Morality and the Gay Debate

Andrew Kelley

Last week, Bryan wrote an article entitled, I’m (Kinda Sorta Yeah Not Really) Gay. As you might imagine, the post got a lot of attention: good, bad, and ugly.

There were many who offered words of affirmation and encouragement, but along with these came comments with a totally different emphasis. The most common and fundamental objection that many readers had towards the post was that “being gay isn’t wrong.” In addition, the most emotional responses went on to say that not only is being gay morally acceptable, but to condemn it as sinful is in itself wrong. And unfortunately, from here, most discussion gets a little bit confusing.

This isn’t the case because people on either side of the debate are ignorant, uninformed, or mean-hearted – despite many accusations to the contrary. Instead of debating on whether or not a particular thing is wrong with those who do not share our most basic presuppositions – regardless of whether or not that act is practicing homosexuality or anything else that could be given moral status – we should instead talk about what makes something right or wrong in the first place.

After reading hundreds of comments and a handful of responses to the post elsewhere on the web, I came to the conclusion that both sides are like ships passing by night. Each is headed in its own direction, intent on arriving at a particular moral destination. So they share that in common. There is, in one sense or another, the concept of morality. And how could one accuse anyone of doing something wrong otherwise? What isn’t shared is how or why something is wrong. In that sense, the ships seem unable to communicate with each other.

Although we are using the same words, our vocabulary isn’t as shared as it appears.

For the typical Christian, morality proceeds from scripture. For those who don’t think Scripture is anything more than an ancient text the idea of it controlling morality in a modern world is absurd – and rightly so if that’s all the Bible is. Because of this clear difference in presuppositions, communication is impeded.

I don’t have an answer to remedy this. Perhaps to begin with, those unbelievers out there – and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way – can help fill out for me what morality looks like for them. Where does it come from? What does it do? How can a group agree on morality? And I am hoping to get some comments here.

Maybe – and I use that word as optimistically as I can – once we begin to sort out some of these question, we can talk together about particular things being right or wrong.

Andrew Kelley
Andrew is a former regular contributor to The Two Cities.

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9 responses to “Morality and the Gay Debate”

  1. the dude

    Surely this discussion is pointless till you Jesus people (I don’t mean that in a derogatory way) have to agree on how to interpret your holy book first of all.

    Reply
    1. Andrew Kelley

      The Dude,

      I understand that it is frustrating to those who aren’t religious that there are so many different interpretations of the Bible. Trust me, it is even more frustrating to religious people. But, in the context of this conversation about common ground between believers and non-believers, it isn’t necessary for there to be agreement. That would be like saying that every single atheist has to have the same understanding of philosophy before there can be any dialogue between them and religious people. I can’t hold you responsible for the beliefs of those that you disagree with because there are some similarities between you and them.

      Reply
      1. Phil

        It seems to me like “what is the right thing to do” (“what is the right way to interpret your holy book”) is very much the important question.

        This seems to me be a separate question from “where does it come from.” Indeed, where it comes from seems more or less irrelvant.

        Reply
  2. Lise

    The “Sort of, Not Really Gay” article was very well thought-out, and I like the point here that when both sides cite morality strongly, they must have totally different definitions of morality.

    But the Dude also has a point when he says the obvious problem is how to interpret scripture. Almost no one believes that every instruction given in scripture is meant for all people at all times. Some are commands are absolute. Some aren’t. (Some people believe sexual orientation belongs in category two. Some don’t.)

    Therefore, pointing to “scripture says” as the basis for morality seems like a very narrow argument, and one that’s inadequate for the topic. Besides, I think there’s a lot more to morality than following a code or set of rules. Why do we say, “Do this, not because you are forced to, but because it is the Right thing to do”? It’s a big question!

    So even though I’m also Christian, I wouldn’t stop with “scripture says.” One explanation for different types of morality might be that one side says “You should do what makes you happy now” while another side says “You should become more of a selfless person.” But that’s not very detailed…

    Better answer: Everyone should go read Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics and then have a discussion on morality!

    Reply
  3. Patrick

    Maybe, (I’m interpreting this from the scriptures) if we love one another, this might help start some good conversations.

    @Lise, Male and Female is pretty consistent scientifically across every species. The primary purpose of sexuality is procreation and adding another category doesn’t make sense.

    For humans gay male and straight female can procreate, a straight male and gay female can procreate, a gay male and gay female can procreate; all fulfilling the primary purpose of sexuality. Male/male or female/female can not, making preference optional.

