Classical Theism, Philosophy, and Religion Forum » Sodomy Laws

iwpoe · 3/10/2016 7:26 pm

What right to privacy? And why should I give a care about it?

It seems to me the question of enforceability is not a legislative but within certain parameters an executive issue, but presumably there were ways of enforcing it in the past. Also, such laws might entail that clubs for the purpose could be monitored or shut down, public activity could be monitored and specially punished, etc. The return of a chilling effect amongst those who are inclined to obey the law is also of some importance, presuming that the law is also to be educative rather than merely instrumental.

seigneur · 3/11/2016 2:19 am

BillMcEnaney wrote:
I would love to see anti-sodomy laws back on the books. But how do you enforce them?

Sodomists used to be found out by medical examination, roughly the same way as you determine virginity. Or have physicians become incompetent all of a sudden? This would actually explain a lot of the "incomprehensibility" argument I see in this thread.

iwpoe wrote:
Which doesn't determine laws, is even more poorly explained than the legal history, and *also* seems incomprehensible today.

There's nothing incomprehensible about sodomy laws nor about their revocation. Marriage is considered old-fashioned and laws are fashioned according to fashion these days. Those who deem moral and natural issues incomprehensible should not be making laws, yet they are making laws, so we have the result we have.

iwpoe · 3/11/2016 2:26 am

I don't think that the incredulity with respect to the intelligibility of sodomy laws in large portions of the population today is feigned. I myself understand it only abstractly and indirectly.

Last edited by iwpoe (3/11/2016 2:28 am)

seigneur · 3/11/2016 2:32 am

iwpoe wrote:
I think the argument would properly be that it was included on unscientific grounds in the first place, not that subsequent research "found" that something "known" about homosexuality wasn't so.

And what was the unscientific ground? In what way was it unscientific?

iwpoe wrote:
seigneur wrote:
If the changes in medical views and laws were motivated only by "appeal to experience", they were totally unmotivated.
As opposed to all that medical research that isn't based on experience?

Originally, the "appeal to experience" in this thread meant the experience of the homosexuals: They *feel* that their love is the same as heterosexual, therefore it is, must be...

Would you base your medical diagnosis purely on the patient's announcement that she feels okay or would you do some medical examination to determine the matter? In the case of homosexuals, society has decided that the patient's subjective experience is the sole determining factor. Somehow we fail to reason the same way with any other illness, crime, or vice. We have some work to do to apply our newly found reasoning consistently.

Last edited by seigneur (3/11/2016 2:33 am)

iwpoe · 3/11/2016 3:23 am

seigneur wrote:
And what was the unscientific ground? In what way was it unscientific?

I didn't expect anyone here to ask me to defend the scientific credentials of either psychology and psychiatry as a discipline today or of the American Psychiatric Association. Keep in mind that my claim here is not that the conclusion is false but that within the operative framework it was perfectly sensible to argue that there were no grounds for its inclusion in the DSM.

seigneur wrote:
Originally, the "appeal to experience" in this thread meant the experience of the homosexuals: They *feel* that their love is the same as heterosexual, therefore it is, must be...

I mean, the claim would be more robust than that- that the relevant passions are sufficiently similar as are habits and outcomes considered relevant. Some of that is publicly available and not limited to homosexuals alone. Is the formal arrangement the same? No obviously, and you don't need natural law theory to tell you that, but few consider that a relevant matter. Hell, few are even aware of it as a way of thinking about ethics.

The medical criteria for the inclusion and exclusion of homosexuality is functional and, to some extent, political on the part of the APA. The criteria for functional and nonfunctional have nothing to do with either natural law nor even prevalence nor traditional or even merely popular moral intuitions.

seigneur wrote:
Would you base your medical diagnosis purely on the patient's announcement that she feels okay or would you do some medical examination to determine the matter? In the case of homosexuals, society has decided that the patient's subjective experience is the sole determining factor. Somehow we fail to reason the same way with any other illness, crime, or vice. We have some work to do to apply our newly found reasoning consistently.

