The homosexual experience may be deemed an illness,
a disorder, a privilege, or a curse; it may be deemed worthy of a 'cure,'
rectified,
embraced, or endured. But it exists.
-Andrew Sullivan,
Virtually
Normal
Even if you don't agree with another word in the book, I think we have to grant the validity of this premise : homosexuality exists and we, all of us, need to reckon with it. Andrew Sullivan, one of the most prolific and frequently interesting political writers of the day, here sets the stage for a reasoned discussion of how we, as a society, should handle the reality of homosexuality and of how we should treat homosexuals. Though I disagree with his final conclusions, I appreciate the way in which he treats differing viewpoints respectfully and I think he makes a serious moral argument for his own position. As we go forward and wrestle with the issues he raises, it seems likely that we will continue to utilize the framework that he has erected for analyzing them. This in itself makes the book eminently worthwhile.
Mr. (Dr.?) Sullivan begins his discussion of homosexuality by asking the question, What is a homosexual?, and rather than really answering, describes his own life experiences, essentially offering us an example of a homosexual. He does, however, present a portrait of homosexual as somewhat bifurcated beings :
The homosexual learns to make distinctions between
his sexual desire and his emotional longing--not because he is particularly
prone to
objectifications of the flesh, but because he needs
to survive as a social and sexual being. The society separates these
two entities, and for
a long time the homosexual has no option but to
keep them separate. He learns certain rules; and, as with a child
learning grammar, they
are hard, later on in life, to unlearn.
It's possible, I think, that whatever society teaches
or doesn't teach about homosexuality, this fact will always be the case.
No homosexual
child, surrounded overwhelmingly by heterosexuals,
will feel at home in his sexual and emotional world, even in the most tolerant
of
cultures. And every homosexual child will
learn the rituals of deceit, impersonation, and appearance. Anyone
who believes political,
social, or even cultural revolution will change
this fundamentally is denying reality. This isolation will always
hold. It is definitional of
homosexual development.
This fundamental split between the private and the social realms provides the axes along which he locates what he defines as the four prevailing political stances towards homosexuality.
The first "politics of homosexuality" that he examines is prohibitionism :
The most common view about homosexuality--both now
and, to an even greater extent, in the past--has an appealing simplicity
to it. It is
that homosexuality is an aberration and that homosexual
acts are an abomination. It is that homosexuality is an illness that
requires a cure,
and that homosexual acts--meaning sexual acts between
two people of the same gender--are transgressions which require legal punishment
and social deterrence. All human beings, in
this view, are essentially heterosexual; and the attempt to undermine this
fundamental identity
is a crime against nature itself. In fact,
to legitimize homosexuality is to strike at the core of the possibility
of civilization--and to pervert
the natural design of male and female as the essential
complementary parts of the universe.
Perhaps the most depressing and fruitless feature
of the current debate about homosexuality is to treat all versions of this
argument as
the equivalent of bigotry. They are not.
Essentially, this is a politics which is derived from religious and/or moral objections to homosexual acts and so would totally prohibit them
Next is liberationism, which is prohibitionism's opposite :
For the liberationists, homosexuality as a defining
condition does not properly exist because it is a construct of human thought,
not an
inherent or natural state of being. It is
a 'construction,' generated in human consciousness by the powerful to control
and define the
powerless. It reflects not the true state
of human affairs, but a crude and arbitrary ordering imposed upon them.
As with many
prohibitionists, there are no homosexuals, merely
same-sex acts; only unlike the prohibitionists, even these acts are dependent
on their
social context for their meaning.
This at least is the liberationist analysis.
The liberationist prescription is more inspiring. For all liberationists,
the full end of human
fruition is to be free of all social constructs,
to be liberated from the condition of homosexuality into a fully chosen
form of identity, which
is a repository of individual acts of freedom.
Refusing even to acknowledge the existence of morality, the liberationists would not bar any behavior, anywhere, at any time.
The third politics of homosexuality is conservatism :
It concedes, unlike much prohibitionism and liberationism,
that some small minority of people are constitutively homosexual--they
can't
help it--and that they deserve a good deal of private
respect. Most conservatives are well aware that many of the most
distinguished
members of society are homosexual; and that the
existence of homosexuality seems to be a constant throughout all cultures
and times.
