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A Counterpetition to the APA Emerges: Discrimination Against Gay Men and Women Really Isn’t Discrimination!

Brian Leiter

The petition is here.  Its arguments were addressed in the earlier thread, but this has made no impact on these philosophers.  I applaud them, though, for signing their their names to this, rather than "signing" anonymously (which is tantamount to not signing–the same person could "sign anonymously" 200 times).  So far it has 39 actual signatures; I shall be interested to see how it fares over the coming weeks.  (The original petition now has over 1200 signatures; I am surprised, frankly, that it does not have more, given how reasonable its position is:  the APA should either enforce its non-discrimination policy, or abandon it.  If this involved racial discrimination, no one [one hopes!] would hestitate in the least just because some religious traditions sanctioned such discrimination.)   

Comments on the merits of the new petition are welcome.  Signed comments only, and keep it substantive. 

UPDATE:  I realize this petition is highly offensive to many people, but I would really urge folks not to post 'fake' signatures.  I am genuinely curious to see which philosophy professors are willing to sign their name to this.  The enterprise ought to proceed without Cyber-vandalism.

ADDDENDUM:  May I ask that the jackass who keeps adding my name to this petition stop this childish vandalism.  No one believes I would sign it, so you are just wasting the time of the petition organizers, who have to then remove my name.

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50 responses to “A Counterpetition to the APA Emerges: Discrimination Against Gay Men and Women Really Isn’t Discrimination!”

  1. Non-APA member

    I'm interested in signing (the original), but I'm not a member of the APA. I planned to join this semester, but given all the complaints about the organization at the eastern meeting and now this, I'm less inclined to join right now. Long story short, can non-members sign the original petition? I see reasons on both sides.

    Reply
  2. Sarah

    Using the phrasing homosexual acts "among" faculty, staff, and students, rather than "by" sounds suspicious.

    Reply
  3. Mark Murphy

    The first thing to be said in favor of this counter-petition is that it takes issue at precisely the right point: it denies that the defenders of the original petition have made their case that Wheaton et al. are discriminating in their hiring policy in the relevant sense of 'discrimination.' It is obvious that their policies do not involve intentional targeting of those with homosexual orientation. Anyone who denies this needs to get a clearer grip on the notion of 'intention.'

    In the absence of intentional targeting, what needs to be articulated is the standard that is being applied to show discrimination. It needs to be shown that it does not have absurd implications in obviously innocent cases, and that it can be otherwise plausibly supported. It has been claimed the fact of discrimination is obvious, but apparently, it is not obvious enough, and so it would be a service to make the relevant standard explicit. If this standard requires certain empirical claims to be true, it would be useful if the relevant empirical evidence be brought forward. It would also be useful if it could be shown under what criteria it has been decided that this is the best interpretation of the APA rule.

    One further thing. Folks in previous threads seem to think that it is obvious that if an institution has a rule covering a certain case, then that rule ought to be applied by that institution in that case. But it is obvious that there is a gap between holding that, in fact, a rule applies in a certain case and holding that the institution ought to invoke that rule in a certain case. (Everybody believes this; it’s the basis for, among other things, prosecutorial discretion.) So even those who believe that Wheaton et al. fall under the policy have to ask themselves 'Ought the APA to invoke this policy against Wheaton et al.?' That is why defenders of the current application of the APA policy come here and talk about (to much frustration) what one can reasonably believe vis-a-vis the morality of homosexual conduct — they likely doubt the efficacy of argument on the subject of the morality of homosexual conduct on a blog site, or maybe just this site, but perhaps hope, though maybe in vain, that there is greater likelihood of progress thinking about when an institution ought to, or even must, attempt to apply its own rules in a given case.

    Reply
  4. Jamie Dreier

    Brian, it's going to be difficult to say anything both new and substantive about the petition. Alastair Norcross and Derek Bowman did a fairly good job in the earlier thread, I thought, and it's hard to know what to add. How about this. A policy forbidding homosexual acts obviously discriminates against homosexual human beings, notwithstanding the conceptual distinction between a kind of act and a disposition to perform that act.

    Speaking of conceptual issues: I see that some professional philosophers have 'signed' the new petition… anonymously. Yes, the concept of a petition is an exceptionally difficult one, so I can understand the confusion.

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  5. Ben

    Does the third paragraph imply an inference from "Many of the greatest philosophers in history have argued that P" to "It is indefensible that the APA stigmatize P as philosophically beyond the pale"?

    I am not sure that this is a good inference. The antecedent is probably true if we substitute all sorts of nasty things about women in for P, but in that case the consequent would probably be false.

    Reply
  6. Stan Wood

    There certainly is a difference between a particular 'orientation' and that orientation put into action, i.e. an act. Though if the counter-petition's argument is that one is capable of discriminating only against those that act upon their orientation while not against the broader category of those that have that particular orientation, then it seems to me that it is legitimate to hire a person who have an orientation towards a particular religious faith on the proviso they don't act on that faith (e.g. attending services, partaking in Communion etc.) (Given an argument that religion is 'morally objectionable' which I think is just as plausible as the traditions that claim themselves to be ethical arguments against homosexuality.) But surely this would be discrimination, would it not?

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  7. Charles Hermes

    I'm glad to have heard from many non-members of the APA that they would like to sign the original petition. Nevertheless, doing so would be a bit counterproductive for the petition. The APA is an organization that is controlled by its members. If only members sign then it is a demand from within the institution to change its policy. A petition that had non-members signing could certainly get a few more signatures, but would not motivate the APA as successfully. Given the unfortunate state of affairs in our world, I am sure that the counter-petition could generate many signatures from non-APA members. In fact, unless many members of the APA are named "Anonymous" it is hard to tell whether the counter petition is being signed by APA members. Also, notice that almost every person who signed the initial petition proudly listed their university affiliation. I'm not surprised that those who have signed the counter petition have not followed this practice. I certainly would not want to clearly identify myself if I chose to make a stand for bigotry.

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  8. Jon Cogburn

    I can't be alone in wondering how many forgeries are on this petition.

