LET’S YOU AND HIM FIGHT. So apparently there’s this kerfuffle in the American Philosophical Association about whether schools which require their faculty to abstain from gay sex should be allowed to advertise in the APA’s job listings.

There’s a petition, and a counterpetition, and my name came up in comments on the latter, because apparently I’ve been weaponized now? I tried to post this at Brian Leiter’s site, but the comment wasn’t accepted–not sure if it’s in moderation, or if it’s too long (for which I apologize!), or if this is just some computery glitch, but just in case, I’m reposting it here.

It’s nothing new if you read this site regularly, but I figured I’d post it in case people are still finding me by Googling for stuff about this issue–if that’s how you got here, I suggest checking out my sidebar under “Sicut cervus: Resources on God and homosexuality,” and/or the “Gay Catholic Whatnot” and “romoeroticism” tags…. I promise to have some more interesting stuff up Saturday, inc. possibly some Gay-Catholic-Whatnot for those who can’t get enough of that wonderful Duff. Plus reviews of movies about rats.
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Well, now I know why so many people have been coming to my site by Googling “Eve Tushnet and John Heard”….

I feel as though I have been pushed into the middle of someone else’s fight–I don’t think the best model of a Catholic university is one in which all faculty must pledge to profess and follow the Catholic faith–but… fine. My take on some of the issues involved in this question.

1. Some of the arguments in the counterpetition are quite silly. (“Many of the greatest…” etc.)

2. But y’all are really arguing that “You cannot make sense of someone’s sexual orientation apart from the acts that embody and constitute that identity”? Really? (This from the movement that claims Cardinal Newman was gay?–sorry, cheap shot.)

Many, many “gay people”/”people with same-sex desires”/(your term here) have chosen celibacy, for a variety of reasons, not all of which have anything to do with religion. Gay people choose celibacy as a form of fidelity to a deceased beloved. They choose celibacy because they’re bitter about their experiences in a gay community (my guess is that Djuna Barnes, for example, might fit this one). And of course they (we) choose it as a form of fidelity to Christ. You can judge some of these reasons as much better than others–bitterness is something I’d try to alleviate, not recommend–but they don’t make the people involved any less gay. “Between the emotion/and the act/falls the shadow,” as TS Eliot didn’t say….

(You’re really telling me I’m… what? Straight? Nothing neither way? Romoerotic?)

I don’t think this analogy works:

Though if the counter-petition’s argument is that one is capable of discriminating only against those that act upon their orientation while not against the broader category of those that have that particular orientation, then it seems to me that it is legitimate to hire a person who have an orientation towards a particular religious faith on the proviso they don’t act on that faith (e.g. attending services, partaking in Communion etc.)

If you’re Catholic, for example, there are lots of things you’re supposed to do. (Those things really are intrinsic to being Catholic.) Are gay people supposed to have sex? Is sex the vocation of the lesbian, as witness is the vocation of the Christian?

Now, you could argue that the vocation of the lesbian can be expressed in lots of different ways, including some forms of celibacy, but religiously-motivated celibacy cannot be among them. I am not sure why the APA should endorse this viewpoint.

Anyway, at least the religion analogy is much better than the race analogy; I’m not sure what I could possibly say to someone who thinks I’m analogous to a black girl bleaching her skin in an attempt to become white.

4. Finally, I understand why people want to marginalize and stigmatize religions which bar homosexual acts. But do acknowledge that that’s what you’re asking the APA to do.

Ahhhh, this is too long. I’m sorry.

Yeah well, happy Lent to me, I guess. I had to cut a lot of stuff from that, including my defense of Catholic universities hiring all manner of religious flotsam and moral jetsam–God and Man at Yale is wrong, y’all, and The Closing of the American Mind is right–but rest assured I know that sots and lechers and even Presbyterians can be good teachers….