CHAPTER ONE The ProhibitionistsRead more at location 284
Note: proibizionismo: l o è una perversione una malattia e l atto o richiede cure obbligatorie punizioni e deterrenza appello alla legge di natura grave errore pensare a p come a una bigotteria. è una posizione maggioritaria nel mondo e da sempre sostenuta con argomenti anche solidi. i tassi di natalitá fanno pensare che p tornerà a prevalere presto premessa di p: o è una scelta. nessuna diferenza tra o e inclinazione a mentire bibba: protezione della famiglia. o come adulterio bibbia: levitico. purezza dei riti. ma il p nn vuole rendere obbligatori i digiuni san paolo: condanna con premessa la volontarietà del atto. analogia con i romani che hanno dio e indulgono negli dei. tommso: l uomo ha una sua natura che desumiamo dall osservazione. la sessualità dell uomo è destinata alla procreazione problema: anche l istinto o sembra naturale. come può la natura andare conto la natura? 1975: la chiesa ammette l o come istinto innato e incurabile ma insiste a condannare l atto difficoltà a condannare un comportamento naturale che nn danneggia i terzi 1986: l omosessuale, con la sua inclinazione, è persona degna. tuttavia l atto omo resta colpevole. rlorigine della condanna: ribadita la centralità della procreazione possibili analogie: 1 l avido. no provare avidità è già colpevole e nn un sentimento naturale. l avido nn è a immagine e somiglianza di dio 2 il cannibale. no c è differenza tra il disordine del cannibale e quello dell o. oltretutto il primo disordine reca danno a terzi 3 il down. no gli atti del down nn sono mai colpevoli 4 l alcolizzato. no una quantità moderata di alcol fa bens e viene consigliata 5 lo strrile. sì ci si aspetta che l o venga trattato come lo sterile ma così nn è. la cc ammette il matrimonio tra sterili, magari xchè anziani. si dice: il miracolo è sempre possibile. ma il miracolo è possibile con chiunque giustficazione: l unione tra sterili anche se sostanzialmente scorretta resta simbolicamente rispettosa della natura umana. un argomento pro omo: accettiamo la varietà della natura e della creazione divina. la legge di dio va freduta e scoperta nn la possediamo la politica sociale dei p è problematica poichè si lotta vs un inclin naturale. come voler combattere vs i capelli ricci ci saranno sempre oltretutto la teoria su cui si basa p è cervellotica (natura vs natura victimless crime) difficile da far capire alla massa rispetto all adulterio. anche la centralità della procreazione è difficoltosa da proporre. pr essere coerenti bisognerebbe proibire la sodomia etero la mastur il matrimonio tra sterili i sesso pre matr.. nn resta che far leva sul pregiudizio.Edit
homosexuality is an aberration and that homosexual acts are an abomination. It is that homosexuality is an illness that requires a cure,Read more at location 303
require legal punishment and social deterrence. All human beings, in this view, are essentially heterosexual; and the attempt to undermine this fundamental identity is a crime against nature itself.Read more at location 305
Perhaps the most depressing and fruitless feature of the current debate about homosexuality is to treat all versions of this argument as the equivalent of bigotry. They are not. In an appeal to “nature,” the most persuasive form of this argument is rooted in one of the oldest traditions of thought in the West, a tradition that still carries a great deal of intuitive sense.Read more at location 309
The most humane representatives of this view seek to bring people trapped in homosexual behavior back into conformityRead more at location 313
Until very recently, homosexual sexual acts were illegal in Great Britain; and they are still illegal in many states in the United States.Read more at location 322
Prohibitionism is a force to be reckoned with, resonating with the instincts and convictions of the majority of mankind.Read more at location 328
tolerant Western populations will be increasingly outnumbered by societies where fundamentalist religionRead more at location 329
In the prohibitionist case, the argument goes something like this: Homosexuality is a choice. There is no significant difference between homosexual orientation and homosexual acts.Read more at location 356
It is a contingent quality of a human being, such as a propensity to lie or a fondness for wasting money. As in both those examples, it is a diversion from the virtue that is within the reach of any human being.Read more at location 358
none of the handful of injunctions against homosexual acts in the Bible are based on an argument about nature.Read more at location 369
