I, like most people, was shocked to discover that a high-profile and (as far as I can tell) well-liked professor at Columbia was indicted for sleeping with his daughter for five years. Perhaps most surprising for me though, was that the professor was charged with a crime.
I mention this not to advocate removing laws banning incest, only to express my surprise that our society still regulates consensual sexual relationships between two adults at all anymore. It also got me to thinking about Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court case that struck down laws banning sodomy as unconstitutional, and, due to subsequent conversations with friends who have no or few moral qualms about homosexual behavior expressing abject horror at the Columbia professor incest case, wondering what it is about our society's organization that led to the decriminalizing of one and not of the other. I think, oddly enough, the disease model of homosexuality that arose in the 19th century is probably the reason.
If you consider the way sodomy is understood in our culture compared to how it once was, you will find that today we consider the act of sodomy not as an aberrant form of sexual behavior, but as the consummation of a natural inclination arising within a particular class of individuals. As far as incest is concerned, we have no "incesexuals" or the like. There is no class of individuals that is socially designated as "those whose identity is defined by their having sex with their relatives." The interesting thing about this designation is that it typically arises with the intent to marginalize and stigmatize a group of individuals by making a reviled behavior into the ultimate source of their identity. Ironically, what ultimately appears to occur instead is the decriminalization of that behavior, and eventually (if gay marriage advocates are successful) the social endorsement of its moral legitimacy.
Permit me to armchair psychologize for a moment. Maybe this happens because so classifying these behaviors as the result of a particular identity makes society at large feel safer. These behaviors confused and horrified our ancestors. "Why," the Victorian moralist asks, "would anyone ever choose to engage in such a behavior?" In response to this fear,* society can either prohibit it morally (and sometimes legally), or it can attempt to explain it "scientifically" in order to wipe it out that way. In the case of homosexual sex, this was accomplished with the new "science" founded by Sigmund Freud.
In order to make society feel safe, this science would need to identify those behaviors and traits that are co-morbid with the dreaded sexual act, so that society can push those that display them to the outskirts of the community, and label them as "homosexuals." Then when society develops a well-established conception of what "homosexuality" is, they can neatly categorize the population into two groups; one normal and the other aberrant and to be "cured."
Later, once the marginalized group is deemed sufficiently harmless (i.e. all of the "homosexuals" are out in the open and no one will suddenly wake up tomorrow and leave his wife for another man; that is, it becomes a temptation for a class of people rather than for all people), then the individuals can safely be reintegrated into society. Sodomy is no longer dangerous, because it's something that is confined to a particular group of people, and no longer something that society at large is responsible for. Same-sex sexual behavior becomes domesticated. (This could also explain why those who have a large number of gay friends and are very friendly to the idea of gay marriage still experience a great deal of fear and disgust when confronted with a son or daughter who comes out as gay: it's an example of the marginalized outgroup suddenly bringing its behavior home, which goes against the "rules" of the divided society.)
But why did this normalization take so long to get started and why did it eventually happen so quickly? My guess is that the internal moral logic of liberalism that came of age in the civil rights movement has a great deal to do with it. If sexuality is who you are and not what you do, suddenly, maintaining the marginalizing force of the disease model of homosexuality faces increasing moral approbation. Make no mistake though: our contemporary understanding of what "homosexuality" is is still entirely dependent upon that original disease model. Only those smaller voices at the outskirts of the Left and the Right that are beginning to insist on a less rigid understanding of sexuality are moving to put it aside. Certainly the advocates of same-sex marriage are, ironically, the disease model's strongest defenders.
To return to the original idea: once upon a time, learning that someone had intercourse with a member of the same sex had a similar emotive and moral impact on the hearer that learning of this Columbia professor's acts of incest do today. This is no longer the case. Does no one else find this odd or in need of an explanation? I've tried my best to outline one here.
