What’s Wrong with the World

I'm not in the APA, of course. But if I were, I would see no other honorable option than to quit.

I have so very little understanding of how a lot of this stuff works it out I'm sort confused about the implications it carries, specifically for Christian institutions that fall under violation of this new policy.

Does this mean anything to, for example, Talbot's Philosophy program at Biola?

I for one am pleased that the APA will no longer discriminate against me for engaging in those acts integrally connected to my status as a plagiarist.

Yeah, this is pretty embarrassing. I somehow thought a bunch of philosophers could do better job of rationalization.

RobertK--The practical implication is that if Biola (Talbot) places an ad in the APA's Jobs For Philosophers publication, the person placing the ad will be told to check a box stating that Biola is in compliance with the APA's non-discrimination policy. Presumably the person will not check the box, since I would guess that Talbot does not allow its faculty to engage in homosexual sexual acts. The APA will then allow the ad to run (the more "progressive" elements on the board wanted all such ads banned, but that was defeated for the time being) _but_ will place a mark next to the ad. The meaning of the mark (presumably as defined somewhere in the pages of Jobs for Philosophers) will be, "This school refused to say that it is in compliance with our non-discrimination policy." Further, if a complaint is brought that Talbot _definitely isn't_ in compliance, and if that complaint is verified by the APA, a different mark will be placed by all Talbot ads, a "censure" mark indicating that the school is in non-compliance. This indicates that (as the above language says) the school is doing something "unethical" by telling faculty they cannot engage in homo-erotic acts.

So it's all about symbols and censure. The goals of the progressives are clear--ban all ads from schools with traditional sexual morality required of faculty members. This is considered to be an incremental step in that direction.

The APA statement reads:

The American Philosophical Association rejects as unethical all forms of discrimination based on race, color, religion, political convictions, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identification or age, whether in graduate admissions, appointments, retention, promotion and tenure, manuscript evaluation, salary determination, or other professional activities in which APA members characteristically participate. This includes both discrimination on the basis of status and discrimination on the basis of conduct integrally connected to that status, where "integrally connected" means (a) the conduct is a normal and predictable expression of the status (e.g., sexual conduct expressive of a sexual orientation) or (b) the conduct is something that only a person with that status could engage in (e.g., pregnancy), or (c) the proscription of that conduct is historically and routinely connected with invidious discrimination against the status (e.g., interracial marriage).

Two observations. First, doing the work of a philosophy professor at a Christian university, including committing one's self to the theological vision and ethical standards of the institution, is a "professional activity" in which "APA members characteristically participate." Second, "conduct integrally connected that status" would seem to include participating in faculty searches that require prospective candidates to agree with, and abide by, the theological vision and ethical standards of the institution. Given the wide range of institutions that have such visions and standards, and the number of APA members that are employed by such institutions, this "conduct is a normal and predictable expression of the status," "something that only a person with that status could engage in," and "the proscription of that conduct is historically and routinely connected with invidious discrimination against the status" (e.g., religious liberty). Thus, the APA's new rule violates itself.

One more thing, given my analysis, every Christian institution that has ethical standards concerning extra-marital conduct can claim not to violate the APA statement. If the APA disagrees, then the APA violates its own statement, since it would be discriminating against philosophers whose "conduct is integrally connected to" their religious status, which, according to the APA is a protected status.

Hi F. Beckwith,
I think your post is generally on target. Clearly it violates the policy to refuse to hire persons engaged in same sex activity. However, you are correct in the sense that enforcement of the policy against Christian schools is an activity "characteristic" of APA members and hence would fall under the heading of activities in which APA members cannot discriminate on the basis of certain hiring practices "integrally connected" to one's religion. The issue seems to be that in the case of Christian schools, the APA policy dictates that it is unethical to implement its policy against those who have clearly violated it.

What we're seeing here is a showdown concerning identity politics. The APA is particularly in a bind because it has chosen to list religion and political convictions as types of protected status. Yet it's quite clear that in actual fact the progressives in the APA's leadership want sexual orientation to be a form of protected status _higher_ than political and religious convictions. Frank's and Troy's points here in the comments are related to Alex Pruss's clever point to the effect that if X is a philosopher who belongs to a strongly anti-homosexual religious organization, X can say that discriminating against homosexuals in hiring for future philosophy jobs is "integral" to his own religious status. Hence a department cannot use his intention to engage in future discrimination against him in hiring.

So the APA has to take substantive positions as to which activities "integral to" one's status (for any of these listed types of status) are reasonable, legitimate, protected, must not be held against one and which activities may be held against one by an institution.

But that's exactly what the APA wants to pretend it isn't doing. The APA wants to make believe that it has come up with a single over-arching principle that gives the result it wants without having merely been tailored in an ad hoc manner to give that result.

Statements like this are where the ivory-tower stereotype comes from. (I say so as an academic myself.) The folks who wrote this are certainly more than smart enough to see its patent illogic. So why didn't they? Because the community to which they look for peer review is too much of a monoculture, too divorced from the concerns of people who don't think like them; and so the objections that are so clearly devastating from the outside are seen as “not serious” from the inside.

Christians can and do fall into the same trap, of course. The smaller the community of people whose opinions “matter,” the easier it is to do so. I would argue that this is one reason (not the only one) why communion is so important for us. It is both the diversity of Christians (as a body of people united in nothing but Christ and his Church) and our willingness to submit to one another in love (including intellectual submission) that keeps us from exactly this kind of folly.

Peace,
--Peter

Nicely put Lydia.
Let's hope that if the American "Lovers of Truth" Association continues to lie about the ethical concensus of their constituency, deceive themselves and others regarding their true motives and play-act as if the old anti-discrimination policy already incriminated Christian institutions that at the very least they continue to produce buffoonish nonsense such as this new policy. If these are "lovers of truth," then I assume "absence makes the heart grow fond."

Good points Peter!

Excellent points by all. I must say that I share Troy's 3:53 cynicism about the real motivations behind the APA resolution. Having watched much of this debate unfold, it should be obvious to everyone that the political tail is wagging the philosophical dog here. I observed many notable professional philosophers pretend that they couldn't understand the act/orientation distinction, even after it had been explained about as clearly as any substantive conceptual distinction. These same philosophers then went and defended this poorly written resolution which collapses under minimal scrutiny, all the while pretending that nobody had raised any legitimate objections to it, and that those who had were motivated by "religiously inspired bigotry". I think we need to recognize that this is no longer a philosophical debate; the other side has broken the terms of our professional "modus vivendi" and is grabbing whatever power they can in order to obtain additional leverage in the culture wars. We have entered a phase where these people will say or do anything to "win", and we should be under no illusions about what is happening to our professional culture.

I think we need to recognize that this is no longer a philosophical debate; the other side has broken the terms of our professional "modus vivendi" and is grabbing whatever power they can in order to obtain additional leverage in the culture wars. We have entered a phase where these people will say or do anything to "win", and we should be under no illusions about what is happening to our professional culture.

And there's a name for it....

Leiterizing.

It seems to me that the proper response to such bleating-heart navel-scrutinizing (not to mention navel-piercing) nonsense is to quit the organization in public protest, AND START YOUR OWN philosophical society. One that is honest and forthright about standards. Then you can thumb your noses at them and simply say that their organization offers nothing that you cannot get elsewhere, so nuts to them. If you can't stand to join them, then beat them in the marketplace of ideas by offering a competing association that does what theirs does only better.

Tony,
Your suggestion is a good one, but I'm afraid you've overlooked one thing. In order for Christian philosophers to pull that off, they would have to be willing to act collectively and with resolve. I'm sorry to report that I see no way Christians will show that sort of moral fortitude.
There's only one instance in which the the so-called progressive groups in the APA exhibited any intelligence in this matter. Specifically, they took a gamble that Christians would by and large not have the guts to stand up to them no matter how belligerently, self-righteously and stupidly they behaved. Given the spiritual decay in modern Christianity, I'd say they made a smart bet.

The American Philosophical Association rejects as unethical all forms of discrimination based on ... disability ... whether in graduate admissions, appointments, retention, promotion and tenure, manuscript evaluation, salary determination, or other professional activities in which APA members characteristically participate

As a test, will some philosophers claim "homophobia" as a disability, and then see how the APA responds to the problem of respecting each and every protected class?

Troy, you may be right. But I suspect that there are enough Christian philosophers with moxy to at least start the discussion, and who knows where it will go from there. Some of the same people who started the Manhattan declaration, just for example.

I recall about 20 years ago the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC, the western accreditation agent) tried to put the crimp on 2 or 3 staunchly Christian schools for not being politically correct (committed to diversity, they called it), my alma mater being one. Two things happened. First, some people at my alma mater got together with some others and went public with the fight, in the sense of showing up the incoherence of the standard, and taking the offensive in the war of words on the subject. At the same time, they worked to get a new accreditation agency up and running, one that was organized to be amenable to colleges that actually had principles. The combination of the two efforts ended up successful - WASC eventually backed down, reformed its standard, and the issue was buried in a deep grave. And there is an American Academy for Liberal Education as a new accreditation entity.

If a large number of schools stopped signing the non-discrimination agreement, we could make the resolution professionally irrelevant. Suppose that certain professors point out at faculty meetings that a)would render most substance abuse policies "discriminatory" by the new APA standards. After all, one could argue that "I am an alcoholic of genetic predisposition, and coming to work with a BAC of .20 is a normal and predictable expression of this status...." Since the act/orientation distinction is, of course, "obviously" a "canard," and since asking alcoholics to remain sober is "immoral and wrong, because it forces alcoholics to live 'inauthentic' lives," we must either change our school's substance abuse policy or refuse to sign the APA agreement. My guess is that most sane individuals would blow off the APA agreement before they would challenge their school's substance abuse policy. With the current crop of naturalist progressives, however, you never can tell. Give them another 15 or 20 years as the de facto professional establishment, and I'm sure there is no form of aberrant behavior that won't be forcibly mainstreamed in the name of "justice."

Before getting too worked up over all this, it should be noted that the rest of the APA's statement on nondiscrimination reads:

At the same time, the APA recognizes the special commitments and roles of institutions with a religious affiliation; and it is not inconsistent with the APA's position against discrimination to adopt religious affiliation as a criterion in graduate admissions or employment policies when this is directly related to the school's religious affiliation or purpose, so long as these policies are made known to members of the philosophical community and so long as the criteria for such religious affiliation do not discriminate against persons according to the other attributes listed in this statement. Advertisers in Jobs for Philosophers are expected to comply with this fundamental commitment of the APA, which is not to be taken to preclude explicitly stated affirmative action initiatives.

It should also be noted that the APA will enforce this policy by specially marking job ads in the JFP from institutions that fail to abide by the nondiscrimination statement.

Grad student, I already noted that. I also noted that the progressives just view this as a halfway house on the road to banning the ads.

Untenured, I love your alcoholics idea.

Tony, there already are some alternative organizations, such as the Evangelical Philosophical Association, which is pretty big. (I forget if it excludes Catholics. The Evangelical _Theological_ Association [famously] does exclude Catholics, as of a couple of years ago.) Perhaps somebody can clear up that question about the EPS.

Moreover, there are alternative venues for job advertising, so *in one sense* the JFP ads thing is "irrelevant," especially in a job market where smart young philosophers will train a troop of performing sunbirds in the college quad if required to do so to get a job and will crawl over broken glass to find additional ads to which to apply.

However, the largest and most well-known philosophy association will never be _completely_ or even very substantially irrelevant. Young philosophers going on the market will always need to go to the APA meetings in order to interview, for example, though they can probably do that with "non-member status" if they're willing to pay a bit extra and not get the special member rates at the hotels.

In one sense, the reference to accrediting agencies is a good analogy (though in other ways it's somewhat different). The big accreditation agencies will never be irrelevant, and being accredited with a different association carries penalties for a college even now. For example, colleges without regional accreditation from one of the "standard" agencies cannot receive funds from the National Merit Foundation, making them less attractive choices for young people who are National Merit Scholarship winners. And their credits, though usually transferable if they are accredited by some USDE-recognized agency, are somewhat disfavored and less certain as transferable credits. Middle States (accrediting agency) will never be irrelevant in any serious sense. So it is for the APA. So it's a serious thing for the APA to be moving in the direction of trying to drive out the Christians. It will certainly make life more difficult, gradually and in various ways, for individual Christian philosophers.

There is no question that _culturally_, this move sends a message that it is acceptable to discriminate against Christian philosophers in hiring. I'm sure the Leiter-ites would howl at that statement, but as a matter of cultural atmosphere, it's the plain truth.

Grad Student,
You are correct that the APA allows schools to require certain religious affiliations of candidates. However, if a candidate adopts that affiliation, indeed if that affiliation includes an explicit condemnation of homosexual behavior, the APA policy forbids the institution from taking any action. So long as the candidate is willing to maintain that they hold the beliefs required of them, no enforcements of norms with respect to such sexual behavior can be permitted under the new APA policy.
As bizarre as that seems, it is a point about which Peter van Inwagen was made much ado in recent discussions of this topic.

So is this a de facto or a de jure handicap for morally conservative institutions?

Well, de jure certainly, but I think Lydia is correct that it is an attempt to bring about a handicap de facto.

Troy, I'm not sure I follow you. If a school has an explicitly Baptist affiliation, and if they explicitly define the identity of that Baptist affiliation as including a condemnation of homosexual behavior and a statement that homosexual orientation is disorderd, are you saying that for a professor who said " Yep, I agree with those principles" but then goes off and lives an openly gay life with a same-sex partner, the school cannot do anything toward censuring him without falling afoul of this standard? You mean, the school cannot demand of him that he live an integrated, honest life and do what he claims to believe? The school is required to allow him to be EXPLICITLY non-integrated so that his actions defy his own beliefs, and cannot touch him for that, but the very STANDARD that requires this is based on the concept that a person must be allowed to be integrated and at one with himself ! ?

Just how stupid are these people?

Pretty stupid, Tony.

It would be interesting to see a test case, of course. The school could claim that the person is not signing onto their belief standards (regarding the wrongness of homosexual behavior) in good faith, just as schools now claim (for example) that if you sign an explicitly Protestant statement of faith you can't simultaneously belong to the Catholic church, because you must not be signing the Protestant statement of faith in good faith. But such cases (regarding statements of faith) are so notoriously tricky that it's become increasingly difficult to enforce claims of lack of good faith, especially where the person has tenure. One professor who defends the new APA policy has indicated that the type of case you outline would be similar to a case where you require professors to sign a statement that they believe in some doctrine like (say) the deity of Christ but where some professor then denies the doctrine in private to students. With the quasi-legal notions of due process now in place in such settings (especially if he's tenured) it might be surprisingly hard to get rid of him. So in the type of case you mention.

For example, I would expect that in the type of case you describe the spurious argument would be made that no one has ever _actually witnessed_ this person having sexual relations with his live-in partner, and that saying that "everybody knows" that this is his same-sex partner is just hearsay. This despite the fact that the person openly calls himself "gay" (remember, some Christian schools gave up the right to discriminate on the basis of his _identifying_ himself as gay twenty years ago!) and so does the partner he lives with, that they refer to one another with terms usually used for sexual partners, etc. You see how the game is played.

Troy:

Your analysis is telling and precise. It also reveals that the APA's statement lacks a normative principle adequate to justify human behavior as moral or condemn it as immoral. This is because the statement (the subtext of which is naturalism or philosophical materialism) can only appeal to extant functioning, not proper functioning based on a design plan (divine telos). Its attempt to ontologically justify or condemn behavior thus falters on the old "is/ought" problem raised by Hume, Moore, and C.S. Lewis.

Hi Doug G.
I essentially agree with you here. It is no accident, I think, that those who take up the cause of the new policy seem to do so on the basis of "I don't see what's wrong with that sort of sexual behavior." Of course they don't. All that proves, so far as I am concerned, is that modern moral theory is a wash. On that point, I'm essentially in agreement with G.E.M. Anscombe. These philosophers ought to have jettisoned ethics altogether because moral language and terminology have pretty much been allowed to go on holiday. The combination of strong emotions and bad arguments used to prop up the current policy is, I think, illustrative of the dangers Anscombe may have been directing our attention to.

But that's just my opinion.

Tony, I just thought of another game an openly homosexual person could play in the type of case you describe:

He could claim a) that he really does believe that homosexual behavior is a sin,

b) he does fall into this sin from time to time, perhaps even frequently (but remember, the policy says they can't penalize him for the behavior),

c) he has to continue living with this gay partner because he made an interpersonal commitment to this person to stick with him, to share living expenses, to make a home together, etc., and he considers himself conscience-bound not to break that promise, even though it does raise the likelihood that he will commit homosexual acts.

What do you do about someone patently lying like that, if you're supposedly not penalizing him for the behavior per se?

Of course, it's all nonsense. But I'm just underlying the point Troy is making, which is that a so-called "loophole" whereby schools can require faculty to agree with their _propositional positions_ on homosexual behavior is really no loophole at all so long as they are expressly not supposed to penalize for the behavior itself. That was the point Troy was making above in response to the Graduate Student poster.

Very interesting. Very sad. I agree that the APA "non-discrimination policy" has an internal contradiction: we should accept the same-sex attraction as normal and we should accept St. Paul's philosophy as normal (Ouch). Thus, all the wonderful talks and lectures about virtue at the APA conferences are now being thrown out the window. And Pope Benedict XVI's description of political correctness as "the dictatorship of relativism" is shown to be accurate. Just as the AMA (American Medical Association) forces pharmacists to fill prescriptions that hurt their conscience, the APA wishes to force members to accept doctrines that go against their consciences. Without a doubt the ACPA (American Catholic Philosophical Association) is much more open to truth, tolerant of diversity and respectful of individuals that the immature and bossy APA. I hope the senior members of the APA act like genuine philosophers and reject the illogical policy.

About Nunley's original objection:

"Integrally connected" is stipulatively defined in the APA's statement. So, if one has an objection to their new policy, it will have to be something else, since the APA can stipulatively define the phrase any way they want. This isn't a good point on which to attack the policy.

So, if one has an objection to their new policy, it will have to be something else, since the APA can stipulatively define the phrase any way they want.

"Stipulation" is precisely the right term, since it is not the result of careful philosophical reflection and deliberation. It arises from the appetite and not the intellect. That should be evident from the ease by which even a first year philosophy student can dismantle it.

Hi anon1,
Three things...
1.) I don't think the APA stipulatively defined the term. As I mentioned, though the term is hard to define it clearly has a meaning that is already widely understood and accepted. Thus, it is unreasonable to claim that although the APA clearly tells us that sex with white women is "integrally connected" to one's status as a black male that the APA can exonerated themselves by "stipulating" a definition that makes this claim true. It is not true. And such stipulations in the face of common usage are unconsciounable when they lead to these sorts of results.
2.) It is clear that in the absence of the common use of the term "integral" the APA loses its reasons/rational for the new policy altogether. The point of singling out behaviors "integral" to a status is to account for the "why" as well as "when" behavior-discrimination amounts to status-discrimination. On your construal, the APA is not identifying these situations or thinking through the reason for them at all: it is stipulating them. That is not remotely the intent of the policy.
3.) Should the APA have "stipulated" instead? That's the question. Yes. That was my point as I made clear in the final paragraph. The APA needs to stop pretending that bans on pregnancy and interracial marriaged are for the same relevant reasons the same as bans on homosexual behavior. Reasons are precisely what they cannot give. And to the extent that the APA policy's mention of "integral connections" is an attempt to give common reasons (and it certainly is doing that, contrary to your interpretation) it is a howling failure.

Ditto Beckwith! Perhaps my post will make them be more honest and forthright on this point.

If the stipulative definition is completely out of touch with the normal use of the phrase this calls into question the reasonable and normative nature of the policy. So, no, one isn't obligated to criticize the policy on some other grounds. Troy is completely right to point out how ludicrous it is to take any and all activities that are normal, predictable, and expressive to be "integrally connected." If "integrally connected" as defined by the APA is so far off from ordinary use and understanding of "integrally connected," they should not get the rhetorical cachet of the term, by which they intend to imply that these poor homosexual applicants will be false to themselves and fail to live out an integrated life in some deep, heavy, and ethically relevant sense if they fail to engage in homosexual acts!

Moreover, that stipulative definition is precisely what leads to the tension that have been noted elsewhere in this thread, for one cannot and should not accommodate all actions that are normal (for the status), predictable, and expressive.

It seems Lydia McGrew, Francis Beckwith and I are on the same page with respect to anon1 and their proposal. But maybe we can add a bit more. IF the the policy were revised? Specifically, what if the phrase "integrally connected to that status, where "integrally connected" means..." were replaced with simply "such that..." instead? Stipulation indeed!

Here are the difficulties...

With respect to (a), there are normal, predictable and expressive behaviors with respect to age (being 110 years old), political convictions(radical movements or facists), disabilities (alzhemiers) which can become legitimate factors in hiring decisions insofar as they affect an applicant's job performance. Incidentally, where the job of a Christian educator includes representing the school's moral values, homosexual behavior affects their job performance as well.

With respect to (b), the policy would have the affect that any behavior, no matter how atrocious, would be off limits for employers to consider just so long as the employee could point to their status as a necessary prerequisite for performing that act. If my counterexamples do not already convince you here, imagine some of your own.

Item (c) is more difficult, but there are exceptional cases. Specifically, there are cases in which the prohibition was motivated by bigotry but ethically (at least by contemporary standards) justified by something else. Consider the British ban on Sati in India, the missionaries ban on nudity among certain Pacific tribes or the prohibition of black males marrying (I want to be very specific here) very young white teen girls in the old South. I suspect that in all cases, the motives were riddled with bias and the prohibitions motivated badly. Still, you can't insist on self-immolation for widows, come to work nude or marry a thirteen year old of any particular race; at least not if you want to be hired at a public university.

So, even if the APA decided to pontificate via stipulation rather than explain why certain behaviors could not be grounds for hiring descrimination, I submit that they would still do an awful job. Bad behavior does not become negligible simply by being predictable, expressive, having necessary conditions of some sort or being the target of badly motivated prosecutors. It's folly to think it should.

Tommy Aquino's comment (1-21, 6:15) is, of course, on the surface somewhat off topic, but his remark (or, rather, his coinage) actually gets to the heart of the matter, perhaps even to the heart of a deeper matter, of which the present concern is only one of many (and, alas, many future) manifestations.

Troy wrote:
Interracial marriage is not integral to any status I can think of.

The statement says it is the proscription of the conduct that is "historically and routinely" discriminatory to the status. So it is not stating that interracial marriage was itself integral, but its prohibition was historically used to prevent racial groups from equal participation in society.

That a status S is necessary for behavior B is a lousy justification for the view that the two are in any way “integrally connected.”

If S is necessary for B, the two must be connected. To say they are integrally connected needs greater clarification, but the example of pregnancy implies that the justification is fairly basic and not some elaborate construction.

Accordingly, if a behavior meets the three conditions of “predictable,” “normal” and “expressive of,” then it becomes “integrally connected” to a person’s status.

Unless you wish to deny there are any integrally connected behaviors, I don't know what is objectionable about describing those behaviors as "predictable, normal and expressive of".

Bad behavior does not become negligible simply by being predictable, expressive, having necessary conditions of some sort or being the target of badly motivated prosecutors.

Being the target of badly motivated prosecutors is often enough on its own to cause a mistrial.

Recently, a certain gentleman in Scotland was caught trying to copulate with a tree: http://tinyurl.com/yk7pxfq

Here's the conundrum for our liberal minded friends: Suppose this gentleman were a Professor of Philosophy and a member of the APA. Ought the gentleman be fired for violating the principles of sustainability (not being a "tree hugger") or should he be protected for doing something that is integrally connected to his sexual orientation [language edited out by LM].

