G-d's design, and the necessity of social/governmental affirmation of G-d's standards."

I have met Episcopalians who have told me that the spiritual meaning of the ban on homosexuality was to stop the sort of predatory homosexual relationships that were common in biblical times. It was never meant to ban "warm" "loving" "committed" "monogamous" homosexual relationships that exist today. Therefore such homosexuals should be welcomed into the Church without prejudice. How is this spiritual reading of scripture any less valid than yours? This raises the question of why you go with your reading; is it possible that you are motivated, just a little bit, by a personal hatred to homosexuals that has nothing to do with God or scripture?

This is not a problem for Orthodox Jews like me or for Catholics. I could respond to the Episcopalian (or the Reform Jew) that, regardless of the moral and spiritual commitment of our homosexual couple, we could not accept them into our religious community because their actions are not in keeping with the demands of the community. This is nothing personal; I am fully willing to acknowledge that these people may be fully right with God, maybe even more so than I am, but the community cannot admit them without undermining the very integrity of the community. This would be no different than if a righteous Jewish pork lover would raise and slaughter his pig in an ethical manner and eat it with the highest spiritual intentions. This Jew may be very holy and beloved by God. God can see into this man's heart and accept him for spiritually keeping his commandments. As a guardian of the community, I can only see that he has willfully violated the physical commandments of God.

I can hide behind my religious legal traditions, you cannot. To do that would be Catholic or, even worse, Pharisaic of you.

A Religious Defense of a Secular State Not Enforcing Biblical Punishment: My Response to Dr. Lively II

We have a second exchange of more series emails between Dr. Scott Lively and me. Dr. Lively continues his challenge to my commitment to biblical law in that I seem to be willing to let certain verses in Leviticus slide when they do not suit my liberal beliefs. There is a certain irony to this in that, as the Orthodox Jew, I take all of Leviticus very seriously, including the passages that deal with pork. I counter by using Augustine's model of two cities to formulate a religious argument for a secular state.


Mr. Chinn,


Regarding Igra's take on Shaw, I was quite clear that I don't know enough about the subject to hold a firm opinion.  It is fair to assume that you have not read the book or investigated its claims in which case it is unfair if not unscholarly to dismiss them out-of-hand.  Regarding Igra himself, if you are basing your opinion of him on Germany's National Vice, I can assure you that I have independently validated most of his assertions using mainstream sources of the period and overtly "gay" sources.  He was sensationalistic in style, but not factually wrong on most points. 

Regarding your claim to be a classic liberal, I must disagree.  Your correspondence leans much closer to the snide arrogance of the New Left than the dignified civility of classic liberalism.  