    Humans and about 1500 other species perform sexual acts (behaviors) other than for procreation. These acts also include incest, pedophilia, with objects, multiple partners, and masturbation. The primary purpose of sexuality still remains procreation or as I interpret the scriptures “be fruitful and multiply”.

    By the way, there are approximately 2 million species that exist on earth, so 1500 with preference behaviors isn’t going to add a category.

    Reply
  4. Jill

    I hate that a debate on morality even stemmed from Bryan’s post last week. In case no one else noticed, he posted it as his TESTIMONY. A testimony isn’t to be debated – it’s where he’s been and where he’s at now. His feelings, his views of who HE is… how do you debate that?

    However, since it has, I’m interested, too. Those who don’t base their morality off Scripture… where do you base it? What do you measure right and wrong against? I feel most people would say society or their upbringing or what they’ve been taught or experiences, but what makes that morality right or wrong? Another thing is, I think that people (all people, Christian or not) have a hard time seeing the difference between being gay and being gay. Like Bryan explained in his testimony, he may be gay and be attracted to the same sex, but he’s not really gay – that’s not his identity; his identity is Jesus. And whether you believe homosexuality is a sin or not, Jesus still reigns higher than anything else… yes, even homosexuality. People look at all of these moral issues and justify which side is right and which side is wrong… Jesus is being left out of the matter too many times. And whichever side you are on in the moral debate, one thing stands true… Jesus accepts you NO MATTER WHAT. And we’re selfish enough to let it divide us.

    Reply
  5. Aaron Deering

    When I was little—maybe younger than 10—I asked my mom, “What if I’m the only real person, and everyone else is just really realistic robots who look and act like real people? How do I know?” Mom paused before answering, “You don’t.” I’m not writing this to claim that my mom convinced me that the world’s population is made of robots. I’m partially writing to to explain why I do not believe the world’s population is made of robots, and why it matters.

    Andrew has tried to engage me in this conversation in a while. I’ve always put it off for fear that time will get away from us if we really work through it to its depths, but also for fear that the two of us will do it a disservice but forgetting to consider any critical perspectives or problems. So, as an atheist, I’ll try to get to the core of what I believe morality is.

    I want to start by talking about the lens through which us of us views reality. I promise, this will be very important later. Everything that I can possibly know has been passed through various nerve endings in my body into my brain and subsequently matched for patterns against every other bit of input. It will keep doing this until I die.

    That time I touched the car lighter and burned my finger as a kid, the first time I listened to metal, the first time I kissed a girl, my last breakup, the first time I finished writing and shooting a short film, the first time I shot a gun, the last time I got hit my a car while riding my bike, the first time I dislocated my shoulder, and the last time I interpreted an extraordinary emotional high as a supernatural experience: these experiences all happened within my mind.

    But I am not being solipsistic. I am not saying that, in an objective world, some form of the events described did not occur for my mind to shade. The solipsistic person would refuse to believe that any of these memories are more than a fever dream. I say that I am can never be sure. It is entirely possible that I could wake up before finishing this sentence to a reality in which the sky is purple; however, I choose not to disbelieve my present experience of reality because it is all that I have. In fact, it is all that any of us have. Our perceptions dictate the terms on which our relationship with reality is dictated. Every meaningful, painful, wonderful, and/or beautiful experience in my life has been shaped and moderated through my individual lens.

    Yes, I know, what am I doing talking about experiences. We were talking about morality, right? The problem that we have with defining morality is deciding what is right and wrong. Without context or purpose, these opposite spectral ends become arbitrary. The question loses meaning and significance before it is answered; one might as well ask, what is the correct color?

    Now I will make an assertion, and I feel comfortable making this assertion because I was raised in a Christian home and considered myself a Christian for the longer part of my life, but I invite any of you to correct me if I am wrong. A Christian believes that the purpose of morality is to glorify and to please God, and because God has humanity’s best interests at heart, our subjective experiences of life will enjoy the benefits of pleasing God. This position is based on faith. It is in the nature of faith to exist without evidence. One of the alleged virtues of being faithful, moreover, is to be so in starkest absence of tangible evidence.

    I will not claim that good never comes from this line of reasoning. Despite fundamental differences of opinion on this issue, I consider Andrew to be a good friend of mine; more importantly, I believe he is a good person who treats other people extraordinarily. That is, in fact, why I believe he is a good person.