Once you Leiterize philosophy, [language edited out by LM]

[I've said this in other threads, Tommy Aquino, but perhaps you didn't happen to read them. There are certain words I do not allow in my threads, even with asterisks. Please don't do that. Thanks. LM]

Step 2,
I'm afraid all four of your points suffer from bad readings.

1.) Regarding the APA statement and interracial marriage, I'm afraid you are flat wrong. The statement is very clear that if a prohibition on behavior B is part of a routine historical pattern of discrimination against persons of status S then by virtue of what "integrally related" means, B is integrally related to S.

The statement does not limit itself to the platitude you read it as, namely, that the historical prohibition was discriminatory.

2.) Secondly, contrary to your assertion the simple fact that one example of a status (gender) is necessary for a behavior (pregnancy) and that the two are, in fact, integrally connected, is very lousy justification for the claim that the APAs generalization(b) is true. Generalizations become neither true nor justified by having one positive instance. Really, check my counterexamples for proof of this.

The APA statement does not merely say, nor did I dispute that pregnancy is "somehow connected" to gender nor that bans on pregnancy were generally morally illegitimate.

3.) You claim that if the criteria of "normal, predictable and expressive of" are not sufficient, then I am committed to the view that there are no behaviors integrally connected to a status. The counterexamples I gave show that the criterion are not sufficient, and the paradigm examples I offered prove to me that there are such things as behaviors integrally connected to certain statuses. If you find a contradiction in that view, you need to spell it out rather than simply pontificate.

4.) Your image of a mistrial is completely off target. Granted, prejudice in a judge might result in the overthrow of a verdict. But the fact that some other judges in some other trials had such a prejudices is no such grounds at all. And that is precisely the non sequiter the APA is trying to get away with. Someone failed to hire a person of status S engaging in B out of sheer animousity, therefore, everyone who fails to hire a person S engaging in B is similarly bigoted. Silliness.

When someone says: "X" where "X" means "Y", that means they're stipulatively defining X, and that's exactly what the APA does with respect to "integrally connected" in their policy statement. And I'm sure if this were a different topic, no one would have a problem seeing that. But, not surprisingly, since everyone on here is so "passionate" about this subject, everyone wants to say Nunley's objection is strong when in fact it is not. Not that I would expect psilosophers the caliber of Beckwith to recognize that.

If I stipulated that all the word 'insightful' shall be defined so that racist comments are henceforth dubbed "insightful comments," why should there be there a problem with that? I'm just stipulating, after all.

Troy,
1) The APA statement places the conduct in a particular frame, and it is that frame which causes the integration and not the conduct alone. Your insistence that the statement be read without context is the problem.

You wrote: The statement does not limit itself to the platitude you read it as, namely, that the historical prohibition was discriminatory.

My reply: It explicitly states that the historical prohibition was discriminatory.

2) So your counterexamples provide more interpretive guidance than the archetype example provided in the policy. Because the are less general? Anyway, I have already conceded that this part of the policy needs clarification.

3) If a college established a firm policy against hiring otherwise qualified philosophy applicants who walk slowly (to use your example), is there some reason to think it isn't discrimination against age or disability?

4) First and obviously, I reject the premise of bad behavior. Second, it was your statement that bad behavior could not become negligible from other factors. It can and it does.

The APA statement does not merely say, nor did I dispute that pregnancy is "somehow connected" to gender nor that bans on pregnancy were generally morally illegitimate.

Consider this example. Suppose Christian University X (CUX) fires faculty member, Jane, since it is discovered that Jane is pregnant with the child of one of her colleagues, Fred, who is subsequently fired from CUX as well. In that case, everything follows naturally from the act engaged by the agents: Fred impregnates Jane. But Jane is not fired because she was pregnant, and Fred is not fired because he sired a child. Both were fired because their act, that resulted in the pregnancy, is a violation of the university's moral standards. It would make no difference to judging Jane and Fred as immoral if they thought that their cooperation in procreation was integrally connected to their self-understanding as sexual beings. That is, "integral connectedness" does no real moral work, since it is consistent with a negative moral judgment of the act.

What's more, suppose two other CUX faculty, Tom and Winston, engage in homosexual acts but do not consider themselves homosexuals or even bisexuals. Suppose they just want to experiment and see how it feels. Would the APA permit CUX to fire Tom and Winston since their behavior is not integrally connected to their orientation? Suppose the APA says "no." In that case, integral connectedness is not relevant to assessing the morality of an act. And if "yes," then the APA is conceding that homosexual acts are immoral if performed by non-homosexuals, which means that it too accepts the distinction between orientation and behavior. But suppose Tom and Winston each claim that they represent a new subclass of bonafide heterosexuals who engage in sexual acts that they firmly believe are not integrally connected to their sexual orientation. And yet, they want to receive APA protection, since they understand their sexual orientation as non-normative. That is, they believe that limiting one's sexual conquests to one's integral connectedness is just a liberal version of oppressive natural law theory that relies an outmoded Aristotelean teleology that has been discredited. For isn't that precisely the problem with defenses of traditional marriage: it depends on a natural teleology of gender. And isn't "integral connectedness" just a "natural teleology of sexual orientation." Tom and Winston reject this on the same grounds that gay activists reject the traditional view. Tom and Winston just want to have sex. Why should they be bound by the stipulation of the APA's shabby version of "natural law."

I concur with Lydia, pace anon1. You can't make a flagrant racist comment and defend it as analytic by stipulation. However, as is abundantly clear, the APA did not view them selves as "making it up as they go," nor was the phrase "integrally connected" chosen arbitrarily as a catch-all for whatever behaviors the APA wanted to protect. The idea that the APAs absurd claims can now be defended as true-by-definition (their definition)is desperation at its worst.

To Step2, your misreadings are becoming impossible to explain.

Regarding (1)
I SAID: The statement is explicitly committed to the view that marrying a white woman is behavior integral to being a black man.
YOU READ: Troy doesn't know that the statement prohibits bans on interracial marriage and Troy thinks he can ignore "contexts" and "frames."

Regarding (2)
I SAID: The section b of the policy is false and counterinstanced. Ie. What it says is CLEARLY FALSE.
YOU READ: Troy thinks he has paradigms and archetypes which offer better guidance regarding what behaviors are integral. ie. Troy complains that it is UNCLEAR.

Regarding (3)
I SAID: That behavior is "normal, predictable and expressive" of a person of some status does not make it integrally connected to that status.
YOU READ: Troy thinks behavior "normal, predictable and expressive" of one's age is automatic justification for not hiring them.

Regarding (4)
I SAID: That some groups prohibit behavior B out of animosity towards a certain group is not grounds that all groups who prohibit that behavior do so for that same reason.
YOU READ: Troy thinks "...bad behavior could not become negligible from other factors."

If you wish to continue, then respond to what I actually said. I have no interest in defending the straw men that you have set set out to defeat.

Ditto to Beckwith on one point. Whether or not a behavior is integrally connected to a certain status depends upon teleology. Bingo. The embarrassing definition of an "integral connection" of behaviors to statuses is the result. Compare Plantinga's attacks on naturalistic attempts to account for "proper function."

Sorry so sloppy... I meant to say "The embarrassing definition of 'integral connection' of behaviors to statuses AS GIVEN BY THE APA is the result OF OVERLOOKING THIS POINT."

Anon1, your "objection" is pathetic. Go back and read the intitial discussions about why we "needed" this resolution. The argument of the day was that an anti-discrimination policy wasn't fulfilling its purpose if it didn't sanction prohibitions on homosex. Thus, the APA policy needed to either explicitly protect homosex or be abandoned. If the old criteria simply excluded bans on homosex *by prior stipulation*, then why on earth did progresives use this argument? They would have just said "the current definition *doesn't* cover bans on homosex, so we need to redefine "discrimination" in order to satisfy our intentions to protect homosex." The progressives implicitly acknowledged that the previous definition of "discrimination" already applied to bans on homosex, and that the language of the APA policy needed to be made explicit on this point. You can try to save their by pretending that this was just a stipulative issue, but the minute you go back and take a look at what the *progressives themselves actually said,* your post hoc rationalization comes to look like exactly what it is.

3) If a college established a firm policy against hiring otherwise qualified philosophy applicants who walk slowly (to use your example), is there some reason to think it isn't discrimination against age or disability?

Step2, if a new Peripatetic College is committed to the view (in its founding documents etc.) that philosophy should only be done while walking at 4 miles per hour to aid the brain and heart, then (a) YES, it is discrimination for them to refuse to hire those who fail to demonstrate that they can do philosophy while walking 4 miles per hour, and (b) that type of discrimination is legal (i.e. does not partake of now standard pejorative meaning of "discrimination" that is considered both immoral and outlawable). It discriminates in hiring against those who cannot do the job at hand. And if that happens to fall more heavily on the aged and disabled, well so what? the law doesn't protect those statuses from hiring decisions that discriminate on the basis of the job's (i.e. the job of peripatetic philosopher) own necessary requirements.

And if the college hired a professor who demonstrated that he COULD teach while walking 4 mph, and then found out later that he chose not to walk at 4 mph while teaching, then they would have every right to fire him for his actions _regardless_ of whether he attested to a belief in the requirement or not.

I neglected to mention in my comments here (January 22, 2010 11:53 PM) that Jane and Fred are not married to each.

Tony,
Fair points. I just want to underscore them a bit.

One spot where statuses such as age, race, gender, etc. and any behaviors connected in any way to these can reasonably become demerits to an applicant is in situations where these interfere with functions "integrally connected" (how ya like that term?) to one's job performance.

It is no mystery as to why an 80 year old, Asian woman is not going to be hired to play the role of Martin Luther King Jr. on film or stage. She can complain all day of the immorality of ageism, the difficult history of Asians in the U.S. and the plight of women generally. She will be discriminated against....ON THE BASIS OF HER INABILITY TO GET HER JOB DONE WELL. Let her draw "connections" between this inability, her statuses, history, bigotry, etc. Indeed, let her protest the irony of MLKJ's name being tied to all this "discrimination."

The fact is that the stage/film industry might be discriminating "against" certain ages, races and genders here, but it is not "on the basis" of these statuses or any behaviors pertaining thereto. It is on the basis of whether the applicant can do their job.

The job of a Christian educator partly constituted of promoting and modeling a lifestyle within the moral parameters of a religious tradition. If a homosexual cannot or will not get their job done, that is a breach which will earn anyone their walking papers.

Troy,
1) I disputed this by saying that it is not the conduct full stop; it is the conduct within the context of the historical record. In short, A+B=C and it is C which is integrally connected, not A or B.

2) Yet you’ve already admitted that the example of pregnancy is true, but it isn’t enough to justify the generalization. I agree, they need to clarify what would and would not extend the rule to other situations.

3) My basic contention is that it is a fairly good description and the supposed counterexample about walking slowly is weak. Your contention seems to be that it isn’t perfect so it can’t be used. Which is a good reason to throw out all rules, guidelines, and laws.

4) All I did was quote your own statement, how is that a straw man? The problem is, the human biodiversity folks provide lots of reasons besides animosity for wanting a return to segregation (or worse) and a patriarchal society. I'm not inclined to give those reasons much concern.

Step2, you don't seem to get the bit about bad behavior: Let's put it even more explicitly. Since there is bad behavior which presumably even the APA members would agree is bad behavior which would be "expressive, predictable, and normal" for certain religious, political, etc., statuses, this definition of "integrally connected" cannot be sufficient to make the behavior a protected behavior. The APA must do what it does not wish to do--make a substantive, explicit ethical judgement regarding the acceptability and protectability of _some_ such behaviors but not others. The "integrally connected" stuff doesn't do the work they want it to do of showing why homosexual sexual behavior must be protected in employment.

Get it?

Step2...here we go again,

Regarding 1: Your view then is that marrying a white woman is "behavior integral to a black man in the context of the historical record." Step 2, I gotta tell ya, that's rediculous. I think you are confusing "Its integral in the context of the historical record" which is false with "Its discriminatory in the context of the historical record" which is true.

Regarding 2: You're closer to the truth here. They need to "clarify?" Perhaps, or just drop the present issue altogether. But not merely, as you say, "extend." Yes, extend beyond pregnancy cases, perhaps. But no, do not extend the item (b) for which pregnancy was an illustration. As my counterexamples show, they are overextended as it already is.

Regarding 3: A word about definitions and counterexamples is in order here. If the APA were suggesting a "general rule" (and they weren't) rather than defining their terms, then not only would the counterexample be weak, there could be no counterexample at all. One can counterinstance "All As are Bs" but not "Most As are Bs." Which of these two is the logical form of the APA's statement? Pace your view, clearly the former. Hence, I offer counterexamples.

As to the contention that I "seem" to think that the criterion of "normal, predictable and expressive of" are useless (!) in determining what is behavior integral to a status, that I simply deny. I deny, however, that a behavior becomes integral to a status in virtue of (!) meeting these criteria.

Regarding 4: You said, claiming to quote me, "it was your statement that bad behavior could not become negligible from other factors." That is a severe misquote. This was liberaly lifted out of my sentence "Bad behavior does not become negligible simply by being predictable, expressive, having necessary conditions of some sort or being the target of badly motivated prosecutors." A close look at how you replaced my point about "not simply because of one factor" with your interpretation "could not from any other factors" reveals how bad a misquote that was.

The unprincipled political cherry-picking of the APA's statement vindicates MacIntyre's thesis in After Virtue: Enlightenment attempts at rationally establishing a bloodless ethics (i.e., traditionaless) turns out to be emotivism in rational drag. The APA might as well have required Jobs for Philosophers advertisers believe in unicorns, rainbows, and the tooth fairy. And you know what, they could have probably pulled it off if they could have shown that to believe in such things means that Christian moral theology will be marginalized in the profession.

F. Beckwith,
Enlightenment-Style Ethical Theory = Emotivism in Rational Drag.

Largely, yes. But I hope some reasonable version of natural law, divine command or virtue ethics can save the day. MacIntyre's traditionalism leaves me worried of its relativistic implications. Just a worry.

It seems our dear friend Brian is at it again. He doesn't disappoint, adhering to the Leitersnark formula with robotic precision. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it goes like this: 1)Call your opponents "bigots"/"fascists"/"reactionaries"/"theocrats" 2)passingly refer to how "lame" or "pathetic" or "feeble" their arguments are, leaving the impression that there is some devastating criticism waiting in the wings that need not be stated explicitly 3)File under "Texas (sic) Taliban Alerts", and it's another victory for The Enlightenment! All that's missing now is the "Update" where he links to some criticisms from another leftist philosopher and declares that the "bigots"/"fascists"/"reactionaries"/"theocrats" have been "eviscerated" or "annihilated" or "spanked mercilessly."

Don't tell me that Troy's (and in a sense, my) little ol' blog post has been linked by _the_ Dr. Leiter himself? I don't read the Leiter Reports if I can avoid it, but I suppose (sigh) I'll have to go and look.

"The APA is desperately trying to make an attack on Christians..."

This statement is downright silly... unless, of course, being a bigot is somehow "integral" to being a Christian.

Given your apparent definition of 'bigotry' (perhaps we should call it a stipulative definition and label it 'bigotry*'), and given Christian moral teaching of 2,000 + years, yep, bigotry* is "integrally connected" with being a Christian. Now you'll have to decide what that means, especially in terms of the APA statement.

See, after all, it's going to be necessary to make substantive decisions as to which "integrally connected" behaviors must be tolerated (e.g., homosexual sex acts) and which must not be tolerated (e.g., discrimination on the basis of homosexual sex acts).

The integrally connected stuff is a fifth wheel. Or perhaps a fig leaf. Might as well ditch it now and go straight for the naked power politics. It wasn't covering them up very well anyway.

Well, the categories spelled out by the APA leave something to be desired, as you've pointed out; but you've done so without adducing a single piece of evidence that any of the behavior the APA is trying to protect is immoral. So what was the point of your exercise?

To go from last to first, as you did:

c) It is hard to see how interracial marriage is "integral" to being a black, or for that matter, white male or female. But who but the most rancid bigot would assert that the conduct in question is immoral, or that proscription of that conduct wasn't used principally to oppress minority members and confirm their allegedly inferior nature? The APA are on the right side here; they've just picked a not very good argument. (Btw, you should clarify what you mean by "racial obscenity"; the answer might reveal whether you're worth talking with at all.)

b) It seems to me that pregnancy is in some senses of the word "integrally connected" to being a woman. But does this notion of "integral connection" bear the weight the APA wants to put on it? You make the point that there are any number of behaviors that only a woman (or a man) can engage in, which are generally regarded as immoral or are at least controversial; are these behaviors "integrally connected" to one status or another? Should we be barred from discriminating against people who engage in such behaviors? It has to be said that, for someone obviously picky about precision of language, you're being a little slipshod here. The behaviors you mention are all behaviors that people choose to engage in. Pregnancy can be chosen or not. If not chosen, moral disapproval cannot be a legitimate basis for discriminating against a pregnant woman. If chosen, you've given me no reasons to believe that the motives for that choice should be relevant to a philosophy hiring committee. Why a woman gets pregnant is generally regarded as no one's business but hers. Show me that the common wisdom here is wrong.

(An ancillary point: you treat this new policy of the APA as solely intended to bar discrimination against gays. Categories b & c seem, prima facie, to be aimed at protecting ethnic minorities and women. What evidence allows you to divine the APA's real intent here?)

Finally a): I don't understand your counter-example. A spry 80-year old is lucky, and probably regards himself as such. An 80-year old whose mental faculties are as good or better than those 40 years younger than he, who is nonetheless passed up for consideration in favor of those 40 years younger, is likely to see himself as a victim of unfairness. If his age is both nothing that he can help, AND is irrelevant to how he should be treated in a particular context, if he's nonetheless singled out for disfavor in that context, most of us would say he's being treated unfairly. So, whether or not "integrally connected" is the best way of putting it, should we not also see unfairness in the case of a gay man or woman in comparable circumstances? In other words, you HAVE TO present evidence that they can somehow help being gay, and, if they can, that they SHOULD do something about their gayness, because either being gay or acting gay is somehow immmoral, or otherwise relevant to whether they should be chosen or rejected in the given context. You produce NO such evidence in this posting.

I'm not convinced by anything you've said here (no evidence, you see); but I do like your Byzantine eagle! You should be aware, however, that the Byzantines lasted as long as they did by a very pragmatic talent for adjusting to changing circumstances. (E.g. there was even a mosque at Constantinople.)

What evidence allows you to divine the APA's real intent here?

You've been living in a cave for the past year and a half? You don't know that this *entire revision* was a result of an explicit petition generated _explicitly_ on behalf of "gay and lesbian philosophers" and widely signed that was intended to close a perceived "loophole" whereby some schools have policies prohibiting homosexual acts but are in no way censured by the APA? That's what the whole thing was about from the get-go and from the side pushing this policy! Those who opposed the proposed policy were accused of anti-homosexual "bigotry" and "homophobia."

Discrimination against minorities was not an issue. It was in place already and there was no complaint of a loophole, etc., of religiously oriented institutions finding ways to get away with discriminating against racial minorities. The question, rather, was over the meaning of "discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation" and whether this included a prohibition on discrimination on the basis of sexual acts. The debate has been, shall we say, widely canvassed.

The author of the post, Troy, and several of the rest of us have made clear what the point of the post is: The APA is trying to get "integrally connected" to do a certain job for it--to show a _rationale_ for banning discrimination against sexual acts. The concept of integral connection does not do that job. If the APA wants to ban discrimination on the basis of homosexual acts, it will either have to do so outright and by itself, "Oh, by the way, no discrimination on the basis of homosexual acts" (full stop) or else find some other overarching rationale. But for any rationale attempted, the substantive question of the morality of homosexual acts cannot be avoided. The "integrally connected" discussion was meant to avoid it. It doesn't work.

All clear, now?

I'm not a philosopher, so I don't know the whole history behind the APA's present language. Even so, since points b & c address minorities and women better (I think) than gays, I'm at least open to the possibility that the APA wanted to strenghthen its anti-discriminatory language more broadly than you're alleging (It's something that liberals tend to want to do). I've been wrong before, so maybe I'm now wrong now; it is, as I said, an ancillary point.

I agree that the substantive question of the morality (or immorality) of gay acts can't be avoided; but, as a general principle of fairness, the party who wants to discriminate has the burden of proof here. (As I said, I'm not a philsopher, I'm a lawyer; maybe we understand this principle better than philosophers do.)

I'll tip my hand in advance and tell you that for me, an alleged supernatural revelation wouldn't cut it. Do you have something else, anything else, that would lead someone without a previous confessional commitment to agree with you that the behavior at issue is immoral?

I'm not a philosopher, so I don't know the whole history behind the APA's present language.

Well, there is such a history, and I'm not going to provide you with a zillion links, but the history is as I've represented it. This is _new_ language, and the perceived need for _new_ language was directly and substantially related to the specific issue of homosexual acts. The whole "behavior integrally connected" thing is what that's all about. Here is a link to the petition that originated the whole thing:

http://www.petitiononline.com/cmh3866/petition.html

as a general principle of fairness, the party who wants to discriminate has the burden of proof here.

By no means would I want to put words in Troy's mouth, and he may disagree with me here, but I disagree with this statement. To discriminate is simply to make decisions based on particular criteria, to make distinctions and prefer some things over others, especially in such areas as hiring. It is obviously ridiculous to say that "all discrimination is wrong," and as a lawyer, you must know this. Employers discriminate on the basis of all kinds of things, some of them matters of morality, some of them not at all. Whether or not a candidate dresses appropriately for an interview, for example, can be a legitimate basis of employment discrimination, even though it is not a matter of morality. It is only ignorant people who say things like, "All discrimination is illegal in the United States." On the contrary, as a lawyer, you are well aware of the category of protected class status. Certain groups are picked out in legislative and quasi-legislative acts (as in the APA's act of making a non-discrimination policy) for protected class status, and the legal or quasi-legal language states that _that_ status shall not be an allowable basis for discrimination.

If we are to speak of burden of proof, my own inclination would be to say that when a new group is to be given protected class status, the burden of proof is on those who would further burden, rigidify, and formalize the employment process and remove that status from the normal give and take of daily human interaction and the complex set of criteria that feed into an employment decision.

This is all the more true when we consider the legal category of a "hostile work environment" and realize that when a group is given legally protected class status, it becomes a matter of possible litigation if opinions considered hostile or unpleasant to that group are permitted by the employer to be uttered in the workplace without penalty. Thus the expansion of protected classes has chilling and rigidifying implications for human interactions every day of the week, every hour of the day, and in every employment facility that falls under them. This is relevant even for matters less politically fraught than homosexuality. I, for example, oppose the granting of protected class status on the basis of weight. It should not be a cause of litigation against an employer if a fellow employee makes an unkind comment about "fat people" in the presence of an overweight co-worker without suffering dire employment penalties (so the employer can prove that he is trying to avoid a "hostile work environment"). People need to learn to live together without litigation over every slight.

So, no, I disagree that the person "wishing to discriminate" has the burden of proof in some absolute sense, or in the name of fairness, and such a claim about burden of proof is obviously _untrue_ in a legal context, where discrimination on some basis is legal unless connected with a protected class.

an alleged supernatural revelation wouldn't cut it

Rationally, that should depend upon the affadavits of the putative supernatural revelation. It would be closed-minded to hold it utterly impossible that God should reveal that some particular act is wrong.