Well, I agree, but this is a general issue with psychiatry as a discipline that is in no respect limited to homosexuality. It's not even an issue for psychiatry alone, as you can also see the problem in medicine more broadly. I and others have alluded to the issue in a few places when I argue for the scientific credentials of objective normative notions from disciplines like medicine.

Last edited by iwpoe (3/11/2016 3:26 am)

DanielCC · 3/11/2016 5:56 am

iwpoe wrote:
I don't think that the incredulity with respect to the intelligibility of sodomy laws in large portions of the population today is feigned. I myself understand it only abstractly and indirectly.

]Allow me to offer further phenomenological testimony re incredulity. Even if homosexuality is wrong, something I'm not convinced of at least by NL arguments, why on earth would anyone care that much? By parallel reasons own should lobby for enforceable Anti-Gluttony Laws and the like. Perhaps the best one could do is argue that public displays or intimations of such vices should be prosecutable on grounds of indecency.

seigneur wrote:
Originally, the "appeal to experience" in this thread meant the experience of the homosexuals: They *feel* that their love is the same as heterosexual, therefore it is, must be...

Would you base your medical diagnosis purely on the patient's announcement that she feels okay or would you do some medical examination to determine the matter? In the case of homosexuals, society has decided that the patient's subjective experience is the sole determining factor. Somehow we fail to reason the same way with any other illness, crime, or vice. We have some work to do to apply our newly found reasoning consistently.

Well I was the person who gave the argument from experience first and I certainly haven't made direct appeals to reading off moral norms from 'unconscious-physical' medicine. In fact as elsewhere I stick to my line that medicine in fact presupposes a set of moral norms and thus cannot be used to establish them (secular types are often prone to criticising what one would have called 'evil' on the grounds of it being 'sick' or 'psychopathic', a move not open to them for the above reasons).

iwpoe · 3/11/2016 7:30 am

DanielCC wrote:
Allow me to offer further phenomenological testimony re incredulity.

I think Roger Scruton gives a plausible analysis about homosexuality at least being symptomatic of a more general sexual insularity, with might not be wrong of itself but which is symptomatic of more general problems of the individual with respect to their sociability, and it is thus prone to unique vices which are quite manifest, particularly obviously in male-male relationships. That does seem right to me that many of my homosexual friends also experience social neroticism and difficulties with intimacy such that homosexuality looks to be as much a matter of the comfort of familiarity as much as any purely erotic same-sex drive.

Is the proper response to that simply a legal ban on sodomy? No, I don't think it is- certainly not in lieu of some means of addressing wider issues of sociability (which might not be solvable insofar as we insist on living as we do) -but I can see a rout for why it could be of legitimate visceral concern. If you lived in a time or in a place where it was clear and imparitive that love really was an exercise in trying to reach out to a radically different even totally alien person, it does seem to me that homosexuality would stand out as obviously perverse. We, however, live in an age of narcisistic and nurotic love wherein people avoid marriage their whole lives because they "haven't met just the right person" yet, so the attempt to short-cut that process by the familiarty of same-sex relationships seems hardly out of line. What's wanting the ease of being with other men compared to rapid-fire dating, absurd Sex and the City/Seinfield style relationship "deal breakers", and nurotic serial monogamies?

DanielCC wrote:
Even if homosexuality is wrong, something I'm not convinced of at least by NL arguments, why on earth would anyone care that much?

By parallel reasons own should lobby for enforceable Anti-Gluttony Laws and the like.

I would support such laws out of genuine concern for the educative function of law. The glutton is clearly and universally not a happy person- even in the banal sense of happiness. Perhaps a parallel case can be made in the case of homosexuality, though we are generally unwilling to question too hard the romantic lives of ourselves let alone others. I am however, unconvinced that homosexuality presents insurmountable obstacles to happiness, just that it is a well-advised path to take for that purpose.

