Is it morally wrong to believe that gay sex is immoral or that gay relationships are inferior to straight ones? I think that these views are both false and harmful, and I spent more than a year trying to prove that it’s immoral to hold them. I eventually realized that I was wrong: There’s no reason to think that these beliefs are always immoral, even if they often are. In the rest of this post, I’ll explain what’s (often) morally bad about homophobic beliefs while also noting that these same reasons don’t apply to every person who holds them.
To start off, I think we should agree that some people are in a bad position to form pro-gay beliefs: Young children in conservative households, gay teens who hate themselves, and 12th-century Catholic peasants are not in a good position to question homophobic doctrine. I’ll also focus on the two beliefs that I mentioned at the beginning of this post–that gay sex is morally wrong and that gay relationships are inferior to straight ones. I think that some other views, such as that it’s okay to discriminate against gay people, are much less likely to be permissible. Consider Jack, a mentally competent adult who lives in a society that has seen the influence of feminism and the gay rights movement. Jack believes that gay people should have all of the same legal rights as straight people, but he also thinks that God disapproves of gay relationships and that gay people ought to be celibate. When would it be right to blame Jack for his beliefs?
Here are some arguments that live in my head:
Anti-gay beliefs are the same thing as homophobic bigotry, which is analogous to racist or sexist bigotry.
If a person holds anti-gay beliefs, then that’s conclusive evidence that they hate gay people, even if they claim not to.
Even if a person has non-hateful reasons to hold anti-gay beliefs, it’s immoral to hold these beliefs because they harm gay people.
(1) is a false equivalence–the belief that gay people should be celibate is not the same thing as disgust, fear, or hatred toward gay people. (2) is trickier, since I can’t prove that there are people who have homophobic beliefs and who don’t also hate us. (It's also tricky because I think this argument is partly right--see below.) People who claim to fall into this category might be lying or delusional. It really doesn’t seem that way to me, though. I know one person who holds these anti-gay views, but who has never shown the slightest sign of disgust or malice toward me even as we’ve discussed this topic at length. Why assume that her real attitudes and motivations are so much uglier than anything I can glean from her words or body language?
(3) is closest to the view that I tried to develop into a mature argument. On its face, this argument looks pretty bad: Memes aside, facts really don’t care about our feelings, and we should often believe things that are inconvenient or hurtful. Jack thinks it’s just a fact that God disapproves of gay relationships. He can take various steps to reduce the harm of holding this belief–for example, by only expressing it very tactfully and in appropriate contexts–but it would be unreasonable for him to give up that belief just because it is harmful in some ways. So it looks like this argument is a non-starter.
Hold on, though. Even if we can’t blame Jack just for believing that gay relationships are immoral, we might be able to blame him if he has acquired or defended his beliefs in a haphazard way. In William Clifford’s parable, a shipowner realizes that his ship might be in need of expensive repairs before it becomes seaworthy, but he brushes these worries aside by convincing himself that the ship is already safe. He sends the ship on a voyage without inspecting it, and the ship sinks, killing every passenger. The shipowner acted on a “sincere and comfortable conviction” that the ship was safe, but he arrived at that belief “not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts.” From there, Clifford argues that “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence,” but I think that conclusion is hasty. I would say, instead, that we have a moral responsibility to scrutinize beliefs when there's a serious risk that our ignorance could harm others. The shipowner is culpable for his ignorance because he declined to investigate even when he knew that the outcome could be catastrophic. We can’t possibly fix all of our false beliefs–there are simply too many of them–but as a starting point, we should be humble about the beliefs we have acquired so far, and we should especially remain open to revising views when our ignorance could cause a lot of harm.