In any event, you must surely know that natural law theorists have discussed the wrongness of homosexual sexual acts at length in terms of teleology, and a discussion of the question of teleology in humanity and whether it is discernible by the human mind (my take--it had better be or we're all in trouble) would take us far afield.

I would add that in my opinion there are ample _practical_ grounds for considering it a good thing that traditional Christian religious institutions should exist, and if they exist, of course they are going to want to promote traditional Christian morality--which will mean, no homosexual sex.

I'm baaaack....and (wow!) apparently the conversation has heated up. So here's my update to "brian" and "Aaron Baker."

Brian, snarked against my view that "The APA is desperately trying to make an attack on Christians..." that "This statement is downright silly... unless, of course, being a bigot is somehow "integral" to being a Christian."

Very interesting...the view expressed is that if a behavior B (say, forbiding homosexual acts)is not intregal to a status S (say, being a Christian), then organizations are not discriminating against S by prohibiting B.

Result? Unless sex with a white woman is integral to being a black man, institutions are not descriminating against black men by forbiding such behavior. And that's a stupid result. Brian needs to rethink his logic here.

Aaron Baker, your attacks on A-C all contain the same fallacy. I argued that the standards (Note Well!) for "integral connections" so designated were false. Rather than attack my arguments, you switched subjects.

With respect to (C) you conceded that the APA had "a bad argument." Thanks. But the APA had no argument; it was an illustration. Please don't change the subject as to whether bans on interracial marriage are bad. I happen to be in an interracial marriage; and NO, it is not integrally connected to my "status."

With respect to (B), you changed the subject to whether pregnancy is/isn't integrally connected to being a woman. I made no claim either way; I have no view on that. I did say that criterion B for "integral connection" is false and easy to counterinstance.

With respect to (C), I simply said that the manner in which one moves is not "integral" to being 80. However, you bring up one good point (even if you did get off on a rabbit trail). Whether or not the natural, predictable and expressive enfeebled behavior of the 80 year old ought to be taken into consideration in the hiring/employment process should depend on whether he can still do his job as well as, say, the 40 year old. Correct. The proper concern is not his status-per-se nor his behavior-per-se but whether he can do his job.

But didn't you figure out that persons engaging in homosexual acts have a problem doing their job? What exactly do you think the job of a Christian educator is? See my replies above.

Also, you are incorrect in your view that employeers need to show that a certain behavior is immoral in order to take it into consideration in the hiring process. If a woman can't get a job as a professional baritone, she can't insist that her prospective employer show her that singing/speaking in a high voice is immoral. She can't do her job, that's all there is to it. And it is not encumbant on the employeer to show that she could have had a lower register if she had tried.

Q.E.D.

I agree with the original poster that the APA policy is poorly phrased. But I do think the intent of the policy is clear: a majority of APA members take (a) expressing one's sexual orientation in legal ways, (b) reproducing in legal ways, and (c) marrying in legal ways (as well as many other legal behaviors that bear a similar connection to a protected class of individuals) to be behaviors that we don't want to facilitate discrimination against through un-asterisked ads in the JFP (and most of us are "progressive" enough to have qualms about facilitating it even through asterisked ads, but we recognize that this would needlessly harm job-seekers). Even if the policy could have been better worded, I don't think there's anyone who seriously misunderstands that this was its intent.

I strongly disagree with the original poster's suggestion that "the APA is desperately trying to make an attack on Christians." Many Christians are perfectly happy not to discriminate against gay people (including those who run my religious university), and I see no concerted effort (desperate or otherwise) by the APA to attack such moderate Christians. So, at best it's only a subset of Christians we're trying to attack. Furthermore, that subset of Christians don't have a monopoly on homophobia, and we'd be equally happy to attack Muslim homophobia, secular homophobia, etc... And furthermore furthermore, our "attacks" are limited to using an asterisk and a footnote indicating which job-listings discriminate in a way that most of us find immoral, which, as attacks go, seems neither "desperate" nor even all that potent.

Behold our mighty asterisks all ye homophobes and despair!

The central idea seems to be that the behaviors in question are not merely associated with a particular status, but rather that a certain behavior is connected to that status in such a way that repressing or not engaging in the behavior constitutes a violation of one’s “integrity” (hence, “integral”) as a creature possessing such a status. Internally, it sets one at odds with themselves (or at least with themselves que person-of-a-certain-class) and in paradigm cases the result is both a sense of unease and repression.

1) This is your own suggestion of what integrally connected means. If your own marriage was dissolved or forbidden because of your racial status, do you believe it would be a violation against your integrity or not? If not, what is it?

2) I don't understand why the word clarification bothers you so much if we seem to be in agreement that scope of the definition is unclear.

3) That isn't how I think of definitions at all. A definition can be true or false or somewhere in between. And you can have weak or strong counterexamples depending on how thoroughly you show the definition doesn't work.

4) Fair enough. I should have restated your list of factors to keep the meaning intact.

5) If the APA removes religion and/or political convictions from their list of protected status would that be a better solution? You could complain about that, but on what grounds that aren't self-refuting?

Clarification: some people seem to be objecting that "integrally connected" doesn't justify the APA's policy. But that's a rather frivolous complaint. Everyone on here should be fully aware that the rationale--whether you bought it or not--was laid out through endless discussion, particularly on Leiter's blog, prior to the rewording of the APA's policy. The statement of the policy is one thing, the arguments for it another (if you really care about the latter, you can find them online on old Leiter threads, but I'm sure you already know them). Nevertheless, if you're really just upset about the wording of the policy, how about you politely send the APA your suggestion for how to reword it? After all, as far as this thread is concerned, apparently that's what you're so upset about--how the policy is worded, rather than the policy itself. Actually, here's a better suggestion: why not just cut to the chase, avoid the caviling, and complain about the policy directly, rather than pretending some grave philosophical error was committed through something as petty as the APA's wording? Grow up already.

Shorter Justin Fisher: The language of the resolution was poorly thought out, but it's no big deal because it was just a procedural figleaf for our decision to blackmark religious schools that disagree with our egalitarian sexual ethics. But take heart, we are only trying to blackmark schools with traditional sexual moral codes, not christian schools as such.

Thanks for telling us what we already knew: that this was pure power politics, and at bottom was nothing more than an attempt to professionally enforce your liberal conception of the good. The truth comes out in the strangest ways....

and most of us are "progressive" enough to have qualms about facilitating it even through asterisked ads

...Um-hmm. And some of you were "progressive" enough to want the ads banned. I have read quite definitely that this was the position of a faction on the APA board who hope that this will be merely a step in that direction.

So enough with the "who, us?" stuff, Justin Fisher. You yourself have "qualms" about not banning the ads outright. I wonder how bothered you'd be if the vote were one year to go that way. Might the price of making things a bit more difficult for job seekers be worth it for "not facilitating" such evil behavior (in your opinion) as discriminating on the basis of homosexual acts?

The truth is, your sarcasm about the mildness of the "attack" in question makes it quite clear that you are frustrated at not being able to do something more substantial, somehow, if only the pesky purpose of helping people find jobs didn't intervene. I wonder whether, just perhaps, you would favor _laws_ against this sort of discrimination. You know, then the APA wouldn't have to make the call. Either the schools would fold...or they'd fold. And any jobs lost would be out of the APA's hands.

Attacks? Yep. It's pointless for pro-homosexual activists to pretend that they don't want to attack the so-called homophobes in a number of quite concrete ways. Their own political agenda makes that clear. This APA policy is just an attempt to penalize homophobia at the organizational level when you can't get the law to do the good work wholesale.

a majority of APA members take (a) expressing one's sexual orientation in legal ways...to be behaviors that we don't want to facilitate discrimination against through un-asterisked ads in the JFP

Justin, sorry to pop your bubble, but there are jurisdictions in which homosexual acts are illegal. And will remain illegal for the foreseeable future, unless the SCOTUS does another revolutionary legislative enactment from the bench. Are you suggesting that the validity of the APA arrangement rests on whether the act is legal? Well, then the APA will have to accept ads from places where homosexual acts are illegal without any disapproval. Or, better yet, simply admit that basing a requirement that an institution eschew discrimination based on homosexual behavior because "that behavior is legal" makes no more sense than a policy of accepting such institutions' ads because discriminating on the basis of homosexual behavior is legal. If it's law you want to base it on, the law allows such discrimination.

The APA effectively wants to say that such discrimination is immoral, but doesn't want to say it up front because it would then have to debate the issue frontally.

Perhaps we should start referring to "expressing one's religious orientation in legal ways" or "engaging in legal, private employment practices expressive of one's religious identity." Perhaps others have more clever versions of this.

I sympathize with your argument, Tony, but don't waste your breath. The proper analogy here is with Al Capone and tax evasion. As the story goes, the feds wanted to book Al Capone for racketeering but didn't have the evidence to put him away. Since they *knew* he was guilty, it didn't matter whether they have any evidence of racketeering or not- to get him behind bars, tax evasion will get them what they wanted. Likewise with this debate, the secular progressive just *know* that traditional moral codes are evil and must be eliminated. They may not have any good evidence that such codes are morally equivalent to racist or sexist codes of the past, but that doesn't matter- maybe the creation of an ad hoc moral category called "integral connection" will get them what they want. If that doesn't work, then don't sweat it, they can keep playing this game until they find their equivalent of the "tax evasion" charge. We don't need to argue with them anymore, we just need them to be honest and say what we already know they are thinking. Namely: "We think you people are a bunch of bigoted reactionaries and we want to institutionally disenfranchise you. Since we have the numbers we are going to do it, and because we know we're right you just have to sit and take it." To his credit, Justin Fisher came awfully close to telling us the truth. Now we just need the straight dope, so we can all quit pretending that disinterested philosophical reasons have anything to do with this debate.

"...this was pure power politics, and at bottom was nothing more than an attempt to professionally enforce your liberal conception of the good."

It seems really childish to describe what transpired in such tendentious terms---"pure power politics". That suggests that this was somehow just arational bullying. It wasn't. There was a lot of debate about the moral status of religious schools doing this. The majority conclusion was that there was no significant moral difference between religious schools treating homosexuals this way, and, say, doing the same to ethnic minorities. You might not like that conclusion, but it attracted the most support after sustained, intense discussion. You're not a victim. Frankly, it's hard to believe anyone in your position in the US after the past 30 years could believe that. If you want "pure power politics", look at the way conservatives shoot down any sort of real climate policy with a near TOTAL disregard for scientific standards of evidence. I'd say that's the paradigm, certainly not what the APA has done.

The majority conclusion was that there was no significant moral difference between religious schools treating homosexuals this way, and, say, doing the same to ethnic minorities.

Which conclusion has nothing to do with its being "integrally connected" to homosexual status.

The APA produced a piece of philosophical shlock. Troy took it apart. I find it at least mildly amusing that the APA's defenders are more or less admitting that this piece of drivel, unworthy of philosophers, was produced as the merest pretense of a rationale for what was being done. The _real_ rationale, we are now told, lies in oodles of discussions among Leiterites on Leiter's blog, etc. Charming. And they couldn't condense these learned discourses (which evidently are supposed to have been _quite different_ from what in fact was produced and adopted by those advocating the Leiter-Hermes policy) into something about the length of the policy above but which (unlike what was actually passed) could stand up to _minimal philosophical scrutiny_? Gosh, how strange.

I assume that Untenured means "pure power politics" to stand in contrast to a conclusion that flows from some more general principle about right and wrong. Something more than "Peoplewhothinkhomosexualactsarewrongarebigotspeoplewhothinkhomosexualactsarewrongarebigots" [repeat]. (Which we heard plenty of, heaven knows, from the Leiterites when the Hermes petition was circulating.)

The APA tries, pompously, to give that impression of a greater principle uniting its policy. It fails. Y'all are more or less admitting this. Why did they bother? Why not just put, "Inasmuch as people who think homosexual acts are wrong are bigots, the APA hereby regards it as unethical to discriminate on the basis of homosexual acts"? Short and sweet. Save the trees. Whenever the statement had to be printed, it would have saved on paper.

Justin Fisher, The response that the policy is poorly worded but we all get intent misses the point. The point is that if you can have a policy, you should be able to word it coherently. But if you take the trouble to word it coherently, you are going to end up with a policy that doesn't just rule out its intended target but a lot of uncontroversially innocent targets as well. If you don't believe this, take a try at it.

Again...some replies to my kind critics...

Justin Fisher first,
Your post confuses several issues. First, you say the APA is not targeting Christians, only a (extraordinarily large)subset who fail to agree with the majority of the APA. Now how is that a defense? No one would take the analogous position of saying "The Christian schools targeted by the APAs new policy don't discriminate against homosexuals. Only against a (extraordinarily large) subset of who fail to live the way the majority of Christians think they should." My original point stands.

As to your point about APA members not wanting(!) certain "legal" expressions of sexuality prohibited, we are agreed. But you are missing the point of this entire thread. First, the APA certainly did not maintain that the prohibition is merely what they "wanted." They claimed moral warrant for this and insulted those who disputed that moral warrant. Second, their alleged moral warrant came from deplorably stupid reasoning as I showed. Third, the "asterisks" are not merely notifications to job candidates (which might otherwise be unobjectionable), but rather citations of ethical violations. So let's not candycoat such moral pretense.

To Step2:
Regarding 1: You've switched subjects again. The dissolution of my (interracial) marriage would be degrading to me. But not que-white-person and not because of my "integrity" as a white person. That's foolish. My marriage is important to me que-Troy not integrally connected to my race.

Regarding 2: Switched subjects again. I didn't argue that the APA requires word clarifications. I argued that they need to rethink their criterion for integral connections entirely.

Regarding 3: Your contention that "a definition can be true or false or inbetween" is bizarre. I simply stated that the APA's three criterion take the logical form "All As are Bs" and that contradicts the fact (which I established) that "Some As are not Bs." If you think the APA is revising basic logic on behalf of its membership, you should probably rethink that view. And recall Quine's point that persons who revise logic (the law of excluded middle) are simply changing the subject. Sound familiar?

Regarding 4: Thanks for self-correcting on this point.

Regarding your new point 5: I don't argue that the APA should remove religion and political convictions from their protected status list. But I will admit that it would improve their moral track record; at least the American "lovers of truth" Association would display a bit of honestly for once.

To anon1...two points...
First, the fact that the decision of the APA was favorable to it majority membership is severely (appallingly, ridiculously) inadequate to justify the new policy. If you really think that a majority opinion justifies publicly castigating a minority point of view, then you really need to rethink whether the treatment of homosexuals in our nations history was wrong in the first place. The mere wishes of the majority versus a minority should prevail? Really, anon1. What were you thinking? That's the opposite of what you should have learned from history.

Second, your view that the dissent represented in this thread is "childish" is cowardly. Part of being an adult is taking responsibility for one's words and actions. And it is not childish to hold persons/institutions to account for this. It is especially childish to beg for a pass on criticism when you wish to launch a moral slur against a minority among you and come up short on justification for it. Worse, given that so many self-righteous voices declared the APA decision "obviously" right, it is shameful that a group of professional, cock-sure philosophers could only scrounge up the nonsense "reckoning" above and worse that the "obvious" truth has to now plead for asylum from adult criticism.

Lydia,
Ha! Nice post. 10:48 above.

@untenured (8:04): As a private organization, it is well within the APA's rights to refrain from actively detracting from what a majority of us take to be the good. We're not forcing this on anyone. If you're embarassed to have an asterisk next to your school's name, please go advertise somewhere else instead. Really. Please do.

@Lydia (8:17): I would indeed favor laws against discriminating against gays, just as I favor laws against discriminating against women and racial minorities. You're right that such laws would make this a lot easier. In the meantime, I'm torn between avoiding assisting unjust discrimination and helping philosophers who really need jobs to get them. Whichever policy the APA adopts, I'll feel misgivings.

@Tony: If you read the APA policy in the original post, you'll see the APA is completely upfront in holding that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is immoral. We say this openly, and this issue has been discussed frontally, ad nauseum, e.g., on Leiter's blog. I used the term "legal" in my gloss just to circumvent examples like "man-on-dog sex" that people on your side often bring up in these debates. You're right that this term probably doesn't cut exactly the right boundary lines, given the backwards jurisdictions that you mention. But I actually do think schools are in a more defensible position when they discriminate against illegal acts in general than they are when they discriminate against legal acts between consenting adults in the privacy of their own bedrooms. So "legal" reflects my own views fairly well, but I can't speak for others.

@Lydia (9:37): You're welcome to start talking about "expressing one's religious orientation in legal ways". However, the majority view among APA members is that some ways of expressing your religious orientation are discriminatory and immoral, and we refuse to help contribute to those, or rather will reluctantly help but only if you agree to have a little asterisk beside your school's name. Feel free to start your own organization and put your own asterisks next to all the names of schools you think are immoral.

@untenured (9:45): If you really are unaware of the principled arguments people have given in support of the APA policy, you should go read the old threads on Leiter's blog. You might learn something. If you *are* aware of these arguments, then it's disingenuous and disrespectful for you to suggest that our position is that we "just *know*" discrimination against gays is wrong. You might think our arguments are wrong, but you should engage with them directly rather than pretending they don't exist. Either way, you have some growing up to do before you'll be taken seriously in these debates.

Hi Justin,

I read all the old Leiter debates, and I think that many people did take the "we just know" approach. Basically, there were two positions taken by the pro-revise side: (1) John Corvino has proved that there are no good arguments against gay marriage/the licitness of gay sex and lots of good arguments for creating gay marriage/the permissibility of gay sex. (2) Having gay sex is as much a part of a person's sexual orientation as praying is a part of a Christian's religious orientation. Just as you can't really *be* a Christian unless you pray, you can't really *be* gay unless you're open to having gay sex.

Now, I think there are good arguments in favor of the permissibility of gay sex, but they assume all sorts of things about the nature of the good and morality that can't be convincingly argued for--at least no more convincingly than, say, trope theory can be argued for. I think all philosophers are in this boat with regard to certain basic principles of value and reasoning, but it's interesting, and perhaps defensible, that the APA is taking up a substantive position regarding the nature of the good with this position. It's basically saying that one significant ethical theory--namely, natural law theory, a position that has numerous articulate defenders of both contemporary and historical importance--is beyond the pale.

Note that the situations regarding homosexuality is quite different from the state of affairs regarding racist positions. Although Aristotle, Hume, Kant, et al., held racist positions, these positions were in no way integral to their moral theories, but depended on the observations of people such as captain Cook, and so were purely empirical positions. It's similar to a school whose official policy is to have a statement where people argue that abortion is morally wrong be censured because we all know that abortion is morally just fine.

I should say, the "we just know" approach is exemplified in many people's simply stating (1), giving Corvino's arguments a credence that I think no other philosopher's arguments has ever gotten on any other controversial position. That, from my perspective, looks pretty close to a "We just know" approach.

@troy: Your original post seemed to paint the APA's policy as a desparate attack on Christianity, as though this were some sort of (un)holy war. My point was that the attack had nothing to do with Christianity, per se, but just with unjust discrimination perpetrated by some Christians, among others. Similarly, the APA's no-racial-discrimination policy is not felicitously described as a desperate attack on old-school Mormonism, even if some old-school Mormons, among others, discriminate against black people.

Incidentally, I think -- or at least hope -- you're mistaken in your estimate of how many Christians think it's morally permissible for employers to discriminate against gays. It's one thing to think gay sex is sinful -- quite another to think employers should pry into people's sexuality and pass judgement on it. Let he who is without sin cast the first pink-slip, and all that...

I also think you're mistaken to equate the letter of the APA policy with what reasoning APA members took our moral warrant to come from. Different APA members surely understood the moral warrant in different ways (probably as many different ways as there were people who voted for the policy). What a majority agreed upon was that this policy came close enough to expressing an intent they agreed with. As I've said, I think you're right that the policy could, and even should, have been better worded. But that's far different from saying that APA's members reasoning for supporting the policy was "deplorably stupid". A poorly worded policy whose intent is clear is much better than no policy at all.

To Bobcat:
Your dead right. The so-called "arguments" on the Leiter blog are just as you depicted. I was involved in them.

To Justin...several things.
First, the percentage of Christians worldwide who regard homosexual activity as immoral is certainly extremely large.

Second, you did not so much as touch my arguments with your view that the attack was not on "Christianity per-se." I don't care what you think that term refers to, I said the APA attacked Christians(!) not their "Christianity" or worse your diluted "Christianity-per-se." The APA by your lights said in effect "We're OK if you want to practice Christianity...just make it our sort." And THAT is a fascist attack on Christians whatever else you make of it.

Thirdly, let's get one thing straight: I did not so much as imply that it was perfectly OK for Christians who disapprove of homosexuality to refuse those persons hire for simply that reason. I did NOT say that this was OK. I said that if their lifestyle makes it impossible for them to fulfill their job commitments, THEN it is OK to refuse them hire. Are we clear?

Fourthly, you criticize me for equating the reasoning in the APA statement with the reasoning that motivated reforming it. Now I don't think that's remotely a reasonable distinction. But OK, let's roll with it. At least you granted that the "intents" behind each were roughly the same.

So tell me Justin, what intentions are you referring to? As several have already pointed out in this thread, was the intent to give reasons why certain behaviors cannot be grounds for discrimination in hiring? Was it intended to show a moral parallel between discriminating on the basis of homosexual activity, pregnancy and interracial marriage? Was it intended to connect discrimination against a behavior with discrimination against a certain status? Name your pick Justin.

Correct answer: probably all of the above.
Proper evaluation: "deplorably stupid."

I suspect you are trying, as did previous commentors, to white-wash the APAs statement so that it is merely a stipulation of which hiring practices will marked as unethical. It is not, as several persons have already pointed out above.

Troy wrote:

"The APA by your lights said in effect "We're OK if you want to practice Christianity...just make it our sort." And THAT is a fascist attack on Christians whatever else you make of it."

But that's not what the APA said and I think you know that. The APA said, "We're OK if you want to practice Christianity ... just make it our sort if you want to advertise in our publications". Two important points. First, the APA policy only applies to schools who wish to use the APA's publications and services for hiring. (Obviously. How could the APA have a policy that applied to schools that did not choose to associate with the APA?) Second, "our sort" here means the kind of Christianity that does not attempt to justify discrimination against its homosexual members in hiring. It may well be that lots and lots of Christians condemn homosexual conduct as immoral in much the way that many philosophers might condemn as immoral the practice of raising children to believe the doctrines that lead them later in life to condemn homosexual conduct as immoral. My guess is that there is not a one to one correlation between Christians who condemn homosexual conduct and Christians who think such conduct should factor in hiring decisions. Similarly, there is not a one to one correlation between philosophers who condemn Christians who raise their children with unfortunate moral views and philosophers who think we should use this as a justification for refusing to hire Christians who raise their children with unfortunate moral views. (I have in mind Christians in the United States alive now, but you might have a different group in mind when you talk about the attitudes of Christians. You're probably right that those Christians in Nigeria keen on killing homosexuals would broadly be in favor of firing them.)

Sort of a side issue, but the APA is engaged in a fascist attack? Fascist? You might expect this sort of gross abuse of the language from Glenn Beck, but you have a degree. Cripes. Go to bed and get some rest. There's a long tradition at WWWtW of contributors disappearing their posts and comments. You might think about deleting your 12:24 comment. There's no shame in it.

Troy,

"And THAT is a fascist attack on Christians whatever else you make of it."

That seems REALLY strong, Troy. Do you really mean that? Fascist?

Bobcat,
Jinx. You owe me a coke.

Funny how the internet sucks up one's time when one can't sleep...

