The Name of Love
Far Right Nutjob
Sexual orientation does not exist. It's a social construct. Allow me to explain.
But first, what is a "sexual orientation"? Well, it has to do something with the stable object of one's sexual desires. Someone who is only ever sexually attracted to people of the opposite sex is said to have a heterosexual orientation, and someone who is only ever sexually attracted to people of the same sex is said to have a homosexual orientation. So far so good. But sexual orientation is also said to constitute a kind of identity, as if having same-sex desires is constitutive of one's nature. This flies in the face of the teleological and marital tradition found in Christian cultures up until the nineteenth century.
As the father of queer theory Michel Foucault once pointed out in his book History of Sexuality, the term "homosexual" was invented in the nineteenth century to describe the psychological makeup of one who commits same-sex sex acts. Rather than the "perpetrator" of sodomitical acts being "nothing more than the juridical subject of them," an identity was created to label those with same-sex attraction.
Foucault describes this state of affairs coming about after the decline of classical Christianity and the rise of secular science. Elites wanted to defend their conservative moral values without appeals to God. So they invented the homosexual, a perverted psychiatric identity, a mutant "life form." Foucault describes this process as being especially insidious because "nothing that went into [the homosexual's] total composition was unaffected by his sexuality. It was everywhere present in him: at the root of all his actions because it was their insidious and indefinitely active principle." A social straightjacket that bound him with pseudoscience.
There's good reason to doubt that the sexual orientation as an identity is even coherent as a concept. From a purely biological point of view, sexual organs exist to allow us to copulate with someone of the opposite sex, and sexual arousal prods us to copulate with someone of the opposite sex. Same-sex attraction was not favored by evolution per se; rather, evolution favored some other trait causally correlated with same-sex attraction. Same-sex attraction is an alteration of normal sexual attraction that prods us to copulate.
Now, the underlying claim among those who claim that there are there are these things called "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" is that (1) Everyone has a sexual orientation, and for heterosexuals it matches the biological function of their sexual faculties, and (2) Homosexuals have a sexual orientation that doesn’t match the biological function of their sexual faculties.
If sexual orientation is supposed to be an identity, then (2) is not true for all so-called homosexuals. There are some people with same-sex desires that reject the very idea of a gay or lesbian identity. In order to make (2) come out true, one could adopt a looser notion of sexual orientation as simply having a stable sexual attraction of a certain kind. But there are also some people with opposite-sex desires who don't have much in the way of sexual desire at all. These people are generally indifferent to sex, but if you were to put them in a sexual situation, they'd be down for opposite-sex activity, but not same-sex activity. They are "heterosexuals" that lack a "sexual orientation."
So it appears that this entire concept, to me at least, is on shoddy grounds conceptually, and, in fact, is a complete fabrication of nineteenth century psychiatry that nobody really believes in anymore. Even the consensus on the Left, the bleeding edge of queer theory, thinks that sexual orientation is a myth. It was simply politically useful in the struggle for gay civil rights.
The idea of sexual orientation is not only false, it is intellectually, morally, and spiritually destructive. Intellectually, it makes ethical philosophy in the realm of sex all but impossible by replacing the old marital-procreative principles of chastity with a reference to a conditioned and unprincipled gag reflex. Morally, it shifts our everyday attention to subjective passions and away from objective purposes, leading to obsessive self-searching among young "homosexuals." Spiritually, it is at odds with the idea that Christ sets us free. As Fr. Hugh Barbour wrote in his paper "Do Homosexuals Exist? Or, Where Do We Go from Here?", traditional moral theology "evaluated acts, and did not generalize so unsatisfyingly about the tendencies that lead to these acts. That was left to the casuistry of occasions of sin, and to spiritual direction. If the sin is theft, then is the standard of evaluation kleptomania? If drunkenness, alcoholism? If sloth, clinical depression?" Take any sin, and you could point to some "condition" that supposedly underlies it and, with it, the person, binding the sinner to their sin.
Besides the harmful effects this idea of sexual orientation has on "homosexuals," it also has a harmful effect on "heterosexuals" as well; this system of sexual orientation seems to exempt "heterosexuals" from conservative moral evaluation. As a general rule, self-identification as a "heterosexual" is self-identification with the "normal group" that is defined against all the "deviants." The model norm for evaluation of sexual deviancy is not "heterosexuality" but Jesus Christ, the perfect God-man. Heterosexual identification fills men with an unholy pride, something far worse than the lust and despair that fills those who identify as homosexuals.
Heterosexual identification also inhibits our ability to form genuine interpersonal relationships with members of the same sex. Thanks to Sigmund Freud, we all associate any physical attraction and affection with genital erotic desire. As a result, intimate same-sex friendship and a chaste appreciation for the beauty of one’s own sex have become all but impossible to achieve. "Heterosexuals" must avoid getting too close to a friend of the same sex, lest they be mistaken for gay, so they settle for superficial associations with their mates. Sexual orientation robs "heterosexuals" of the deep friendships that characterized past societies.
Lastly, I must mention the recent push for pedophilia, marked by all those articles coming out in favor of that garbage film "Cuties." Part of what's behind this the labeling of pedophilia as a mental illness and a sexual orientation. If this is correct, then discrimination against so-called "minor-attracted persons" is bigotry, simple as. There doesn't seem to be any way to escape this logic unless one rejects the idea that sexual orientation constitutes some kind of concept. Then, we can just say "bad thing is bad, and we have the right to discriminate against people who want to do that bad thing." No sweat.
In conclusion, there's really no reason anyone left, right, or center ought to support the existence of sexual orientation. So let's just stop and embrace sane human relationships rather than this kind of taxonomical nonsense!