The injunctions against adultery are thus far more profound and common and insistent than the injunctions against homosexual acts,Read more at location 375
Sodom does not refer to the sin of homosexual sex but to that of inhospitality to strangers;Read more at location 380
So those who use Leviticus to argue for the general prohibition of homosexual acts today have also to say why they are not in favor of a general prohibition against eating shellfishRead more at location 392
the founder of the Christian religion makes no reference to homosexual acts whatsoever—not a single one.Read more at location 400
The reference is an analogy to the way in which Romans, having had the opportunity to follow the one true God, persist in polytheism.Read more at location 410
Paul uses the example of heterosexuals, who have the capacity to be engaged in authentic heterosexual conduct,Read more at location 410
mass of data suggesting that the vast majority of people engaging in homosexual acts regard these acts as an extension of their deepest emotional and sexual desires,Read more at location 427
in virtually all societies, there are records not only of homosexual acts but of distinct homosexual identities and communities and subcultures.Read more at location 429
But, of course, the modern prohibitionist view of homosexuality is not primarily scripturally based.Read more at location 443
According to Aquinas, all human beings’ sexuality is linked to procreation.Read more at location 453
an unavoidable problem: not all human beings seem to be naturally heterosexual.Read more at location 462
Church became embroiled in an attempt to show how something that seemed to occur naturally could still be profoundly unnatural, and against the end of God’s creation.Read more at location 468
“A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education,Read more at location 474
and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinctRead more at location 475
Homosexual sex was therefore condemned in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reasons as premarital heterosexual sex, adultery, masturbation, or contracepted sex.Read more at location 486
lacked the sexual relationship which realizes “the full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love,”Read more at location 491
There was, it seems, in nature, a group of people who were “definitively” predisposed toRead more at location 493
This condition, insofar as it was innate, was morally neutral, since anything unchosen could not be moral or immoral;Read more at location 495
it simply was. But always and everywhere, the activity which this condition led to was “intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.”Read more at location 496
difficult doctrine of a blameless condition leading to activity that was always abominableRead more at location 502
regards the view that homosexual persons are sexually compulsive as an “unfounded and demeaning assumption”;Read more at location 527
What in 1975 had been “a pathological constitution judged to be incurable” was eleven years later a “homosexual person,” “made in the image and likeness of God.”Read more at location 534
The other half was that, simultaneously, it deepened and strengthened its condemnation of any homosexual sexual activity.Read more at location 538
“It is only in the marital relationship that the use of the sexual faculty can be morally good.Read more at location 549
homosexuals, is a “form of life which constantly threatens to destroy” them.Read more at location 554
Nor are greedy persons to be treated with respect as a peculiarly troubled group.Read more at location 567
things that occur in nature may be in accordance with an individual’s nature but somehow against human nature in general:Read more at location 569
Aquinas’s only answer to this conundrum is to suggest psychological sickness,Read more at location 575
between, for example, the desire to eat other human beings and the desire to unite emotionallyRead more at location 579
With greed, the paradox was resolved by making the condition itself blameworthy; with epilepsy, the paradox is resolved by making the act blameless.Read more at location 591
alcoholics, like homosexuals, should be welcomed into the Church, but only on condition that they renounce the activity their condition necessarily implies.Read more at location 596
analogy doesn’t quite work. For one thing, the act of having a drink is immoral only for alcoholics.Read more at location 598
The real reason alcoholism does not work as an analogy is a deeper one. It is that alcoholism does not reach to the core of the human conditionRead more at location 608
that such people would be regarded in exactly the same light as homosexuals.Read more at location 621
