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Loading ...Corvino: Diversity and discrimination
I’ve been a member of the American Philosophical Association (APA) for about fifteen years. I go to the annual meetings, I get the publications, and I peruse the frightfully scarce listings in “Jobs for Philosophers.”
Last week a colleague sent me a petition addressed to the APA. The petition notes that many universities “require faculty, students, and staff to follow certain ‘ethical’ standards which prohibit engaging in homosexual acts,” and that some of these advertise in “Jobs for Philosophers.”It goes on to point out that the APA’s anti-discrimination policy “rejects as unethical all forms of discrimination based on race, color, religion, political convictions, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identification or age, whether in graduate admissions, appointments, retention, promotion and tenure, manuscript evaluation, salary determination, [etc.].”
Philosophers hate contradictions, and the petitioners detect one here. Arguing that these anti-gay ethical codes run afoul of the APA anti-discrimination policy, they conclude:
“We, the undersigned, request that the American Philosophical Association either (1) enforce its policy and prohibit institutions that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation from advertising in ‘Jobs for Philosophers’ or (2) clearly mark institutions with these policies as institutions that violate our anti-discrimination policy.”
One would think that as a longtime openly gay philosopher, I would jump at the chance to sign this petition. But I paused.
Part of my hesitation may strike non-philosophers as nitpicky. It seems to me that there’s no contradiction in prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation while allowing it on the basis of sexual conduct. The schools mentioned don’t exclude gay people; they exclude people who engage in homosexual acts. It’s a fine line, perhaps, but philosophers like fine lines.
Generally speaking, these prohibitions are part of a more general effort to preserve the schools’ robust religious character. Schools that prohibit gay sex generally prohibit pre-marital and extramarital sex as well; some even prohibit the drinking of alcohol. (Philosophy without beer? Count me out.)
At the same time, the APA policy recognizes the special commitments of religious institutions and allows them to discriminate on the basis of religious affiliation as long as—and this is key—“the criteria for such religious affiliations do not discriminate against persons according to the other attributes listed.”
I admire the petitioners for recognizing the serious injustices that daily confront gays and lesbians and for seeking to remedy those injustices.
I also agree that, while there’s a difference between orientation and conduct, the two cannot be teased apart as easily as some religious conservatives would like. Who we are is intimately connected with what we do—especially when it comes to deep personal relationships. Those who profess to “love the sinner but hate the sin” often distort that deep connection.
So let’s grant that these schools, even if they don’t contradict the letter of the APA’s policy, violate its spirit. The APA is (or should be) saying “If you’re against gays, we’re against you.” Why not?
Some might worry that the petitioners’ stance violates freedom of association. If you want to organize a school committed to conservative Christian principles—including opposition to homosexuality—a free society ought to allow you to do so.
But no one is suggesting that such schools should be abolished. Rather, they’re suggesting that APA—a private voluntary organization—ought to be allowed to dissociate itself from such schools.
Freedom of association cuts both ways, and if individuals are free to form schools that exclude gays, other individuals should be free to form professional organizations that exclude the excluders from advertising in their publications.
Indeed, the petition even concedes that the schools might be allowed to continue their advertising, provided that they are identified as violating the APA’s policy. Given the schools’ presumed pride in their ethical commitments, they should have little objection to asterisks announcing what they’re doing.
That concession strikes me as a reasonable compromise: you can advertise here, as long as we can alert people to your policies and express our moral objection to them.
But when are asterisks insufficient? Suppose a school had “ethical” standards prohibiting interracial dating (as Bob Jones University did until 2000). If such a school should be completely excluded from our organization, why not schools that prohibit homosexual conduct?
On the merits, I think the cases are similar. But pragmatically speaking, our culture is at very different places on those two issues. Excluding schools that in 2009 prohibit homosexual conduct is not like excluding schools that in 2009 prohibit interracial dating; it’s like excluding schools that in 1950 prohibit interracial dating.