    Out of only 46 people we have Roger Scruton, Alvin Plantinga, Alisdair MacIntyre, William Lane Craig, Robert Koons, and Daniel Bonevac all signed? It's like someone knew a list of notable "conservative" philosophers and just put their names on. Maybe all five view their conservatism in terms of the United States Republican Party's closet-case obsession with homosexuality, but this is hard for me to believe. Does anyone see Scruton, God love him, really signing any kind of petition? Or the MacIntyre of "Dependent Rational Animals" affixing his name to this? Maybe I'm wrong, but it certainly doesn't smell right.

    If anyone reading this is in contact with the above (Brian?), they should probably call or e-mail them to let them know that their names are on the petition, just in case they are forgeries.

    REPLY FROM BL: Jon, someone is monitoring the signatures, since some genius signed my name to the petition, but it's now gone.

    Reply
  9. Anonymousgradstudent

    Mark,

    What you’re demanding can be easily given. Here's a nice, neat definition of the sort of discrimination that Wheaton et al. are guilty of: discrimination is the act of excluding someone from a position on the basis of characteristics that are completely irrelevant to that person's job qualifications.

    By placing a "no homosexual behavior" clause in their job applications, the universities in question are discriminating.

    Further, discrimination is bad. The APA is right to have an anti-discrimination policy.

    There you are. Now that we've settled that issue, I suggest we withhold membership dues to the APA until they enforce their own policy about the JFP.

    Reply
  10. Michael Glawson

    It's really frustrating to me to see this sort of discrimination compared (as in this post) to racial discrimination. The two are plainly not analogous since it's at least plausible that homosexual practices are immoral, while it's utterly implausible that it's wrong to be a certain race. That, plus the fact that schools are well within their rights to require a certain standard of conduct from their faculty and students – especially a moral standard – seems to warrant far more charity toward these schools than is being offered here.

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  11. Jon Cogburn

    The strange thing about the petition is that it mentions that great philosophers have written against homosexuality. Why is that relevant? A distressing percentage of great philosophers expressed nothing but contempt for women in their published writing. I do not doubt that it is greater than the number of great philosophers who intoned about homosexuality, Schopenhauer being the only one I can think of (didn't Kant write bizarre things about masturbation?); and he argues that evolution reliably selects for homosexuality (though, like so much else, the particulars of his view are admittedly weird in hindsight). In any case nobody takes the contempt towards women (or any other group of powerless historically maligned people) of many great philosophers to be relevant to applying the discrimination policy as at applies to other forms discrimination. Why are the signatories not counting their relevance towards discriminating against everyone else but do count their relevance towards the issue of discriminating against homosexuals?

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  12. Aaron Maltais

    Just curious about US labour law; why isn't it illegal for an employer to include a prohibition on legal, private, and non job related sexual acts as a condition of employment?

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  13. Michael Ryan

    Mark Murphy writes:

    "One further thing. Folks in previous threads seem to think that it is obvious that if an institution has a rule covering a certain case, then that rule ought to be applied by that institution in that case. But it is obvious that there is a gap between holding that, in fact, a rule applies in a certain case and holding that the institution ought to invoke that rule in a certain case. (Everybody believes this; it’s the basis for, among other things, prosecutorial discretion.) So even those who believe that Wheaton et al. fall under the policy have to ask themselves 'Ought the APA to invoke this policy against Wheaton et al.?'"

    This is an incredibly weak argument. Surely if an institution has a rule, and it covers a given case, then there is a very strong prima facie reason to apply it in that case. The only situation in which it would make sense not to apply the rule is one in which exceptional circumstances obtain. But what exceptional circumstances obtain in the present case? Will Wheaton College et. al go bankrupt if the APA doesn't post their job ads??

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  14. GradStudent

    "Discrimination Against Gay Men and Women Really Isn't Discrimination!"

    This is just not at all an accurate depiction of the counterpetition. Rather, the claim is that homosexual activity is to be distinguished from homosexual preference, and only the latter is protected by the current APA anti-discrimination policy. Maybe it's still discrimination, (though surely some would dispute this), but it is not in violation of the APA statement.

    What can be said to this? In particular, what do you say to John Heard and Eve Tushnet? (Before reading the petition, I had not heard of either.) Both identify as homosexuals, and both are chaste. Do we tell them that they no longer count as homosexual, as having that kind of sexual preference? Of course not. Chastity doesn't change one's sexual preference. (Or so it seems to me.)

    But if we concede that they are homosexual, we concede that sexual preference and sexual behavior are not one and the same. (We shouldn't even really have to argue for this point, as far as I can tell.)
    It seems very likely to me that a place like Wheaton would be thrilled to have a vocal, chaste homosexual Christian on their faculty…and if that is the case, then they cannot be accused of discriminating on the basis of sexual preference. Sexual behavior, yes, but not sexual preference–and only the latter appears in the anti-discrimination clause.

    This is what I took the counterpetition to be saying and it seems to me to be a perfectly valid response to the petition.

    I'd be interested in hearing responses to this.

    Reply
  15. Wes McMichael

    It seems to me that only APA members should be allowed to sign either of these petitions. The APA is a private organization funded by our dues. As such, they should be primarily concerned with our views.

    According to the APA's database, 26 non-members have signed the counter-petition (I'll provide a list of non-members in a subsequent comment and let Dr. Leiter decide whether or not to post them) along with 8 anonymous signers. That means only 15 of the first 49 signatures are from APA members appearing in the database.

    I would be extremely disturbed if the organization to which I pay dues (and as a student, $35 isn't always easy to come by) bowed to the wishes of non-members over its members.

    Reply
  16. Wes McMichael

    The following 26 names that appear within the first 49 signatures of the counter-petition do not appear in the APA database. Additionally, there are 8 anonymous "signatures" on the petition.