Last edited by iwpoe (3/11/2016 7:40 am)

seigneur · 3/13/2016 4:24 am

iwpoe wrote:
The medical criteria for the inclusion and exclusion of homosexuality is functional and, to some extent, political on the part of the APA. The criteria for functional and nonfunctional have nothing to do with either natural law nor even prevalence nor traditional or even merely popular moral intuitions.

True, in the sense that APA cares little. However, this doesn't mean that the problematics as laid out by means of NL arguments do not exist. And where there's a problem, there should be a solution.

DanielCC wrote:
Even if homosexuality is wrong, something I'm not convinced of at least by NL arguments, why on earth would anyone care that much?

Non-caring fails to solve the problem. At best, non-caring makes you not see the problem and you can go on not caring for a while until the problem is irreversible. (Of course, homosexuality is admittedly irreversible now, certainly after its normalization by redefining marriage.)

DanielCC wrote:
By parallel reasons own should lobby for enforceable Anti-Gluttony Laws and the like. Perhaps the best one could do is argue that public displays or intimations of such vices should be prosecutable on grounds of indecency.

Actually, the value of public campaigns to address obesity is a sign of recognition of this particular issue. Anti-gluttony laws may not exist, but gluttony as a problem - easily identified by NL arguments - is definitely there.

iwpoe wrote:
Is the proper response to that simply a legal ban on sodomy? No, I don't think it is- certainly not in lieu of some means of addressing wider issues of sociability (which might not be solvable insofar as we insist on living as we do) -but I can see a rout for why it could be of legitimate visceral concern.

How is sodomy not a legitimate visceral concern right now? What would make it a legitimate visceral concern? And is it only a visceral concern or is there more to be concerned about, socially, legally? How would one know? If not for NL, how should one analyze it and determine it for certain as a definite normalcy or anomaly?

DanielCC wrote:
iwpoe wrote:
By parallel reasons own should lobby for enforceable Anti-Gluttony Laws and the like.
I would support such laws out of genuine concern for the educative function of law. The glutton is clearly and universally not a happy person- even in the banal sense of happiness. Perhaps a parallel case can be made in the case of homosexuality, though we are generally unwilling to question too hard the romantic lives of ourselves let alone others. I am however, unconvinced that homosexuality presents insurmountable obstacles to happiness, just that it is a well-advised path to take for that purpose.

So, we are more concerned about the individual's subjective happiness and not social harmony? Are you saying that there is no social dimension to sexual behaviour? Is there a good argument to establish this or is it just an assumed unchallengeable presupposition?

Timocrates · 3/13/2016 4:35 am

Sodomy as near as I can tell is a kind of rebellion. I understand the hatred of 'the system'. There is no excuse for degrading yourself or others. The old rules still apply, and all of the homosexuals I have met still know it.

The gay-marriage thing is meant to undermine Christendom. We shall suffer that and worse before it is over.

DanielCC · 3/13/2016 5:35 am

seigneur wrote:
Actually, the value of public campaigns to address obesity is a sign of recognition of this particular issue. Anti-gluttony laws may not exist, but gluttony as a problem - easily identified by NL arguments - is definitely there.

Yes, which (granting the NL premises for the sake of the argument) shows that society recognizes it has a vice. However there is a long distance between public recognition of such and its becoming a matter policeable under national law. There any many other such vices we would think to discourage but not to illegalise for both practical and ethical reasons.

It's also not that clear that something's merely being a vice constitutes its being an injustice and thus subject to judical retribution.

seigneur wrote:
So, we are more concerned about the individual's subjective happiness and not social harmony? Are you saying that there is no social dimension to sexual behaviour? Is there a good argument to establish this or is it just an assumed unchallengeable presupposition?

As far as happiness is a state pertaining to a cognitive subject then all happiness is 'subjective' (so I suspect is the 'harmony' element in 'social harmony' unless one wants to admit a harmonious society could be made up of zombies). Note that I am not defending Poe's account as such just pointing out this evident fact.

seigneur wrote:
Are you saying that there is no social dimension to sexual behaviour?

Prima facia there is an obvious social element in that it involves another subject.

Last edited by DanielCC (3/13/2016 5:57 am)