But that, of course, is not the Church’s position. Marriages are available to sterile or older couplesRead more at location 623
With the sterile couple, it could perhaps be argued, miracles might happen. But miracles, by definition, can happen to anyone.Read more at location 626
Even with sterile people, there is a symbolism in the union of male and female that speaks to the core nature of sexual congress and to its virtuous instantiation.Read more at location 633
when the two sexes are the same, in contrast, the act becomes one of mere narcissismRead more at location 637
arguments for the centrality of heterosexual sexual acts in nature, not their exclusiveness.Read more at location 641
Extinguishing—or prohibiting—homosexuality is, from this point of view, not a virtuous necessity, but the real crime against nature, a refusal to accept the variety of God’s creation,Read more at location 649
It resonates too with that ancient and rich notion that one proof of God’s existence is in the sheer diversity and complexity of His creation,Read more at location 655
homosexuality, as the Church belatedly concedes, is not a behavior so much as a natural condition,Read more at location 661
So a social policy which seeks to ban homosexuality has similar paradoxes as a social policy which seeks to banish curly hair,Read more at location 662
But this, of course, would undermine the other wing of the prohibitionist politics, which is to attach moral disapprovalRead more at location 680
course, a prohibitionist politics could settle for anathematization. It could implicitly recognize its own impossibility but attempt nevertheless to restrain the number of homosexual acts as much as possible.Read more at location 700
there is a level at which the state’s attempt to extinguish homosexuality only backfires—pushing homosexual behavior into parks, public restrooms, private networks, and coded language.Read more at location 705
Prohibitionism may also fall into the trap of unintended consequences. The attempt to deny the existence of the homosexual and to condemn the homosexual act may not always reduce the amount of deviance; it may actually increase it.Read more at location 709
many men identified themselves primarily not as gay or straight, but as active or passive.Read more at location 711
as we have seen, the natural law arguments in their classic incarnation are extremely difficult to understand and contain within them an equally plausible and possibly contradictory message about homosexuality and nature.Read more at location 732
Compared to, say, natural law arguments about the importance of moderation, fidelity,Read more at location 734
But there are many features of contemporary Western society that violate the centrality of monogamous procreationRead more at location 739
To be consistent, prohibitionists have to argue for laws that would make heterosexual sodomy as illegal as homosexual sodomy;Read more at location 742
that would allow people to be discharged from the military on the grounds of a propensity to masturbateRead more at location 743
Their politics would swiftly degenerate into a form of rhetorical anachronism,Read more at location 747
prohibitionists’ concentration on the issue of homosexuality is, therefore, a tactical, not a principled, one,Read more at location 748
CHAPTER TWO The LiberationistsRead more at location 752
Note: liberazionista foucaultiano: la vita è una lotta di tutti vs tutti x il potere. senza limiti. neanche il limite natuale xchè tutto è cultura. il potere poi è ovunque xchè la cultura è ovunque: nelle parole nei gesti... la neutralità nn esiste. siamo condannati alla faziosità lf è l ugiale e contrario del p lf: l o nn esiste. è un prodotto della cultura lf policy: liberarsi da ogni costrutto e scegliersi l identità. l idea di lf sembra controintuitiva: noi tutti pensiamo che la natura esista. eppure l antropologia conferma la potenza della cultura: ci sono mille idee di omosessualità viggiando nel tempo e nello spazio alcune idee di o: indiani coerunas. marocco (il giovane allievo viene sodomizzato ritualmente). nuova guinea (lo zio materno). college inglesi (nonnismo pederasta). antica grecia (efebo). il berdache pellerossa (un transgender). il fairy di ny (chi va col fairy nn viene bollato come o). tanti casi una conclusione: difficile definire l o. ma se è impossibile allora l o nn esistfoucalt: è x i lf ciò che tommaso è x p lf: il potere crea false cosciebze. idea già di rousseau presente in marx. ma in marx si indica una via x liberarsi e uscire dal tunnel della falsa coscienza. f è pessimista: c è solo la lotta. qlc prevarrà (temporaneamente) f nn conta sullo stato. è scettico sulla rivol