‘Morality and Homosexuality’
Gold urges gays not to be defensive about their “life styles.” He thinks that the moral high ground has been conceded wrongly to those who think homosexuality is wrong. He writes that if he believed homosexuals were immoral, he would “try not to be one, even if it meant a painful struggle,” because he tries as hard as possible “to live a moral life.”
Gold is to be congratulated for taking this attitude. Let us hope that he will display the “honesty and courage” that he says it takes to defend homosexuality, in examining candidly the question of whether it is right or wrong. In his article he merely assumes the truth of his position. He questions, for example, whether the Bible “really” says that sodomy is wrong. One wonders how anyone, reading the story of Sodom, and Gomorrah, can have any doubt on that point. In any event, sodomy is not wrong because the Bible condemns it, rather the Bible condemns it because it is wrong--just as it condemns, murder, theft, adultery and perjury.
Sodomy is to be condemned because the rational--as distinct from revealed--ground of all morality is nature, and sodomy is against nature. This nation was founded upon an appeal to “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” By those very same laws, it was said that the “just powers of government” were derived from “the consent of the governed.” With respect to their right to be governed only by their own consent, it was held, “all men are created equal.” The great proposition of human equality is therefore based upon the truth--the self-evident truth--that all human beings share a common human nature.
All morality is grounded in the reality of nature. Mankind as a whole is recognized by its generations, like a river which is one and the same while the ever renewed cycles of birth and death flow on. But the generations are constituted--and can only be constituted--by the distinction between male and female, without which no generation--or generations--would be possible. Morality comes to sight as the relationship of husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters. From this it expands to include the clan, the city, the country, and mankind. But the root of all human relationships, the root of all morality, is nature, which itself is grounded in the generative distinction of male and female.
To regard this distinction as arbitrary is to regard all the distinctions upon which all morality rests--e.g. those which condemn slavery and genocide--as arbitrary. It implies that we are free to choose whether there are objective limitations upon human action, objective standards of right and wrong.
If Mr. Gold is really willing to debate the morality of sodomy and lesbianism, these are some of the arguments he must confront.
HARRY V. JAFFA
Claremont