@Bobcat: I think you're drastically oversimplifying the arguments presented in very long discussion threads. But rather than go into ancient blog exegesis, I find it more useful (for myself anyway - perhaps for you) to articulate some of my own reasons, which I think are closely akin to reasons others presented on those threads. I'll keep it short and sweet.

1. If it were your employer's business what genitals you have, then it would be your employer's business if you're a hermaphrodite.

2. But it's none of your employer's business if you're a hermaphrodite.

3. So it's none of your employer's business what genitals you have.

4. The difference between whether the sex you're having is gay or straight is what genitals you have.

5. So it's none of your employer's business whether you're having gay sex or straight sex.

6. If it's none of your employer's business whether you're having gay sex or straight sex, then employers shouldn't discriminate against gay sex.

-------------------------------------------------------

7. So employers shouldn't discriminate against gay sex.

But what if your employer discriminates not explicitly against gay sex, but instead explicitly against *non-marital* sex, in a jurisdiction where the government prohibits gay marriage?

8. Reasoning parallel to (1-7) establishes that it's none of the *government's* business what genitals you have, and hence that the government shouldn't discriminate against gay sex, nor gay marriage.

9. If it were permissible for employers to discriminate on the basis of some seal of approval discriminatorially given by a third party, then it would be permissible for employers to discriminate on the basis of some seal of approval discriminatorially given by the Klan.

10. But this wouldn't be permissible.

11. So it's not permissible for employers to discriminate on the basis of some seal of approval discriminatorially given by a third party.

12. In jurisdictions that prohibit gay marriage, marital status is a seal of approval discriminatorially given by a third party. (from 8)

--------------------------------------------------------

13. So, in jurisdictions that prohibit gay marriage, it is not permissible for employers to discriminate on the basis of marital status.

In a nutshell: It's nobody's business what genitals you have, so your employer shouldn't discriminate against you for them, and if the government discriminates against you for them your employer shouldn't use that as a license to further discriminate against you for them.

It's nobody's business what genitals you have

What if a male homosexual crossdresser shows up in drag for a job interview, and the prospective employer can't tell what he's looking at? Does he check the M box or the F box on the job app?

Justin,

You wrote, "rather than go into ancient blog exegesis, I find it more useful (for myself anyway - perhaps for you) to articulate some of my own reasons, which I think are closely akin to reasons others presented on those threads. I'll keep it short and sweet."

Before you go on, I want to cut you off at the pass here. It seems to me that you're trying to make a case against employment discrimination on the basis of sexual conduct in general. But that's too broad; the Leiter discussion was about discrimination against gays on the basis of sexual conduct that goes against the religious mission of a university. Since, the argument went, there is no good reason for believing that gay sex is impermissible, and indeed since there is reason for thinking that believing that gay sex is impermissible is itself immoral, it follows that any university department that refuses to hire individuals who actively practice gay sex is engaging in immoral conduct, and so should in some way be censured by the APA. This is a much narrower issue than your argument below seems to grapple with. Nevertheless...

"1. If it were your employer's business what genitals you have, then it would be your employer's business if you're a hermaphrodite."

Already, there are some cases, I think, where it is your employer's business what genitals you have. Arguably people who want to hire only women to counsel battered women are concerned with what genitals you have; pornographers are also concerned about what genitals their employees have. But I take it that you're saying something like, "there are a range of cases where it is your employer's business what genitals you have, but there is a much wider range of cases where it is none of your employer's business what genitals you have", and that seems right. And certainly, in the vast majority, perhaps even all, cases where it's none of your employer's business what genitals you have, it's also the case that it's none of your employer's business whether you're a hermaphrodite.

"2. But it's none of your employer's business if you're a hermaphrodite."

That seems right for a large range of cases.

"3. So it's none of your employer's business what genitals you have."

Again, it seems right for a large range of cases, but I'm not sure what help it is to bring up the business with hermaphrodism. It would be relevant, I think, if it were more clearly none of your employer's business whether you're a hermaphrodite than it was her business what your genitals are, but I don't find one case more obvious than the other.

"4. The difference between whether the sex you're having is gay or straight is what genitals you have."

Now, that just sounds weird to me. Surely what makes the sex you're having gay or straight is what you do with your genitals, not just with what genitals you have?

"5. So it's none of your employer's business whether you're having gay sex or straight sex."

"6. If it's none of your employer's business whether you're having gay sex or straight sex, then employers shouldn't discriminate against gay sex."

-------------------------------------------------------

"7. So employers shouldn't discriminate against gay sex."

Sorry to say, but this formulation of things seems inapposite. Surely what matters is whether the sex you have and who you have it with interferes with your job performance, right? In other words, what makes something your employer's business is whether what you do affects your job performance. As I read them, Leiter's supporters saying that there's really no defensible way to maintain that being gay and/or having gay sex interferes with a philosopher's job performance, even at a university with a Christian mission. The only way such a university could maintain that it does interfere with a philosopher's job performance is if they took up a morally indefensible view according to which it did (i.e., some form of divine command theory, or most forms of natural law theory). But we (the APA) shouldn't let such institutional odiousness stand, so we shall censure those departments that hold to that odious view.

But that's not what the APA said and I think you know that. The APA said, "We're OK if you want to practice Christianity ... just make it our sort if you want to advertise in our publications". Two important points. First, the APA policy only applies to schools who wish to use the APA's publications and services for hiring.

Clayton,

I've already seen on this thread Justin Fisher admit quite openly that he would like said employment practices outlawed outright--presumably for Christian colleges as well, since that's the context of discussion--and then revert to this kind of quasi-libertarian talk about how it's just the APA telling Christians it will mark Christian college ads, etc.

Now, I would be _astonished_ if you, Clayton, whom I have known on-line for yea, these many years, did not _also_ support a legal ban on these employment practices.

I strongly suspect that Troy sees, quite understandably, the APA job-marking decision as part of the wider movement of homosexual activism and its possible and probable effects upon Christian schools. I certainly do see it that way. And, to be honest, I think you should admit that _you_ see it that way and that all those who were so passionate about the Leiter-Hermes petition and "justice for GLBT philosophers" and the like see it that way. If this isn't a blow in the culture wars, why the heck did Hermes start the whole thing? Troy is quite right to point out that the marking indicates a possibility or probability (depending on whether the mark indicates that the discrimination is confirmed) of unethical behavior. That, again, was part of the whole point. That, again, is why people on _your_ side of the issue thought this important enough to throw themselves into. This was meant to be a matter of _censuring_ such institutions.

Why should the phrase "attack on Christians" (which is what Justin Fisher _originally_ objected to) not be appropriate here? And, please, let's not have a double standard: "This isn't an attack on Christians but only on what some of them do." Really? Fine and dandy. Then employers who discriminate on the basis of homosexual conduct aren't attacking homosexuals but only what some of them do. My gosh! It's the orientation/act distinction! How convenient that y'all use it when you can try it on your side and ridicule it on the other!

Justin Fisher, your premise 4 is laughable. Bobcat has given the reasons, though Bobcat is a much nicer person than I am, so he didn't say "laughable."

I have not read through all of this depressingly unedifying discussion, but I would like to make one comment. I find it baffling in the extreme that most of the commenters here seem to regard this as an issue about Christianity, and think that the APA's attempts to proscribe discrimination against homosexuals is somehow an anti-Christian measure. Not all Christians think that there's anything wrong with homosexuality. Indeed as someone from an Anglican background I find this whole thing especially odd, given that American Anglicans ("Episcopalians", as they rather coyly call themselves...) are among the most gay-friendly Christians in the world - to such an extent that their gay-friendly practices are threatening to disrupt the Anglican communion, since they go beyond what Anglicans in other countries are willing to countenance, even the supposedly liberal Rowan Williams himself.

So please, if you're so concerned for exactness of phrasing and definitions, don't keep using "Christian" as a synonym for "homophobic" or indeed for anything about homosexuality. Don't use "Christian university" to mean "university that does not permit its staff to engage in homosexual activity" or however you're meaning it. If it's not OK to use "integrally connected" in a non-standard way stipulatively, then it's not OK to use the term "Christian" in that way either, no matter how much it may pander to the simplistic and reductive outlook of the American culture wars.

I'm a tad confused. The use of the "integrally connected" seems to be what's at issue. Suppose we drop it from the policy.

"The American Philosophical Association rejects as unethical all forms of discrimination based on race, color, religion, political convictions, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identification or age, whether in graduate admissions, appointments, retention, promotion and tenure, manuscript evaluation, salary determination, or other professional activities in which APA members characteristically participate. This includes both discrimination on the basis of status and discrimination on the basis of conduct where (a) the conduct is a normal and predictable expression of the status (e.g., sexual conduct expressive of a sexual orientation) or (b) the conduct is something that only a person with that status could engage in (e.g., pregnancy), or (c) the proscription of that conduct is historically and routinely connected with invidious discrimination against the status (e.g., interracial marriage)."

As Anon1 (I believe) pointed out, the APA's use of the term "integrally connected" was stipulative, and they stipulate right in the policy what the term is supposed to mean. So drop the use of the term altogether. Seems that we have maintained the aim of the policy. But notice that the original objections now just fail to apply.

"Clayton,

I've already seen on this thread Justin Fisher admit quite openly that he would like said employment practices outlawed outright--presumably for Christian colleges as well, since that's the context of discussion--and then revert to this kind of quasi-libertarian talk about how it's just the APA telling Christians it will mark Christian college ads, etc.

Now, I would be _astonished_ if you, Clayton, whom I have known on-line for yea, these many years, did not _also_ support a legal ban on these employment practices.

I strongly suspect that Troy sees, quite understandably, the APA job-marking decision as part of the wider movement of homosexual activism and its possible and probable effects upon Christian schools. I certainly do see it that way. And, to be honest, I think you should admit that _you_ see it that way and that all those who were so passionate about the Leiter-Hermes petition and "justice for GLBT philosophers" and the like see it that way. If this isn't a blow in the culture wars, why the heck did Hermes start the whole thing? Troy is quite right to point out that the marking indicates a possibility or probability (depending on whether the mark indicates that the discrimination is confirmed) of unethical behavior. That, again, was part of the whole point. That, again, is why people on _your_ side of the issue thought this important enough to throw themselves into. This was meant to be a matter of _censuring_ such institutions."

Lydia,

Good points, as usual. No, I'll go further. Better points than usual. I suppose that if you suspect that I secretly believe something stronger than I said, then Troy's points are perfectly correct and the logic of the points he made just changes to make that so. Damn fine work.

@Bobcat and @Lydia: Lydia says my Premise 4 is "laughable" and Bobcat disagrees with it. I think premise 4 is quite plausibly true.

4. The difference between whether the sex you're having is gay or straight is what genitals you have.

For example, if you perform... [Here Justin lists particular sexual acts that might in practice be performed by either men on men or by heterosexual couples and argues that whether these are regarded as "gay sex" or not depends on the genitalia that the people performing the acts have. Justin, I had to make a judgement call on this one. I have no intention of misrepresenting your argument, nor am I saying you did something wrong in making the argument in such terms, but as it is my thread, I had to decide whether to let the graphic language stand and decided not to do so. LM] name your favorite "gay sex" act. I'm sorry to have to be a bit graphic, but apparently some people here have a bit to learn about the birds and the bees...

Tod, well, no, they don't. Because, as Alex Pruss pointed out and as several of us have pointed out on this very thread, discrimination against practicing homosexuals is "predictive, expressive, and normal" for certain religious identities. (I would add, for that matter, certain sets of political opinions, which are also included in the APA policy.) And religion is one of the protected statuses in the APA's own policy. So the APA cannot simultaneously condemn all discrimination on the basis of sexual conduct while at the same time condemning all discrimination on the basis of conduct which is expressive, etc., etc. of religious identity.

It needs a more narrowly tailored policy--narrowly tailored, that is, to achieve the purpose of censuring as unethical discrimination on the basis of homosexual conduct. But _that_ would appear ad hoc and perhaps un-philosophical or un-principled. So the APA didn't simply want to put in the "short and sweet" version that I suggested above.

Hi Lydia,

By "original objections", I meant Troy's, which were the point of the original post. And as others have said, the APA recognizes the tension that Pruss and others have pointed out, as is evidenced by the part of the statement Grad Student at 8:21 on the 21st quoted.

Being inclusive in a diverse society is tricky. Or, to avoid PC jargon, not being a jerk in a diverse society is tricky. The APA statement represents a far better effort at this than it is being given credit for here. A little charity would go a long way, I think.

I'm back again...time to catch up.

To Clayton and Bobcat (two people with very different views!).
Both of you where astonished at my use of the word "FASCIST" to describe the APAs actions. I'll defend that; Bobcat has hinted at the reason behind this.

As I have illustrated and demonstrated time and again in this post, anti-discrimination policies simply do not apply in situations where certain statuses or behaviors (confuse the two issues if you like) interfere with successful job performance. What is the job performance expected of a Christian educator? In part, it is to promote the moral tradition in which they stand whether this is the watered-down "Christianity per-se" that people in this blog keep drudging up as a sidetrack or whether it is historical Wesleyanism, traditional Catholicism or something more robust.

Therefore, the APA policy is an attempt to stigmatize activities necessary (or at least "vitally important") to promoting these moral points of view. To suppress the spreading of ideas generally is FASCIST. As Bobcat points out, the ideas targeted are parts of moral traditions, forms of perhaps Divine Command or Natural Law theory, which are defendable (regardless of their unpopularity). The APA is, in effect, intentionally suppressing philosophical dissent. That's FASCISM.

Worse, given the amount of emotional pleading on behalf of the new policy, it is SNIVELING FASCISM, which is the worst kind.

It may be objected that the APAs attack on certain views is legitimate: didn't the original statement stigmatize anti-Seminitism, chauvanism, etc? Why is that not FASCISM?

The answer is that it is one thing to warn those outside of your group/institution about the enforcable moral convictions and policies of persons therein. In many cases, that's perfectly OK. For example, a Muslim is perfectly in their rights to tell women what will be expected of them if they join a certain Mosque. It is quite another to introduce enforcable policies in order to castigate diversity of thought within(!) an already diverse group/institution. That's fascist.

It may be objected again: but what if, for example in the case of the changing conscience of the US towards minorities, there are good reasons for public, enforcable stigmatization of certain ideas and points of view?

This brings us again to Tod's post (a reasonably smart post, actually though his points aren't exactly novel to this thread). The APA tried to provide such "reasons" (!). Indeed, given what I have just said they need such "reasons." And Tod's suggestion that they simply stipulate, indeed he wrongly argues that this is what they did all along, is precisely what lays them open to my current objection.

Will they take a new turn and simply stipulate without such rationalizations? Fair enough Tod, that would answer most (not all) of the counterexamples I raised in my article. But don't hold your breath...they don't have the integrity or courage for that sort of thing.

Jonathan's post didn't really strike me as having anything new or intelligent to offer the conversation, so I'll just skip it.

The part quoted about religious commitments of religious institutions doesn't really change anything, Tod, because it expressly says that such requirements on the basis of religious commitments *must not discriminate on any of the bases mentioned elsewhere in the policy* (unless--a delicious irony--in affirmative action programs). So that evacuates it of all point for the issue on the table, since that means that religious institutions *can't discriminate on the basis of homosexual practice*.

As for your other point, Tod, In his original post, Troy referred to propagandizing and political affiliation. In a comment, he said,

Bad behavior does not become negligible simply by being predictable, expressive, having necessary conditions of some sort or being the target of badly motivated prosecutors. It's folly to think it should.

I take it that this represents an expansion upon the original point, which is that the APA is obviously _not_ simply banning discrimination on the basis of behaviors that are thus described (e.g., expressive, predictable, and normal) but is banning only discrimination on the basis of _some_ of them, which it wishes to consider specially protected. In my opinion, removing the phrase "integrally connected" would not be a good fix, as it leaves the entire substantive question un-addressed while implying that it has been addressed.

And in any event, the phrase is in there and is obviously supposed to be doing work. Quite a bit of work. It seems to me entirely consonant with charity to take philosophers at face value when philosophers make a big, hairy deal about a particular phrase and evidently think they are doing philosophical work with that phrase.

And let me add, I do think the philosophers who pushed for this revision to the policy were being jerks. They could simply have left alone the Christian institutions in question. But they couldn't leave it alone. It was considered *so bad* that these institutions have these policies that they *had* to be censured. Of course, as I've said elsewhere, whether you think something is making a mountain out of a molehill is going to depend on your substantive position. My conclusion of jerk-hood here does indeed depend on my substantive positions. But it could also flow from a substantive position (which isn't mine) that homosexual acts are not wrong but that it *isn't a big deal or a problem* if some school wants to set itself up representing the Christian morality of 2,000 years and forbid such acts to its faculty as part of its Christian identity. In fact, I know that there exist philosophers who take this substantive position, who therefore opposed the change, and are therefore not being jerks, on my reading.

You know, this kind of thing could easily come up elsewhere. I can easily imagine an evangelical Protestant who thinks non-natural birth control isn't morally wrong who nonetheless thinks it's perfectly fine if a Catholic school requires its faculty to agree not to use non-natural birth control and not to teach that it's licit. (I don't know of any Catholic schools that do this for sure, but there might be some.) What is so hard about a little meta-level tolerance? That's part of the reason that words like "totalitarian" and even "fascist" come up in these discussions. There is something so _committed_ and _tight-lipped_ about the homosexual lobby here. Everything they disapprove of must somehow be chided if they can't get it outright proscribed by law.

P.S. No charity is due to stigmatization of free thought and promotion of alternative points of view Tod; if the APA can't defend their rationalizations, let them retract them like grown adults.

@Lydia: It's your blog, so of course it's your right to limit the graphicness of depictions on it, and I think your sanitized summary of my argument was fairly reasonable. (Thank you.) However, two things.

First, I included as many woman-on-woman examples as man-on-man examples, whereas your sanitized version mentioned just the man-on-man examples rather than using a more neutral term like "homosexual couples". I think it's important to consider woman-on-woman examples in this context, as many people (including apparently you) have a phallocentric understanding of sexuality, and this limits people's ability to think clearly about these issues, including making them dismiss obviously true claims as laughable, as you did.

Second, I doubt that it's a coincidence that both (a) talk of sexuality -- even polite clinical talk which is entirely germaine to points you yourself made -- makes you so uncomfortable you need to have it removed from your blog, and (b) you dismiss an obviously true claim about sexuality as laughable. It's fine for you to live in a sanitized world where you don't even think about the sorts of sex that gross you out. Be as ignorant as you want -- there are lots of things I'd like to remain ignorant of too. What isn't fine is for us to impose opinions grounded in ignorance on other people. If you're going to encourage condemning people for their sexual acts, please take care to ensure that you understand what you're talking about. Thus far, the evidence suggests that you don't.

(Incidentally, the main reason I joined in this discussion thread is because I got a positive impression of you and your husband when I met you at the Formal Epistemology Workshop a few years back. So I certainly don't mean to be suggesting that you're generally ignorant or a poor reasoner. Quite the contrary, it's because I thought highly of your reasoning ability that I was willing to join in your blog discussion. But on this particular topic, it seems you have plenty of room for improvement, as perhaps do I.)

Justin, look, I still think your premise 4 is obviously false, but I suppose that is because I and presumably Bobcat took it to mean "the _whole_ difference," etc. Now, this is obviously untrue. For there is a specific, well-known and (dare I say) normal sexual act--the one that can result in a baby--which is paradigmatically heterosexual and which cannot be performed between two men and two women. So while there are _some cases_ in which either heterosexual or homosexual couples can perform acts which are in some sense similar to one another (though I would maintain that the question of "what genitals the people have" is crucial, particularly since in heterosexual cases these acts are often performed as foreplay to the paradigmatically heterosexual act), it simply is not true that _the_ difference between homosexual and heterosexual sex is the gender of the people involved.

But of course I have many other problems with your argument. For example, I think your premises 2 and 3 are false. There could certainly be employment situations in which hermaphrodism was a legitimate consideration, and there certainly are situations where it is legitimate to prefer to hire a man or a woman.

Another problem is that your entire argument depends on a notion of something's "not being someone's business," which seems to imply (as I often find homosexual activists do) that the chief issue here is _nosiness_. Yet that is not true, because homosexual don't want to be "in the closet." They wouldn't be happy with any kind of don't-ask-don't-tell settlement, which was meant to enshrine a "none of my business" principle. So the issue is in no small measure whether it is an employer's business (and, in the context, an employer that is trying to create a certain kind of Christian institution for the education of the young) if someone engages in homosexual sex *and lets you and perhaps everybody else know that he does so*.

Another problem with your entire argument is that it implies that it could never be an employer's business under any circumstances if his employees were engaging in acts the employer considered immoral. This is implicit in premises 2 and following.

Please remember that if people were celibate, this issue wouldn't even be coming up. So what we're talking about is whether it could ever be an employer's business whether you _act in a particular way in a particular context_ with your genitals. (I add "in a particular context" in response to your previous points.) It is tendentious and misleading to imply that for an employer to have a problem with homosexual sex is _merely_ for the employer to have a problem with what genitals a person has. After all, a monastery might ask those who join it to abstain from _all_ sex.

I myself believe that it could be understandable and legitimate for a particular type of employer even to "get nosy" about sexual _acts_, as in my above example of a Catholic employer who wishes its employees to agree not to use contraception. And it would be ridiculous to claim that this is a matter of "what genitals you have," even though contraception is relevant only to heterosexual couples.

I appreciate your kind words about FEW. I assume you are a Leiter reader. I know now, given what you have said, of a couple of Leiter readers, and there may be more, whom I met at FEW and interacted with collegially and to our mutual profit on epistemology. I trust that this professional fact will be kept in mind on both sides in the future, e.g., if Brian Leiter should find any future occasion, as he has in the past, to attack me without any mention of the fact (of which he may be unaware) that I am an analytic philosopher.

I won't say that I was "astonished" by your use of "fascist". I noted that it was an abuse of the term. I don't think it is astonishing when someone gets a bit overheated late at night and misuses the language. That you continue to do it, however, is disappointing.

Look, if you want to use "fascist" to mean whatever you feel like, fine. Make it mean whatever it takes to make your remark, "To suppress the spreading of ideas generally is FASCIST" correct. You still know that the fascist charge is out of line. You completely ignore something that Lydia perceptively noticed. There is a perfectly good libertarian argument that goes like this: the services and publications of the APA belong to the APA and so they are at liberty to decide who gets to use them. You don't count as fascist simply for saying that your services will be used only by those who meet guidelines of your own creation. This isn't hard. You are just wrong on this point. You could admit it, let it pass, pull a Frank and delete it, but you're not going to be right on this point even if we let you abuse the heck out of the language.

[This is a second issue, but you write:
"As I have illustrated and demonstrated time and again in this post, anti-discrimination policies simply do not apply in situations where certain statuses or behaviors (confuse the two issues if you like) interfere with successful job performance. What is the job performance expected of a Christian educator? In part, it is to promote the moral tradition in which they stand whether this is the watered-down "Christianity per-se" that people in this blog keep drudging up as a sidetrack or whether it is historical Wesleyanism, traditional Catholicism or something more robust."

I think "demonstrate" is a success term, but let that pass. If it is part of the successful job performance of a professor at Bob Jones University circa 1984 to rat out students in interracial relationships and refrain from entering into interracial relationships, your position is that anti-discrimination policies of groups like the APA that condemn discrimination on racial grounds simply do not apply to the case of a white female professor married to a black man who knows of a white male student dating a black female undergraduate. Nice view.]

I'm in a hurry because I need to go teach, but I wanted to back off a little from what I said in my last post.