The shipowner’s decision is vastly more fraught than Jack’s decision about whether to reconsider his homophobic beliefs, but the latter decision is still risky enough for Jack’s decision to be morally evaluable. Since Jack lives in 21st century America, he is aware that some people think anti-gay views are very harmful–that these views are hurtful and false, and that they contribute to discrimination and violence. It’s easy to imagine situations where Jack’s beliefs could cause harm: If Jack has a gay child, then the child is likely to suffer psychological harm because of his beliefs. If Jack’s children are straight, then his beliefs might influence them to be bigoted toward gay people (even if Jack isn't). If a friend comes out to him, then Jack won’t be able to enthusiastically and honestly support her. These are not arguments against Jack’s beliefs, but they are unfortunate consequences of his holding them. Thus, I would argue, Jack has some morally compelling reasons to consider the possibility that he is wrong and to seek out arguments which might change his mind.
It’s probably unreasonable to demand that Jack re-consider his entire belief system, but it wouldn’t cost him very much to remain open to the possibility that God approves of gay relationships. Even granting that Christianity is true, Jack’s views depend on several controversial claims that might be false. At most, about seven passages from the Bible explicitly condemn homosexual relationships, and some of these are probably misreadings.1 Jack might learn that Biblical literalism has only been a major part of Christian thought for a few centuries, or that Jews tend to view the Hebrew Bible as a text that comprises fallible and contradictory perspectives. Jack might drop from 100% confidence that homosexuality is immoral to 90%, 80%...maybe even as low as 50%, true agnosticism about whether God approves of gay relationships.
So far, I actually still agree with this argument. If you’re aware of the gay rights movement and you’ve met gay people, then it’s pretty obvious that your beliefs have the potential to cause harm, even if they are also true. If the belief is wrong, then there’s no justification for causing that harm. It seems unreasonable to be 100% certain about God’s views on a topic that receives so little attention in scripture, so I still think that it’s morally appropriate for Jack to see out challenges to his theological views on this topic. However, I disagree with my past self on two points: First, I now reject that Jack always has an obligation to re-examine his homophobic views. Second, I reject that, if Jack does retain his homophobic views, then this is proof that he's done something immoral.
Must Jack re-examine his views? I’ve argued that there are morally compelling reasons for him to do so, but there are morally compelling reasons to do all kinds of things that most of us don’t have time for. Jack could spend dozens of hours reading pro-LGBT books and websites; he could learn Biblical Hebrew and Greek and read academic articles about the best interpretations of relevant scriptures. But Jack has limited time, and he’s allowed to be interested in other things. It’s easy for me to say that Jack should educate himself about this topic (i.e., that he should read people I like until he agrees with me), because this topic really is important and because I think that our arguments are better than the ones he currently accepts. The problem is that there are so many important topics, and any of them might have an equal or stronger claim on Jack’s time. Communists, feminists, men’s rights activists, scientists who study AI risk, and numerous other groups want you to pay attention to their pet causes. It’s literally necessary to set some problems aside even though you might be wrong about them. In some circumstances, I think that it might become a serious priority for Jack to re-examine his homophobic views–for example, if his child comes out as gay.2 Until then, it might be no more urgent for him to re-examine his homophobic views that it is for him to examine his views about nuclear energy or the ethics of organ donation. It’s impossible to understand and care about every issue that deserves attention, and it would be extremely costly to try.
The other problem is that I was expecting too much agreement from Jack. I think that this is a decent evidential argument against homophobic interpretations of Christianity: Gay relationships are often good in the same way that straight relationships are; they bear good fruit, allowing gay people to flourish, to spiritually develop within their relationships, and to raise children within good homes. Although Christian churches have historically maligned gay relationships, they have often done so by mischaracterizing them as assaultive, hedonistic, or physically disgusting–all claims that do not apply to most gay relationships in our own culture. Other Biblical commandments, including the apparent prohibition on premarital sex, could plausibly benefit the people who follow them, but people who observe the prohibition on homosexual relationships tend to be significantly worse off than people who ignore this prohibition. Rather than forming relationships which are, by all appearances, exactly as healthy as heterosexual unions, gay Christians who embrace celibacy often find the process continually difficult and painful. Thus, to the extent that I think Christianity might be true, I still think it’s pretty unlikely that God disapproves of gay relationships.