These conservatives are not alarmed to meet a homosexual
at a dinner party (indeed, they may find it fashionable to invite one or
two) and
regard some level of comfort with homosexuals as
a mark of civilized conduct. Moreover, these conservatives find it
abhorrent that
homosexuals--especially homosexuals they know--might
be subject to harassment, violence, ill treatment, discrimination, or illness,
for no
fault of their own. So they're mainly at ease
with the relaxation of social sanctions against homosexuality that has
occurred in most
Western countries since the 1960s, although it's
not something they're particularly eager to discuss. The sensibility
that privately tolerates
homosexuality is often also the sensibility that
finds it uncomfortable to talk about.
Conservatives combine a private tolerance of homosexuals
with public disapproval of homosexuality. While they do not want
to see legal
persecution of homosexuals, they see no problem
with discouragement and disparagement of homosexual behavior in the abstract
or, more
commonly, a carefully sustained hush on the matter
altogether. In this sense, they are also tolerant of private homosexuals
and
disapproving of public ones; they are the deftest
enforcers of the code of discretion. They are liberals inasmuch as
they respect and support
a distinction between private and public life, and
do not wish to see people's privacy invaded; but they are conservatives
inasmuch as they
wish to guide public life in a way that clearly
demarcates homosexual behavior as shameful and to be avoided.
Conservatism basically allows homosexuality in private life but not in public life.
Finally, there's liberalism :
Liberals believe, like conservatives, that homosexuality
as a social phenomenon is a mixture of choice and compulsion. Some
people, they
concede, are involuntarily homosexual; others may
be tempted that way, but could lead either heterosexual or homosexual existences.
But
unlike conservatives, whose first recourse is to
ask how society's interests are affected by this phenomenon--and therefore
what social
effects would be incurred by a relaxation of the
antihomosexual taboo--liberals ask first how the individual is affected.
And by this, of
course, they mean primarily the individual homosexual.
They see the homosexual's rights infringed in several
areas: the right to individual privacy, where the antisodomy laws exist;
the right to
free expression, where social oppression largely
intimidates homosexuals from disclosing freely who they are; and, most
significantly, the
right to employment and housing, where antihomosexual
prejudice results in homosexuals being fired or never hired because of
their sexual
orientation, or being refused housing. So
the liberal's response is to create laws which protect this minority class
from such infringements
on its freedoms: abolition of antisodomy laws, enforcement
of antidiscrimination statutes in employment and housing, discouragement
of
antihomosexual public expression in the form of
hate crimes laws, and the like.
Liberalism not only accepts homosexuality in private life, but insists that it be accepted by the entire public, under penalty of law.
Mr. Sullivan is exceptionally even-handed in treating each of the four politics of homosexuality, pointing out what he thinks are weaknesses, but generally seeking to understand, rather than to question, the motivations of the respective adherents of each theory. It will come as no surprise to anyone who reads him regularly that Mr. Sullivan, though he seems to admire the ideological purity of the prohibitionists and liberationists, finds their absolutism to be ultimately untenable. Nor will they be shocked that he is, in many ways, toughest on liberalism, first for its belief that changing laws can change men's hearts, second for the very notion that it is appropriate for the state to try to dictate our opinions on such matters, and, finally, for its treatment of homosexuals as victims, which necessarily diminishes them and assumes that their liberation depends not on their own actions but on the good intentions of liberals. All that's really left at that point is conservatism, but Mr. Sullivan--who is, at least on issues that do not directly affect him, temperamentally conservative--finds its refusal to treat homosexuality as acceptable in public to be too restrictive. So, he offers a fifth option, a kind of synthesis of what he likes best about each of the existing politics.
In place of the four traditional theories, Mr. Sullivan offers his own politics of homosexuality :
This politics begins with the view that for a small
minority of people, from a young age, homosexuality is an essentially involuntary
condition that can neither be denied nor permanently
repressed. It is the function of both nature and nurture, but the
forces of nurture are
formed so early and are so complex that they amount
to an involuntary condition. It is as if it were a function
of nature. Moreover, so
long as homosexual adults as citizens insist on
the involuntary nature of their condition, it becomes politically impossible
to deny or ignore
the fact of homosexuality.