Regarding your claim to be a faithful Orthodox Jew, I believe my Orthodox friends would disagree.  By the standard you have articulated G-d Himself should be considered a "homophobe" for singling out the Sodomites of Canaan for special punishment not meted out to any other group.   In my observation, the Orthodox position acknowledges Scripture's repeated characterization of this lifestyle as an abomination, whereas your uninformed position, obviously influenced by popular culture, minimizes what G-d specially emphasized.  As for my specialization in this field of study, you should know from my writings that I oppose all forms of sex outside of marriage equally, but I focus on homosexuality because it is the only form with a global advocacy movement demanding political power and control for its practitioners.    
Regarding Uganda, my advice to the Ugandan Parliament was to go pro-active in support of marriage and the natural family to inoculate the population against promiscuity in all of its forms, and regarding homosexuality specifically I urged an emphasis on therapy, not punishment.  I did not advocate for the death penalty, nor did any of my teachings provide a reasonable rationalization for it.  The "gay" and leftist press are misrepresenting the facts for political advantage as they always do.  As for Proposition 8, your investment in its importance as a bulwark against "gay" power shows a gross misreading of the state of the culture.  Prop 8 will not stop their agenda, even if it is upheld by the 9th Circuit (a highly unlikely event in any case -- I have personally argued a pro-family case before this court and learned just how fully it is committed to the "gay" cause).  Absent a dramatic political shift of national power into the hands of people who believe like I do, you will suffer persecution for your view that homosexuality is a sin, as will I to a likely much greater extent. 
It seems rather odd that you can foresee the real possibility of persecution from them for your tepid opposition, while at the same time arguing that they do not represent a serious threat to society. That's a rather bizarre disconnect, don't you think?  They're seeking fascistic control over the speech of others but they're not really dangerous?  Sort of reminiscent of the attitude of the German Jews in the 20s, isn't it?  You really should read The Pink Swastika. 
Regarding your claim to be consistent in your principles, I don't know enough about you to say.  I suspect, however, based on our short exchange, the degree to which your ideas accommodate the politically correct sensibilities of the day (despite your claim to orthodoxy), and the "show-offish" way you've treated me on your blog that you are not. Nevertheless, as a Christian I am willing, within reason, to tolerate both your erroneous views and your demeaning tone to show you that I care about you as a person. 
I do happen to agree with some of what you wrote in your next-to-last paragraph, which I concede does reflect a more classic liberal perspective.  I also believe in freedom of choice (within reason) and would be happy to tolerate a "gay" subculture so long as it does not work to mainstream itself at the expense of family-centered society.  I also support religious freedom, but only as the concept was known by the Founders i.e. tolerance for all who acknowledge the existence of G-d.  Inclusion of atheism as a "religion" toward which government must be neutral is a 20th century concept that breaks the entire model.  Scott Lively


My Response:

Dr. Lively,

You are correct in assuming that I have not done a thorough scholarly investigation of Ingra's work nor of the claim that George Bernard Shaw wrote the Protocols. He may very well have had some evidence up his sleeve that I am unaware of. There are lots of claims that I have not given serious consideration to. For example, that it was a body double of Julius Caesar, who was assassinated and that Caesar and Cleopatra fled to the new world where they met up with the ten lost tribes and founded a race of uber-Indians, whose history was written on gold tablets buried in a hill in upstate New York. I may very well be the victim of an Augustian conspiracy to cover up this truth. The historical method upon which I rest my sanity requires that I dismiss any person making such claims as insane and be willing to sign them over to a padded cell and a lifetime supply of happy pills.

The Old Testament outlines a set of personal practices and a theocratic form of government designed to foster a community of people who keep God's law. The God of the Old Testament has 365 prohibitions, one of which happens to be against homosexuality. This biblical theocracy has many rules with extreme punishments for those who violate them. A priest who violates the most minor rule of the Temple cult is guilty of blasphemy. In a theocracy, blasphemy is, by definition, treason against the state and therefore possibly subject to the death penalty. Similarly, sexuality is a type of religious ritual subject to "Temple cult" stringencies. As such someone who goes outside the transcribed forms of sexuality, regardless of whether there is anything bad per se about this action, commits an act of blasphemy and therefore is potentially subject to the death penalty. Just as it is logically conceivable that God would have commanded us to sacrifice a cow for the paschal lamb, God could have also decided to permit us to engage in homosexual relations. In the universe we live in we testify to following God's command in our sexual activity by engaging in heterosexual sex within marriage and refraining from homosexual sex. (Whether homosexuality goes against "nature" or not is irrelevant.)