    Timothy McGrew
    Lydia McGrew
    James G. Hanink
    Roger Scruton
    Ann Hartle
    Alexander R Pruss
    Jeffrey Koperski
    Christopher Kaczor
    John DePoe
    Isaac D. True
    James Stump
    Ronald K Tacelli
    Jim Spiegel
    Anthony McCarthy
    Victor Reppert
    David Bradshaw
    Michael P. Foley
    William A. Dembski
    Giuseppe Butera
    Theodore P. Rebard
    Mary C. Sommers
    Kevin Diller
    Gregory Koukl
    J. Budziszewski
    Michael Garcia
    Lukáš Novák

    Reply
  17. Matt Burstein

    For those without the time to read the petition, here's my favorite part:

    "Historically, many of the greatest philosophers have argued that homosexual acts are morally objectionable. The position implied by the proposed policy–that this view is philosophically beyond the pale and should be stigmatized by the APA–is indefensible. "

    I'm not sure that this even rises to the level of being wrong, and as a result it is hard to know exactly how to reply. It seems to me that it would be trivial to generate a nearly endless number of arguments of the form "Historically, many of the greatest philosophers have argued that , therefore it is indefensible to think that is beyond the pale", where could include some of the classic racist or sexist or anti-semitic or classist elements of philosophy. Heck, I think we might even have a justification for the APA approving of discrimination against Christianity and social conservatives.

    This, if I'm not mistaken, brings us full circle and justifies the current APA policy as it is described by the petitioners:

    "The present policies of the APA prohibit discrimination based on religion or political convictions. But the policy recommended attempts to segregate and penalize religious institutions for abiding by their long-standing and coherent ethical norms."

    That is one hot philosophical mess, indeed.

    Reply
  18. J. Edward Hackett

    The counter-petition makes a counter-intuitive claim. In their own words, the petition says:

    "Institutions can require their faculty to agree to abide by ethical standards that forbid homosexual acts while not ipso facto discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. The conceptual distinction between a certain kind of act and a disposition to perform that kind of act is one that no philosopher would fail to acknowledge in other ethical contexts. We fail to see why it should be ignored in this one."

    The distinction between acts of homosexuality and discrimination of someone's sexual orientation cannot be held. In general, many ethical theorists hold that an agent has some ownership of their action, and that consistent aggregrate performance of a type of action demonstrates stated preferences of character. In this case, homosexual acts reveal an aspect of someone's identity that "cuts all the way down." Expression of one's sexual identity only makes sense along these lines–identity and preferred acts speak volumes about people. You cannot make sense of someone's sexual orientation apart from the acts that embody and constitute that identity.

    Consider a logical substitution. Say Wheaton really has it in for Star Wars fans, but maintain that we are not discriminating against SW fans, but only acts of SW fan indulgence (watching the SW movies, reading Dark Horse comics and the like). My only reason for doing these things is that I identify myself as a SW fan (Geek) initially. My identity is wrapped up in what I love to do. Moreover, an attack on my freedom to watch movies and read what I want on the level of action is therefore an attack on me, my Geekdom. Now, I want to stop with this analogy. I am not trying to trivialize sexual identity with my chosen example, but merely hoping to prompt people out of thinking that such a distinction between acts of an identity and identity can meaningfully be maintained.

    Finally, someone needs to say it. The Christian religion is, in my opinion, a false view ontologically, metaphysically, epistemologically and lastly, morally. In terms of ethics, there are a host of other theories that give us action-guidance more regularly and consistently than the hermeneutics of a mythic book. The contemporary climate of naturalism in philosophy (broadly construed) is more successful and in some major ways, philosophically more responsible of a view to maintain. For these reasons, Christianity really has nothing productive to say on moral matters that other moral theories cannot already do (I leave open what type of ethical theory that would be).

    Reply
  19. Jon Cogburn

    To properly understand the APA policy we must distinguish between discrimination against black people (which would be wrong, of course), and discrimination against black people who can't pass for white (which of course is not really discrimination since it only concerns behavior (I include Jacksonian skin bleaching under the rubric "behavior") and since several great philosophers have said relevant things).

    I hope that we all believe that this would be a vicious and morally depraved use of a distinction. But then, again, why is it not beyond the pale to it against homosexuals the way the signatories do?

    Reply
  20. Mark Murphy

    Anonymousgradstudent: Either 'serving as a model of someone trying to live up to the community's moral standards' can be part of a job description or it cannot. If it can, then what Wheaton is asking of job candidates is part of their job description. If it cannot, then the standard has absurd consequences as an account of what discrimination is.

    Michael Ryan: What I offered what not an argument but a question. Since the move from 'this rule applies here' to 'those with the authority to invoke this rule ought to invoke it' can be unjustified in lots of instances, can we give an informative account of when one is justified making that move, and if so, do the Wheaton cases fall under it? I also asked whether the existence of reasonable disagreement over whether the rule applies might be a reason not to cross that gap.

    Reply
  21. Matt Burstein

    Wes:

    The "counterpetition" does not require APA membership; it is open to all "professional philosophers, including those affiliated with academic institutions or think tanks, independent scholars, and graduate students". Perhaps this makes the petition less relevant, since the issue raised by the Hermes petition isn't being posed to just any philosophers, but rather to those of us who pay our dues to this particular association of philosophers.

    Reply
  22. Mike Otsuka

    Some questions for anyone who supports this petition:

    Suppose that a university (or college) does not merely prohibit ‘homosexual acts’ but also explicitly prohibits those with a gay or lesbian sexual orientation from membership in their faculty. Suppose that it does so on religiously-rooted grounds akin to those that Pope Benedict has enunciated, in his ‘Instruction concerning the criteria of vocational discernment regarding persons with homosexual tendencies’, against the admission into a seminary or ordination of those who have ‘profoundly deep-rooted homosexual tendencies’: namely, that such tendencies are ‘objectively disordered’ and such people, by virtue of this tendency, ‘find themselves, in fact, in a situation that gravely obstructs a right way of relating with men and women’.

    Would you maintain that such a university ought to be permitted to advertise in Jobs for Philosophers and therefore object to the APA’s present policy, which prohibits ads from universities that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation?

    Or would you maintain that, even if Pope Benedict’s grounds are sufficient to justify an exclusion from the clergy on the basis of sexual orientation, such grounds are not sufficient to justify a university’s banning the employment of a university teacher on the basis of sexual orientation?

    If you would maintain the latter, then why don’t you adopt a similar stance towards those universities that ban faculty from engaging in homosexual acts?: i.e., even if there’s sufficient reason to exclude those who engage in homosexual acts from the clergy, such grounds are not sufficient to justify a university’s banning the employment of university teachers who realize their homosexual tendencies within, say, the privacy of their own homes.