*I'm not arguing here that this fear is necessarily a bad thing; there are certain behaviors which are so damaging to the social fabric that they ought to cause fear. It is the community's collective responsibility to determine which feelings are rational and which are not.
I mention this not to advocate removing laws banning incest, only to express my surprise that our society still regulates consensual sexual relationships between two adults at all anymore. It also got me to thinking about Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court case that struck down laws banning sodomy as unconstitutional, and, due to subsequent conversations with friends who have no or few moral qualms about homosexual behavior expressing abject horror at the Columbia professor incest case, wondering what it is about our society's organization that led to the decriminalizing of one and not of the other. I think, oddly enough, the disease model of homosexuality that arose in the 19th century is probably the reason.
If you consider the way sodomy is understood in our culture compared to how it once was, you will find that today we consider the act of sodomy not as an aberrant form of sexual behavior, but as the consummation of a natural inclination arising within a particular class of individuals. As far as incest is concerned, we have no "incesexuals" or the like. There is no class of individuals that is socially designated as "those whose identity is defined by their having sex with their relatives." The interesting thing about this designation is that it typically arises with the intent to marginalize and stigmatize a group of individuals by making a reviled behavior into the ultimate source of their identity. Ironically, what ultimately appears to occur instead is the decriminalization of that behavior, and eventually (if gay marriage advocates are successful) the social endorsement of its moral legitimacy.
Permit me to armchair psychologize for a moment. Maybe this happens because so classifying these behaviors as the result of a particular identity makes society at large feel safer. These behaviors confused and horrified our ancestors. "Why," the Victorian moralist asks, "would anyone ever choose to engage in such a behavior?" In response to this fear,* society can either prohibit it morally (and sometimes legally), or it can attempt to explain it "scientifically" in order to wipe it out that way. In the case of homosexual sex, this was accomplished with the new "science" founded by Sigmund Freud.
In order to make society feel safe, this science would need to identify those behaviors and traits that are co-morbid with the dreaded sexual act, so that society can push those that display them to the outskirts of the community, and label them as "homosexuals." Then when society develops a well-established conception of what "homosexuality" is, they can neatly categorize the population into two groups; one normal and the other aberrant and to be "cured."
Later, once the marginalized group is deemed sufficiently harmless (i.e. all of the "homosexuals" are out in the open and no one will suddenly wake up tomorrow and leave his wife for another man; that is, it becomes a temptation for a class of people rather than for all people), then the individuals can safely be reintegrated into society. Sodomy is no longer dangerous, because it's something that is confined to a particular group of people, and no longer something that society at large is responsible for. Same-sex sexual behavior becomes domesticated. (This could also explain why those who have a large number of gay friends and are very friendly to the idea of gay marriage still experience a great deal of fear and disgust when confronted with a son or daughter who comes out as gay: it's an example of the marginalized outgroup suddenly bringing its behavior home, which goes against the "rules" of the divided society.)
But why did this normalization take so long to get started and why did it eventually happen so quickly? My guess is that the internal moral logic of liberalism that came of age in the civil rights movement has a great deal to do with it. If sexuality is who you are and not what you do, suddenly, maintaining the marginalizing force of the disease model of homosexuality faces increasing moral approbation. Make no mistake though: our contemporary understanding of what "homosexuality" is is still entirely dependent upon that original disease model. Only those smaller voices at the outskirts of the Left and the Right that are beginning to insist on a less rigid understanding of sexuality are moving to put it aside. Certainly the advocates of same-sex marriage are, ironically, the disease model's strongest defenders.
To return to the original idea: once upon a time, learning that someone had intercourse with a member of the same sex had a similar emotive and moral impact on the hearer that learning of this Columbia professor's acts of incest do today. This is no longer the case. Does no one else find this odd or in need of an explanation? I've tried my best to outline one here.
*I'm not arguing here that this fear is necessarily a bad thing; there are certain behaviors which are so damaging to the social fabric that they ought to cause fear. It is the community's collective responsibility to determine which feelings are rational and which are not.
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