This politics adheres to an understanding that there
is a limit to what politics can achieve in such a fraught area as homosexuality,
and it
trains its focus not on the behavior of citizens
in civil society but on the actions of the public and allegedly neutral
state. While it eschews
the use of law to legislate culture, it strongly
believes that law can affect culture indirectly by its insistence on the
equality of all citizens.
Its goal in the area of homosexuality is simply
to ensure that the liberal state live up to its promise for all its citizens.
It would seek full
public equality for those who, through no fault
of their own, happen to be homosexual; and it would not deny homosexuals,
as the other
four politics do, their existence, integrity, dignity,
or distinctness. It would attempt neither to patronize nor to exclude.
This politics affirms a simple and limited principle:
that all public (as opposed to private) discrimination against homosexuals
be ended
and that every right and responsibility that heterosexuals
enjoy as public citizens be extended to those who grow up and find themselves
emotionally different. And that is all.
This politics would obviously have a number of important implications for public policy but :
Its most powerful and important elements are equal access to the military and marriage.
He treats the issue of homosexuals serving openly in the military briefly, asserting that the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy prevailed :
...because of the dominant, visceral, and powerful emotions upon which the politics of prohibitionism stands...
but that the dialogue it opened up, which required society to acknowledge that homosexuals had in the past rendered, and continue to render, exemplary service to the nation, must eventually transform how we deal with homosexuality. But Mr. Sullivan's more heartfelt purpose is to clear the way for homosexual marriage :
The critical measure for this politics of public equality-private freedom is something deeper and more emotional, perhaps, than the military.
It is equal access to civil marriage.
As with the military, this is a question of formal
public discrimination, since only the state can grant and recognize marriage.
If the
military ban deals with the heart of what it means
to be a citizen, marriage does even more so, since, in peace and war, it
affects everyone.
Marriage is not simply a private contract; it is
a social and public recognition of a private commitment. As such,
it is the highest public
recognition of personal integrity. Denying
it to homosexuals is the most public affront possible to their public equality.
Thus, the crux of the matter, for Mr. Sullivan, is that each of us is entitled to discriminate against homosexuals in private, but the state is never allowed to make any distinctions between citizens on the basis of their sexual preferences : "public equality-private freedom."
It should be obvious by now that Mr. Sullivan's target audience is really just one of the four groups ; conservatives. After all, prohibitionists will not accept the idea of even private homosexual acts; liberationists will not be satisfied with any limitations whatsoever; and liberals will do whatever they are told to do by homosexuals. It is conservatives whom Mr. Sullivan hopes to convince with his argument. He is trying to demonstrate that it is their own best interest to allow these changes to occur.
Now, as it happens, I am a conservative; and while I would no more claim to speak for conservatives in general than Mr. Sullivan claims to speak for homosexuals in general, allow me to state some of my objections to his these. First, I would take exception to a statement that he makes about conservatism :
Instead of mounting a steady and distasteful retreat,
conservatives might concede that society is changing and that it is the
quintessential
conservative posture to co-opt that change rather
than to go into lonely opposition against it.
This seems to me to rather badly misstate the central purpose of conservatism and of its enduring value as a political philosophy. Contrast his assertion with this definition from Russell Kirk's epochal text, The Conservative Mind :
[T]he essence of social conservatism is preservation
of the ancient moral traditions of humanity. Conservatives respect
the wisdom of their
ancestors...; they are dubious of wholesale alteration.
They think society is a spiritual reality, possessing an eternal life but
a delicate
constitution : it cannot be scrapped and recast
as if it were a machine. 'What is conservatism?' Abraham Lincoln
inquired once. 'Is it not
adherence to the old and tried, against the new
and untried?'
Conservatism is never more sublime than when it stands in lonely opposition to the prevailing winds of change, particularly wholesale change, which is always for the worst. Likewise, it is never more valuable than when it serves as a brake on such helter skelter alteration of society. Conservatism is frequently in retreat, but when it manages to do so slowly, fighting for every hill and valley, it can often reduce, though sadly not avert altogether, the damage that is done by those who are so foolish as to try to remake man and society.