    There are, I realize, a number of distinctions one might draw between homosexual orientation and homosexual sex. One might maintain, for example, that the latter is immoral whereas the former is not – it is merely an ‘objective disorder’ which cannot be helped.

    But surely the fact that one is ‘objectively disordered’ in a manner that ‘gravely obstructs a right way of relating with men and women’ might provide grounds against being hired, even if one cannot help this ‘disorder’. Even though it cannot be helped, a person’s schizophrenia might so ‘gravely obstruct[] a right way of relating with men and women’ that this person could not effectively serve as a university teacher, which would provide sufficient grounds against hiring him.

    One might concede that if someone had an objective disorder that gravely obstructs a right way of relating with men and women, that would be sufficient grounds for not hiring this person. But one might reject, as unreasonable, Pope Benedict’s claim that a homosexual orientation constitutes such a disorder. One might do so even if this belief is deeply rooted in religious tradition and held by a religious authority whose teachings are supposed to be followed by millions of Americans.

    But if one does that, what is to stop others from rejecting, as unreasonable, the claim that there’s something morally wrong with having sex with a member of the same sex?

    Reply
  23. Tait Szabo

    "It's really frustrating to me to see this sort of discrimination compared (as in this post) to racial discrimination. The two are plainly not analogous since it's at least plausible that homosexual practices are immoral, while it's utterly implausible that it's wrong to be a certain race."

    That's just it. It is utterly implausible that homosexual practices are immoral. The only case that I can see being made for the claim that "it's at least plausible that homosexual practices are immoral" is a dubious appeal to authority (to put it mildly).

    With respect to the act/orientation distinction, some defenders of the counter-petition continue to express frustration that the rest of us just don't get it, but here is the point (which has been made again and again): even if there is a real distinction, it is irrelevant to the case at hand. Discrimination against homosexual acts cannot be distinguished from discrimination against homosexual orientation in any morally relevant way (as has also been shown again and again). Continuing to point out that there is a distinction between act and orientation is to continue to miss the point.

    Reply
  24. Christopher Pynes

    I find it interesting that there are only 50 signatures on this petition after a good 12 hours. How many did Hermes have after that amount of time 400 or so. It surely had 50 real signatures in under an hour.

    Here is the dilemma for any signer of the petition: Accept being called a bigot OR explain why the arguments against them aren’t cogent. Other than some silly bluster about behavior/orientation distinction, they don’t have any good arguments to support the discrimination nor do they have good arguments as to why the APA shouldn’t enforce their policy.

    Surely no self-respecting philosopher would sign and not defend their view as NOT a bigot. So, I just don’t see anything in it for an APA member to sign even if they believe in having policies they don’t enforce. Because if you have this belief, it is consistent with having a discrimination policy you don’t enforce. And if you go that far, then why have the discrimination policy at all. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for the signer of the petition on any account. Thus, I bet the list will remain small and embarrassing and largely faked.

    Reply
  25. kris k.

    I'd like to expand on Tait Szabo's argument against Michael Glawson, the racism analogy, the petition, and the supposed relevance of the act/preference distinction for anti-homosexual hiring practices.

    Suppose Bob Jones University instituted a policy of hiring black people only as long as they promised to never have sex. Bob Jones might justify this by saying, "We love black people, and black people can't help being black, but we find sex amongst black people to be immoral, and so we've banned it, but we're not discriminating against blacks because they don't have to act on their immoral preferences."

    Of course, we'd all recognize this as thinly veiled discrimination, even if the people who held these views did so honestly as part of some religious or moral code.

    It's important to note that the idea that sex amongst black people is immoral is ridiculous, but I can imagine a clever -though vile- argument being made for this claim. Perhaps you could base said argument on some sort of -we would say false- claim that blacks are intrinsically designed to be slaves, that their libido is unnaturally strong, and they therefore cannot make good choices about sex, and so it's natural that their sexual impulses be controlled and regulated. Granted, any argument like this will have serious, glaring flaws, but so too does the case against homosexual sex.

    If you'd like a more real world scenario, I can imagine a school banning interracial sex as a backdoor way of discriminating against blacks. And, as we all know, if you look back a few decades, you can find arguments that say miscegenation is immoral, just like you can find arguments against homosexual sex. but this really proves nothing about whether policies that clearly discriminate against interracial couples would meet the APA's standards for discrimination.

    Anyway, this has all been said before.

    Reply
  26. Les Green

    Mike Otsuka writes, "surely the fact that one is ‘objectively disordered’ in a manner that ‘gravely obstructs a right way of relating with men and women’ might provide grounds against being hired, even if one cannot help this ‘disorder’."

    Caution, Mike. Homophobia and the superstitions that legitimate it tend to be *highly* obstructive in developing a right way of relating to men and women, and especially to homosexual ones. In my experience, almost none who have these dispositions are to blame for them, and by the time they are deeply-set they are in practise immutable. Reparative therapy–not to say reasoned argument– has proven utterly ineffective. But surely we want to tolerate homophobes in the academy–provided of course they do not in professional circumstances *act* on their regrettable dispositions, that is, provide they do not discriminate against women, gay students, etc. I suppose we could require them to sign on to codes of non-discriminatory conduct as a condition of employment.

    Reply
  27. Chris Swoyer

    The emergence of the counterpetition is a good occasion for those of us who strongly disagree with it to make a renewed effort (a surge, if you will) to alert more people to the original petition and urge them to sign it. I've found many colleagues who would like to sign but simply didn't know about it.

    Reply
  28. Kate Abramson

    Jon (upthread)– I, for one, do not find it the least bit implausible that Plantinga and MacIntyre would sign that 'petition' (single quotes for a 'petition' that can be signed anonymously). Not the least little bit surprising.
    And I'm with BL on watching with great interest who else signs it–non anonymously, that is.

    Reply
  29. Charles Hermes

    So far I have deleted six names from the original petition because they were not members of the APA. I want to thank those signers for not only placing their names on the petition, but proudly identifying which university they are affiliated with. Many of them informed me that they would like their names removed to ensure that our petition is a demand from within the APA. I hope non-members of the APA continue to place external pressure on the APA by contributing to these discussions and informing colleagues of the petition. If supporters of the counter petition create a list like the one that Wes McMichael has for the counter petition, and e-mail it to me I will eliminate those names from the petition. I have also received twelve e-mails from non-members of the APA asking if they could sign. I asked them not to. Fortunately, while the counter petition has 52 signers only 16 members of the APA have so far been proud enough of their bigotry to sign the counter petition.