Counterfactuals are notoriously difficult to evaluate, so it shouldn't be surprising that people had trouble interpretting the implicit counterfactual in my 4. Lewisian counterpart theory to the rescue! Here's a revised version that I hope will be more clear:

4*. For virtually any gay sex act you might perform, there is a closely analogous straight sex act that a counterpart of yours might perform, where the primary difference between the two acts would be in what genitals you and your counterpart have. For your employer to know whether you're performing the gay sex act or its straight analogue they'd need to know what genitals you have.

But (3) it's none of your employer's business what genitals you have, so (5) it's none of their business whether your sex-act was gay or straight, so (7) they shouldn't discriminate against gay sex acts.

Hopefully that avoids the confusion people had about the original 4. I do wish Linda had tried to interpret this charitably (I don't think it should have been that hard) rather than just laughing and dismissing it. But anyway I recognize that her confusion was partly due to my own unclarity, so hopefully I've remedied that.

Oops.. typo. I meant "Lydia" not "Linda". Sorry.

Clayton, would you prefer "rabid, closed-minded ideologues" to "fascists"? As Bobcat has pointed out, we're talking here about ruling natural law theory as beyond the pale. And given Justin's desire to extend his argument to schools that want to discriminate on the basis of marriage, it's apparently also supposed to be beyond the pale not to support gay marriage! That's so far over the top I can't even see it. Let's remember that the schools in question would also fire you for seducing the pastor's wife--where the "you" in question is a male, that is. They consider it "their business" not simply whether you are having homosexual or heterosexual sex but also whether the heterosexual sex is between two people who are married. Point this out, and you're told that the government is way out of line anyway for not recognizing gay marriage, so that just puts the schools on the side of the busybody government that won't recognize gay "marriage"!

I think you should recognize how bizarre that looks. Suddenly schools that aren't on board with the full homosexual agenda are beyond the pale according to a _nationwide philosophical organization_ that acts as a clearinghouse for job ads from a huge variety of institutions of higher education, including Catholic schools, etc.

If you don't like "fascist" for this, then you can go with my phrase above instead.

A lot's happened since my last post, but I want to address Jonathan, if he's still reading.

Jonathan, you pointed out that "Christian" has a much broader extension than is being used around here. And I think that's certainly correct, as a matter of use. But I imagine you can imagine the response people around here would give: just because you call yourself a Christian doesn't mean you are a true Christian. So, what's a true Christian? Personally, I think you can be a true Christian and not have any problem with gay sex as opposed to straight sex; but I can certainly see how someone would reject that view. But regardless, there are people out there like John Spong, Thomas Sheehan, and Dominic Crossan, who would say that you can't be a true Christian if you believe in the existence of a God or an afterlife, whereas people around here (including me) would say that if you don't believe in the existence of a God or an afterlife then you're not a true Christian, even if you act like a really great dude.

And I'm sure you use this distinction as well; perhaps you don't think that Allen Bloom or Mortimer Adler are true philosophers; perhaps you don't think Christina Hoff Sommers or Camile Paglia are true feminists; perhaps you don't think Norman Geras or Christopher Hitchens are true soci...well, you get my point, no? What you're really criticizing is not the fact that they're excluding other people who call themselves Christians from being Christians, but rather what their grounds for the exclusion are. That's my guess, anyway.

Lydia,

This is getting tiresome. Troy says something false. I correct him. You jump into the mix and try to change the subject and to lure me into some tangentially related debate where I know what you'll say, you'll know what I'll say, and I'll wonder why I'm spending some much time arguing with Troy's unhinged bulldog.

* I don't think taking a stand on the moral status of homosexuality makes you a "rabid, close-minded ideologue", but if I thought that, I'd think that the point cuts both ways. (I take it that the APA is making a point about hiring that is indirectly connected to claims about objective moral status. Obvious point, but I'll join you in missing it.) You're talking about groups that are ruling out alternatives to any version of natural law theory that does not carry with it the implication that homosexual conduct is morally inferior to heterosexual conduct to such a significant degree that homosexuals shouldn't be employed. Your view, I take it, is that someone could adopt a version of natural law theory that purports to justify discriminatory hiring practices without being a "rabid, cose-minded ideologue". And the asymmetry comes from where?

* I didn't say anything about gay marriage. I didn't say anything about anti-discrimination laws. I didn't say anything about the objective moral status of homosexuality. I relied on a kind of libertarian argument that you have ignored again. The APA can't come to Wheaton or Westmont or Liberty University and tell them how to run their schools and these schools have no claim on using the APA's services if they can't bring themselves in line with the APA's policies.

Clayton, the asymmetry comes (do I really have to say this?)from the fact that the APA does not purport to be a religious institution or organization with a narrowly distinctive religious identity but is rather the national organization for philosophers throughout the United States which has for umpety years accepted without special mark of censure ads from all manner of higher educational institutions that offer jobs for philosophers. I'm afraid it is *in fact* the case that the APA is turning itself into a kind of liberal ghetto, a kind of narrow, religious organization committed to the religion of hard-left Liberalism. But do you really want to use that as a justification or defense for what they are doing? Perhaps the Hermes crowd should found the PAPA--the Progressive Philosophical Association. Or maybe the CLAPA--Comprehensive Liberal Philosophical Association. That they are in fact changing the APA, turning the APA into the PAPA or the CLAPA, while still trying to look like broad-minded philosophers is a little pathetic, but it hardly _helps_ them for you to analogize them to an organization with a religious identity!

Lydia,

A "liberal ghetto"? A "kind of narrow, religious organization committed to the religion of hard-left Liberalism"? That seems kind of extreme. I imagine many of the philosophers who voted in favor of the asterisk do not consider themselves to be "leftists".

Correct me if I am wrong, but your main worry (it seems to me) here is the slippery slope. You're mainly worried that this is the first step to eventually making it illegal for religious institutions to discriminate on the basis of sexual conduct.

-Tony

That they are in fact changing the APA, turning the APA into the PAPA or the CLAPA...

That's not what happened. The APA changed itself. Hermes, Leiter, Norcross, et al. were merely trying to get the APA to enforce a policy that had been on the books for twenty years. When the APA adopted a new, stronger policy, it did so on its own accord. If the APA has become the PAPA or the CLAPA, it did so in October of 1989, while David Hoekema was the executive director.

I hope that this will be my last post on this. It seems to me that the fundamental debate regarding the permissibility of employers discriminating against gay sex is a debate over which of two desiderata should take priority:

(1) Employers should be able to choose who they spend their money on employing.

(2) Employees shouldn't have to reveal intimate details about themselves to their employers, like what genitals they have, or what they do with them in the privacy of their own bedroom. [Others might add to (2) that for reasons involving justice and equality, employees also should be free from having employment decisions be made on the basis of what genitals they have, or what private consensual things they do with them. I think many APA members believe that too, but it played no role in the argument I proposed above.]

These two disederata come into tension when employers want not to spend money employing people with certain genitals (e.g., a man's sexual partner will be deemed an acceptable employee if he/she is female, but not if he/she is male) or on people who enjoy doing certain private consensual things with their genitals. I hope that most of us to agree that both (1) and (2) are genuine desiderata, and that there is a genuine conflict between them.

For me, privacy rights (and also equal gender rights) clearly trump employers' desire to nose into people's private business. However much a prospective employer might want to know what genitals you have, or what you like to do with them in the privacy of your own bedroom, that's none of their business, and I think it's unethical for them to pry into it or to condition your employment on what they find.

For people on the other side, employers' desires are taken to trump employees' privacy rights (and gender equality rights): if an employer wants to know what genitals you have and what you like to do with them, you can choose to tell them or you can seek employment elsewhere. I really don't understand people's reasons for privileging employer desires in this way, especially when there is broad agreement in our society that employers' desires shouldn't trump personal privacy and equality regarding related issues like race and gender. Indeed, as you've seen, I view sexual-orientation discrimination as a form of gender discrimination: opponents of gay sex would be perfectly fine letting a gay employee keep his male partner if only that employee were female instead of male, so they're discriminating on the basis of his gender. Since there's broad agreement that discrimination on the basis of gender is immoral, I really don't see why gay sex should be any different.

Anyway, that seems to be the fundamental issue here: I don't see why employers should have the right to pry into employees' private matters, and the other side doesn't see why employees should have the right to keep their privates private if their employer demands to see them.

I did use the progressive "is turning" expression, Tony.

But here's the thing: I do think it's very extreme and narrow for the APA to hold that it is not only unethical, but so unethical as to deserve formal censure as unethical (your so-called "asterisk" being, in cases of confirmed discrimination and where that is the mark used, a mark of censure for unethical institutional behavior) for a religiously identified institution to discriminate in this way. Yes, I really mean that. I think that's ideology on steroids. It's a definite indication (as most people, even on the other side of the issue, realize) that all traditional Christian morality as well as Catholic natural law theory on sexual ethics, and practices based upon these, are _so far beyond the pale_ that institutions who base their identity upon such things must be censured. That's just wild. It is a _big step_ in the direction of turning the APA into a liberal ghetto, etc., just as I have described. Really, the only reason the APA still isn't is because the Leiter-Hermes types aren't the only people still in it, though plenty of other people who stay are hardly staying because they consider their leadership in step with them! Whether the people who voted for the new policy want to call themselves "leftists" or not, they have taken an extreme measure by voting to censure these schools in this way.

And it's _Clayton_ who wants to analogize them to the religious schools in what he calls his "libertarian argument." That's kind of ironic, actually. What we're talking about in the context here is a private business organization that expressly identifies itself with a highly contentful and fairly specific set of propositions about theology and morality. Should the APA be such an organization? Should the APA try to get the perks in terms of institutional actions and expectations that come from being such an organization? Aren't the downsides--for a national philosophical organization trying to represent all professional philosophers--a lot bigger than any gain? If the APA shouldn't be thought of as a narrow, leftist organization and be allowed to discriminate in this way based on its self-identity as a leftist organization, then why is Clayton telling me that I should cut the APA the same slack for trying to declare actions based on traditional morality beyond the pale that I cut Christian organizations for declaring homosexual acts beyond the pale?

Tony, btw, to help avoid confusion: If you are not the same "Tony" who commented earlier in the thread (you can look upthread and see whom I mean), it wd. be helpful if you would add some extension to your name to indicate this.

Oh, sorry about that. I am, in fact, a different Tony! If I post in the future, I will use my full name, as I did in this post.

For goodness' sake, Justin, I already replied to all that "nosing in" stuff. It's true that I actually disagree with you even about "nosing in," but you know *perfectly well* (and I sometimes really am tempted to say that it is an act of bad faith on the part of homosexual activists to pretend that they don't know this) that homosexuals wish to be _openly sexually active_, yea, even to _flaunt_ the fact that they are sexually active, to make this _absolutely clear to everyone_, while not having this affect their hiring status. You know this. I know this. Why go on and on about "prying"? You know perfectly well that you would consider it totally unacceptable if someone on my side of the issue were to say this: "Very well. Let's make a don't-ask-don't-tell policy and take it _really seriously_. Employers can't ask private questions about sexual behavior. However, a Christian institution also has a right to uphold its moral standards, which include the proposition that homosexual sex is wrong, and Christians and moral traditionalists have a right not to be told about what homosexuals do in bed and not to be given too much information about the sexual proclivities of their employees. [Side point: I find it ironic that the very person who keeps going on about privacy and nosiness is the person who chided me for willful ignorance for editing out explicit sexual references in his earlier comment.] So, if an employee of such a Christian institution is actively homosexual and is not _so firmly in the closet that no one knows what he does in bed_, then he can be fired. How about that?"

You would definitely not accept that. So you might just as well not bother with the "nosiness" argument.

Moreover, the proposition that something can never be an employer's business is pretty context-less and in many cases could be misleading as such.

Consider a parallel to your argument:

1. It is none of an employer's business what money a prospective employee made last year.

2. If a prospective employee has falsified his income tax return, there is a hypothetical counterpart to him who could have put the very same thing down on his income tax return without falsifying it. The only way to tell the difference between the two is to know what the prospective employee actually made.

3. Therefore, if an employer fires an employee for lying on his income tax return and bragging about it to all and sundry, he is firing him on the basis of what he actually made in income last year.

4. Therefore, if an employer fires an employee under these circumstances, he is firing him on the basis of something that isn't his business.

Obviously, by the time you get to 4, you find out that premise 1 wasn't the mild and reasonable generalization it seemed to be but rather meant something much stronger than any defender of not employing income tax frauds should have granted. It meant, "Under no circumstances and in no context could it possibly ever be an employer's business to know anything about what an employee made last year."

Fascist? You might expect this sort of gross abuse of the language from Glenn Beck

Or, you know, from Leiter. And I'm sure, Clayton, that you've complained to him many times about his constant smearing of his opponents as "bigots," "fascists," "Texas Taliban," etc. Because I know you care so much about precision, fair play, good faith efforts to understand an opponent, professional courtesy and all that. It must be killing you to see him dishonor your side of this issue with such schoolyard invective, lowering the tone of our fair profession and its ideals of collegiality, calm disinterested rationality, and all around niceness.

Gimme a frickin' break.

@Mr. Zero,

"If the APA has become the PAPA or the CLAPA, it did so in October of 1989, while David Hoekema was the executive director."

I think that's a pretty contentious point you're making there, Zero. Remember, Hoekema and the committee that ratified that statement explicitly (not in the statement, but in the discussion surrounding the statement) excluded religious institutions' refusal to hire homosexuals from what they took to be invidious discrimination. Later, Michael Otsuka argued that to hold the APA now to what it intended in 1989 would be a kind of simple-minded originalism. And perhaps he's right; but regardless, if he is right, I don't think it's fair to the 1989 APA to hold that it changed the APA to the CLAPA when it explicitly said that that wasn't what they intended to do, and what they didn't take their statement to mean.

"Or, you know, from Leiter. And I'm sure, Clayton, that you've complained to him many times about his constant smearing of his opponents as "bigots," "fascists," "Texas Taliban," etc. Because I know you care so much about precision, fair play, good faith efforts to understand an opponent, professional courtesy and all that. It must be killing you to see him dishonor your side of this issue with such schoolyard invective, lowering the tone of our fair profession and its ideals of collegiality, calm disinterested rationality, and all around niceness."

I'm not sure the point you're making with this, Ed. OK, so Leiter uses "fascist" far too broadly. He shouldn't, right? So are you saying that if "the other side" didn't label our side as fascists, then it would be wrong for us to label them as fascists, but that given that they label us as fascists, the field of play is open for us to use the same tactics?

Alternatively, maybe your argument is just argumentum ad Clayton--that it's hypocritical or cowardly for Clayton to object to Troy's using fascist when he would never object to Leiter's using fascist?

maybe your argument is just argumentum ad Clayton--that it's hypocritical or cowardly for Clayton to object to Troy's using fascist when he would never object to Leiter's using fascist?

I don't want to speak for Ed, but I certainly think that would be a fair thing to say, _especially_ given the fact that Clayton has gone on about Troy's using "fascist" over a period of quite a few comments here, pressing him to take it back, etc., etc., when he _certainly_ would not do that to Leiter. And Clayton apparently doesn't even like it when I try to explain the kinds of things that prompt such terminology--the tight-lippedness, the refusal to live and let live with religious institutions, etc. Golly, no. That's just me being "Troy's unhinged bulldog." Couldn't possibly be any truth in the criticism or anything about it that makes the temptation to call such moves "fascist" the least bit understandable.

Ah, my old friend Zero, I didn't see your comment. Don't drag Hoekema into this. He's made it amply clear that _he_, at least, didn't understand that policy in '89 to mean that. And, indeed, the failure of any enforcement over a period of twenty years might actually have an impact upon interpretation in a quasi-legislative context like this. It's certainly true that contemporary rules against "discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation" _mean_ to include "sexual practice" in this, and sometimes make this explicit. (The new municipal law in my own town is explicit about this inclusion.) But Hoekema--and I'm guessing he wasn't the only one at the time--didn't intend it so. And the enforcement required was _definitely_ a new move. It would be rather, from your perspective, like a law against contraception that was only enforced against doctors, written in such a way that it might or might not be intended to be enforced against couples, and then twenty years later the right starts a campaign to "enforce the law on the books" to fine contracepting couples who had never once been fined before in the entire history of the law! You would doubtless take that to be, you know, making a _change_ in the culture of the jurisdiction!

"I certainly think that would be a fair thing to say, _especially_ given the fact that Clayton has gone on about Troy's using "fascist" over a period of quite a few comments here, pressing him to take it back, etc., etc., when he _certainly_ would not do that to Leiter."

It could be, though, that Clayton wouldn't do that to Leiter (though maybe he has, in a private email? Leiter doesn't usually have comments open for his Texas Taliban alerts) because whenever Leiter uses the term, Clayton happens to agree that it is appropriate. After all, Leiter is usually talking about things with farther-reaching consequences than the APA's censuring particular philosophy departments, so it's not entirely implausible.

After all, Leiter is usually talking about things with farther-reaching consequences than the APA's censuring particular philosophy departments, so it's not entirely implausible.

Really? Well, I don't read the blog, so I can't say you're definitely wrong, but my _impression_ had been that he would apply such language to things like, I dunno...this post.

As for "bigot," I know for a fact that Leiter & crew apply this label to people at (e.g.) some tiny little Baptist college somewhere who won't hire sexually active homosexuals, which hardly affects as many philosophers as the APA's decision!!! As also to all who defend such schools, even if their defense costs no one anywhere his job or causes anyone anywhere to have an ad censored or anything of the kind whatsoever.

But perhaps you, Bobcat, object to "bigot" less than to "fascist" in any event. Perhaps if Troy had referred to the APA's decision only as that of "bigots" rather than "fascists" you would not have demurred against it as extreme? And think Clayton shouldn't have either?

HELLOOOO...AGAIN my fellow friends, fascists or philosophers. Time to catch up!

To Lydia,
On the Leiter blog, I raised your point about forbidding sex generally, marriage and birth control in certain Catholic institutions and I pointed out that despite the fact that the Catholic institutions were prohibiting certain perfectly legal acts, Protestants didn't raise a fuss. A fine example of respect and diversity despite disagreements! The Leiterites wrote the Catholics off as bigots and urged to press against them anyways. Yick!

To Justin,
You're wrong to boil down the issue to (1) employers freedom to hire versus (2) the employees right to privacy. No one here is arguing that freedom (1) is unrestricted and despite your protests no one should argue that (2) is unrestricted. The employer has a right to hire whomever can do the job best. If promoting a code of ethics is part of the job, then your private life certainly can infere with that job. And no, this does not necessarily give the employer a license to "pry."

To Clayton,
Your arguments contain a contradiction; didn't I try to help you alleviate that? Let's review.

You claim that the APAs censure is not an act of fascism because the APA is a private organization. Then you attack my position (rather one that you falsely attribute to me) that it is the right of BJU-pre-1984 to refuse hire to professors who don't make certain attacks on interracial marriage.

First things first, it is YOUR position that is in trouble. Both the APA and BJU are equally private organizations. So which is it Clayton? Why justify one and not the other? I'll make the case against both (and BJU, by the way, were probably "bigots" at least and "fascists" at worst). If a private golf club changed it's policy (especially after members had joined) so that members would have to golf with a black ribbon on if they violated the golf club's new ethical policy against interracial marriage, wouldn't you say they were being fascists? Or better still, if they were involved in a church that promoted the very idea that such marriages were OK. C'mon! Of course they are!

Second, my attack on the APA was that they failed to provide GOOD REASONS for linking discrimination against behaviors a-c with dicrimination against the statuses mentioned (indeed, failed to link them to those statuses at all!). In order to block your analogy all I need to maintain is that there are GOOD REASONS to think BJU was targeting minorities, that is, a status. As the Supreme Court noted in Loving v. Virginia, the absence of plausible motives other than animousity towards a certain status group surely constitutes one very good reason! By contrast, as Mark Murphy pointed out in his excellent letter to the APA, there is no compelling evidence for the view animousity towards homosexuals is the motive for hiring practices of the Christian institutions currenlty under attack. At least, as he said, no one has offered such evidence.

So much for the "its private so not fascist" argument...

Lydia wrote:

homosexuals wish to be _openly sexually active_, yea, even to _flaunt_ the fact that they are sexually active, to make this _absolutely clear to everyone_, while not having this affect their hiring status. You know this. I know this.

I agree that *some* homosexuals want to be completely out about their relationships. But clearly there is diversity among homosexuals, and I'm sure that many gay professors would prefer *not* to have their students at a fundamentalist Christian or Muslim school know about their personal sex-life. There's a real danger when you paint all members of any group with a single brush.

Anyway, regarding your don't ask, don't tell proposal, I'm actually much less opposed to it than you expected. I'm open to the thought that colleges have a legitimate interest in having their professors lead public lives within the college community that uphold the college's moral code. So, I'm actually not completely opposed to a college's prohibitting gay professors from talking to students about their own sexual lives, from holding hands with their gay partners on campus, etc... (I do think this would be a regrettable, far from ideal, state of affairs, but I think it would be too hard to draw a principled line between this and less regrettable educational policies to make it feasible to adopt a prohibition against it.) The key difference is that a college has a legitimate interest in specifying what sorts of interactions it wants to have between professors and students, but it doesn't have a legitimate interest in specifying what sorts of legal activities it wants its professors to engage in in their private lives.

Incidentally, rather than rudely presuming what I would say about an issue like this, why don't you politely ask me? I've tried hard to be polite to you and others, and tried not to presume what your unstated views are. Why not extend me the same courtesy?

And on the topic of incourteous presumptions, I'd encourage you not to call people "homosexual activists" unless you have good reason to believe they're homosexual. I'm proud to support homosexual rights, but my sexual orientation is none of your business. I don't call you a "bigoted activist" when you advocate the rights of bigoted people to discriminate, so please don't call me or others "homosexual activists" when we advocate the privacy and gender-equality rights of homosexual people. If you're grasping for an inoffensive label, "Gay-rights advocate" would be great.

Bobcat: Alternatively, maybe your argument is just argumentum ad Clayton--that it's hypocritical or cowardly for Clayton to object to Troy's using fascist when he would never object to Leiter's using fascist?

Yup. That's all. Not a big point, just an obvious one.

Lydia: Well, I don't read the blog, so I can't say you're definitely wrong, but my _impression_ had been that he would apply such language to things like, I dunno...this post.

Oh, I'm sure Clayton's really upset that Leiter has referred to the discussion this post has generated as the ravings of a bunch of "anti-gay bigots" and "crazies." Either that, or he's got some bad-ass argument explaining why that sort of thing is OK but Troy's using "fascist" is not. I'll brace myself for the devastating refutation to come.

Since I read Leiter religiously, I notice that he's posted an update offering some Philosopher's Lexicon-style definitions of some W4 contributor's names. I rather like mine:

Feser (v) -- to be in possession of the unique interpretation of a classic argument that makes it not only work (pace everyone else's views) but makes it decisive.

Example:

"Listen, dude, you can keep talking about how the ontological argument "doesn't work" -- but I've Fesered it."

I have to admit that that's pretty funny. Not at all fair, of course, but what the hell.

Also funny, BTW, how Leiter's always got some "reader" or other alerting him to the most trivial combox reference to him. What's up with that? Doesn't he -- Leiter's "reader," I mean -- have better things to do with his time?

1) My marriage is important to me que-Troy not integrally connected to my race.
I understand that, but the only reason your marriage would be legally dissolved or forbidden is because of your race. Once again, it is the act of proscription that causes the marriage, which is integrally connected to your identity, to be connected to your race. You keep strangely insisting that I read the statement in a way that doesn't make any sense when there is a sensible alternative.

