It's Unnatural!

There’s a referendum on marriage equality tomorrow. There’s no question in my mind as to how I will vote. Of course gays should be allowed to get married. Love is not the property of heterosexuals and I honestly fail to see how a person’s choice of sexual partner has any bearing on how well one performs as a parent.  I see the effects of dreadful parenting every day of my working life and I can tell you that the gays are not the cause.

It seems a matter of shame that we even have to have referendum about this question. Restricting marriage to heterosexuals seems so absurd to me that the referendum is beginning to seem like a vast campaign of deflection away from actual politics. There are far more important things at stake in this state right now. Meanwhile, the state broadcaster’s leading news item today is that unemployment has fallen below 10 per cent.  Whoever is setting the PR agenda for Fine Gael and Labour knows what he’s doing.

So I don’t really want to talk about this referendum. And yet, last week I got into an argument about it. While we were “discussing the issues” a colleague described gay marriage as ‘unnatural’.  This comment really stuck in my mind.

What did he mean by that: “unnatural”? 

For that matter, what does anyone mean by 'natural'?

Nature, the natural, these have to be some of the most slippery words in any language. Not only do you have to negotiate with the semantic garbage left behind by every advert for washing powder, shampoo and muesli you've ever been fed but there are layers upon layers of personal taste, morality, conscious and unconscious preferences to contend with too.

It's hard to know where to start. So, when all else fails, go back to Aristotle.

In the Physics Aristotle contrasted the natural with the produced:

“Among things that are, some are natural, others are due to other causes. Those that are natural are animals and their parts, plants and the simple bodies, such as earth, fire, air and water; for we say that these things and things of this sort are natural. All these things are evidently different from things not naturally constituted; for each of them has in itself an origin of change and stability, whether in place, or growth and decay, or alteration.

Compare these with a bed or a cloak, or any other such kind of thing. So described and to the extent that they are products of such a craft, they have no innate impulse to change” (192b)

A natural thing, then, has a life of its own – it can change or remain the same, grow and decay, alter. A made thing has no such life of its own.  Leaving aside (for a moment) the obvious point that contrasting the natural with the made doesn’t address the point made by my colleague that gay marriage was ‘unnatural’, that is, I suppose, ‘disgusting’, I was struck by how surprisingly helpful Aristotle can be to the ‘yes’ argument:

First, what is human sexuality if it is not natural on an Aristotelian account of ‘nature’? Human sexuality certainly has an origin of change and stability within itself – its tendency to change, to grow, decay and alter is precisely what troubles some people about it. The potency and instability of human sexuality is exactly what provokes public and private efforts to control it. Civilisation is what happens when sexuality is mapped and measured, repressed and released. The scary thing is that the most natural thing in the world is for human beings to have sex for pleasure – if gay marriage is unnatural that is the fault of marriage.

Second, Aristotle – one of the main philosophical influences on Catholic theology – lived in a society where homosexuality was ‘natural’.  It’s an ad hominem (pun intended!) argument and as such it’s as weak as they come but I thought I’d throw it in!

Anyway, the objection to gay marriage as ‘unnatural’ was, as I pointed out above, really just something along the lines of “it’s disgusting” or “it’s unconventional”.

Dealing with the second point first – gay sex is far from unconventional. It has been around a long time; the Catechism of the Catholic Church admits this:  “Homosexuality …. has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures…. The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible” (Secs 2357, 58)

On the first point - gay marriage is 'disgusting' - well, to be honest, gay sex would be disgusting to me. Brussels' sprouts are disgusting too. I'm not going to stop others from eating them. I see no reason to argue any more on that point.

  

We live in a secular republic; not a theocracy. So the teachings of the Catholic church should have no bearings on this whole affair, right? Wrong. Above, I mentioned the Catholic Catechism because, for many people in Ireland today, this whole question is a quasi - religious one.

It's not all bad news, though: the Catholic Catechism explicitly instructs its adherents not to persecute gays: “They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.” (Sec 2358)

I guess “unjust discrimination” doesn’t include denying them the right to marry. Of course, the Catholic Church is perfectly right to include such a tortured denial of the right to marry to millions upon millions of its followers; once again, this referendum is about the laws of a republic, not about the letter of church catechism. But given how much Catholic morality is bound up with the homophobia and stupidity that comprise the ‘No’ vote it is helpful to examine what exactly the Catholic Church has to offer gays.

It’s not much. The only advice that the catechism offers gays is to avoid fucking and pray until they end up straight: “Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.” (Sec 2359)

Seriously?  What an unnatural state that would be. Abstain, pray, grow old and die.

Preventing gays from getting married is unnatural.