No Inconsistency
By I probably shouldn’t dabble in theology, but this contradiction doesn’t seem like much of a contradiction:
But once you recognize homosexuality as a genetic reality, it does create a theological dilemma for the Mohlers among us, for it means that God is making people who, in the midst of what may otherwise be morally exemplary lives, have a special and inherent predisposition to sin. Mohler’s response is that since Adam’s fall, sin is the condition of all humankind. That sidesteps, however, the conundrum that a gay person may follow the same God-given instincts as a straight person — let’s assume fidelity and the desire for church sanctification in both cases — and end up damned while the straight person ends up saved. Indeed, it means that a gay person’s duty is to suppress his God-given instincts while a straight person’s duty is to fulfill his.
I don’t think there’s anything about evangelical Christian doctrine suggesting that all people walk equally difficult paths; God, I assume they would say, obviously lays greater challenges before some than others, for reasons that only He perceives. Just as someone unlucky enough to be born to a Muslim or atheist family faces a more difficult challenge than one born to good Christians, someone born with an inherent predisposition toward some specific form of sin faces a particularly difficult path.
Indeed, the simplicity of this argument makes me wonder why religious conservatives seem so terrified of the notion that their might be a genetic basis for homosexuality. Conservatives have long been tolerant of and even attached to the idea that certain forms of difference are inherent. Inherent difference in race, class, and gender provides an easy and convenient explanation of inequality, and a ready defense against egalitarian arguments. In the case of homosexuality in particular, the “inherent” argument gives fools like Mickey Kaus a simple dodge: I don’t like gays because I’m genetically predisposed to not liking gays.
On the other hand, I’ll also admit that I really don’t understand the other side of the argument. Leftist, progressive politics has a strong record of denying inherent inequality and inherent difference; this is key to the leftist critique of racial, gender, and class hierarchy. On the question of homosexuality, however, a lot of progressives seem willing to accept the “inherency” argument, and even to use it as a foundation for a case about equal treatment for gays and lesbians. Now, I know that this isn’t an argument that finds much currency in Queer Theory, but it does seems to have a lot of popular support, at least among the gay men that I know.
I can certainly understand the value of the “inherency” argument as part of a personal narrative (“I didn’t choose homosexuality”), and as a rhetorial device making family life easier (explaining to your dad that your gay may be easier if you don’t use the language of choice), but it has always struck me as deeply problematic for two reasons. First, I’m genuinely hostile to almost all arguments that rest on a genetic basis for contemporary socio-political behavior. There’s a reason that John Tierney loves stories of evolutionary psychology so much; they almost always involve justifications of certain kinds of inequality. More importantly, they’re almost always sloppy; recall Mickey Kaus’ silly arguments about smart college students marrying smart college students and consequently producing tremendous inequality in the 1980s and 1990s, as if the elite had never intermarried before 1977.
The second and bigger problem has to do with the political narrative. Simply put, resting an argument for the political rights of a small minority on the logic of inherent difference strikes me as remarkably ill-conceived. It depends on this idea that the majority will concede rights to a minority that it may find morally reprehensible because the minority is inherently reprehensible. In other words, it implies that the only option available to the majority in the face of inherent difference is acceptance and the concession of political equality. It should hardly need be noted that this is not the only option available to such a majority, and that the language of inherency carries with it some extraordinarily dangerous implications.
Much better, I think, to try to develop a vocabulary that doesn’t depend on the distinction between nature and choice. In other words, some characteristics cannot be useful described as either chosen or inherent. The job then, within a liberal framework, at least, is to make the case that these differences ought to be politically irrelevant, and that the gay/straight distinction shouldn’t matter for questions of marriage/benefits/rights claims/etc.
Those are my thoughts, anyway. I concede the field to the political theorists…