2) You also wrote: "Yes, extend beyond pregnancy cases, perhaps. But no, do not extend the item (b) for which pregnancy was an illustration. As my counterexamples show, they are overextended as it already is." If it can be extended to other cases, and needs more precision in its current one, that looks a lot like clarification.

3) You are under the mistaken impression that I have or ought to have respect for philosophers and their bizarre language rules. It isn't called the world's oldest inconclusive profession for nothing.

5) I would urge them to strongly consider such a change. It would be historically justified.

"Anti-gay crazies." I see that. Well, you know. Extreme language. Can't have that, can we? Maybe Clayton should start urging him to retract it. Come on, I bet he wrote it when it was late at night, he's overextended and tired, etc., etc.

Justin, my "don't-ask-don't-tell" suggestion was _much_, _much_ stronger than what you are outlining. Really. I entirely agree with Troy that if part of the mission of a school is to uphold a code of ethics, then one's lifestyle can interfere with doing the job of promoting that mission. If, of course, one were *so totally discreet* that no one *ever could find out* that one were violating that code of ethics (which I admit would be hard), then the only way for the employer to find out would be by asking questions, which you consider to be prying. I don't consider it a problem, if the employer has reason to ask. And I don't consider it a problem for the employer to ask in advance for the employee to sign a behavioral agreement that included a ban on such things. But the employer _could_ adopt an "innocent until proven guilty" policy, much as schools often do with heterosexual adultery. After all, Christian schools don't insult their faculty members by _asking_ them--just at random--if they are engaging in heterosexual adultery or fornication. So if the faculty member were totally "in the closet" (as you might say) about the heterosexual affair with the organist, he wouldn't get fired. It's not like all professors at Christian schools live with cameras posted outside their homes to make sure their guests leave by a certain time at night!

So, Justin, if you consider it rude for me to presume your positions, how about I ask: What would you think of a school that had a policy that it could fire a professor based on what it considered to be strong circumstantial evidence that he had violated its ethics policy, including both homosexual sex and all extramarital heterosexual sex, but that it _could not ask him_ whether he had engaged in such sexual activities as part of the investigation? Would that be okay with you, as not involving "prying"?

I'll use "homosexual activists" when I think it appropriate. Often I mean it to distinguish those homosexuals who are not activists from those who are. Sometimes I mean by it "pro-homosexual activists," which could include heterosexual people as well. I won't adopt your phrase for regular use, any more than I will use "abortion rights advocates," because I don't believe that there are rights _particular_ to homosexuals (as opposed to citizens in general), just as I don't believe there is a right to an abortion. So I consider your suggested phrase to be confusing concerning my own position. I occasionally will use the phrase "gay rights" as an adjective when talking to people where it will get across a point quickly. For example, in talking to prospective voters I sometimes referred to the new ordinance I was fighting as a "gay rights ordinance," as that seemed useful for communicating with minimal syllables. But I usually avoid it.

I see that over at Clayton's blog, he's now taken to calling us all "nuts." One of his readers cleverly adds that we're "a****les" too. Only one epithet short of a complete set!

Hi Lydia,

I said that when Leiter calls people fascists, he's "usually talking about things with farther-reaching consequences than the APA's censuring particular philosophy departments." This is just my impression; I could be wrong, but I think he tends to reserve that word (as well as con-men, shills, etc.) for the Discovery Institute, or any other group or person that wants to tell intelligent design in high schools or think it's permissible for intelligent design to be taught in high schools. I also thought the use of the word to designate such people was "not entirely implausible". That doesn't mean I agree with it, though; I don't. I think it's far too strong a word to use to designate the Discovery Institute, and other, like-minded people. So is Texas Taliban.

"But perhaps you, Bobcat, object to 'bigot' less than to 'fascist' in any event. Perhaps if Troy had referred to the APA's decision only as that of 'bigots' rather than 'fascists' you would not have demurred against it as extreme? And think Clayton shouldn't have either?"

I do object less to bigot than fascist. It's much more plausible to me for "bigot" to accurately describe my views than it is for me to imagine "fascist" describing the APA. I think bigoted may be right to describe the motivations and discussion leading to the revised APA-proposal, but the words that come to my mind more quickly are "closed-minded", "arrogant", "faddish", "group-thinking", and so on.

If Troy had said bigoted rather than fascist, I may not have objected at all. I certainly think there's a lot more going for it than Troy does, even after hearing Troy's defense. As for whether I think Clayton shouldn't have demurred from it, that's trickier. I can see reasons for and against the appropriateness of "bigoted" to describe the APA's actions, but I'm not sure where I come down.

(2) Employees shouldn't have to reveal intimate details about themselves to their employers, like what genitals they have, or what they do with them in the privacy of their own bedroom. [Others might add to (2) that for reasons involving justice and equality, employees also should be free from having employment decisions be made on the basis of what genitals they have, or what private consensual things they do with them.

Justin, for a wealth of reasons I think Lydia is completely correct, and your point here is so full of holes it could be used as a strainer.

For example, an employer could be taken to court for not enforcing his own sex-distinct bathroom arrangement (see "sexual harassment", including "hostile work environment") . But if he has no business knowing what genitals you have, he can have no business knowing whether you are using the wrong bathroom, and he can have no business telling you which bathroom to use. Yeah, I can just see a judge letting THAT argument buy an employer out of a sexual harassment suit because he did nothing to prevent a big hairy gorilla of a guy from entering the women's bathroom regularly and chatting to the girls there. Suuurrre. That and 4 bucks will buy a cup of coffee.

But much more importantly, an employer has a right to either (a) not employ, or (b) get rid of, someone whose morals are generally degenerative of the workplace environment, even if there is no one single act that is itself a clearly unacceptable workplace act as such. (This is, after all, the very basis for the "hostile work environment" aspect of sexual discrimination). An employer who finds an employee talking about his pleasures in using drugs, and promotes the idea that owning decriminalized amounts of pot is a great idea, and denigrates "traditional morality" about drugs, can rightly and legally decide to fire the employee as a disruptive influence, even though none of those employee acts is itself illegal in the employment sense. Similarly, an employer who finds that an employee regularly seduces other married employees and then leaves each one an emotional and legal wreck after 3 months, could legitimately decide to stop paying this employee a salary and tell him to employ his talents elsewhere. Now, each of these employment decisions can be made on the basis of clearly NON-religious grounds, but that is not the reason the employment decision is legal and doesn't raise our ire. The very same decisions could have been made by a Christian (or Mormon, or Moslem) employer simply on the basis that he doesn't want to pay someone to promote values that are antithetical to his (religiously informed) view of a healthy and successful workplace. But it is up to the employer to decide how widely to interpret that employees are promoting values that are antithetical to his informed view of a successful workplace.

(He could also simply fire a person because he doesn't like them, or because he thinks they talk funny, and this also would be legal. We wouldn't think that kind of decision was nice , and would certainly think he was ignoble in doing so. But that provides no basis for a legal or institutional rule prohibiting this kind of employment practice.)

*. For virtually any gay sex act you might perform, there is a closely analogous straight sex act that a counterpart of yours might perform, where the primary difference between the two acts would be in what genitals you and your counterpart have. For your employer to know whether you're performing the gay sex act or its straight analogue they'd need to know what genitals you have.

I reject this characterization of sexuality utterly, for multiple reasons. For example, it is devoid of the very specific meaning-content that is the difference between a Christian understanding of sexuality and secular humanistic decomposition of sexual behavior into a series of unconnected physical acts without meaning. If a person performs those physical acts as a prelude to the characteristically heterosexual conjugal act capable of conceiving a child in the normal mode, those preliminary acts take on human meaning precisely from their context as preliminary to something else which has human meaning. THAT MEANING cannot attend the performance of the act as done by people who are the same sex, nor by people who engage in those acts without having any intention of a normal conjugal act. And without THAT MEANING, the preliminary acts take on a whole other, morally degenerative human meaning - they become different acts . It is a false characterization to speak of human acts as if the physical dimension is what defines them completely.

Would the Christian university be allowed to publish in APA's journal without the asterisk if the university's policy was that they censure all employees who permit their known behavior to proclaim that their sexual acts are intentionally devoid of the human meaning that is the natural meaning of marital conjugal relations? This censure would not be directed specifically at gays, since it would fall equally (but on many more) people who live together without marriage, and people who are married but openly use contraceptives to avoid having children, etc.

Not Tony Macri

This is just my impression; I could be wrong, but I think he tends to reserve that word (as well as con-men, shills, etc.) for the Discovery Institute, or any other group or person that wants to tell intelligent design in high schools or think it's permissible for intelligent design to be taught in high schools. I also thought the use of the word to designate such people was "not entirely implausible". That doesn't mean I agree with it, though; I don't. I think it's far too strong a word to use to designate the Discovery Institute, and other, like-minded people. So is Texas Taliban.

I'm not sure what you mean here by "not entirely implausible," Bobcat. Do you mean it's not entirely implausible that Leiter & co. _do actually reserve_ the term "fascist" for those groups or that thus using the word is (though you think it far too strong) not _way_, _way_ too strong in your view? Because I think it's absurd, not to say outrageous. If Clayton or anybody else thinks using "fascist" to describe Michael Behe, Steve Meyer, and Paul Nelson isn't worth objecting to, or even badgering Leiter to retract, said person has such completely off-base judgment about the appropriateness of the term that he has no business lecturing much less badgering Troy about his use here. I mean, seriously. That's astonishing. Ditto for supporters of Proposition 8 in California. (Mind you, I'm making that one up, because I merely _guess_ that Leiter would call them "fascists." I don't read the blog enough to know. But I suppose you could say Proposition 8 has more widespread ramifications than the APA policy.)

I wrote that calling the ID-in-school advocates "fascists" is not entirely implausible for the simple reason that, if you think forcing the teaching of ID in school to be something that will miseducate children, then it's plausible to think of it as immoral, and if it's immoral, then it's got the tiniest sliver of plausibility to call the people who advocate for that policy "fascist" for the simple reason that they're affecting more people in a more severe way than the APA is.

I think now, though, that speaking of plausibility on such matters is probably wrong-headed; I don't think there's any chance that the schoolboard people are fascists, just like I don't think there's any chance that the APA people are fascist. So neither term has plausibility, I think. Therefore, even though the ID-in-schools policy has arguably worse consequences than the can't-advertise-in-JFP policy, it's the case, I think, that both uses of the term are equally unjustified.

Bobcat, I probably agree with you that "fascist" in this context may be stronger than warranted. But _something_ is warranted.

Let me put it this way: natural law theory is a philosophical theory that has a long-standing respectability in philosophy, and has a modest but not trivial following now in philosophical circles. The new APA policy, explicitly based on an ethical view, is effectively contrary to the natural law theory of philosophy. One might take it that the APA has effectively, in promoting this new policy, made a professional judgment and decision that natural law theory is just plain WRONG as philosophy, and thus has no place in the professional world that the APA operates in.

But procedurally and operationally, they didn't come to this decision by testing natural law theory among themselves as a philosophical system and satisfying the membership that this system is philosophically bankrupt. That's not how the argument played out. Virtually none of the argumentation ever got around to examining the basic ground-work of that system and discerning its rightness or wrongness separately from the issue at hand.

As a result, their intended censure of the ACTS that are the normal and predictable outflowing of an acceptance of natural law theory is a back-handed (but fully intended) censure of the IDEAS of natural law, without that censure being based on a suitable professional platform - i.e. a platform of thorough-going professional argumentation that would be convincing to qualified philosophers (or other professional thinkers such as theologians, mathematicians, etc) who have no iron in that particular fire.

This may be something short of fascism, but it certainly smacks of the kind of unprofessional silencing of opposing views on _extraneous_ grounds that is common in bigoted circles.

Hi Bobcat,

You write,

I think that's a pretty contentious point you're making there, Zero.

I guess. But the 1989 policy rejects as unethical all forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation (et al.) with respect to decisions concerning graduate admissions, appointments, retention, promotion and tenure, manuscript evaluation, salary determination, or other professional activities in which APA members characteristically participate. It does recognize certain exceptions on the part of some religiously affiliated institutions, so long as the criteria for such religious affiliations do not discriminate against persons on the basis of sexual orientation (et al.).

So, for one thing, the policy rejects as unethical all forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation, blah blah blah. It would be pretty weird to write a sentence like that and expect it to be interpreted as expression of permission for institutions to require some but not all employees to maintain a celibate lifestyle as a condition of employment, and further permission for this requirement to be based on sexual orientation. I suppose it's possible that, as it's written, the policy doesn't succeed ruling that sort of thing out since presumably everyone, even gays, could have heterosexual sex in the confines of heterosexual marriage. But the idea that it was intended to work that way strikes me as somewhat zany, to say the least. If that's how I wanted to be interpreted, there's no way I'd write the sentence that way.

I suppose it's also possible that the sentence was drafted so as to include a loophole, accidentally-on-purpose. But I guess I think it's better for the policy to say what it means in clear language--and I mean that either way. If the policy is supposed to permit mandates of celibacy that apply only to gay faculty, it would be better if it just said so. At least then we'd all know where we stand.

I know that Hoekema doesn't interpret the policy my way, and that was there and I wasn't, and that this is a prima facie problem for my interpretation. But he also thinks that the policy does not apply to decisions beyond the initial hire in spite of the fact that it explicitly mentions such decisions as retention, tenure, promotion, manuscript evaluation, salary determination, and other professional activities in which APA members characteristically participate. So I am inclined to regard Hoekema as an unreliable guide as to what the policy was designed to do.

Back again!

To Step 2: I think you are confused. To repeat on each point (1) my marriage is not integral to my racial identity nor my wife‘s to hers period! (2) Extending item b is a mistake, it is far too broad a criterion and extending it only adds counterexamples (3) Logic is not a set of “language rules” it is the bare minimum for rational discourse and (5) I would urge the change, but there is no “historical justification” and you did not offer any.

To Tony Macri: Thanks for the good illustrations on how even legal(!) behavior can become grounds for firing or non-hire where it affects job performance.

To Mr. Zero: I don’t think anyone needs to argue that the original policy intended to allow Christian schools to forbid certain sexual behaviors. The schools are innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof is on the shoulders of those who say that the policy was intended to censure the schools. Good luck on that.

As for those still concerned about my throwing about the term “fascist,” one dictionary definition is “a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control.” (I just pulled on Merriam-Webster online). Looks to me like it could apply to a wide variety of belligerent control freaks, even the APA idea-police.

Heaven’s! The Leiter klan is calling me nasty names? I’m in great company indeed. I hope the good Lord takes note of this on that day all are judged.

Take note kids. When you go about correcting “smart” people regarding their view that black folk really do have integral behaviors that include sleeping with white women and those women have procuring multiple abortions as integral behavior of their own , those “smart” people might get nasty in return.

@Lydia: In response to your question, I think that, since it's none of your college's business what you do in the privacy of your bedroom, not only should they not ask you, they also shouldn't fire you if they somehow happen to find out.

However, if they find that you've been behaving inappropriately in your interactions with *students* (however their ethics code defines "inappropriately") then that seems to be a fireable offense to me.

As for straight adultery, that strikes me as probably another none-of-your-employer's business things, though I will admit that firing adulterers does seem less bad than firing people for having gay sex, perhaps because (a) adulterers usually have a realistic permitted way to express their sexuality (with their spouses) whereas (at the colleges in question) homosexuals don't, and (b) because rules against gay conduct seem blatantly discriminatory on the basis of a combination of arbitrary unchosen features (gender and sexual orientation) whereas rules against adultery aren't.

"As for those still concerned about my throwing about the term “fascist,” one dictionary definition is “a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control.” (I just pulled on Merriam-Webster online). Looks to me like it could apply to a wide variety of belligerent control freaks, even the APA idea-police."

Well, if what the APA did counts as "strong autocratic or dictatorial control", then fascism is a much more common phenomenon than I would have ever thought. Perhaps both the Republican and Democratic parties regularly engage in fascist conduct, then? (Not being sarcastic; I'm just wondering how you, Troy, could count the APA as having engaged in fascist behavior without our major political parties regularly engaging in such behavior as well.)

Hi again,

Um, Justin...do you really mean to say that NOTHING that goes on in private should be taken into account by an employer? What if your a spokesperson for PETA and you're running a slaughterhouse in the basement?

Bobcat, did the APAs action exhibit a tendency towards strong dictatorial control? I argued that their policy was, in effect and likely in intent, an attempt to stigmatize dissent from a majority point of view. By the APAs lights, the Christian schools in question are too "uppity" in their insistence on doing what is necessary (in hiring and other areas) to promote their own moral traditions. The policy is reflective of an institution that cannot tolerate intellectual dissent. It's dictatorial and controlling, yes.

Incidentally, when did either political party attempt to reign in dissent by instituting a government censure on the means necessary to promoting dissent from their views? Whichever party did it...fascists!

"Incidentally, when did either political party attempt to reign in dissent by instituting a government censure on the means necessary to promoting dissent from their views? Whichever party did it...fascists!"

Governmental institutions and political parties, when they control the levers of government, don't do precisely that, but they use high-handed, controlling tactics all the same. Take state supreme courts striking down various versions of proposition 8, claiming that a right to gay marriage was in the state constitution all along; was that fascist?

As for your point w/r/t the APA, you write:

"Bobcat, did the APAs action exhibit a tendency towards strong dictatorial control? I argued that their policy was, in effect and likely in intent, an attempt to stigmatize dissent from a majority point of view. By the APAs lights, the Christian schools in question are too "uppity" in their insistence on doing what is necessary (in hiring and other areas) to promote their own moral traditions. The policy is reflective of an institution that cannot tolerate intellectual dissent. It's dictatorial and controlling, yes."

I wouldn't put it like that; I think the members supporting the Hermes position think that the Christian position on homosexuality is not just immoral, but clearly immoral, and such that you can't rationally argue for it. I don't know how many have heard the arguments against their view, but some at least have (the ones who argued the point with Alex Pruss on The Prosblogion, for instance), and don't feel at all moved by the counter-arguments. The APA can certainly tolerate intellectual dissent, but some intellectual dissent it deems beyond the pale. Dictatorial seems too strong to me, though arrogant and controlling seem better terms.

Incidentally, and I know everyone hates this example, but if some Bob Jones-like university wanted to advertise in the JFP, but held that black philosophers need not apply, why wouldn't you find an APA censure of them to be dictatorial? (Keep in mind that I think the Christian universities that claim that active homosexuals aren't in keeping with their mission have a lot of plausible things to say in their defense, which I don't think the fictitious university of my example does; but surely some people think that there is a lot to be said in defense of a racist policy.)

surely some people think that there is a lot to be said in defense of a racist policy

Bobcat, for one thing, the "some" who think that are not wide swathes of philosophers of the past and present. Nor is such a policy a natural outworking of a whole ethical theory--e.g., natural law theory with ideas about the human telos of sexuality, etc.--with long-standing philosophical credentials. Nor is such a policy bound up with traditional Christian moral teaching uberhaupt. Look, _you_ were the one who pointed out that the APA policy is declaring natural law theory beyond the pale. There's no parallel in the case of a "no interracial dating" policy.

Dictatorial seems too strong for you??? And that on the grounds that the Hermes-Leiter types _believe_ that the traditional moral view of homosexuality is "beyond the pale" and are closed to intellectual dissent on it? That's a head-shaker for me.

That being said, I'm going to be honest (and here I speak for no one but myself): I think major, national organizations who act as a clearinghouse for job ads need to lighten up even on things that I disagree with. I was a teenager and young adult in the eighties when everyone was getting really upset about the BJU thing on interracial dating, and I've done my bit to dissuade people from attending BJU as students, explicitly on that ground. But frankly, it just seems to me that there would be something a tad petty and even pretentious about a national organization's stooping to get into the nitty gritty of the hiring practices and on-campus rules of a school in these areas and putting a mark of censure next to them even on the grounds of a stupid and wrong-headed dating policy of that sort. All the more so if they'd been advertising without censure for twenty years! People who chose to become students or faculty there knew the policy and could refuse to apply for jobs there if they didn't want to abide by it or thought it so horrible that they wanted no association with the school. Indeed, there's always seemed to me something problematic about people who deliberately try to attend or get hired by schools whose strong and well-known institutional identity they despise, just so that they can change the schools from within or rant about why they were not hired or whatever. Frankly, in terms of daily life, I think a much larger number of students were affected by the strict requirements for chaperoned dating only than by the ban on interracial dating. One of the young men I tried to dissuade from going to BJU was a good-looking and friendly Brazilian, though, and he would doubtless have had problems! I do indeed disapprove of the policy BJU had, but I don't consider it the worst thing in the world, and I don't think everything I say has to provide a really overwhelming rationale for _definitely censuring_ them at that time but not censuring schools for traditional positions on homosexual sex. I have more libertarian leanings than that.

Hi Lydia,

"Bobcat, for one thing, the 'some' who think that are not wide swathes of philosophers of the past and present. Nor is such a policy a natural outworking of a whole ethical theory--e.g., natural law theory with ideas about the human telos of sexuality, etc.--with long-standing philosophical credentials. Nor is such a policy bound up with traditional Christian moral teaching uberhaupt. Look, _you_ were the one who pointed out that the APA policy is declaring natural law theory beyond the pale. There's no parallel in the case of a 'no interracial dating' policy."

I think the italicized portion really gets to the heart of the matter. Here's how I see things:

It's a fact that natural law theory is a defensible view.
The belief that homosexuality is defective springs from most versions of natural law theory.
The belief that people are various races are in some significant, intrinsic sense inferior to members of other races does not spring from most versions of natural law theory, but stands on its own, and is not really defensible.
One of the marks of the fact that natural law theory is a defensible view is the fact that extremely sophisticated philosophers of past and present have found it the most plausible of all ethical views, and have correspondingly made it central to their philosophies. This mark is not in place regarding racist theories.
Another mark of the fact that natural law theory is a defensible view is the fact that it's played a central role in Christian thinking about ethics for thousands of years, and that natural law theory makes very good sense of lots of passages from the Bible, which, as a matter of fact, is the inspired word of God, who is a perfectly good, omniscient, all-powerful being with a deep, abiding interest in how humanity conducts itself. Racist theories have much less scriptural warrant.
Therefore, the belief that practicing, homosexual philosophers go against a university's Christian mission is a legitimate belief.

What Hermes, et al. disagree about are the facts. They don't think natural law theory--at least, a natural law theory that sees homosexuality as in any way defective--is a defensible view. They either don't agree with me about natural law theory's marks--perhaps, like Robert Pasnau, they don't think that a condemnation of homosexuality as defective is in any way central to Aquinas's theory--or they don't agree with me about the significance of natural law theory's marks--they might think the fact that thoughtful people of past and present adhered to it tells nothing at all in its favor.

Because they disagree about these facts, they don't see any problem in holding natural law theory to be beyond the pale.

Now, I wouldn't take this disagreement about the facts, and the acting on them, to be dictatorial. I mean, I think it's a fact that eliminative materialism is beyond the pale, despite the fact that Rorty, Quine, Feyerabend, G. Rey, Rosenberg, and the Churchlands are really good philosophers (maybe you don't think Rorty, Feyerabend, G. Rey, Rosenberg, or Paul Churchland qualify; but surely Quine and Pat Churchland do). I also think logical positivism is beyond the pale, and it's had its share of distinguished adherents. But if I were in charge of a board distributing funds, I wouldn't vote to fund any eliminative materialist project, as it's obviously a non-starter. I also wouldn't censure them, despite the fact that I think their doctrine has monstrous consequences. Because I think that would be really arrogant. But not dictatorial. When I think dictatorial, I think of people being disappeared, bosses firing people for not sleeping with them, etc. I'm fairly convinced that it cheapens the word to use it of the APA. And I certainly think fascist as a descriptor of the APA cheapens that word (despite the fact that one dictionary has dictatorial and fascist as synonymous; sorry, but I'm just not going to use the word that way).