We do not live under a biblical theocracy and therefore lack the ability to punish people for violating biblical prohibitions, whether it is eating pork chops or homosexual sex. Personally, I think it is a good thing that we are not living under a theocracy and I have no intention, in practice, of trying to bring one about. On the contrary, I seek to live under a government that is completely "secular." By this I mean a government that does nothing to promote or prohibit any religious activity and devotes itself solely to protecting people from direct physical harm. We must recognize that, to go back to the Augustinian political model that is at the foundation of much of my thought, we live in a "fallen" world. As the Old Testament provides ample testimony for, people as a whole are not capable of living up to God's law. Furthermore, I would be hard-pressed to find "men of God" whom I would trust to tend his flock. All the people that I might conceivably trust would laugh at me and tell me to stop bothering them if I ever asked them to step up to the task. This leaves us with limiting the political state to building the earthly city. A properly functioning earthly city would create a large supply of virtuous and rational citizens. It is from this group of citizens that we can hope to recruit a flock of citizens for the heavenly city.
I am glad you are consistent about opposing all forms of extra-marital sex. Would you not agree that any church or synagogue that chooses to wink and nod at the transgressions of heterosexual teenagers should be consistent and look the other way at what the committed homosexual couple may or may not be doing in the privacy of their own home? We should not have a "forgive me father, I slept with my girlfriend this week again."

As of now the government of Uganda engages in coercive behavior to stop people from engaging in homosexual activity and is posed to implement even greater levels of coercion. Even to force homosexuals to undergo therapy would be physical coercion. It should be noted that I understand physical coercion fairly narrowly. For example, I would have no problem if a public school teacher put up a cross in her classroom and told her students about accepting Jesus as her personal savior over vacation.

I certainly do not see Proposition 8 as a cure-all. I do believe though that if we cannot win even on this issue then we are in serious trouble. While I believe that the modern left fully intends to persecute people like you and eventually maybe even me and do not trust them, I do not trust people like you to allow people like me to openly live our non-Jesus lifestyles and negatively influence society. My money is on trying to create a strong political center of classical liberals whose religious values support a secular government; this is what Izgad is all about. We offer a consistent set of principles that will allow our entire political spectrum to live together in peace.

To be clear, I do not view homosexuals even proactive ones as a threat. I see arrayed before me the full might of the modern left, who have destroyed the concept of rights and have reduced it to political spoils for chosen useful groups. In essence, they are armed with a checkbook full of blank checks for persecution. Homosexual activists are simply a group that has managed to end up as one of the privileged groups. It could just have easily been Mormon polygamists as the privileged group and homosexuals having their children snatched by government agents. (I do fear a right-wing theocracy, but I believe that the left is culturally in a better position to stop this than the right is for the reverse. As such I see the left as the more immediate threat.)

You say that you are willing to tolerate a gay subculture as long as it does not challenge mainstream culture. Part of tolerance is the willingness to allow groups you dislike to compete in the public arena and even win. For example, I oppose Israel's anti-missionary laws. Christians should be allowed to travel to Israel and try to convince people to believe in Jesus to their heart's content. Similarly, I support homosexuals not only being allowed to practice their chosen lifestyles with other consenting adults, but they should be allowed to take part in the public sphere and make their case to society at large. I have no problem with gay pride parades as long as they do not violate any local profanity laws. Gay advocacy groups are fine. I do not object to anyone making the case to me or my adult children that homosexuality should not be considered a sin or even that sodomy is a pleasurable activity that I should try some time. (Yes I believe in the right to offer people drugs.)

As I often point out to people, the Enlightenment model of tolerance was tolerance for all people who belonged to an established faith community or believed in a supreme being. I follow John Stuart Mill and offer tolerance for everyone as long as they can live within the law and not cause any physical harm. I am willing to give individual atheists the benefit of the doubt and assume they are moral individuals, even if I have my doubts about the ability of an atheist society to remain moral. There is also the experience of Orthodox Jews in Germany in the 19^th century. German law insisted that everyone belong to established religious communities. This was a problem for the Orthodox who desired to break away from the Reform. In the 1870s the law was changed to allow secularists to not belong to any community. This created the channel for the Orthodox to also gain the right to dissent.