    Reply
  30. Matt Hart

    Firstly, I'd like to point out that the institutions in question, Wheaton, Biola et al, aim to give a RELIGIOUS education, not merely an education. In that case, practicing homosexuals would be RELIGIOUSLY unfit to help students get their religiously orientated education. So it's not discrimination – practising homosexuals just couldn't cut it, in the estimation of the above institutions.

    And why do people so arrogantly assume that there are no good arguments for the immorality of homosexuality? There are LOADS.

    1) You could argue that disgust (in appropriate conditions) is a good guide to what's wrong. Who doesn't believe that?

    2) You could argue that homosexuality is a radically inferior sexual mode – men are driven to penetrate for example, but in homosexual sex, only one person penetrates the other – and to consistently prefer an inferior sexual mode over a superior one is sexually perverse, and that perversities are bad.

    3) You could also argue that homosexuality has a lot in common with established sexual malpractices like paedophilia – peadophiles, like homosexuals, often come from broken homes, have social problems etc. – and thus get a sort of inductive argument for the immorality of homosexuality.

    4) Finally, there is also the appeal to authority. You argue that God exists, that Christianity or whatever is the most plausible of the world's religions, and that the Christian God says it's wrong. God knows better than we do, so we should trust him. (A corollary of this is that if you want to argue that homosexuality is obviously right, then you are going to have to argue that Christianity is obviously false. Good luck!)

    Even if you ultimately disagree with these conclusions, the fact is they represent plausible lines of argumentation. Who gives the APA the right to decide which arguments are good and which aren't?

    Reply
  31. Brian Leiter

    Lest anyone has any doubt, I am approaching moderation of these threads in a Millian spirit (within certain limits of relevance etc.): even bad arguments and false ideas should be expressed as a means to arriving at more plausible and defensible views.

    Reply
  32. Les Green

    Amongst Matt Hart's arguments we find "2) You could argue that homosexuality is a radically inferior sexual mode – men are driven to penetrate for example, but in homosexual sex, only one person penetrates the other…"

    This is *very* interesting. Exactly how many people penetrate the other in heterosexual (penetrative) sex? And why is penetration-maximization a good-making characteristic of sex? And why is a disposition to sub-optimal penetration a justification for discrimination in employment? I'd love to hear more about this. (Does it depend on the line of work one has in mind?)

    Reply
  33. John Turri

    Matt,

    I didn't know that 'you argue that God exists, [etc.]' was a performative utterance! Good thing for you that it is, because after uttering it you then got to demand that your opponents "have to argue that Christianity is obviously false." That's right, obviously false, not merely false!

    Reply
  34. Peter Alward

    Matt

    If these are the best arguments for the immorality of homosexuality (note the abandonment of the distinction between homosexuality and homosexual sex), then the charge that there are no plausible arguments for this position has been decisively established. The suggestion that homosexual men are perverse, and hence immoral, b/c they prefer to be penetrated despite being driven to penetrate is a particular howler.

    Reply
  35. Christopher Pynes

    Matt has now given us an instance of LOADS! 4! I have $4 in my pocket: loads of cash! Matt, I didn't write arguments, I wrote good arguments. You don't have any GOOD/COGENT arguments.

    Nice to know that icky things are bad and your wife/girlfriend is having inferior sex because of that inferior mode of hers. This might have been an over share on your part.

    I fail to see how homosexuals are similar to pedophiles. (I really feel bad for gay men that have to deal with this type of comment.) And how living in a broken home makes one either gay or a pedophile. And aren't about half of all Christians from broken homes since they have similar divorce rates to the rest of the country? Very interesting!

    And Mr. Hart. Are you a member of the APA? If so, then why didn't you proudly sign the petition? I didn't see your name with the other 62 or so people that signed it unless of course you are one of the anonymous bigots.

    If discrimination weren't so serious your comments might have made me laugh. — LOADS — broken homes —…

    Reply
  36. Eric

    Matt said,

    "1) You could argue that disgust (in appropriate conditions) is a good guide to what's wrong. Who doesn't believe that?"

    I don't.

    This argument is clearly open to an easy reductio. A racist can (and will) use his visceral reaction of disgust to interracial sexual relationships, civil rights for minorities, and the election of a black President to justify his beliefs of racial separatism and 'white purity'. Since disgust guides the racist's reaction, according to Matt, then it's a 'good guide to what's wrong'. Clearly, this is a conclusion that most of the folks who would be willing to sign the counter 'petition' would want to deny.

    My guess is that Matt would try to differentiate the 'appropriate conditions' for disgust in such a way to make racial disgust inappropriate but disgust over sexual behaviors or orientation appropriate, but that would seem to beg the question at hand.

    Reply
  37. kris k.

    I'm assuming Matt Hart's comments are some sort of Stephen Colbert-esque performance art: parodying a position by taking it to a stupid extreme. (I only realized this after typing out a response to his penetration argument asking whether dentistry, nose picking, and colonoscopies were equally immoral.) Of course, the strongest argument that homosexual sex is immoral is that it constitutes an unnatural use of sex organs, which goes against their telos, but even that argument is quite weak for obvious reasons.

    But none of this matters, because the mere fact that there is an argument against homosexuality is irrelevant to the question of whether the APA should give schools a place to advertise and interview for jobs that violate the APA's anti-discrimination rules.

    Indeed, there are arguments -I'd say bad arguments- for a variety of racist positions, including natural law based arguments against miscegenation, but this doesn't mean that schools with hiring policies that ould discriminate on the basis of race, or against blacks who or marry whites, can escape violating the APA's anti discrimination policy just by citing said arguments. The same holds true of schools that discrimate against homosexuals.

    Reply
  38. Tait Szabo

    Lest I just seem arrogant, I'll take a shot at these arguments.

    "1) You could argue that disgust (in appropriate conditions) is a good guide to what's wrong. Who doesn't believe that?"