    I believe—and I base my belief on the only tool I believe I have to work with: my own experiences and perceptions—that what is most important, what ought to be guarded, and what ought to be nurtured in this life, is the only thing that we can be sure that we all have (assuming you aren’t all robots, which I will accept on faith) is the individual’s experience of life. If we look at the two opposite sides of this spectrum, we find (for lack of better words) suffering at one end and happiness at the other.

    Bill S. Preston, Esq. tells us that we should “be excellent to each other,” and I am compelled to agree. I want to avoid assumptions as much as possible, and the most that I can avoid without slipping into solipsism is that people have feelings, and all of what is important and meaningful is derived from those senses. Therefore, I reject the notion that you are all robots. I believe that you all feel the same way that I feel. I doubt that you all feel the same things, but that does not diminish how important it is that I avoid making any of you feel bad, and that I strive to make your experiences—and my own experience—of this limited life as excellent as it can possibly be. I claim that this is right and moral.

    P.S. I expect most if not all of you to disagree with me, and that is okay. That is also why I did not waste time arguing against what I suspect is your (Christian) concept of morality, as I am sure there will be plentiful actual positions to argue against in the comments that follow.

    Reply
  6. Edward Mar

    Morality…I feel is a short-sighted term. It feels shallow since we all do recognize that atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, and everyone else in between has some set of morals. We can all agree that each and everyone of us has a sense of what is right and what is wrong. Of course, fine, let it be because isn’t that what Paul wrote in Romans 2 (I think)? The special case about Christian morality is that we don’t necessarily stem off as a to-do list since the work has already been done. Why else would Jesus ever say “It is finished”? This sense of moral code that we define as humans really isn’t necessarily what it is. We act in a different way because it is who we are as Christians. As Christians, we are a new creation. Amen? So being that very new creation, we become different. We’re not the same anymore because we put off, we leave behind, we are born. Christians live as Children of Light so Paul says to the Ephesians. We form our motives based on new thinking…on honoring God, to please our Father. Remember, this must be constant because we are continually being remade to be more like Jesus. It follows that we must become righteous and holy.

    That is where our “moral code” comes from. It comes from our decision believing in Jesus as savior AND as our LORD. I capitalized this for a reason. From that decision, we are taught and we are a new creation so we become righteous.

    Reply
  7. J Hemmerich

    These are a few thoughts in response to Arron Deering above. Very stimulating ideas! For what its worth here are a few of mine.

    //Everything that I can possibly know has been passed through various nerve endings in my body into my brain and subsequently matched for patterns against every other bit of input.//

    This overlooks the fact that the human body is a self organizing teleological organism and that the structure of the mind contributes to knowledge product. There is no reason to think that moral judgments are derived from external stimuli alone and that the organization of the brain/mind itself makes some contribution to the judgment. This dose not disprove your materialist assumption about what knowledge is, but it does raise questions about the blank slate view.

    The difficulty with the materialist assumption about the mind is that the structure of the brain is contingent and therefore logic and truth are contingent upon its structure, but since different people have different brain structures there is no truly permanent or universal logical way of thinking. There is no basis is perusing rational agreement except to increase ones one synaptic club for a temporary period of time, for temporary self-gratification. Materialism to me does not justify the passion and conviction that people have over truth and reason. Its not enough that we agree on a lie, most of us want TRUTH and the very possibility of this is denied by the particulate and temporary structure of the material universe.

    //The solipsistic person would refuse to believe that any of these memories are more than a fever dream. I say that I am can never be sure. It is entirely possible that I could wake up before finishing this sentence to a reality in which the sky is purple; however, I choose not to disbelieve my present experience of reality because it is all that I have. In fact, it is all that any of us have.//

    This is brilliant and it reminds me of the common sense philosopher Thomas Reid (also a Christian theist). As a believer I have no quarrel with this observation. See below for further comments on basic beliefs (the material world’s existence outside of us is among them and should be presumed based upon our experience).

    //The problem that we have with defining morality is deciding what is right and wrong. Without context or purpose, these opposite spectral ends become arbitrary.//

