GOProud

Sarah Palin & GOProud:

I don't care if anyone goes to CPAC, which garners no interest from me in the first place; but the question of how conservatives (in general) should relate to homosexual groups (in general) is a good one. Sarah Palin provides a fairly moderate suggestion.

[P]erhaps what it is that you’re suggesting in the question is should the GOP, should conservatives not reach out to others, not participate in events or forums that perhaps are rising within those forums are issues that maybe we don’t personally agree with? And I say no, it’s like you being on a panel shoot, with a bunch of the liberal folks whom you have been on and you provide good information and balance, and you allow for healthy debate, which is needed in order for people to gather information and make up their own minds about issues.

I look at participation in an event like CPAC or any other event, along, or kind of in that same vein as the more information that people have, the better.

That seems reasonable to me. You're all familiar with my own positions on the two largest "gay" issues, gays in the military and gay marriage; obviously I'm opposed to both. The reasons for being opposed are different in each case, but have to do in both cases with the bedrock status of the institution. There's a great deal of room for social experimentation in America, but that room lies within the walls guarded by the military, kept firm by the family. I must oppose anything that appears to weaken either institution.

That isn't a condemnation of homosexuality -- for example, there are probably a lot of extraordinary people who nevertheless have no business in the military. To say that they do not have any business in the military is not to condemn them as human beings. By the same token, to point out that their unions are not creating new kinship relationships across generations is merely to state fact, not to condemn what they are doing. It is a bedrock feature of my philosophy that there should be room for many different kinds of human beings.

One might argue that Christianity requires us to condemn homosexuality; I am not sure that I agree. There seem to be two approaches to this argument, both of which are doubtful. The first is the clear condemnation in the Old Testament; but it is not clear to me that the Old Testament's laws for the Jewish people are meant to apply broadly to all humanity, rather than being supplanted by the Great Commandment for Christians.

The second approach argues from St. Thomas Aquinas' three part test for sexuality: that there are three goods that God intended sexuality to fulfill, and therefore the moral kind of sex will be that which fills all three. These are: (1) generation, (2) a deepened union between the man and woman joined as 'one flesh,' and (3) mutual pleasure, which is a good of a lesser kind. Homosexuality clearly cannot fulfill the first two (being neither capable of generation, nor a tie across the sex divide that would allow deepened understanding between a unified man and woman), and the first of the three is given special importance by Aquinas.

The logical error here is this: if a thing is "good" in the eyes of God, then it is good. If mutual pleasure is the only good being achieved, still it is a good! Aquinas may be correct to say that the best kind of sexuality will achieve all three -- that seems correct to me. It does not follow that the only good kind of sexuality will do so. As long as greater goods are not being set aside in its favor, I'm not convinced that logic requires us to condemn it from these principles.

In any case, this is the long way around saying: by all means let us speak with people with whom we have some disagreements, and other agreements. In some sense that captures all of humanity, none of whom will agree with us about everything -- I suspect that several of you will disagree with me just over the material in this post! Yet I regard you still as my friends and companions, and think it is an excellent thing that we should debate and discuss both what we agree upon, and what we do not.