    What are the appropriate conditions? In any case, I don't believe this. I am disgusted by the thought of eating snails, and yet I do not believe that my feelings of disgust tell me anything about the morality of eating snails. Furthermore, I very much doubt that homosexuals are disgusted by homosexual behavior, and I'd guess that maybe some of them are disgusted by heterosexual behavior. Actually, if you think about it in a certain way, all sexual behavior seems rather disgusting – thank goodness it's also often pleasurable!

    "2) You could argue that homosexuality is a radically inferior sexual mode – men are driven to penetrate for example, but in homosexual sex, only one person penetrates the other – and to consistently prefer an inferior sexual mode over a superior one is sexually perverse, and that perversities are bad."

    I'm not sure where to begin. Generally, when I've engaged in heterosexual activity, there has also only been one person penetrating. Maybe I'm missing out on something, but in any case I can hardly see the moral relevance of the number of people penetrating. Is more penetration better than less? Hurray for orgies. Is less penetration better than more? Let's all be abstinent. Furthermore, I'd like to know what you mean by "perverse."

    "3) You could also argue that homosexuality has a lot in common with established sexual malpractices like paedophilia – peadophiles, like homosexuals, often come from broken homes, have social problems etc. – and thus get a sort of inductive argument for the immorality of homosexuality."

    These are some doubtful empirical claims. Nevertheless, even if the empirical claims are on track, I'm not sure how much that would establish. The commonalities need to be shown to be relevant. Suppose a high number of social workers also come from broken homes, have suffered social problems themselves, and so on – so what? Should we think that it is immoral to be a social worker just because they have that in common with pedophiles? Surely not.

    "4) Finally, there is also the appeal to authority. You argue that God exists, that Christianity or whatever is the most plausible of the world's religions, and that the Christian God says it's wrong. God knows better than we do, so we should trust him. (A corollary of this is that if you want to argue that homosexuality is obviously right, then you are going to have to argue that Christianity is obviously false. Good luck!)"

    As I suspected. Unfortunately, there are too many steps here, all of which are rather contentious. But let's just address the moral claims. Where does the Christian God say that homosexuality is wrong? What else does he say is wrong? What good reason explains the fact that these other prohibitions are no longer respected, but that homosexuality is still such a vitally important issue? What is the limit of our trust in God's judgments? Is there none? And what grounds do we have for believing that we ought to trust God's judgments in the first place? He may know more than we do, but how can we claim that he is good, and thus trustworthy, in any meaningful way without applying some god-independent standard of goodness? This argument is difficult to accept even for many Christians.

    As Peter Alward noted, I think it is safe to say that "If these are the best arguments for the immorality of homosexuality…then the charge that there are no plausible arguments for this position has been decisively established."

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  39. Peter Alward

    Kris K

    I think you miss the point of Matt's arguments. As I read him, he is simply trying to substantiate Michael Glawson's earlier claim that "it's at least plausible that homosexual practices are immoral, while it's utterly implausible that it's wrong to be a certain race," rather than directly address the question of the APA's anti-discrimination policy. But given that many of his own arguments could equally well be used to justify various sorts of racial discrimination, he seems to have performed a spectacular self-refutation. Colbert-esque indeed.

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  40. Charles Hermes

    I think its time we set aside our bickering and help each other out. In an effort to assist with the counter-petition I have sent the following e-mail to the creator of the petition. Hopefully, they will agree that we can help each other in our efforts, even if we do disagree.

    Dear Edward Feser,
    I wanted to thank you for starting the counter petition which is helping to spread the discussion of this topic to more philosophers. Since we are both managing petitions to the APA, I was hoping we could assist one another. One of the most challenging aspects of monitoring the petition so far has been ensuring that only APA members sign the petition. Since the APA is an organization run by, and accountable, to its members I doubt it would be persuaded by a document signed by many non-members. I have found that using the APA’s member search feature (https://member.apaonline.org/memberlookup.aspx) has allowed me to monitor this problem and delete many of the signatures we have received from those who are not members of the APA. Unfortunately, signatures have been appearing so fast that I may have missed some cases. I’d greatly appreciate it if you and your supporters could help me in this regard by reporting to me the numbers and names of anyone who has signed my petition who is not listed in the APA database. I will delete these names from the petition. Of course, it would be unfair to ask this favor unless I was willing to assist your efforts in the same manner. To help your efforts in constructing a more effective petition, here is a list of signatures you have acquired from non-APA members.

    Timothy McGrew, Lydia McGrew, James G. Hanink, Roger Scruton, Ann Hartle, Alexander R Pruss, Jeffrey Koperski, Christopher Kaczor, John DePoe, Isaac D. True, James Stump, Ronald K Tacelli, Jim Spiegel, Anthony McCarthy, Victor Reppert, David Bradshaw, Michael P. Foley, William A. Dembski, Giuseppe Butera, Theodore P. Rebard, Mary C. Sommers, Kevin Diller, Gregory Koukl, J. Budziszewski, Michael Garcia, Lukáš Novák, Dr. Andrew Beards, Tully Borland, Michael Liccione, Maria José Figueiredo, David Grothoff, Sarah Geis, Dave Bukenhofer, Travis Dickinson, Daniel Lendman, Douglas Groothuis, John Brungardt, and 9 anonymous

    Thanks in advance for helping me delete the signatures of non-members of the APA from my petition.

    Best wishes,
    Charles Hermes

    Reply
  41. MA Prof.

    I call Poe on Matt Hart.

    Reply
  42. Mike Otsuka

    Les,
    My cautious use of the word 'might' was an attempt to avoid the sort of pitfall that your example of the homophobe nicely illustrates. I agree that a person's fear and loathing of gays and lesbians (or his sexism, or racism, or xenophobia, for that matter) would not provide grounds for refusing to hire him if it had no bearing on his effectiveness as a teacher. But I suppose that a disposition might provide grounds not to hire even if it never manifests itself in *acts*. A disposition to forget, for example, might debar one from teaching effectively simply on account of the *unintentional inaction* to which it gives rise. (If memory serves, Jonathan Haidt has written that he had to stop taking an anti-depressant because a side effect was that it made it difficult for him to remember names and faces, thereby interfering with his effectiveness as a teacher.)