Sincerely,
Benzion N. Chinn

The Ethical Case Against Sex Outside of Marriage (Part II)

(Part I)

Where does this leave sex? We must accept an almost Pauline position of seeing all sex as morally problematic. Sex is in a category of its own because it requires you to physically take hold of someone and use them for your own benefit, violating the categorical imperative in an inescapably literal way. Furthermore, this categorical imperative would forbid us, to a lesser extent, from touching anyone in a sexual manner or even look at someone dressed in a sexually provocative manner. How can you indulge, through touch and sight, in the use of someone else's body as a means to your own pleasure? If it were possible we would ban sex and have everyone live in celibacy. (Catholic Church 1, Jewish outreach specialists who like to attack straw-man versions of Catholic sexuality 0) Since there is a need to procreate to create more rational beings with inherent value, we require some system that gives us at least some plausible ethical cover. The solution thought of by almost all societies is to have sexual activity take place within the context of some relationship. So I go over to a woman (this could also plausibly work for homosexual relationships) and say to her: "I desire to establish a special relationship with you that will allow us numerous opportunities to engage in ethical actions, live according to universal categorical imperatives and even bring into this world and raise up rational beings capable of engaging in ethical actions of their own." Since this woman is equally concerned about living according to categorical imperatives, she swoons at my pick-up line and immediately agrees to consummate this special relationship by having sex with me. Now societies, out of their desire to encourage such ethical behavior, have created various formal activates to make this official; we tend to call it marriage.

I grant that it is possible for a couple to be engaged in a meaningful relationship without it formally being a marriage with a marriage license. Furthermore, there are plenty of sham marriages out there that are simply cover for sexual activity, regardless of a signed piece of paper. For the purposes of this discussion of marriage, the former type of relationship counts as marriage. This is the sort of marriage found among primitive tribes and the biblical patriarchs. That being said, the society at large needs to ask some questions about such a couple. Why would such a couple, living in a civilization that possesses formal marriage and stigmatizes those who do not take advantage of it, choose to live without formal marriage? The most obvious explanation would be that such a couple was not serious about their relationship and were simply engaging in a mutually parasitical set of sexual acts. Thus, such couples must be presumed guilty until proven innocent of being unethical and placed under public scorn.

There are a few other alternatives that would be relevant, in theory at least, to some people. Members of Plato's philosopher's republic are not being immoral when they engage in free love. This society is built around the absolute sacrifice for the common good. Within this context, the sexual act itself becomes one more act of absolute submission as the person surrenders all claim to power over another, even a wife and children. (This is to say nothing about the feasibility or advisability of Communism.) This would require a person to be a great philosopher and have a commitment to principles to compare with the religious fanatic. Just being a casual hippie is not going to be enough to get you through the gates of this republic. Great philosopher artists like Goethe and his Faust could engage in sex outside of marriage as part of a bildung process. A great philosopher like Faust, whose genius benefits all mankind, needs to go out and physically come to terms with the world around him in order to fulfill his mission as a philosopher. He is allowed to sell his soul to Mephistopheles in order to pursue this goal and he is allowed to seduce young Gretchen. (We could possibly fault Faust for putting himself as a stumbling block, causing an innocent non-philosopher to engage in unethical behavior.) Gretchen's subsequent pregnancy and her arrest for attempting to kill her fetus are a tragic accident for which Faust is not to blame. Faust is not motivated by any base desire and he has no intention of using Gretchen; she is an incidental participant in his great project. While common artists may not be at the level to truly engage in such Faustian activity, it is reasonable to allow them a greater license in terms of what they can touch or see. For example, I fully accept that nudity has artistic value and should, therefore, be allowed within the confines of artistic circles. Since all societies in history have been built around people who are distinctively not great philosophers (at best people working on becoming them), we cannot make calculations based on great philosophers. This leaves us, as a society, having to insist that everyone make at least an outward show of only engaging in sexual activity within the context of marriage.