    The is very well said. However, it misses an important point. Morality as we experience it is not just a set of ends informed by circumstances of life. Morality includes intuitive expectations of individual punishment and reward, it also assumes some standards of obligation that are universal. At root the question is whether simple empirical inputs can produce a universal purpose and personal accountability which actually obligates every individual to strive for that universal behavior or understanding. This is where atheism breaks down for me. It does not provide an intellectual foundation for a universal morality or personal accountability. This is not an accident, but from what I can tell it is build into the very metaphysical structure of material atheism. The basic reason for this is that in this metaphysic the universe is more or less atoms and the individual is privileged over the universal. When this view of the universe is applied to human action, this means that every human is their own individual god with no authority above them or beyond them, they are atoms writ large. This means they have no rational purpose which unites them, but only a collection of individual impulses. In this view of the universe there is no rational reason to expect agreement or unity and every reason to assume disunity and conflict. Finally, when you die there is no resurrection of the body, so any expectation of personal responsibility or reward is removed. This means that, as Disney’s Aladdin says, “you’re only in trouble if you get caught” (one might add caught in this life by somebody stronger, and in this case its not justice but strength that one confronts). Even the idea of purpose itself is a stranger in the atheist’s universe. There is no such thing as real intention. Human intention is just the product of the structures of the universe which are themselves the product of no intent but are simply “occurrences” of matter. Christian theism on the other hand begins with metaphysical purpose, it privileges the universal mind (God), and particular minds (humans) over material parts. This produces a metaphysical hierarchy which justifies humans having an ought which they can universally look to (God), and second, it provides them a rational expectation that the rewards of right action have personal meaning. Injustice in this life has its day of reckoning.

    It’s not correct to think of God as being created out of a rational need to justify morality rather the Christian God is justified based upon our experience. It’s not the case that one can have real moral experience and then not have a real God that is necessary to it. If the experience is real then the God is real who stand behind the experience. The question is whether we are willing to follow our experience to the final conclusion—God–which means that we have obligations and limits, some of which we don’t like. Thus the real question is whether our experiences of truth and morality require one that is universal at points and eternal or whether meaning dies with us, an illusion from the start. Thus is the proverb justified, “But whoever fails to find Me harms himself; all who hate me love death.” Proverbs 8:36.

    //A Christian believes that the purpose of morality is to glorify and to please God, and because God has humanity’s best interests at heart, our subjective experiences of life will enjoy the benefits of pleasing God.//

    Yes, this is correct. Well said.

    //This position is based on faith. It is in the nature of faith to exist without evidence. One of the alleged virtues of being faithful, moreover, is to be so in starkest absence of tangible evidence.//

    This a bit more tricky, and Christians don’t agree about this so I can’t say your wrong to think that some Christians may believe this. But I think this view is incorrect, and there are many Christians that agree that such a position is problematic. I would say that some aspects of faith have no direct empirical evidence, but not that the same thing as to say there is no warrant or justification for faith. So for instance I believe in the resurrection of the body not because I can prove it can happen to my own eyes, but I depend upon the witness of other people who were historically privileged to see such things with their eyes. Thus, its not that this belief has no claim to tangible evidence, it’s just that I am removed from it by distance (Thus Paul says we walk by faith not by sight, and Jesus says blessed are those that have not seen, yet believe). Verification of the event, however, can come through other means just like any historical event; in addition there are the claims of fulfilled prophesy to bolster the historical witness. Finally, there is experiential verification—such as the argument that without the God of Christianity the morality we naturally desire and live by comes to nothing in death.

    I would like to point out, however, that there is one kind of belief type which does seem to have no evidence. However, it is better to think of these beliefs as self-justifying, or basic beliefs. These beliefs are those that are taken as true until there is reason to belief otherwise. Thus your belief in the material world as external to your mind, the hardness of steel and sweetness of a strawberry are all immediate basic beliefs. To these we might add the belief in rules of logic, which are immediately known through the application of thought, and moral laws which are immediately made known through moral experience. There is some debate among Christians about whether God is a basic belief that needs no evidence because he is self-justifying or whether his existence is known by deduction from other basic beliefs like the existence of morality, logic, and the order and consistency of the universes. This however, is an intramural debate and for the purpose of your observation about faith. In either Christian perspective God’s existence is either self-evident or it is consistent and supported by other truths or reason. Therefore Christian faith should not be defined any different than other kinds of belief or faith. I would simply say that belief in God and Jesus are most often not basic beliefs but are very quickly (often intuitively) deduced from basic beliefs about logic and morality.

    Belief in God and the soul beyond matter is sort of like the belief that railroad tracks don’t meet. When you look first down the railroad tracks, this truth seems to be wrong, but the experience of walking down the tracks proves there is more to the situation than meets the eye. This is my experience with morality at first glance, it seems it could be self-justifying by itself, but upon closer examination it requires somebody bigger than me or the world.

    Sorry, this was so terribly long. I thought your comment was brilliant and in need of thorough investigation. I’m afraid this is incomplete, the conversion is one for a lifetime.

    Reply

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