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  43. Mark Murphy

    I see that the posters here have taken to heart Gramsci's admonition that in ideological struggle one should attack opponents at their strongest points.

    Reply
  44. mark lance

    Mark:
    I'd certainly not like to be accused of failing to follow admonitions of Gramsci's, so I'll just ask about your comments, since some sort of pragmatic norm probably implies that you think them strong points.

    You say that it is obvious that these schools are not targeting people of homosexual orientation. I admit I'm puzzled, though perhaps I don't know about intention as you say. Let's accept that they target homosexual acts. (I note that you have not responded to any of the arguments given to show that this is specious, or that targeting acts implies targeting orientation.) But granting this: just who do you suppose that they suppose might engage in homosexual acts? People without homosexual inclinations who were thinking of engaging in them as an act of self-abuse? Even if you believe that these schools would hire gays who were celibate, it is still clear that the target of the restriction is people with homosexual inclinations. They are the ones being forbidden to have sex. Other people aren't. This is perfectly obvious and there is no other remotely plausible hypothesis of their intention, at least on my limited understanding of intention.

    You say the following:
    "Either 'serving as a model of someone trying to live up to the community's moral standards' can be part of a job description or it cannot. If it can, then what Wheaton is asking of job candidates is part of their job description. If it cannot, then the standard has absurd consequences as an account of what discrimination is."
    But on the reading necessary for it to do any work, your initial disjunction is clearly false. That is, the only way to make it support the final conditional is if you read the second disjunct as meaning that this can never be part of a job description, or at least that it generally can't be. But the strongest interpretation of your principle under which it is true is that 'serving as a model of someone trying to live up to the community's moral standards' can be part of a job description provided that those standards don't meet certain disqualifying conditions (like those explicitly listed in the APA policy). You know as well as I do that there have been, indeed are, communities with standards that any of us would consider out of bounds. (Some communities believe that to be a good role model women must cut off part of their genitalia, just for example.) Well, the APA currently takes contributing to the massive societal discrimination against gays by making celibacy a condition of their employment to be a disqualifying condition. (And again, let us keep reminding ourselves that what is at issue here is not whether these schools should be legally allowed to form such exclusionary communities, but whether we as a professional organization should associate with them in this way when they do so.)

    Then you say:
    "Michael Ryan: What I offered what not an argument but a question. Since the move from 'this rule applies here' to 'those with the authority to invoke this rule ought to invoke it' can be unjustified in lots of instances, can we give an informative account of when one is justified making that move, and if so, do the Wheaton cases fall under it? I also asked whether the existence of reasonable disagreement over whether the rule applies might be a reason not to cross that gap."
    I think he answered this quite clearly. There is a strong prima facie presumption in favor of applying rules. Your example of prosecutorial rejection is clearly meant to be applied only when it is clear either that prosecuting would be a clear case of injustice or that there is some other overriding legitimate reason. A prosecutor who refused to apply the law because there existed someone disputing its application would never prosecute any case, and would very soon not be a prosecutor. No such burden has been met, or even attempted, in this case. The main point here is that there is an obvious onus of proof. One who says a clear rule should not be applied bears it. You don't shift that onus by making a philosophical demand that every rule, and every application of every rule, be spelled out with absolute precision in necessary and sufficient conditions.

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  45. Les Green

    Helpful clarification, Mike–thanks. My loose formulation did suggest that one cannot discriminate without performing a discriminatory act. I do not think this. The passage following the hastily italicized 'act' better states my view: "provided of course they do not in professional circumstances *act* on their regrettable dispositions, that is, provided they do not discriminate…"

    This sentence was not really meant to assert that one can only discriminate by an act (let alone an act intended to discriminate). I was not assuming this, because the law here (and other places) properly counts some inaction as discriminatory. (For instance, when one unintentionally fails in one's duties to one's applicants, students, or colleagues, on account of omissions due to one's racist, sexist, or heterosexist dispositions).

    Yet I continue to think they should be tolerated in the academy, provided they do not actually discriminate or, more exactly, provided they do not discriminate in ways that adversely affect their jobs, at least with respect to teaching and administration.

    There is, of course, the further question how vigorously (and in what way) the APA should enforce its non-discrimination standards, whatever they are. I would suppose that such standards should normally be enforced. But I agree with Mark Murphy that the APA might licitly stay its hand in some cases, say, those of de minimis discrimination. Does that apply to the schools under discussion?

    It would be nice to hear from some of the (no doubt closeted) gay students and faculty at those schools. What is it like for you? Do you regret having signed the codes of conduct? Are the codes enforced, or are they merely symbolic? Do you feel reasonably free in teaching or learning philosophy? How do people treat you when they know that you are gay?

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  46. Kris Rhodes

    GradStudent,

    Above you said the schools that forbid homosexual behavior can be seen not to be discriminating against homosexuals because they count at least two avowed homosexuals (nonpracticing) amongst their faculty.

    Your argument rests on a premise that a behavior that discriminates X's from Y's will invariably pick out the X's from the Y's. But I don't think that's true. I'd count as discriminative a process that picks X's out from Y's with only fifty-one percent accuracy. (Say it's sorting, and when it's finished sorting, one sorted pile has slightly more X's than Y's, the other pile slightly more Y's than X's. Say this is the outcome of several trials.) Such a system treats X's differently than it treats Y's, even if only in a statistically aggregated sense. And differential treatment is, basically, what discrimination is.

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  47. Mike Otsuka

    I think, Les, that I agree with everything you say in your latest comment. I'd just add that if any of the supporters of the counterpetition agree with Les that a university should not refuse to hire, or discipline or fire, homophobes unless these people discriminate (either by act or omission) or otherwise behave 'in ways that adversely affect their jobs, at least with respect to teaching and administration', then why do they expect to be held to a different standard when it comes to their refusal to hire, or the disciplining of firing, of a university teacher on grounds of sexual behavior or orientation, when this has nothing to do with his effectiveness, in the same respects that apply to a homophobe, as a teacher or administrator? Unless they think it's just as acceptable for others to discriminate against homophobes in the manner that they discriminate against gays, then they shouldn't complain when others treat them differently too, by, e.g., failing to publish their job ads or (as the federal government did in the case of Bob Jones University) withdrawing their tax-exempt status.

