Positive Liberty

Commenter JC writes as follows:

Natural law has nothing to do with “what animals do.” And I always question the “gay” interpretations of animal behavior (e.g., people argue that dogs “humping” each other is “homoerotic,” yet dogs do not ejaculate except for a female in heat).

Natural Law has to do with examining the intent and purpose of an action. E.g,. eating is for nutrition *first*. Yes, eating is pleasurable, but if we ate only for pleasure, we’d all end up 300 lbs, toothless, and dying of massive coronaries at 25. Our “health” movement is a perfect example of natural law: eating is for nutrition first. You look at the nutritional value of the food, *then* at its pleasurable taste.

The same holds for sexual intercourse. The primary purpose is procreation; unity and pleasure are secondary.

First of all, homosexual acts among animals commonly produce ejaculation (No, I never thought I’d have to argue this point, either):

Geist (1974) in his mountain sheep demonstrates that male-male mounting is a “normal” part behavior and happens frequently. When a dominant ram is courting and copulating with an estrous ewe, the subordinate males become excited and mount each other indiscriminately. Geist counted sixty-nine male homosexual mounts out of one hundred encounters in such a situation. Feral goats show the same behavior. Rams may ejaculate at any time during the year in homosexual interaction.

Even if gay animals didn’t couple to the point of ejaculation, what would the reasoned conclusion be? That lifelong, exclusively homosexual love would be natural, so long as we just humped each others’ legs and no one had an orgasm? I somehow doubt that Christian conservatives would agree.

Now, as to the old Thomistic saw of primary purposes…

Suppose I told you that the primary purpose of reading is to gain knowledge. You would probably agree.

So what do we do with Shakespeare, whom we read chiefly for his aesthetic merit and almost never for the knowledge that we gain? Is reading Shakespeare illegitimate or immoral, because it deviates from the primary purpose of reading?

The very idea that any general category of action must always have one primary purpose is a bit of pedantry that even this Aristotelian must strongly reject. That any specific action must have a primary purpose seems reasonable enough — but that a whole class of actions, or that many different performances of the same action, must always have the same purpose, is ridiculous. Even within a specific type of action, as it were, multiple purposes may exist.

If I deposit a large jar of change at the bank, my primary purpose may be to rid myself of clutter in the house. A secondary purpose might be to free up the jar for another use. A third might purpose be to have more money in my bank account. Are these second and third purposes illegitimate? Should I feel guilty or ashamed that I enjoy having achieved them, too? Certainly not.

Now, what if I didn’t care very much about how cluttered my house was, and if I didn’t really need the money, but I highly valued the use of the jar? And what if I was broke, and I needed cash in my bank account, but a tidy house and an extra jar were merely a couple of fringe benefits?

Any one of these could be the primary purpose of the very same action. In no case would the other purposes become wrong, whether for me or for anyone else. The same is true of sexual acts, which may have many different purposes. They may satisfy a purely biological urge, or express a lifelong romantic devotion, or be the start of a hoped-for new life. They may even express hatred or contempt, as in the case of rape.

Why don’t we just take the commonsense approach, and confine ourselves to moral analysis of these purposes in themselves, and of the harm or the good that the action may do? Here’s another bit of Thomism for all of you natural-law types:

…just as the primary goodness of a natural thing is derived from its form, which gives it its species, so the primary goodness of a moral action is derived from its suitable object: hence some call such an action “good in its genus”; for instance, “to make use of what is one’s own.” And just as, in natural things, the primary evil is when a generated thing does not realize its specific form (for instance, if instead of a man, something else be generated); so the primary evil in moral actions is that which is from the object, for instance, “to take what belongs to another.” And this action is said to be “evil in its genus,” genus here standing for species, just as we apply the term “mankind” to the whole human species.

It stacks the deck inappropriately to crown one purpose “primary” and to judge all the others as immoral, particularly when this reasoning is divorced from all thought of real-world outcomes. As I understand it, this is the way that Aquinas would have us judge natural phenomena — not questions of moral action.

Natural phenomena, which have one definite end, must be judged good or bad solely on whether they achieve that end: A person may be born with genetic defects or other handicaps, or not, and we would call the former bad, while calling the latter good. Actions, however, can aim at many different things — so we must judge them first of all by their aims. “To have sexual intercourse” can be a supremely virtuous action, or an utterly depraved one. What matters is the end in mind. If we are concerned with the status of a moral action, let us use the criteria that Aquinas laid out for judging moral action — and not the criteria that Aquinas laid out for judging natural phenomena.

Now, one may argue that the aim of true love is never served by homosexual actions, but this is entirely different from what most the natural rights theorists say about homosexuality. Instead, they argue — as JC does above — that the primary purpose of sexual intercourse is reproduction, not love, and they proceed to judge all sexual acts based on how close they come to achieving that aim. This isn’t even Thomism. It’s sophistry.

In short, my problem with Thomistic natural law thinkers is not that they use medieval philosophy against gays and lesbians. It’s that they haven’t even read their own medieval philosophy, which despite its age and its technical prose offers undreamed of possibilities for freedom, dignity, and love.

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