But first, what is a "sexual orientation"? Well, it has to do something with the stable object of one's sexual desires. Someone who is only ever sexually attracted to people of the opposite sex is said to have a heterosexual orientation, and someone who is only ever sexually attracted to people of the same sex is said to have a homosexual orientation. So far so good. But sexual orientation is also said to constitute a kind of identity, as if having same-sex desires is constitutive of one's nature. This flies in the face of the teleological and marital tradition found in Christian cultures up until the nineteenth century.
As the father of queer theory Michel Foucault once pointed out in his book History of Sexuality, the term "homosexual" was invented in the nineteenth century to describe the psychological makeup of one who commits same-sex sex acts. Rather than the "perpetrator" of sodomitical acts being "nothing more than the juridical subject of them," an identity was created to label those with same-sex attraction.
Foucault describes this state of affairs coming about after the decline of classical Christianity and the rise of secular science. Elites wanted to defend their conservative moral values without appeals to God. So they invented the homosexual, a perverted psychiatric identity, a mutant "life form." Foucault describes this process as being especially insidious because "nothing that went into [the homosexual's] total composition was unaffected by his sexuality. It was everywhere present in him: at the root of all his actions because it was their insidious and indefinitely active principle." A social straightjacket that bound him with pseudoscience.
There's good reason to doubt that the sexual orientation as an identity is even coherent as a concept. From a purely biological point of view, sexual organs exist to allow us to copulate with someone of the opposite sex, and sexual arousal prods us to copulate with someone of the opposite sex. Same-sex attraction was not favored by evolution per se; rather, evolution favored some other trait causally correlated with same-sex attraction. Same-sex attraction is an alteration of normal sexual attraction that prods us to copulate.
Now, the underlying claim among those who claim that there are there are these things called "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" is that (1) Everyone has a sexual orientation, and for heterosexuals it matches the biological function of their sexual faculties, and (2) Homosexuals have a sexual orientation that doesn’t match the biological function of their sexual faculties.
If sexual orientation is supposed to be an identity, then (2) is not true for all so-called homosexuals. There are some people with same-sex desires that reject the very idea of a gay or lesbian identity. In order to make (2) come out true, one could adopt a looser notion of sexual orientation as simply having a stable sexual attraction of a certain kind. But there are also some people with opposite-sex desires who don't have much in the way of sexual desire at all. These people are generally indifferent to sex, but if you were to put them in a sexual situation, they'd be down for opposite-sex activity, but not same-sex activity. They are "heterosexuals" that lack a "sexual orientation."
So it appears that this entire concept, to me at least, is on shoddy grounds conceptually, and, in fact, is a complete fabrication of nineteenth century psychiatry that nobody really believes in anymore. Even the consensus on the Left, the bleeding edge of queer theory, thinks that sexual orientation is a myth. It was simply politically useful in the struggle for gay civil rights.
The idea of sexual orientation is not only false, it is intellectually, morally, and spiritually destructive. Intellectually, it makes ethical philosophy in the realm of sex all but impossible by replacing the old marital-procreative principles of chastity with a reference to a conditioned and unprincipled gag reflex. Morally, it shifts our everyday attention to subjective passions and away from objective purposes, leading to obsessive self-searching among young "homosexuals." Spiritually, it is at odds with the idea that Christ sets us free. As Fr. Hugh Barbour wrote in his paper "Do Homosexuals Exist? Or, Where Do We Go from Here?", traditional moral theology "evaluated acts, and did not generalize so unsatisfyingly about the tendencies that lead to these acts. That was left to the casuistry of occasions of sin, and to spiritual direction. If the sin is theft, then is the standard of evaluation kleptomania? If drunkenness, alcoholism? If sloth, clinical depression?" Take any sin, and you could point to some "condition" that supposedly underlies it and, with it, the person, binding the sinner to their sin.
Besides the harmful effects this idea of sexual orientation has on "homosexuals," it also has a harmful effect on "heterosexuals" as well; this system of sexual orientation seems to exempt "heterosexuals" from conservative moral evaluation. As a general rule, self-identification as a "heterosexual" is self-identification with the "normal group" that is defined against all the "deviants." The model norm for evaluation of sexual deviancy is not "heterosexuality" but Jesus Christ, the perfect God-man. Heterosexual identification fills men with an unholy pride, something far worse than the lust and despair that fills those who identify as homosexuals.
Heterosexual identification also inhibits our ability to form genuine interpersonal relationships with members of the same sex. Thanks to Sigmund Freud, we all associate any physical attraction and affection with genital erotic desire. As a result, intimate same-sex friendship and a chaste appreciation for the beauty of one’s own sex have become all but impossible to achieve. "Heterosexuals" must avoid getting too close to a friend of the same sex, lest they be mistaken for gay, so they settle for superficial associations with their mates. Sexual orientation robs "heterosexuals" of the deep friendships that characterized past societies.
Lastly, I must mention the recent push for pedophilia, marked by all those articles coming out in favor of that garbage film "Cuties." Part of what's behind this the labeling of pedophilia as a mental illness and a sexual orientation. If this is correct, then discrimination against so-called "minor-attracted persons" is bigotry, simple as. There doesn't seem to be any way to escape this logic unless one rejects the idea that sexual orientation constitutes some kind of concept. Then, we can just say "bad thing is bad, and we have the right to discriminate against people who want to do that bad thing." No sweat.
In conclusion, there's really no reason anyone left, right, or center ought to support the existence of sexual orientation. So let's just stop and embrace sane human relationships rather than this kind of taxonomical nonsense!