The Liberation Debate: Rights At Issue by Dan Cohn-Sherbok & Michael Leahy

Author:Dan Cohn-Sherbok & Michael Leahy [DAN COHN-SHERBOK & MICHAEL LEAHY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2011-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

9

NUSSBAUM’S REPLY

Roger Scruton is right in divining that we are in a substantial measure of agreement about many of the ethical issues that arise in the sexual domain. Both of us attach great importance to the interpersonal intentionality characteristic of sexual arousal, and both of us feel that the valuable dimensions of sex can best be realized in a relationship of some depth, characterized by mutual trust and some degree of commitment. We are both drawn to an odd combination of romanticism with marital friendship that may be difficult to instantiate in the real world, but which seems valuable as an ideal. Scruton romanticizes the traditional family more than I would. His claim that it is among the ‘institutions which have so far offered us the way to happiness’ (p. 123) seems to me not evidently correct. The situation of women who have been involved in that institution in many parts of the world could not easily be described as one of happiness, given that it is characterized by great inequalities in basic nutrition, healthcare, employment and education rights, and political voice. All these inequities the institution of marriage has helped, frequently, to perpetuate. On this topic as on so many, John Stuart Mill offers profound insight.

However, the questions I want to press here do not concern the status of women, since that is not our topic. Let us suppose that Scruton’s moral ideal is agreed to be valuable. Two questions are now before us: (1) does valuing that ideal give us any reason to look negatively on homosexual relationships? and (2) what does any of this have to do with legal and political rights of the sort under discussion?

But first, three remarks about sources. Scruton writes that Gary David Comstock’s Violence Against Lesbians and Gay Men is a’far-from-unbiased source’ (p. 115). What does he mean? This is a well-received work published in a refereed series by a major university press; the data cited in it come from surveys published in major refereed sociological journals and other public sources. I can only suppose that Scruton has the suspicion that Comstock is a gay man (a proposition for which the book offers no evidence at all), and supposes that a gay man is ‘biased’ on the subject of violence against gays. This is innuendo parading as argument. Besides, if every author is assumed to be biased in favour of his or her own sexual orientation, then nobody, including Scruton and Nussbaum, can engage in rational argument or good scholarship in this area. I believe that proposition to be false. As to the alleged ‘inconsistency’ in Comstock (if the assailants are strangers, how do they know their victims are gay?), Scruton could find out the answer by reading the book, and many other sources: they observe gestures of affection, they hang around outside gay bars, they identify people by their dress or manner, and so forth. In the lesbian case I described, the attacker lurked in the woods and observed the two women making love before he shot them.

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