I just want to make a minor factual point. In an early post Justin made reference to the legality of sexual acts between members of the same sex. A responder suggested that barring some new majority opinion by SCOTUS, there are some jurisdictions relevant to the APA (presumably in the US, given the reference to SCOTUS) where such acts are not legal. Justin appeared to concede that such "backward" places exist. It is worth pointing out that the Supreme Court ruled in 2003, Lawrence vs. Texas, that sodomy laws violate due process guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. There are surely places with such laws still "on the books", but they are not in fact law.

The opponents of the APA non-discrimination policy do not appear to care about whether or not gay sex can be legally prohibited or not, so perhaps this fact will not be seen as relevant. But I for one think that it is a gross abuse of employees or prospective employees for employers to refuse to hire or to fire on the basis of private and legal acts. This is indeed a case of unethical "nosiness" on the part of the employer.

Lydia keeps making a big fuss in the conversation with Justin over the issue of "nosiness" in a way that appears to change the subject. I think that there is nothing wrong with gay sex nor with gay relationships and that gay employees morally ought to be able to be open about their relationships in the manner that straight couples are open about their relationships, even in the workplace. But that is potentially a second, distinct issue about which to argue. Lydia and others appear to want to argue against the first issue by reacting strongly toward the second issue. And it is a kind of ad hominem, I think, to keep harping on what is perceived as the secret and more radical agenda of the "homosexual activists" to shove homosexuality down everyone's throats. [To respond in kind ad hominem: One wonders, when hearing this sort of rhetoric, if the contributor to the debate has known many gays or lesbians in or out of the workplace. Alas, we are not nearly as exciting and dangerous as we are made out to be. If only!]

But I for one think that it is a gross abuse of employees or prospective employees for employers to refuse to hire or to fire on the basis of private and legal acts.

Yes, PETA should have no objection to hiring me as a spokesman, and no basis for firing me, if off-duty I spend hour after hour pounding down cheeseburgers loaded with bacon and slathered with pate de foie gras. Come on.

Brad, if you don't want me to bring up the issue of being "out" or not being "out," then stop talking about "nosiness" and "prying." _That's_ a change of subject. And _you guys_ brought it up. If you want to define "nosiness" as "firing somebody on the basis of something he _can't help finding out_ about me but that _in fact_ I do in private," that's an incredibly distracting and confusing definition of "nosiness," and bringing the word "prying" in--which is a verb and implies an _act_ on the part of the employer in an attempt to discover something he wouldn't otherwise know--is even more misleading. This isn't a matter of a "hidden, more radical" agenda. This is a matter of the actual rules being advocated. Rules such as the APA's and laws such as non-discrimination laws in place in many jurisdictions _do not_ permit employers to require employees to keep their homosexual acts a deep secret and merely to fire if the employer happens to find out or is told. That isn't some extra, secret, or hidden agenda. That's part of what such non-discrimination policies _do mean right now_. Indeed, Justin has agreed as much, and it turns out that my ostensibly "rude" belief about his beliefs was _entirely correct_. As indeed, it pretty much had to be given that he favors both this policy and similar laws. Such rules _never_ permit employers to fire on the basis of homosexual acts if the employers find out about them in some way other than by "prying." The whole issue of "prying" and "nosiness" is thus irrelevant to what we are *actually talking about right now*.

So, no, I'm not changing the subject. No, I'm not attributing hidden views to you or anyone else. You are the ones engaging in red-herring trailing, and I have been pointing that out.

But if I were in charge of a board distributing funds, I wouldn't vote to fund any eliminative materialist project, as it's obviously a non-starter.

I think that's a poor analogy, if it's meant to be an analogy, Bobcat. (I can't tell for sure that it is.) But the APA isn't administering funds but publishing ads. And again, don't forget, ads it's been publishing all along with no problem. If the discrimination in question is confirmed (as opposed to suspected) the mark in question _is_ going to be a mark of censure, a mark that means that their acts are _unethical_, which seems to me like "beyond the pale" in a different sense from the sense in which you use it of materialism.

It seems to me too that a large body like the APA really is intending to use its not-inconsiderable influence to intimidate and change the practices of these schools. Perhaps you disagree there. Would you agree with "dictatorial" if they banned the ads outright?

Then, too, there are all the spinoff effects. I think you may be willing to agree that there was intimidation involved w.r.t. the counterpetition we got up last year. There _definitely_ are young philosophers afraid for their careers as a result of this. Look above at the "untenured" and "anonymouses" on our side of the discussion. More than on the other, that's for sure. And more who haven't spoken at all. You don't think Hermes, Leiter, and perhaps Norcross know that, about the worries of young philosophers about crossing them? You think that bothers them, or maybe is part of the point of the exercise in muscle-flexing? C'mon--Leiter is one of the best-known philosophical bullies in the world. Dictatorial? You bet. And the new policy, by condemning these schools as "unethical," lends a good deal of indirect aid and comfort to such intimidation. Putting it bluntly, they can say they won. You think philosophers don't use the bandwagon argument? You've gotta be kidding, especially when the bandwagon is all filled with philosophers.

Hi all,

Bobcat asked "Take state supreme courts striking down various versions of proposition 8, claiming that a right to gay marriage was in the state constitution all along; was that fascist?" Yes, Bobcat, it was. First, it was not in the constitution; they were legislating. Legislating against and without the consent of the people is fascism and, worse, tyrannical. Locke and others listed it among just causes for war. So if anything, I'm understating my case.

You also asked, "...if some Bob Jones-like university wanted to advertise in the JFP, but held that black philosophers need not apply, why wouldn't you find an APA censure of them to be dictatorial?" No, because they would be acting from the moral consensus of their members and not imposing it. In the current case of the APA, we do not see that moral consensus, indeed the petition only represents a minority of the membership. But even then, there is a difference between moral consensus and tyranny of the majority.

IF any institution intends to enforce a point of view AND they lack the moral consensus of their members, then they are only spared the charge of "dictator" if they can make the case that rather than "dictate" a law that they were instead "submitting" to a higher law. Is the APA willing to make this case? I'd like to see it.

Anon said , “Yes, PETA should have no objection to hiring me as a spokesman, and no basis for firing me, if off-duty I spend hour after hour pounding down cheeseburgers loaded with bacon and slathered with pate de foie gras. Come on.”

PETA should fire you flat. If they don’t, they’re idiots. All you’ve done, Anon, is conflate morality with stupidity. But Nietzsche anticipated that modern moral theory would do that anyways.

(1) If you were unable to be married to your wife because of your respective races, your marriage - which is integrally connected to your identity - objectively becomes connected to your race. Subjectively you can both deny any racial connection, that essentially the marriage is based on love and respect etc., objectively the marriage is connected to your race.
(3) Logic can be a good method of rational discourse, if it is used correctly, but you surely don't believe it is a fundamental requirement. Unless you are a logical positivist, which would be surprising.
(5) The justification is the history of the University of Paris and the multiple and varied attempts by the Vatican to suppress the rediscovered writings of Aristotle, at least initially. Interestingly it was the hope that faith and reason were compatible that caused them to change their policy. If they had foreseen the violent divorce known as the Enlightenment, they might not have made the change.

"IF any institution intends to enforce a point of view AND they lack the moral consensus of their members, then they are only spared the charge of "dictator" if they can make the case that rather than "dictate" a law that they were instead "submitting" to a higher law. Is the APA willing to make this case? I'd like to see it."

Actually, they already did make the case (and, no, for the five thousandth time, it's not stated in the policy itself), and they did solicit the moral consensus of their members. That doesn't mean that there won't be a few dogmatists, like yourself, who remain unconvinced. So, I guess that means they're not dictators. Really though, I'm astonished that someone like yourself actually has a PhD; evidently, Missouri-Columbia has pretty low standards.

Hi again,

Step 2: I've said it before and I'll say it again...marrying out of my race is not integrally connected to my racial identity. Logic IS the foundation of rational discourse. And your point about justifying the removal of protection of political and religious convictions just because a certain religious organization misbehaved is bizarre. To protect a persons right to a conviction is not the same as to protect any actions they might undertake as a result.

Anon 1: You claim, again falsely, that the APA members made a claim to a higher law in order to advance their case against Christian Universities.

What are you smoking?

Read the petition and the blogs again; they claimed the Christian Universities were in violation of the ORIGINAL policy. And as for argument, as Bobcat pointed out, they were pretty light on that and high on mere assertions.

If you can find a SINGLE spot in the blogs where the advocates of the new policy (1) admitted that the old policy did not condemn the Christian schools and (2) that nonetheless a new policy must be implemented due to some moral law, then I'd like to see that.

But you're going to be largely if not entirely disappointed; likely you're just taking the fact that they congratulated themselves for being so hyper-moral and reading into it.

You also claim that contrary to what I indicate, they "solicited the moral consensus of their members." I didn't say "soliciting" a moral consensus of the APAs members would be enough to exonerate them from the charge in question. I said they had, minimally, to secure it. The petition did not even canvass a majority let alone show a moral consensus.

Please try to pay better attention in the future.

Anon said , “Yes, PETA should have no objection to hiring me as a spokesman, and no basis for firing me, if off-duty I spend hour after hour pounding down cheeseburgers loaded with bacon and slathered with pate de foie gras. Come on.”

PETA should fire you flat. If they don’t, they’re idiots. All you’ve done, Anon, is conflate morality with stupidity. But Nietzsche anticipated that modern moral theory would do that anyways.

Troy, I was pointing out that Brad's view was easily subject to that PETA reductio ad absurdum. Your sarcasm meter must be malfunctioning.

Apologies Anon, I confused you with Anon1. Sarcasm meter is functional, just context confused...is it bad that I thought that your quote was just something Anon1 would say?

Logic IS the foundation of rational discourse

Well, Tony and I had a discussion months ago which concluded that leprechaun hair, being immaterial and undetectable, could not be disproved by logic. I believe it gives me good luck.

To protect a persons right to a conviction is not the same as to protect any actions they might undertake as a result.

If they aren't the same then protecting a right for Christian schools to their religious convictions and the ability to act upon them would be different. Which undermines the whole point.

Lydia keeps making a big fuss in the conversation with Justin over the issue of "nosiness" in a way that appears to change the subject. I think that there is nothing wrong with gay sex nor with gay relationships and that gay employees morally ought to be able to be open about their relationships in the manner that straight couples are open about their relationships, even in the workplace.

Brad, I won't take issue with that "ought to be able to be open" line, as long as the job is something that being open about being gay has no effect on. But there can be certainly be cases where the job surely IS affected by that. For example, there is a religious practitioner Bill whose life's work is counseling gay people who have depression and other problems. He has come to a conclusion that (a) in some cases, the personal problems stem from poorly integrated personal lives and values, including their sexuality, and (b) in some of those cases that poor integration can be successfully solved by counseling and assistance in such a way that (among other aspects) the formerly gay person no longer sees himself as gay, considers himself heterosexual, overcomes the depression and other issues, and lives happily married with a woman. Bill narrows the scope of his work to focus solely on gay people whom he thinks will be helped by this course of religious counseling and assistance. He needs a receptionist/clerk to help him, and goes through a file of applicants. Perry, who is gay, organizes Gay Pride parades, and is quite vociferous in the community in claiming that sexual orientation is a fundamental personality trait and cannot be eradicated from a person, has applied for the job. Should our friend Bill be required by law to hire Perry, even though Perry will actual damage Bill's ability to do the work he has in mind? My opinion is that a "law" that requires hiring (or not firing) an employee whose outlook on life, whose whole frame of reference, whose actions and speech both in and out of work proclaim a directly adverse position to the work his employer is trying to accomplish is just about as stupid-headed a law as you could ask for.

You may perhaps say that Bill's work is itself wrong-headed and should not go forward. You are entitled to that opinion, but his clients (who go to him freely and are free to walk away any time they choose) don't feel that way, since he helps them solve their depression and other problems, and they later are very happy with their sexuality as expressed heterosexually. If gays can say that being gay and engaging in homosexual acts is fulfilling to them, and claim this based on their own personal experience and internal sense, who are THEY to deny the exact same right and privilege to those who are former gays, (who, by the way, are the only ones to have lived on both sides of the fence and therefore have MUCH MORE right to an informed opinion). It is philosophically impossible that the gays who base their claim of gayness on their internal sense of themselves have a stronger foundation than these former gays do about who they are internally.

Of course, the mere fact that SOME people can change from being gay to being heterosexual casts a fairly big question on the claim by gays that their condition is inherent, unchangeable, and normative for them. The "normative" part rests not a little on the "unchangeable" part, and what doesn't rest on that is more of an assertion than anything argued to. I am sure that alcoholics often delude themselves by saying that alcoholism is normative for them too, because they feel so drawn to it. Neither the assertion, nor the internal sense, makes the claim valid.

But my point here is not primarily to argue the case against homosexuality. No: it is to show that the case against those who oppose homosexuality (either in law, or in hiring, or in other venues), the stance that they are ipso facto bigots, CANNOT be made without tackling head on and directly the more fundamental issue of whether a homosexual act is itself a morally normal form of human behavior. And that is precisely what APA, (and the gay movement generally) has been doing for the last decade - trying to sidestep the basic moral point of difference and claim that the fundamental argument is beside the point, that discrimination based on sexual behavior is wrong EVEN APART from whether you think it is moral or immoral. But there is no way of arguing that Bill is doing something immoral and that the law ought to stop without arguing the fundamental point of whether the homosexual condition is morally normative, and there is no way that Bill's refusing to hire (or decision to fire) Perry ought to be illegal if Bill's work is moral work.

clarification: the last part would read better as:

that discrimination based on sexual behavior is wrong EVEN APART from whether you think it (a homosexual act) is moral or immoral. But there is no way of arguing that Bill's work is something immoral and that the law ought to stop him without arguing the fundamental point of whether the homosexual condition is morally normative, and there is no way that Bill's refusing to hire (or decision to fire) Perry ought to be illegal if Bill's work is moral work.

I Said: To protect a persons right to a conviction is not the same as to protect any actions they might undertake as a result.

Step 2 Responded: "If they aren't the same then protecting a right for Christian schools to their religious convictions and the ability to act upon them would be different. Which undermines the whole point."

Wrong. Dead wrong. Just because it's a fact that defending a persons right to a view is distinct from defending their right to act upon it IT DOES NOT FOLLOW that religious (or political) convictions are open targets for employer discretion. Your view that the APA ought to allow these to be targets, frankly, astounds me.

Why should the phrase "attack on Christians" (which is what Justin Fisher _originally_ objected to) not be appropriate here?

That's probably how the Brian spun it:

APA Adopts New Policy on Religious Institutions that Discriminate Against Gay Men and Women

Of course, when Lydia suggests tighter immigration regulations for Muslims, she's a bigot, according to the Brian. I wish you people would get your name-calling for equity story straight.

Nice point T Aquino.

I find it strange to no end how the debate shifts from "Well, technically it's not an attack on Christian institutions specifically, or not against Christians specifically, or not against Christianity-per-se specifically..." Yeesh.

Troy,
I am surprised by this change in direction. You previously agreed that in order to be truthful the APA should remove religion and political convictions from their list of protected status. Now you are backtracking and saying they shouldn't remove them and furthermore that religious and political convictions are distinct from the actions a group takes because of those convictions. Which is the same distinction the APA policy makes - religious schools can subscribe to any theory of divine truth they want, they are only open to censure for acting on those beliefs in violation of APA policy.

when Lydia suggests tighter immigration regulations for Muslims

That's one way to put it. An honest way to put it would be to say that she proposes an outright ban on Muslim immigration. The proposal is not to prohibit Muslims that might do something wrong from immigrating; it's a proposal to prohibit Muslims from immigrating full stop. She did not propose a "tightening."

By contrast, the APA policy is about institutions that do something wrong. It does not target specifically Christian institutions, and it does not target all Christian institutions. It's an "attack" on institutions whose hiring practices are discriminatory and immoral. The fact that most of these institutions are affiliated with Christian churches is not a sign of animosity towards Christianity. It's a sign that there is a (sadly vocal) minority among Christians who advocate a morally depraved form of bigotry.

"I find it strange to no end how the debate shifts from "Well, technically it's not an attack on Christian institutions specifically, or not against Christians specifically, or not against Christianity-per-se specifically..." Yeesh."

In America, Muslims are currently a vulnerable group. Their interests are ignored by virtually everyone (e.g., people like you could care less how many innocent Muslims are harmed or killed, so long as the good-ole-boys in the military say they weren't intending to do so. Funny how there are seemingly no limits to collateral damage when it comes to swarthy people, huh?). On the other hand, in America, Christians are definitely not a vulnerable group. Their interests are routinely recognized (and, no, that doesn't mean you get absolutely everything your little autocratic heart desires. but it does mean, for example, that your interests are recognized more frequently and taken more seriously than, say, Muslims. but, of course, I understand you'll have to immediately deny this, pretend you don't understand the point, and don your victim's hat, as is your wont). So, naturally, liberals are more sensitive/concerned about routinely victimized people. In any case, here's a solid difference for you: liberals really don't want to attack Christianity (unless you want to narrowly define it so that it includes hatred against gay people, just as a lot ignorant rednecks wanted to define it so that it would include hatred against blacks years ago). You, and the people on this site, are clearly hate-mongers though. You clearly hate Muslims (unless they're trying to convert to Christianity. and even then it's obvious those ones will always be held at arm's length, as are black people in the Republican party). Feel free to deny all this, since it would take away your transparently illusory moral high ground. However, any one with common sense can see that the people on this site are vicious bigots. But, in addition, to your status as virulent hate mongers, you have the additional vices of lacking integrity and honesty. So, unlike public neo-nazis you waste a lot of time denying what any one with a brain can see. There's your cue...

The fact that most of these institutions are affiliated with Christian churches is not a sign of animosity towards Christianity.

You guys are just ab-so-lute-ly amazing. If _we_ try this stuff--"It's not an attack on homosexuals but on those who actually choose to behave in an immoral way"--the "act/orientation distinction" gets ridiculed and hooted down and howled on all your blogs. Just astonishing. People, according to y'all, have a right to _act_ in a way that flows from their deep-seated identity, blah, blah, blah. But suddenly it's okay to start saying, "Hey, we're not attacking Christians, just the ones who behave in ways that we think are immoral."

I mean, heck: Would you guys be willing to admit that the new policy (you know, the one _your people_ said was about _religious institutions_) has "disparate impact" on Christian institutions? Sheesh.

anon1, I defy you to take the example of "Bill" the religious practitioner of my comment of 10:53 pm above and locate an act of bigotry in his actions.

If there are some comments dropped in some of these threads that exhibits bigotry, or simply insensitivity, it is NOT located in this thread. Opposition to homosexual acts is not evidence of bigotry, and must not be spoken of as if it WERE evidence of bigotry until you have proven that both Christianity and natural law theory are wrong on the nature of sexuality. That hasn't happened.

Indeed, the gay agenda is to avoid attempting that very effort, pusillanimously hiding behind procedural rules and arbitrary, artificial rulings rather than letting their case rise or fall on the central point: is a homosexual act a moral human act? The fact is, any time they let the argument veer toward examining THAT question, they lose every millimeter of the advance they gained in other directions, because there can be no successful support of homosexual acts as moral that does not undercut the very possibility of morality meaning anything worthwhile anyway.

the "act/orientation distinction" gets ridiculed and hooted down and howled on all your blogs.

I have no idea what you're talking about. For one thing, being an anti-gay bigot is not an "orientation." Not just any disposition is an orientation. For another thing, religious institutions and people have a bunch of special protections under the policy. It's just not a total free pass to do whatever they want just because they're religious. Next you'll be complaining that the policy would be unfair to a Bob-Jones-esque racist institution. (It is my understanding that BJU has abandoned and apologized for their formerly racist policies. Good for them. It is my hope and expectation that a similar shift is on the horizon concerning homosexuality.) Whatever. Christianity doesn't license or excuse bigotry.

Would you guys be willing to admit that the new policy (you know, the one _your people_ said was about _religious institutions_) has "disparate impact" on Christian institutions? Sheesh.

To my knowledge, all of the institutions whose hiring practices are rejected as unethical by the APA's new policy are affiliated with Christian churches. That's outrageous and deeply sad, but not in the way you think.

By contrast, the APA policy is about institutions that do something wrong. It does not target specifically Christian institutions, and it does not target all Christian institutions

It targets only Christian institutions that are theologically and morally orthodox. And what I mean by that is it targets those institutions that stand in the tradition that begins with Paul to Augustine to Anselm to Aquinas to Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Wesley, Newman, Barth, Woytiya, Ratzinger, Billy Graham, Mother Theresa, Plantinga, and MacIntyre.

You are correct that is does not target those institutions that have abandoned Christian moral theology and anthropology, just as the Rev. Phelps does not protest at funerals of people who share his loathsome hate. What a shock.

It's an "attack" on institutions whose hiring practices are discriminatory and immoral. The fact that most of these institutions are affiliated with Christian churches is not a sign of animosity towards Christianity. It's a sign that there is a (sadly vocal) minority among Christians who advocate a morally depraved form of bigotry.

What precisely is the bigotry? The judgment that sex has a particular purpose? Are you suggesting that if one believes this that one is a "bigot"? That's just weird.

If a Christian university forbade its faculty from engaging in consensual wife swapping, would that be bigotry?

Christianity doesn't license or excuse bigotry.

When you get around to it, could you define bigotry and explain why it's wrong? Just curious.

One more thing, Mr. Zero. The argument by those opposing the change is not "we have unlimited religious freedom." Rather, the argument is: our view of human sexuality is a philosophically defensible and legitimate alternative to those who have a different understanding of human nature and its purposes. Our institutions, therefore, should not be treated as pariahs for offering that alternative. In fact, to punish our institutions is to engage in a type of intolerance and unthinking dogmatism that is usually, and mistakenly, attributed to religious believers by people like Brian Leiter. Therefore, the APA policy is itself borne of an appalling philosophical ignorance, that, given the the tone of your comments and those of others, seems the result of animus rather than careful and rigorous philosophical reflection. "That's outrageous and deeply sad, but not in the way you think."

"Opposition to homosexual acts is not evidence of bigotry, and must not be spoken of as if it WERE evidence of bigotry until you have proven that both Christianity and natural law theory are wrong on the nature of sexuality"

Ok then, by analogy, I guess if I meet someone that says blacks are inferior to whites, I can't call them a bigot, unless I can prove that Christian Identity is false (this is a religious group that claims blacks are inferior to whites). Impressive reasoning. By the way, how about YOU prove that Christianity entails hatred toward gays? I don't remember that as a universal tenet of the religion in C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. I think what you meant to say is that I would have to prove the neo-fundamentalist interpretation Christianity is wrong. Here's my interpretation of Christianity: God thinks middle-class white Americans are evil. Now you can't call me a bigot until you "prove" Christianity is false, on my own pet definition of it. Also, I wouldn't need to prove that natural law theory as such is wrong. The alleged evil of homosexuality isn't part of the definition of natural law theory. It's an implication that's drawn in conjunction with questionable premises. Finally, by what problematic definition of "evidence" do you suppose that Christianity hasn't been proven false? If it's by some unreasonably high standard (which I'd bet a million dollars you're assuming), then I couldn't prove it's false. But I also couldn't prove a thousand other theories that contradict it aren't false (like atheism, Judaism, Islam, etc.). And, by that same standard, you couldn't prove a liberal gay-friendly view is false, but I'm sure you still have no problem (or anyone else on here), calling the APA bigots for putting an asterik by the name of institutions that discriminate against gays. If you're assuming a weaker notion of evidence, then Christianity has been "proven" false, along with natural law theory. Funny how quickly the pretend-rigor that passes for philosophy on here dissipates.