Second, it is important to note that the two institutions that Mr. Sullivan is most determined to tamper with, the military and marriage, lie at the very core of, respectively, government and civil society. For a conservative, it may well be that the only appropriate function of government he will concede is to provide physical security, through law enforcement and national defense. The suggestion that this one essential role of government be thrown open to experimentation must be especially alarming.
And what is the precise objection to homosexuals openly serving in the military? It is not mere homophobia, but it is at least partly sexual. The conservative opposition to homosexuals in combat is, at least in part, identical to the opposition to women so serving; it is that such service necessarily introduces an element of sexual tension into the most difficult and demanding of human tasks, the waging of war. It is that anything that might further confuse the already treacherous situation in which combat occurs should be avoided at all cost. Perhaps nothing is more important in battle than the cohesion of the fighting unit, and nothing should be allowed to undermine it. What could be more detrimental to the camaraderie and mutual dependence of a group of men than love or jealous hatred between certain members. It was after all one of the great homosexual novelists, E. M. Forster, who said, to the enduring applause of the Left :
If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
How much stronger might the seduction of such a sentiment be if the choice were between a lover and a mere handful of countrymen?
Likewise, Mr. Sullivan himself repeatedly notes that homosexuals are quite simply different than heterosexuals.&n bsp; And his differentiation of the neutral public square from the sphere of private prejudices is based at least in part on the recognition that such prejudices do exist and will endure. Imagine the disaster that awaits when men who may well loathe the sexual behavior of their fellow soldiers are sent into battle and asked to fight shoulder to shoulder. It is somewhat bizarre for Mr. Sullivan to recognize that homosexuals will face prejudice in the private sphere but then to imagine that such prejudices will not assert themselves in such a highly emotional atmosphere as military service will often present. In defending his belief that the state can not force citizens to accept homosexuality and homosexuals in their private lives, he says that we have "in a liberal society...the right not to have the state impose a certain morality." Though the military is obviously a public institution, inserting homosexuals into the barracks and battle will represent the imposition of a certain morality on a massive and potentially disastrous scale. No conservative will blithely contemplate this eventuality.
As to marriage, Mr. Sullivan takes the curious stance that the institution of the family has already been so badly degraded that conservatives should not seek to uphold its ideal form :
Some might argue that marriage is by definition between
a man and a woman; and it is difficult to argue with a definition.
But if marriage
is articulated beyond this circular fiat, then the
argument for its exclusivity to one man and one woman disappears.
The center of the public
contract is an emotional, financial, and psychological
bond between two people; in this respect, heterosexuals and homosexuals
are
identical. The heterosexuality of marriage
is intrinsic only if it is understood to be intrinsically procreative;
but that definition has long
been abandoned in Western society. No civil
marriage license is granted on the condition that the couple bear children;
and the marriage is
no less legal and no less defensible if it remains
childless. In the contemporary West, marriage has become a way in
which the state
recognizes an emotional commitment by two people
to each other for life. And within that definition, there is no public
way, if one
believes in equal rights under the law, in which
it should legally be denied homosexuals.
Of course, we might even go Mr. Sullivan one better and admit that marriage is no longer "for life", in our modern day, but rather "until you may find it annoying." But all of this is quite besides the point. There simply is no "right" to marry. Marriage is a privilege, granted by the state, along with a series of benefits, for the central purpose of continuing its own existence--procreation--and the raising of healthy citizens--in the nuclear family, for which we have yet to find an effective substitute. It goes without saying that if we dispense with the definition of marriage, the objections to its extension will go away. But we may dispense with the definition of a duck and its feet will still be webbed and water will still roll off its back.
If it is really true that all that is left of marriage is "a way in which the state recognizes an emotional commitment", then let's just get rid of it and start over. What conceivable social interest is served by such a recognition? Why is it necessary to destroy one of the West's greatest and longest lived institutions in order to achieve this petty purpose? Couldn't we just give any couple that wants one some kind of "emotional commitment" certificate or maybe have one of those vanity license plates? The thought that conservatives should not merely accept the already bastardized version of marriage that currently exists, but should also seek to extend it to people who can not bear children nor do we want raising them just seems like a venture into Cloud-Cuckoo Land.