sessuale f: la liberazione nn esiste si passa da padrone a padrone. al massimo si è padroni x un attimo f e il debito vs kanr: la struttura del pensiero incide sul pensiero contro l identità. ancge quella è un costrutto ob: ormai molta evidenza che l o è in gran parte involontaria. ma per lf anche la scienza è un costrutto ma anche la storia ci racconta di una costante presenza o: ganimde il simposio... anche laddove nn esiste la parola o noi capiamo bene di chi si parla è sempre esistira una libertà o: gestualità linguaggio stile. nn c è solo oppressione come spiega lf i progressi recenti x gli o? sono o nn sono oppressi? e come mai segnali positivi in usa dove predomin il mercato e la cultura cristiana? difetti della policy: se il nemico è ovunque nn ci si focalizza queer: facciamo saltare l ordine costituito shoccando culturalmente. politica antipolitica: 1 outing (anche violento) 2 forzatura del linguaggio se il pubblico è privato l outing violento è accettabile se tutto è violenza nn ci si stupisca della violenza di chi usa la violenza ob: immagina la queer strategy x la causa gay tra i militari. un fallimento annunciato. le conqiiste queer sono solo transitorie. un linguaggio imposto può durare? Edit
For the liberationists, homosexuality as a defining condition does not properly exist because it is a construct of human thought, not an inherent or natural state of being. It is a “construction,” generated in human consciousness by the powerful to control and define the powerless.Read more at location 766
rebellion against nature, to defy the ways in which human thought seeks to constrain and control human freedom.Read more at location 774
this argument seems far less intuitively persuasive than the prohibitionists’ arguments about nature. Nature, after all, is an idea that comes naturally to people.Read more at location 775
“homosexuality” does not refer to something tangible and universal; it is a definition of a particular way of being as defined by a particular culture. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that this is true.Read more at location 783
“trans-generational.” They are about the initiation of youths into adult cultureRead more at location 786
in northern Morocco, the Koran is taught by older scribes in a similar way;Read more at location 789
none of the berdache institutions seems to imply what we would understand as homosexuality: none is a relationship between two equal people of the same sex.Read more at location 812
it would be difficult to argue that the “normal” men who had sex with fairies were really homosexual,Read more at location 827
it means that because homosexuals could not understand themselves in this way, homosexuals simply weren’t.Read more at location 835
Human beings exist, but what they are and what they mean to each other is entirely contingent on the world they find themselves in.Read more at location 838
The trans-generational and the transgenderal relationships are completely differentRead more at location 841
This kind of argument was not new to Foucault, of course. Perhaps its originator was Rousseau,Read more at location 850
But in Foucault, this argument is linked to a deep pessimism about the possibility of escape.Read more at location 852
for Foucault, the sources of repression and control were that much more elusive,Read more at location 856
Foucault was a skeptic about the claims of the sexual revolution in the modern West.Read more at location 857
The dialogue of the psychiatrist’s couch was merely an extension of the priest’s confessional;Read more at location 860
The history of sexuality in the West is not a history from repression to liberation, but the exchange of one kind of powerRead more at location 863
emergence of a gay identity was another prison into which simple pleasures could be locked.Read more at location 864
sees the attempt to “free” gay people, first by identifying them, as another form of control:Read more at location 872
Foucault’s insight that the way we structure our thoughts changes the thoughts themselvesRead more at location 883
Foucault’s insights also helpfully demystify our culture’s obsession with sex.Read more at location 894
To base that identity on sexual desire seemed to him in particular a dangerous absurdity:Read more at location 897
But that does not mean that homosexual persons, however they understood themselves, did not existRead more at location 903
There is overwhelming evidence in both that at least part of homosexuality is determined so early as to be essentially involuntary:Read more at location 908
Both science and psychology are simply further discourses, further traps for freedom,Read more at location 912
