Richard Swinburne's argument that homosexuality is a disability

This argument caused a bit of a ruckus not so long ago.

Swinburne, as part of a lecture on Christian moral teaching, wonders why God prohibits homosexuality. He says:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard Swinburne So I pass to consider what reason God would have for prohibiting such acts; and I suggest that the same kind of consideration applies to the prohibition of homosexual acts as to the prohibition of divorce or extra-marital intercourse. Having homosexual orientation is a disability – for a homosexual cannot beget children through a loving act with a person to whom they have a unique lifelong commitment.

It seems an interesting take on what constitutes a disability.

Suppose for the moment that we would accept that this is a "disabiility", notice that a bisexual does not have this disability..

So if this was God's reason for prohibiting homosexual acts then it would imply that there is no prohibition on homosexual acts by a bisexual. I don't think that this consequence would suit him or other Christian conservatives.

Come to think of it, the premise is incorrect in any case. Swinburne is assuming that having loving sex with someone requires sexual attraction both ways. Not so. You can love someone without being sexually attracted to them and you can have loving sex without being sexually attracted. Indeed there have been many lifelong committed relationships not based on sexual attraction.

Granted it is not what most gays or lesbians would choose, not what most would consider a path to fulfillment, but there is no "cannot" about it, therefore not a "disability".

And of course there are many happy gay and lesbian couples bringing up their happy well-adjusted children, although this is something he denies.

Richard Swinburne is adamant not only that homosexuality is a disability but that it must be cured, and prevented. He makes it clear he does not mean cure in any sort of spiritual way, but in a medical way:

Quote:

Medicine has made great strides in recent years. Diseases of mind or body hitherto believed incurable have proved curable; it would be odd if sexual orientation was the only incurable condition.

He is also interested in prevention and opines that making homosexuality socially unacceptable would prevent most young people from developing homosexuality:

Quote:

So if there was a general recognition in society of an obligation to abstain from homosexual acts, that would prevent homosexual behaviour being presented as an option for young people of equal value to the heterosexual one which makes possible procreative marriage. That would deter the young from wondering whether they are really homosexual when previously it would not have occurred to them, in consequence experimenting with homosexual sexual acts, getting accustomed to such behaviour and so developing a homosexual orientation. Such a climate of opinion that homosexual acts are wrong,would encourage those who have begun to develop such an orientation to go no further; and it would encourage research into how the orientation can be cured.

He gives no indication of being aware that social acceptability of gay and lesbian relationships is a fairly recent occurrence and one still limited to western countries and not all of them either.

So we have no indication of why he thinks that something that has been tried for centuries in most parts of the world and is the case in many countries today and has not had the effect he desires, would work.

He also shows the way for the gay community to help stamp out this "disability":

Quote:

Yet if older and incurable homosexuals abstained from homosexual acts that would have a great influence on young and curable ones; and the older ones would be doing a great service to others, and one which would help to make them themselves saints.

Anyway, you can read it for yourselves:

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~orie0087/pdf_...20teaching.pdf

(NB, I did a quick search for a previous thread on this and could not find one. I may have missed it though, and if so, sorry for the doubling up)

via International Skeptics Forum http://bit.ly/2SmNu0J