I believe in creating an ethical society where all humans are recognized as rational beings with inherent value, not to be used simply to serve some other purpose. This means a society that rejects racism and all forms of bigotry as a violation of the categorical imperative to recognize the inherent value of all rational beings as ends in themselves. This also means that in our day to day personal relationships we must treat people as beings of value in of themselves. We dare not, in any way, indulge in another person's body simply to serve our own pleasure by engaging in sexual activity, even to touch or look at someone in a sexual manner. Through societal pressure we have managed, in only a few decades, to remove at least the outward manifestations of racism from the public sphere. Through similar efforts, we can do the same with human sexuality. I look forward to the day when we take the bulk of our generation's movies and televisions shows, which implicitly or explicitly endorse the legitimacy of sexual activity outside of marriage, and put them next to Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will as immoral works, serving to promote unethical behavior and mindsets.

The Ethical Case Against Sex Outside of Marriage (Part I)

Ever since the sixties, those of us who profess an opposition to sexual activity outside of marriage have been on the defensive. Sex outside of marriage has always been common, but now those of us who actually live up to this standard seem to now be in a heavy minority. Those of us pushing abstinence education are in a difficult position. We cannot directly use religious arguments to make our case so we resorted to making it a health issue. The problem with this is that, by the normal standards of safety, sex done in the manner prescribed by social progressives, with condoms and birth-control pills, is not physically particularly dangerous; certainly no more so than skiing or teenage driving. There is a heavy stench of dishonesty hanging over this whole issue. The reason why conservatives want to spend millions of dollars promoting abstinence programs in schools is not because they are in a panic about STDs. It is because religious Christians believe that pre-marital sex is a sin and they do not want teenagers engaging in it. Conservatives have fumbled the ball and left the moral case wide open for the liberal side. Within the context of the sixties narrative, liberals have been able to make the moral argument that conservatives, by focusing on sex and ignoring the racism of the culture around them, were the immoral ones. From this perspective, any act of "sexual liberation" becomes not only morally acceptable but a moral positive. This argument has been updated in recent years to include homosexuality. With all this under consideration, I do believe it is possible to formulate an argument against extra-marital sex meaningful to the most ardent secularist, one that could justify moderate government interference to discourage students from engaging in such behavior. The argument I offer is no less than sex outside of marriage is fundamentally unethical.  

When most people hear about the immorality of sex they conjure images of repressed hypocritical Victorians. Therefore it is all the more important to define what we mean by sex outside of marriage being unethical. Sexual activity is problematic in that the action itself, by definition, involves physically using another person's very body as a means for gaining pleasure for one's self. This is a very basic violation of Kant's categorical imperative that all humans must be treated as ends and not as means. (Kant even took this to the extreme position of saying that masturbation was unethical because it involved using yourself as a means.)

To put this into concrete terms, you go off to a bar, pick up a girl, take her home, sleep with her and then send on her way. You have taken another human being and used them as a means to procure your own pleasure. Now you have to ask why she agreed to do this. Is it not possible that she did this because she believed that she could get you to agree to a long-term relationship and there was even falsehood and manipulation involved? This would still be an issue even when both sides have made it clear that this is supposed to only be a one night stand. Two wrongs do not make a right; two unethical people objectifying each other and using each other as a means to give themselves pleasure is simply double the unethical behavior. Furthermore, maybe one of the parties merely said this because they believed that with their talent and personality they would be able to convince the other to stay on. (You see a similar line of logic in regards to gambling. There are many rabbinic authorities who argue that gambling is a form of theft because the losing party only made the bet on the assumption that he would win. So to take the money from him involves taking something of his against his will.)

This is not just some ethereal issue, only relevant to students of Kantian thought; it is the foundation of all intellectually honest liberalism, explaining why all forms of tyranny are inherently unethical. Any system that views individual people as simply means to serve the larger good or the good of the elites is unethical. Ask a liberal why slavery and segregation are by definition wrong and even evil. If that liberal is a Kantian he can explain that these institutions violate a categorical imperative; it places blacks in situations where they cease to have inherent value as beings in an ongoing process of becoming more rational and only serve to benefit whites. Without this Kantian imperative, we are left with vague mutterings of taste and personal feelings. If my arguments against white supremacists carry the same universal validity as my arguments against their stylistic choices in neckties then I have lost the debate.

(To be continued …)