Gender

Dear Republican Congresspersons: Might Does Not Make Right In Greenland Or Anywhere

| briansabey

Dear Republican Congresspersons,

I have always considered myself a Republican, because the issues I care the most about are the “moral” issues of social conservatism—family values, keeping a child-centric society, preserving moral boundaries in matters of so-called self-expression, preserving the various means by which our society tells its best and truest story about itself to the next generation, fidelity to the Constitution, which I believe was divinely inspired in a significant degree, preserving those aspects of traditional morality that I believe to be right, conserving and developing a wholesome sense of American identity, conserving belonging and community in our neighborhoods, religious freedom, etc. I acknowledge many of the values underlying these issues are not unique to conservatives. But the Republican Party—the party of Abraham Lincoln—has always seemed to me the better servant of these values. Like many others of my ilk, I have never liked President Trump. 

I have, to a certain extent, rejoiced in my society’s recent cultural rebuke to what the Free Press is calling the “illiberal Left” (cancel culture, the Left’s identity politics, the casual use of terms like “bigot” when opinions about the Left’s pet moral issues diverge from a moral orthodoxy that cannot seem to stay put for a single year, much less a single decade, etc.). But Trump’s strong-arm way of going about his part in that rebuke has always seemed wrong-minded and polarizing to me. Continue reading →

Ambiguity and [Un]healthy Sexuality in the World and in the Church [3]

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PART 3: UNHEALTHY SEXUALITY IN THE WORLD

Hieronymus Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights (triptych), c.1515

“The World” here is defined in contradistinction to “the Church.” The fundamental difference for present purposes is that the Church recognizes the authority of God’s commandments respecting sex while the World follows its desires regardless of God’s commandments. People do not divide neatly in the World and the Church, but at the same time the distinction is more than theoretical. I am sure that there are atheists who eschew sexual whateverism and, for their own reasons, promote faithfulness within loving dual gendered marriage as the only ethical expression of sexuality; but I cannot think of a single person I actually know who fits this category today. The vast majority of those who remain unmoved by the sexual and ideological revolutions of the last century are the religious–and most major religions (including at least Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, and Judaism) have historically spoken with virtual unanimity on the subject. Buddhism, of course, considers liberation from all desire and attachment the ultimate goal, and it therefore has perhaps an even less permissive stance towards sexuality than the other major religions.

While the nearly unanimous consensus of the world’s major religions is so strong an argument in favor of traditional sexual morality as to be, in my judgment, very nearly conclusive, I do not insist on traditional sexual morality for present purposes. What I insist on is that people must attempt to comply with a moral and philosophical system that is dictated by reason and conscience and not by desire. Desire must bow to Right (“as God gives us to see the right”), not Right to Desire. To the extent that a rigorous and conscientious atheist regulates his sexuality by the morality that seems to him correct and yet denies the authority of God’s purported commandments, he is outside the Church but also outside the World. Continue reading →

Ambiguity and [Un]healthy Sexuality in the World and in the Church [1]

| briansabey

PART 1: SEXUALITY AND AMBIGUITY

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ambigram_Ambiguity.png

Our actual experience of sexuality is full of ambiguities. There are at least three major sources of ambiguity that I can discern:

  1. The gap between reproduction itself and the bodily and mental processes associated with reproduction. 
  2. The slippage inherent in language.
  3.  Differing world views and philosophies of sexuality.

There can be no serious claim that sexuality lacks ambiguity, because intelligent people and cultures interpret it so differently. I am not an anthropologist, but I know just enough to know that anthropology furnishes precious few universals across cultures within the realm of sexuality. The few that do exist, according to Wikipedia’s page on cultural universals, include a prohibition on incest, some form of cultural dress code (sexual modesty is described as a “cultural universal” here), and some form of marriage. Continue reading →

Is It Possible To Transition Genders?

| briansabey

There are two competing claims in the debate on transgender issues. The first is the historical norm of Western culture: one’s gender should be considered the same as one’s objective biological sex. The second is the core assertion of the transgender movement: a person’s gender should be viewed by others and by the law as a matter of subjective identity. Both claims are defensible, but both cannot be right. I will refer to these two views as the objective and subjective views even though I admit these terms are problematic. My conclusion (spoiler alert) is that both views should be respected, since (among other reasons) there is no possibility of any public proof that either is right or wrong.

The clearest thinkers on both sides of the debate acknowledge a valid distinction between (1) the mere fact of biological differences between males and females and (2) the things that culture and psychology do with the concepts of “male” and “female.” This culturally and psychologically generated construct has come to be distinguished from biological sex and called “gender,” though the terms are still often used synonymously. Acknowledging this theoretical distinction, the practical issue of what to do about the possibility that an individual’s gender identity may differ from the individual’s biological sex remains entirely unresolved.

Continue reading →

Amy Barrett’s Confirmation And The State Of The Union

| briansabey

I am personally thrilled with Amy Barrett as the newest Supreme Court Justice, though far from thrilled by the process by which she became such (including the Republican-controlled Senate’s procedural hypocrisy in deferring Garland’s hearing but rushing Barrett’s). But amid the discouraging signs of the politicization of the Supreme Court confirmation process, the decline of political discourse in general, and the nation’s increasing polarization, I read one article that I found very encouraging: a self-proclaimed liberal writer who personally knew Justice Barrett back in her days as a clerk for Scalia and who, though anticipating that he will disagree with many of her opinions, is glad that the court is getting a brilliant legal thinker who is also a good person. The nation deeply needs this kind of capacity to recognize goodness and merit in people who are on “the other side,” and I want to recognize and honor that when I see it. Continue reading →

Why Multiculturalism Fails As A Primary Lens For Viewing Culture

| briansabey

Image credit: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/heart-of-darkness-joseph-conrad/1100239706#/

There are several reasons that I am an attorney instead of an English professor (my original plan). A relatively minor reason that I don’t usually mention is the dominance of multiculturalism in the academy as a lens for talking about and judging literature and culture generally.

What I mean by “multiculturalism” is a particular kind of intense focus on race, gender, class, nationality, sexuality, and other categories that might make a person a minority, and the ways in which cultures construct and deploy these categories (generally in ways that disadvantage the minority). Anyone who has studied English literature at today’s universities should understand what I mean. But so should anybody familiar with the rhetoric of certain liberal politicians, some of whom (for instance) have recently assumed it unnecessary to make any substantial explanation of why they deem it deeply wrong for Joe Biden to have had collegial relationships with segregationist senators. Continue reading →