In the past, I urgently wanted Jack to understand the force of this argument. Given my own experiences, it is difficult to even entertain the idea that gay relationships are inherently immoral. If he took my perspective seriously, then he would have to change his mind, wouldn’t he? I do think that Jack should have some sympathy for my perspective, but it would also be unreasonable for me to expect him to adopt it just because it is my perspective. Just as there are too many causes that deserve attention, there are too many perspectives that deserve consideration and sympathy. It is trivially easy to find examples of people whose views on a topic are informed by hurt or trauma; these accounts can be very moving, but they aren’t strong evidence of anything other than that person’s own feelings. If Jack had infinite time and patience, then it would be reasonable for me to expect him to contemplate my perspective in great detail and to read some books and articles that reflect my view. Since he doesn’t, I can only expect him to devote a very limited amount of time to contemplating my opinion. It’s possible that, even if Jack does listen to me carefully and think about what I’ve said, he’ll simply disagree with me. He doesn’t owe it to me to keep thinking until he agrees with me.
I’ve spent this whole post explaining why Jack might be off the hook. Are homophobic beliefs ever immoral? Yes. Although we can’t judge Jack strictly by the conclusions that he comes to, it would still be immoral for him to retain these beliefs through motivated reasoning. Suppose that I grow up in an insular community where gay people are hardly even discussed. I was raised with homophobic views, and by age eighteen I have never encountered the slightest challenge to these views. Since I’ve never had an impetus to re-examine my beliefs, I haven’t done anything immoral. When I move to the city for college, I meet some gay people who don’t embody the negative stereotypes I've heard about, and I learn that these people consider my community’s views to be oppressive. At this point, I have a morally relevant choice to make: I can either pursue the possibility that these people are right and that I am wrong, or I can dismiss this possibility. If I dismiss it entirely, then I’m being irresponsible; I just found out that my beliefs might degrade people for no good reason, and I haven’t even begun to re-examine them. I might be motivated by psychological inertia (it’s simply unpleasant to change a view I’ve held for a long time), pride (it would be painful to believe that I, my community, and my religion have been wrong about this), and even hatred or disgust. Even if I have no obligation to seek out criticism of my views, it’s morally wrong for me to rationalize my views on the basis of stubbornness, vanity, hatred, or disgust. If I find myself in that situation (for any belief), then I should try to understand my true reasons for defending that view, and if my motivations are unreasonable then I should become more open to the possibility that I’m wrong.
I mentioned earlier that argument (2) is partly right. Although I reject that everyone who holds some anti-gay views is bigoted against gay people, a great many of them are. If gay people are paranoid, we have good reason to be: It’s become unfashionable to admit that you feel disgust toward gay people, so people will often deny that they feel this way even when it’s obvious from their tone, their demeanor, or the language they use to describe us. I suspect that these people usually think they are telling the truth, but that they’re lying to themselves, refusing to acknowledge their viscerally negative feelings toward queer people. They have a moral obligation to honestly evaluate their feelings, to make progress toward overcoming feelings of disgust, and to avoid conveying disgust in their interactions toward others. Until then, gay people are justified in being distrustful toward people whose actions convey bigoted attitudes toward us.
1 For example, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is probably not a condemnation of gay sex. Colby Martin thinks that none of these passages actually supports a homophobic reading–-that sounds optimistic to me, but I also haven’t read his book. People sometimes interpret other passages as homophobic (e.g., “Adam and Eve are a model for humanity”), but these arguments have always seemed very weak to me.↩
2 I’m tempted to think that parents have an obligation to re-examine their homophobic views even if their kid hasn’t come out. On one plausible count, about one in six teenagers identifies as L, G, B, or T, and that number may continue to grow. So, if you’re a parent of a young child, there’s always a significant chance that your child will suffer undeserved shame or humiliation as a result of your homophobic attitudes. This argument might be vulnerable to a more localized version of the argument I’m developing in this paragraph, though–-parents have a lot on their plates, and it might be overwhelming for them to address every problem which poses this level of risk to their children.↩
