Roger Scruton on why society should revile gays

Roger Scruton’s “Gay Reservations” is an essay published in the 1997 book “The Liberation Debate” published by Routledge and is in reply to an essay by Martha Nussbaum.

HIs argument is that a feeling of repulsion towards homosexual conduct is a societal good:

Quote:

The real question, therefore, is whether the feeling of revulsion towards the homosexual act is justifiable. This question can be answered only by a patient examination of the nature of sexual feeling, and its place both in the life of society, and in the life of the individual. I shall conclude with an outline of the case for thinking that the revulsion to which I have referred is a legitimate Schutzgefühl, the perpetuation of which is a human good. To the extent that this is so, then the public representation of homosexuality as a fully legitimate option threatens human fulfilment: it ‘liberates’ us from something which it is in our common interest to retain.

I don’t want to go into the rights and wrongs of whether such an argument should be put and Scruton has somewhat walked away from the position himself, saying that he would no longer defend this thesis. The essay does continue to be used in philosophy classes in Universities.

I won’t go into his full argument here as a point by point rebuttal would require an essay which would be too long for a post in this forum, however I don’t think that is necessary because Scruton begins with a premise which is demonstrably absurd:

Quote:

If the issue of gay liberation is to be rightly understood, it must be seen as one ‘moment’ in the confrontation, not merely between an old and a new morality, but between an old and a new way of describing sex. The new language robs desire of its intentionality, and therefore of its essence. Instead it offers ‘neutral’ descriptions in which sexual organs occupy the foreground, and eros slinks in shame away. These descriptions provide a constant pornographic background, a reminder that, since sex is ‘nothing but’ the pumping and throbbing of those once embarrassing glands (embarrassing only because we decked them out with needless scruples), it would be absurd to prohibit its expression.

“Must be” understood in terms of this language? Why?

It should be clear to anyone that it would not even be possible to understand the issue of gay liberation in terms of this language. Scruton himself points to the reason:

Quote:

In reality sexual behaviour has to do with courtship, desire, love, jealousy, marriage, grief, joy and intrigue. Such excitement as occurs is excitement of the whole person.

Exactly. And this goes for LGBT folks as well, although Scruton either does not know this or else wishes to deny it.

Either way, his argument is a non-starter. If he is honest in thinking gay and lesbian relationships involve nothing but “pumping and throbbing organs” then he has not even a rudimentary understanding of such relationships and so how can he offer an opinion on them?

Scruton’s rationale for adopting this peculiar language is that it was used by Richard Posner and that Martha Nussbaum has cited Posner and seems to have seen nothing wrong with this langauge.

So a conservative-leaning, heterosexual lawyer with little involvement in the gay liberation movement and writing nearly a quarter of a century after the beginning of that movement uses a certain kind of language and therefore we “must” use this language to understand gay liberation? No, that does not even remotely follow.

By insisting on adopting a language stripped of emotional content to speak of gay and lesbian relationships, Scruton inoculates himself against even a rudimentary understanding of such relationships and therefore deals himself out of the discussion.

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