Tony,
Indeed, the gay agenda is to avoid attempting that very effort, pusillanimously hiding behind procedural rules and arbitrary, artificial rulings rather than letting their case rise or fall on the central point: is a homosexual act a moral human act?

Please don't bother complaining about arbitrary, artificial rulings.
http://kittywampus.blogspot.com/2008/04/sex-and-penitentials_18.html

The answer to your central question is that it is can be a moral human act, it isn't required to be, likewise with heterosexual acts.

Well done my faithful servants. Continue to spread division and intolerance in my name. HAIL THE 10TH CRUSADE!

"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

-Thomas Jefferson (Letter to John Adams)

If a Christian university forbade its faculty from engaging in consensual wife swapping, would that be bigotry?

Well, Tommy, if it seems that APA policy doesn't prohibit this already, just wait twenty years or so and you'll find -- Voila! -- that it does, and always did. Also, that we're at war with Eurasia, and always have been.

BTW, I hear some of the brighter young evolutionary psychologists have already discovered the Darwinian basis for wife-swapping. So, you see, that's what "the science" says. All the good philosophy too, except that Thomistic natural law stuff nobody reads 'cause they already know it's wrong. To quote Bill Paxton in Aliens: "Game over, man! Game over!"

So, get with the program. Start practicing some serious philosophy. Here's how it's done. Repeat after me: "Swappophobic bigot!" "Swappophobic bigot!" "Swappophobic bigot!"

When you get around to it, could you define bigotry and explain why it's wrong?

It's kind of weird of you--I'm assuming you're not a small child--to ask a stranger on the internet to do work that your kindergarten teacher should have done.

Also, that we're at war with Eurasia, and always have been.

Ok then, by analogy, I guess if I meet someone that says blacks are inferior to whites, I can't call them a bigot, unless I can prove that Christian Identity is false (this is a religious group that claims blacks are inferior to whites). Impressive reasoning. By the way, how about YOU prove that Christianity entails hatred toward gays? I don't remember that as a universal tenet of the religion in C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. I think what you meant to say is that I would have to prove the neo-fundamentalist interpretation Christianity is wrong. Here's my interpretation of Christianity: God thinks middle-class white Americans are evil. Now you can't call me a bigot until you "prove" Christianity is false, on my own pet definition of it. Also, I wouldn't need to prove that natural law theory as such is wrong. The alleged evil of homosexuality isn't part of the definition of natural law theory. It's an implication that's drawn in conjunction with questionable premises. Finally, by what problematic definition of "evidence" do you suppose that Christianity hasn't been proven false? If it's by some unreasonably high standard (which I'd bet a million dollars you're assuming), then I couldn't prove it's false. But I also couldn't prove a thousand other theories that contradict it aren't false (like atheism, Judaism, Islam, etc.). And, by that same standard, you couldn't prove a liberal gay-friendly view is false, but I'm sure you still have no problem (or anyone else on here), calling the APA bigots for putting an asterik by the name of institutions that discriminate against gays. If you're assuming a weaker notion of evidence, then Christianity has been "proven" false, along with natural law theory. Funny how quickly the pretend-rigor that passes for philosophy on here dissipates.

Why is one obligated to not hold false beliefs? Be careful, for if the mind has an end, so may the entirety of the person including his sexual powers.

It's kind of weird of you--I'm assuming you're not a small child--to ask a stranger on the internet to do work that your kindergarten teacher should have done.

Calling someone a "bigot" is a serious charge. I just want to know how you define it, so that I can know what you mean by it.

It's actually kind of weird that you can issue such judgments without the basis for that judgment on the tips of your fingers, prepared to type it in without a moment's notice. You're issuing the judgment "bigot" against strangers. So, you apparently have an exception to your reticence to engage strangers. Please explain.

To be honest, I think you're bluffing. I don't think you have a good definition, if you have one at all.

Prove me wrong, so that our dialogue can begin.

"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

-Thomas Jefferson (Letter to John Adams)

And now most of the descendants of Jefferson's slaves are Christians.

Ed:

I've already received hate mail from egalitarian wife swappers who insist that it is spouse swapping, not wife swapping. Apparently, my use of "wife swap" buys into the vices of patriarchy and the normativity of heterosexism.

TA (that's "Tommy Aquino" Rolling Stones fans).

Dear Tommy Aquino,

What makes you think I'm interested in having a dialog with you? I have stuff to do. I don't have time to be your kindergarten teacher.

Liberal charges of “racism”, “sexism”, “bigotry”, or “hate” are question begging for it simply assumes that the conservative position is false.  However, if it is true that human sexuality has an objective purpose, then charging those who acknowledge the truth as “bigots” is completely irrational.  It is somewhat analogous to being called a “racist” for believing that the average IQ of racial group X is higher than racial group Y, even if it can be demonstrated that the proposition is true.  In light of this, it appears that most charges of “racism”, “sexism” and “bigotry” or emotional charges neither based in reason nor reality.

What makes you think I'm interested in having a dialog with you? I have stuff to do. I don't have time to be your kindergarten teacher

Just as I thought, you can't answer the question, for if you did so it would mean that you would be committed to a definition. And then when I and others show you counter-examples, you'll adjust it. This will go on for about 48 hours until your position dies by a 1000 qualifications. And then everyone will see that the entire APA enterprise on this matter was morally bankrupt and philosophically sub-par (5th rated, as some would say) from the outset, motivated by hatred of orthodox Christian moral theology and those who hold this view.

So, you've made the right move. Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and dispel all doubt.

Gee whiz. Somebody who thinks he's Thomas Aquinas has called me a name. Now I have no choice but to conduct a never-ending kindergarten lesson.

It's really hard to come up with a definition of much of anything, Tommy, at least if you want Zero to state necessary and sufficient conditions. I take it that's what you want, though, because you mention that people will come up with counterexamples that Zero's putative definition wouldn't cover.

At any rate, I don't think it's bigoted to think that there are (a) certain natural functions, that (b) what one's moral obligations are is to not undermine those functions, and that (c) therefore having homosexual sex is immoral because it undermines one's natural functions.

I suspect Zero thinks it's bigoted because he thinks that the only reason that well-educated westerners would believe (b) or (c) is that they hate homosexuals and want to see them suffer, or that they don't want to be homosexuals but fear they are themselves, and see are trying to be anti-homosexual to forestall this possibility, or that no one consistently follows a sexual ethic that lives up to (c), and so for such people who don't follow it to condemn those who also don't follow it is hypocritical. I also imagine that Zero thinks (b) is just obviously false, but I think a simple application of reflective equilibrium would show that (b) is just as good a candidate as any principle for making sense of a wide variety of our moral reactions to things.

well-educated westerners would believe (b) or (c) is that they hate homosexuals and want to see them suffer, or that they don't want to be homosexuals but fear they are themselves, and see are trying to be anti-homosexual to forestall this possibility,

Well, yes, those all make sense as conjectures about what Zero thinks. But to me those seem a tad...unphilosophical for a philosopher. To put it mildly.

Bobcat,
If you could clarify a bit what you mean by "undermine those functions". I'll assume you aren't proposing that a homosexual person causes damage to their reproductive organs. Second, I think moral obligations in some very important ways do undermine or redirect our natural function, where natural function is relative to the laws of the jungle. Third, I agree fully with your point about the double standard applied to homosexual acts versus intentionally non-procreative heterosexual acts. Fourth, I'll give you extra credit for using reflective equilibrium in a discussion with liberals, it's almost like catnip.

Step2: Sorry if you think I’m backtracking on whether the APA should remove religious/political views from the “protected” statuses. I thought I had been clear. (1) It would be very immoral of them to do this. (2) They still “ought” to do it, in light of the fact that it would remove their inconsistency.

There’s no contradiction in my view that either way they will be behaving badly.

Anon 1: Again, you’re being very hard to follow. Despite your name-calling (“hate-mongerer,” “bigot,“ etc) I do not hate Muslims nor have I made a derogatory comment about them on this blog or any other. So please dispense with the self-righteous allegations you make regarding whether I hold them as proper objects of moral concern. Incidentally, the new APA policy is an attack on Muslims as well as on Christians.

Nice post by Lydia regarding the abuse that the act/orientation distinction got on the Lieter blogs and the fact the distinction between attacking Christians per se or their acts is getting so much press here. Very good point!

Ditto to Tony and Tommy Aquino; people who call Christians “bigots” for simply holding to orthodox (!) Christian views on sexuality really need to set the narcissistic name-calling game aside and start offering definitions of their terms and arguments. Mr. Zero’s cowardly comments on 1-29 9:1312:26 and 2:55 are classic (and far from classy) examples of how when they are called to account, the Lieter crowd runs away squealing. Yes, Tommy, Zero IS bluffing as you allege.

Christa Licera posted a quote from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams "And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." I’m afraid Christa, Jefferson was a bad prophet. Jefferson’s own treatment of the historical Jesus was denounced by Albert Schweitzer as a narcissistic attempt to read Jefferson’s own “idealized autobiography” back into the life of Christ; indeed Jefferson went so far as to portray Jesus as a deist. In that respect, Jefferson’s treatment of the person and life of Christ has become a chief illustration to modern researchers as to how NOT to think of the real Jesus.

Bobcat: nice effort at elucidating some possible reasons behind moral prohibitions on homosexual behavior, although for the record those aren’t my own reasons for my views. Incidentally, for a purely philosophical perspective that supports your views, you might what to read R. M. Hare on Universal Prescriptivism and Abortion. He thinks that Universal Prescriptivism condemns abortion and also condemns limiting one’s procreative activity. If he is right (big “if”) there are implications obviously for the status of homosexual sex.

Troy,
I thought I had been clear. (1) It would be very immoral of them to do this. (2) They still “ought” to do it, in light of the fact that it would remove their inconsistency.

2) It is not immoral if that is what they ought to do. So you are being very unclear. 1) I suggest you try to formulate a reason why it would be immoral for the APA to delete religious status as a protected class that isn't self-defeating for your side of the argument. Failed examples include: They need diversity. They should be tolerant. They can't determine their own standards and norms.

Hi Step2,

"If you could clarify a bit what you mean by 'undermine those functions'. I'll assume you aren't proposing that a homosexual person causes damage to their reproductive organs."

Good question, and it's led me to see that "undermine those functions" isn't quite the best way to put it. I should have said, "goes against those functions".

No, I don't think that homosexuals damage their reproductive organs. I think it's quite possible that anal sex may damage the anus, but of course vaginal sex may damage the vagina. One difference between the damages in either case, though, is that we think damage to the anus from anal sex is a normal, expected result of anal sex, whereas damage to the vagina from vaginal sex would indicate a defect somewhere.

I take it that according to the natural law tradition, if there are certain organs that have clear functions, and that using those organs in a particular way not in keeping with the function of the organ results in damage to that organ, then you're going against the function of the organ.

Now, this isn't always the case. I think with lesbian sex, there will not be any damage to the organs, but it still may be a use of organs against their natural function.

The reaction to these observations, if it isn't a cry that I'm bigoted for making them, is "So what?" In other words, the fact that using an organ in a particular way goes against its natural function is no reason not to use the organ in that way, nor does it have anything to do with morality. Morality is instead about respecting people's rights or minimizing suffering/maximizing happiness.

Alternatively, besides the so what? objection, there's also the objection that reading off the functions of organisms is hard. Let's call this the who judges? objection. On this, some will say that walking on your hands is contrary to the natural purpose of your hands (but it's clearly ok to walk on your hands, so NL theory must be wrong), or that if you're a male who doesn't ejaculate regularly, then you're more likely to get prostate cancer, or that priests who take a vow of celibacy go against their natural functions.

In response to the so what? argument, the claim that something violates someone's rights (where rights are a function of what does and doesn't contribute to one's rational agency) can just as easily be met with a "so what?" After all, euthanasia clearly destroys someone's rational agency, but many people think "so what?" What's so great about rationality, after all? Same thing about happiness and suffering; it appears obvious that happiness is good and suffering is bad, but some people honestly think that the happiness a child molester gets from molesting children is a BAD thing. So, there are ways to so what? utilitarianism as well (here's another way: so what if this doesn't _maximize_ happiness? Or: so what if this doesn't contribute to anyone else's happiness but my own?)

In response to the "who judges?" objection, well, I can just as easily say that it's hard to tell what promotes someone's rational agency. Velleman thinks euthanasia always undermines it; Dworkin thinks that in some cases opting for one's own suicide is an expression of respect for one's own rational agency. Some pro-lifers think abortion destroys rational agency because it destroys someone with the capacity for it (or someone who is a member of a species the normal members of which are rational); some pro-choicers think rational agency has to be exhibited for a being to count as one that has rights. And so on.

Anyway, I could say more on this, but everyone who posts here is more eloquent on this subject than I am.

Somebody who thinks he's Thomas Aquinas has called me a name

No, I called your bluff, and you pouted like a spanked puppy with his tail tucked between his legs. By not manning up, you acquired the label "fool" by earning it.

Mr. Zero, it's in Kindergarten that kids answer queries what "cause." That's the way you choose to answer; so, you're the one in Kindergarten. But I'm sure it's one that's highly ranked in the Philosophers' Gourmet (which, as names go, is campy and unattractive).

I'll assume you aren't proposing that a homosexual person causes damage to their reproductive organs.

Step2, have you talked to a gastroenterologist and or proctologist recently. An honest one? The word I get, strictly off the record, is that YES, sodomy does in fact cause damage to the organs involved in a significant number of cases.

Third, I agree fully with your point about the double standard applied to homosexual acts versus intentionally non-procreative heterosexual acts.

Did that mean that you fully agree that there are heterosexuals who defeat the natural functions of the sexual act (which is pretty well agreed upon by all the Christians here), or did you mean to agree (with the hypothetical words attributed to a possible position of a Mr. Zero) that this constitutes a level of hypocrisy that undermines traditional morality, or did you mean to agree with Bobcat that this is a failed form of reasoning?

it's in Kindergarten that kids answer queries what "cause." That's the way you choose to answer; so, you're the one in Kindergarten.

Ah, the old "I know you are but what am I?" Well I'm rubber and you're glue.

Step 2: Sorry if you still think I'm being unclear, but I don't see that at all. Take an illustration borrowed loosely from Simon Blackburn..."If you kill someone, then you ought to do it gently." Seems right, but then you note that in reality you ought not do it gently; you ought not do it at all! You seem inclined to say this much when you say "it is not immoral if it is what they ought to do." My view is that if the APA is going to attack Christian schools this way, then they ought to do it non-hypocritically (take religion off their protected statuses list). If you note that it is also my view that they ought not have been doing the attack at all, true enough. But that doesn't mean my position is self-contradictory. It just means that Blackburn's paradox is, in fact, a paradox. The 'contradiction' is merely apparent.

In general, there is no contradiction in saying "If you are going X, you ought to Y, but strictly speaking you ought not Y."

Troy,
That was an incoherent illustration. There are many sound reasons you can be legally and morally justified in killing someone, to infer that you ought not do it at all is absurd. Therefore it is also legitimate to determine if you ought to kill gently or sadistically.

Tony,
Stories told "off the record" are a poor method of collecting data, even when they turn out to be correct.

...that this constitutes a level of hypocrisy that undermines traditional morality

Bingo. Furthermore, Bobcat did not say it was a failed form of reasoning.

Bobcat,
According to the Wikipedia article on anal sex, it is a high risk activity in terms of damage. The problem as I see it is whether or not this risk which can presumably be minimized in some ways, or avoided altogether in the case of 20-40% of male homosexuals who don't practice it, is sufficient for forbidding those relationships. More importantly, the inability to explain why lesbian sex is unnatural despite not causing any damage is a strong indication that your definition is inconsistently applied.

So here is my counterexample: I know someone who used to have the hobby of skydiving. He claimed he did it mostly for the adrenaline rush and only stopped doing it after his friend was paralyzed in a skydiving accident. I didn't presume to tell him that he was wrong for wanting to experience that very risky behavior, or that it was a violation of his natural bodily functions based upon running on the ground instead of falling through the sky. In fact I was a little disappointed by his reasonable and safe decision to stop.

If homosexual is not unnatural, then the moral judgment that homosexual sex is wrong isn't unnatural either. For every argument for the former can be applied to the latter.

Step2. Adultery is risky behavior, since it places in jeopardy one's family and marriage. But suppose that one can commit adultery and get away with it. We are now back to the Ring of Gyges. And in that sense, I agree with you that the question of the immorality of homosexual behaviour cannot be measured exclusively by its apparent consequences. But this means that nothing is intrinsically wrong if one cannot experience the consequence of the wrong.

"According to the Wikipedia article on anal sex, it is a high risk activity in terms of damage. The problem as I see it is whether or not this risk which can presumably be minimized in some ways, or avoided altogether in the case of 20-40% of male homosexuals who don't practice it, is sufficient for forbidding those relationships. More importantly, the inability to explain why lesbian sex is unnatural despite not causing any damage is a strong indication that your definition is inconsistently applied."

Hi Step2,

No, I don't think my definition is inconsistently applied. Predictable damage to one's body as a result of using it in a certain way is evidence that you're going against one of your bodies natural functions, but that doesn't constitute going against your body's natural functions. So, if, through technology, we figured out a way to make anal sex completely harmless, it wouldn't follow that anal sex would become morally permissible. Instead, what makes anal sex impermissible is the fact that it goes against the natural functions of the penis and the anus. The same thing is true with lesbian sex.

Think about it like deafness; deaf people can live a perfectly happy and healthy life, and in some ways it may even be advantageous to be deaf (you can guiltlessly ignore the people on the street who ask you to sign things; you can ignore knock-down, drag-out arguments, etc.). But plausibly there would be something questionable about a parent who decided to deafen her baby (even if she did so painlessly). Similarly, there's nothing wrong with people who are deaf wanting to become able to hear, and it seems plausible to me that they _should_ want to become people who hear. Now, if a movement developed claiming we should radically rearrange society so that it isn't "audist", but is arranged such that the non-deaf have no advantage over the deaf, that would be something of a distasteful movement, no?

(By the way, the audist movement is a real movement.)

Hi Bobcat,
Okay, you are confusing me again. I originally asked you to clarify what you meant by undermining those functions, your response was that it meant going against those functions and "if there are certain organs that have clear functions, and that using those organs in a particular way not in keeping with the function of the organ results in damage to that organ, then you're going against the function of the organ."

Based upon the previous mention of walking on your hands, using a particular organ different from its normal function is not enough by itself to indicate a contrary usage. The way to determine if it is contrary to its purpose is if there is damage to that organ, although I didn't even discuss the increased likelihood of damaging your hands as opposed to your feet by walking on them. So once again I need you to define what does constitute going against your body's natural functions as opposed to merely using it for an alternative use.

Your point about the audist movement was interesting, but nobody is taking a position that heterosexuals should lose their natural reproductive capabilities like parents deafening their child. Although it would be strange to arrange society so that the hearing enabled had no advantages, it would also be strange to arrange society so that deaf people were deliberately denied broad access to society's benefits, perhaps by eliminating all written communication and sign language.

Step 2: Sorry you didn't like my illustration. Still, the general point I made stands as I said before. In general, there is no contradiction in saying "If you are going X, you ought to Y, but strictly speaking you ought not Y." I'm really suprised that you find my view contradictory. I think the APA should stop harrassing Christians, but if they are going to do it they ought to drop religion/politics from their list of protected statuses. Sounds like a coherent point of view to me.

Hi Step 2,

You wrote, "I originally asked you to clarify what you meant by undermining those functions, your response was that it meant going against those functions and "if there are certain organs that have clear functions, and that using those organs in a particular way not in keeping with the function of the organ results in damage to that organ, then you're going against the function of the organ."

Ha! OK, I'm not a clear writer in blog posts, I'll grant that. But nevertheless, look at the next line I wrote after the line you quoted: "Now, this isn't always the case. I think with lesbian sex, there will not be any damage to the organs, but it still may be a use of organs against their natural function."

Anyway, you next wrote, "Based upon the previous mention of walking on your hands, using a particular organ different from its normal function is not enough by itself to indicate a contrary usage. The way to determine if it is contrary to its purpose is if there is damage to that organ, although I didn't even discuss the increased likelihood of damaging your hands as opposed to your feet by walking on them. So once again I need you to define what does constitute going against your body's natural functions as opposed to merely using it for an alternative use."

A couple of things:

(1) you wrote that "The way to determine if it is contrary to purpose is if there is damage to that organ...", but my considered interpretation of NL theory (which I get largely from Ed Feser and Kant) is that it's just A way, and maybe the best way, but not The way, as "The way" implies that it is the only way.

(2) I think it could be immoral to continue walking on your hands to the point of damage to them. Damaging your own hands for a frivolous purpose seems to me to be the kind of thing that could plausibly be immoral, as you render your hands less useful for some truly important functions. That said, there could be circumstantial factors that would render walking on your hands for long periods of time permissible even to the point of damage. Just because one type of activity is immoral in one situation, it doesn't mean that it will always be immoral.

(3) Finally, the money demand: "I need you to define what does constitute going against your body's natural functions as opposed to merely using it for an alternative use." Yup. This is tough, at least for me. But I shall do my best. If I end up missing the mark, perhaps others will sweep in to correct me. That said, there are a few things to say here:
a. One way to find out what the natural function of an organ is is to see what the majority of people (throughout the world and throughout human history and prehistory) do with it. This isn't foolproof; at best, it's merely suggestive--if almost everyone tends to act a certain way in certain situations, or has certain dispositions, this suggests that those ways of acting/dispositions are natural.
b. Another way is to look at what it could do for the human species or for individual humans who have it. The natural functions of the sex organs are fairly obvious: their function is for procreation. Now, from this one could say that going against their natural function would be something like using them for non-procreative sex. But this isn't the only thing you would have to say...you could say that as long as you use them in the manner they are intended to be used--i.e., in a manner that shares in the form of procreative sex--then you use them properly, even if the intention you have in using them is for physical pleasure.

I could go on but I think this is enough for now.

[Look, T.A., Bobcat used the phrase in passing in the course of a discussion. I don't find that discussion terribly tasteful and am probably going to be cutting it short, now. But do you _have_ to pick out the most distasteful phrase someone uses and make a comment just about that? Sorry to be heavy-handed, but please...LM]

Bobcat and Step2, I think you have done a good job of stating your positions, and I think Bobcat is doing a good job of arguing his, and I'm not faulting either of you for anything. But I think at this point it would be a good idea to end discussions that make reference to the mechanics of homosexual acts. It's difficult to know where to draw the line to have intelligent discussions of matters that, most unfortunately, are now matters of public policy dispute while at the same time keeping the blog family-friendly. You have both been most professional in your manner, and I've not said anything heretofore. But now, especially, that other commentators are taking occasion to pick up on the discussion and make frivolous comments about the specific phrases used, I'd like to ask for a moratorium from here on out on such explicit reference to the acts engaged in by homosexuals. Thanks.

I wondered about that myself, Lydia.

Well said Lydia and Bobcat. Being the person who started this whole discussion by simply protesting that sex with white women is not "integrally connected" to being a black male, etc. I'm still suprised how many strange turns the dialogue has taken.

Bobcat, I left a comment at your personal blog if you wish to continue.