    Reply
  48. Mark Murphy

    Mark L:

    My appeal to Gramsci’s admonition pragmatically implied that the concerns about the relevant standards to show discrimination were stronger worries than arguments about the relevance of the extent of penetration to the morality of homosexual conduct. I’ll stand by that.

    Central to the notion of intention is that of success. The reason that Wheaton’s et al.’s policies obviously do not target homosexual conduct is that their success conditions do not involve not having people homosexually inclined on their faculty. The success conditions of their policy do not even involve having people who never perform homosexual acts on their faculty. What it involves is having only people who commit to trying to live the sort of life in which one’s sexual conduct is entirely intramarital.

    Your point may go to the issue of whether those homosexually inclined are differentially burdened, and so in an unjustifiable way. And again I ask for the relevant standard. One question to ask is: By what standard of ‘burden’? When we ask how far people of homosexual orientation are burdened by such policies, is the relevant comparison class ‘all persons with homosexual orientation’ or ‘all persons of homosexual orientation who are otherwise able to adhere to Wheaton’s (otherwise granted to be unobjectionable for the sake of this argument) terms of employment’? There are other questions here, but this is one I've not seen addressed.

    The argument by dilemma that I gave to Michael Ryan was perfectly appropriate. He responded to my question with a massively overbroad definition of discrimination. Your response on his behalf is question-begging: it does not provide a standard for unjustified differential burdening, but assumes that a certain differential burdening is unjust, and so falls afoul of the APA standard.

    On applying rules. One puts a rule into place to govern a community’s conduct when there is a core of application to that rule that is uncontroversial, and it would of course be an error to think that there is a lot of work to be done in moving from ‘this is part of the uncontroversial core of the rule’ to ‘this rule should be applied here.’ When one gets to aspects of the rule that are controversial, either because vagueness starts to creep in or because there is reasonable disagreement over whether a certain case falls inside the core, then it is not obvious that this move should be quick. This is true even if one is 100% certain a case falls under the rule.

    Michael Otsuka raises interesting questions. But could I ask for a clarification: In your 8:08 post, is this supposed to be one argumentative press, or two distinct presses (that is, one leading up to ‘…privacy of their own homes’ and a second beginning with ‘Of course there are…’?

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  49. mark lance

    Mark:
    I got the point about Gramsci.

    "Your point may go to the issue of whether those homosexually inclined are differentially burdened, and so in an unjustifiable way. And again I ask for the relevant standard. One question to ask is: By what standard of ‘burden’?"

    Yes, it rather obviously and explicitly goes to that. The differential burden is that some people are required to be not engage in sex and others not. I do not need necessary and sufficient conditions for being a differential burden to see that this is one. Again, though these analogies have been made over and over on this thread, suppose that a school says it will hire Christians, but will only recognize orthodox Hindu marriages as valid and will expect faculty to only engage in sex within the confines of what they consider valid marriage. Would you see the point of discrimination then? Or say, hey, they don't intend to target Christians and if you think they do you don't know what 'intend' means?

    "The argument by dilemma that I gave to Michael Ryan was perfectly appropriate. He responded to my question with a massively overbroad definition of discrimination. Your response on his behalf is question-begging: it does not provide a standard for unjustified differential burdening, but assumes that a certain differential burdening is unjust, and so falls afoul of the APA standard." Your argument by dilemma can be read two ways.
    If the initial premise means "either every community standard is ok or none are" then it is false.
    If it means "either community standards are generally valid or it is not the case that are generally valid" then the inference on the first horn to the claim that Wheaton et al are ok is invalid. That's the whole point of the APA principle. It allows the invocation of community standards except when they discriminate along specifically state lines.
    You said nothing before on this point about the standard of differential burdening, and it is clear that I don't need to give one if you mean necessary and sufficient conditions. If you merely want the relevant differential burdening, then as I've said over and over it is the differential forbidding of sex.

    "One puts a rule into place to govern a community’s conduct when there is a core of application to that rule that is uncontroversial, and it would of course be an error to think that there is a lot of work to be done in moving from ‘this is part of the uncontroversial core of the rule’ to ‘this rule should be applied here.’ When one gets to aspects of the rule that are controversial, either because vagueness starts to creep in or because there is reasonable disagreement over whether a certain case falls inside the core, then it is not obvious that this move should be quick."
    This is a red herring. Even if there is reasonable disagreement over whether Wheaton et al are doing something wrong, there is no reasonable disagreement over whether this is a case in which the rule applies. WHat you were arguing, and I responding to, was that even if the rule did apply, this didn't imply that we should enforce it. I pointed out that when it clearly applies there is an obvious burden of proof to call for prosecutorial nullification. Now you shift to a claim that it is unclear that it applies. Change of subject, and false. Requiring celibacy of one group and not another is as clear a case of discrimination as one can find. (Note that you are not here even arguing that it is wrong of the APA to consider discrimination against homosexuals to be unjust. You are arguing that somehow either the rule doesn't apply if we merely demand that they not have sex as a condition of employment, or – the relevant point here – that even if this is discrimination we shouldn't enforce the rule that does apply.

    In the end, I think you know that these are just deflections. What you really want to argue for is that the APA should change it's policy and not treat homosexuality as something that deserves anti-discrimination protection. (Again, 'protection' here meaning nothing more than that the profession will not engage with your hiring if you do.) If that's your view, you agree with what the petition says and should argue not against it, but in favor of a logically stronger petition, namely one that calls for the APA to change it's statement. I think that would be a much more productive debate than the current one.

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  50. John Turri

    Mark M.,

    "The reason that Wheaton’s et al.’s policies obviously do not target homosexual conduct is that their success conditions do not involve not having people homosexually inclined on their faculty. The success conditions of their policy do not even involve having people who never perform homosexual acts on their faculty. What it involves is having only people who commit to trying to live the sort of life in which one’s sexual conduct is entirely intramarital."

    Success is a matter of degree. Clearly you can, to a very great extent, discriminate against a group without having a perfect record of discrimination.

    And it's doubtful that the success conditions don't involve the things you say. Do not the success conditions include the state of affairs where no faculty member is homosexually inclined? Would that not fully satisfy the policy makers (at least with respect to this particular facet of the policy)?

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