User:MacMurrough/test

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Aquinas, Western thought, in contemplating homosexuality, has had recourse to arguments of nature. Plato described homosexual affairs as "contrary to nature"[1]; St Paul lamented the Roman women who "did change the natural use into that which is against nature"[2]; Aristotle considered pederastic propensities might arise "in some by nature"[3]; Aquinas contemplated the question "Whether the unnatural vice is the greatest sin among the species of lust?"[4]

The historian John Boswell in his 1980 study Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality[5] devotes many pages[6] to what these different notions of "nature" may mean. The semantic difficulties are not confined to classical or religious authors. Much of modern-day discourse on homosexuality centres on arguments of nature and naturalness.

"Homosexuality is not 'normal'. On the contrary, it is a challenge to the norm. Nature exists, whether academics like it or not. And in nature, procreation is the single, relentless rule. That is the norm. Our sexual bodies were designed for reproduction. Penis fits vagina: no fancy linguistic game-playing can change that biological fact." Camille Paglia[7].

A deconstruction of this quotation illustrates the varying, and sometimes contradictory, notions involved in the "argument of nature". "Penis fits vagina" invokes the concept of natural (or proper) function. "Our sexual bodies were designed for reproduction" alludes to the theological proposition of

Darwinian understanding. That there should be a "single, relentless rule" contradicts the notion of free will inherent in natural law and promotes instead a determinist view of human nature. The same phrase invokes the notion of laws of nature
, which here, being "rules" which can evidently be broken, are not descriptive, as in the usual scientific understanding, but prescriptive in a legalistic sense. There is a contextual conflation of normal with natural, and "challenge to the norm" points to the contrast of what is natural with what is perverted. Natural is also contrasted with artificial: "no fancy linguistic game-playing can change that biological fact".

This article discusses the differing semantic constructions of "nature" and "natural" in relation to discourse on homosexuality.

Nature as Exemplar

This argument can be characterized in the slogan "Dogs don't do it, therefore humans shouldn't." It relies for its authority on the notion that nature is a teacher: if a phenomenon does not appear in nature (that is, in this instance, in

is-ought problem, which states, briefly, that what ought to be cannot be inferred from what is. On a more practical level, as early as 1910, André Gide noted in Corydon
that dogs do indeed "do it", but that their owners are "inclined not to notice".

The argument is sometimes refined so as to exclude domesticated animals from the paradigm: animals in the wild don't do it, therefore humans shouldn't. In this form the argument logically posits a notion of humankind as ideally unsocial and that all forms of disapproved behaviour are the results of contamination from fellow humans.

In reality, instances of

bonobos, as if the fact that [[[homosexuality]]] is common among them made it any more natural than the fact that it is common in humans? Let people do what they feel like doing (so long as it doesn't hurt others). You don't need to justify it by looking to other species."[11]

Modern advocates of

NARTH, while admitting homosexual behaviour in animals, states "the term homosexuality should be limited to the human species, for in animals the investigator can ascertain only motor behavior. As soon as he interprets the animal's motivation he is applying human psychodynamics – a risky, if not foolhardy scientific approach."[12] And yet, anthropomorphism is ever-present in social discourse, as witnessed by the interested reactions to the film March of the Penguins
.

The argument of "nature as exemplar" has no obvious gay-activist counterpart: though

animal sexuality
may be of interest as a counter-argument to the "unnaturalness" of homosexuality, the slogan "Dogs do it, therefore so must I" has rarely been recorded.

Human Nature

Natural Law

Natural Function

Notes

  1. ^ Plato. The Laws, Bk 1. Jowett translation.
  2. ^ Rom 1:26 KJV.
  3. ^ Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics, Bk 7, Ch 5. Ross translation.
  4. ^ St Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica II-II, Question 154 On Lust, Article 12. Fathers of the English Dominican Province translation.
  5. ^ Boswell, John. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, 1980. University of Chicago Press.
  6. ^ passim, but spec. Chapter 11 and Introduction pp 11-15.
  7. ^ Paglia, Camille. Vamps and Tramps, pp. 70-71.
  8. ^ Bagemihl, Bruce. Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. St. Martin's Press, 1999. ISBN 0-312-19239-8
  9. ^ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0722_040722_gayanimal.html National Geographic News: Homosexual Activity Among Animals Stirs Debate]
  10. ^ Roughgarden, Joan. Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People. UC Press, 2004. Interview with Stanford Magazine: http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2004/mayjun/features/roughgarden.html
  11. ^ http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/FAQs.shtml Richard Dawkins: Frequently Asked Questions.
  12. ^ "http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/narth/exploding.html Exploding the Myth of Constitutional Homosexuality", National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality.
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