Finally, we come to a topic which speaks loudly in Mr. Sullivan's book by its very absence : the homosexual act itself. I can't help feeling that Mr. Sullivan has very badly overestimated the degree to which conservatives have become comfortable with homosexuals and homosexuality. He is probably right in saying that most conservatives "regard some level of comfort with homosexuals as a mark of civilized conduct." But I suspect, if personal feelings and experiences are any guide at all, that this level of comfort extends only to the point of being courteous. The picture he draws of conservatives adding cache to their social occasions by inviting homosexuals may obtain on the Coasts, but seems preposterous as a vision of Middle America. And it is absolutely the case, as I believe his book implicitly concedes (both by its silence about sex between men and by its failure even to include lesbians in the discussion), that conservatives will avoid at all costs the discussion of the physical act of homosexual congress. Even in a group of mildly liberal people, mouthing the accepted social platitudes about how homosexuality is merely a different life style choice, nothing is more certain to redden faces and bring the conversation screeching to a halt than to introduce the fact that such sex requires the confluence of penis and anus. Is it not fair to question Mr. Sullivan's rather beatific image of us newly accepting conservatives when even he acknowledges that we find it "uncomfortable to talk about" ?
I suspect that he must have been confronted by this fact frequently after writing the book, because my copy has an Afterword that did not appear in the original edition, in which he says of the criticism he received from conservatives :
There are times in the conservative critiques, despite
the calm and serious tone of many of them, when one suspects a very simple
thing is
going on. Many conservatives simply have not
yet absorbed the presence of gay and lesbian citizens in their midst.
They assume still that
such people are somehow outside society, and outside
of the polity. So, even when they concede the gist and power of many
of the points
made, the burden of proof still lies, as far as
they are concerned, with homosexuals themselves. For equal treatment,
homosexuals have to
prove not merely that they are not lying about their
fundamental condition, but that they are as able--and in many cases more
than able--to
perform the responsibilities of citizenship that
others take for granted.
Here I believe he is just wrong. The reluctance he has encountered from conservatives is not a function of our inability to perceive the presence of homosexuals in daily life, if nothing else, gay liberation has made homosexuals an unavoidable fact of our cultural life. Instead, what he has come up against is a depth of conservative commitment perhaps best expressed by Albert Jay Nock in his invaluable Memoirs of a Superfluous Man :
As a man of reason and logic, I am all for reform;
but as the unworthy inheritor of a great tradition, I am unalterably against
it. I am
forever with Falkland, the true martyr of the Civil
War,--one of the very greatest among the great spirits of whom England
has ever been
so notoriously noteworthy,--as he stood facing Hampden
and Pym. 'Mr. Speaker,' he said, 'when it is not necessary
to change, it is
necessary not to change.'
Mr. Sullivan's book is engaging, gracefully argued, and eminently readable, but it fails in one vital regard : it does not convince us that change is necessary. Conservatives can probably live comfortably in a world where homosexuals are allowed to do mush as they wish when they are in private and where government acknowledges the existence of commitment between homosexuals in some limited fashion--perhaps some kind of contractual relationship would be appropriate--but to ask conservatives to turn the central institutions of the civilization into laboratories for social experimentation, is to ask more than we can possibly allow and still be true to our core convictions. We wish Mr. Sullivan no ill, and have no great desire to intrude upon his privacy, but neither do we care to treat homosexuals as if they were exactly the same as heterosexuals. Since Mr. Sullivan himself repeatedly makes a point of the intrinsic differences between the two, the conservative position seems entirely reasonable to me.
Ultimately, I suspect that the politics of homosexuality that Mr. Sullivan
outlines is a pretty accurate forecast of where we will eventually end
up as a nation. But honesty compels me to say that I do not look
forward to that day. It is incumbent on conservatives to offer the
resistance to the process that will take us there, hopefully slowing that
change to a glacial pace and perhaps managing to keep it from going any
further. Of course, as conservatives, we believe that this change,
once begun, will go on much further. We believe with Emerson that,
"Events are in the saddle and ride mankind" and that they will end, in
the words of one of the characters in Ghostbusters, with "cats and
dogs sleeping together." Yet, we will remain forever with Falkland.
(Reviewed:17-Jan-02)
Grade: (A-)