Such absolute bans have a cost, since they remove the offending schools from the kind of critical environments that might hasten a change in their policies.
In the end, I will likely sign the petition. But I will do so hoping for the “asterisk” option. It’s not because the APA needs those schools. It’s because those schools, more than most, need us.
John Corvino, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, and philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. His column “The Gay Moralist” appears Fridays on 365gay.com.
For more about John Corvino, or to see clips from his “What’s Morally Wrong with Homosexuality?” DVD, visit www.johncorvino.com.
See John at his upcoming events:
March 2: Texas Women’s University (debate) 7 pm MCL Auditorium
March 3: Everett Community College (WA) 7 pm Student Union Theater
March 10: Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas 11 am Parks Student Union MPR
This is what I love about philosophers – the tempest over a titmouse, and the furious focus to the exclusion of all else whilst contemplating belly-button lint. When will you lot grow up?
The fallacy of legislating societal behavior has been proven for millenia of human civilization. Thanks to our human stupidity, however, we just can’t help ourselves and keep returning to the idiocy.
Discrimination is discrimination, at whatever remove – contortions over degrees does not change that fact, John. Your article, like so many others you’ve written over the years, illustrates for me the meaning of the following:
“We dance around a ring and suppose -
-while the Secret sits in the middle and knows…”
As long as it’s ok to be black/jewish/female, as long as you “don’t act black/jewish/female/muslim”, I’m all for this too!
Come on, John. You’re smarter than this. I think even Kant would say it’s fundamentally/categorically flawed. Take your education in philosophy and apply some William James to it.
Definitions are important. You distinguish sexual behavior from sexual orientation, and thus think of sexual orientation as something different from sexual activity. You cede that “we are intimately connected with what we do,” but nonetheless sustain the “distinction”. I, however, think it goes further than that.
It would be, in this case, a lot like calling someone a shipbuilder who has never built a ship for whatever reason, or someone who stops building ships for whatever reason and yet maintains the title. But a shipbuilder is someone who builds ships…
I suppose you can say that a homosexual is not someone who engages in homosexual activity, but that’s not true, as many homosexuals do. What you’re saying, then, is that it’s not necessary to the definition of homosexual to engage in homosexual activity. Does engaging in homosexual activity make one a homosexual? Not necessarily, but it actually is a part of being a homosexual as many homosexuals will attest (a byproduct, if you will
. So, while one need not necessarily engage in homosexual acts in being a homosexual, homosexual acts are actually a part of being a homosexual; they are the satisfaction conditions of homosexual sexual desires–and necessarily so; though one need not satisfy them and be a homosexual. So homosexual acts are, in fact, necessarily a part of being a homosexual (as the satisfaction conditions of, say, homosexual sexual desire), though individual homosexuals need not necessarily engage in them and be homosexual. So that means that the acts prohibited do constitute sexual orientation discrimination in spite of the fact that no homosexual need ever engage in same sex sexual activity. QED
Another thing to consider is that homosexuality is sexual attraction to members of the same sex, and attraction is an activity (we’ll take a broadly Quinean behavioristic view of “actions and behaviors” here). Is it sexual activity? It’s not necessarily sexual activity with a member of the same sex, but it is sexual activity that involves members of the same sex (it’s got something it’s about). And, it can actually involve sexual activity with members of the same sex. I, however, see no reason to make such clear cut distinctions based on the fact that sometimes, sexual activity and sexual orientation do not match, and thus it is not logically necessary. Such rigid definitions and distinctions have nothing to do with the case, you see. And that, after all, is what we are seeking to address.
@Myke:
Your argument concerning the APA’s ethical guidelines have merit: philosophers ought not need a moral code to govern their association. You make a solid case for that. But as a Vietnamese general told a US general in the 1990s, after hearing the US claim that America won every battlefield fight during the war: “That may be true, but it is also irrelevant”.
While you scorn the Philosophers Association’s code of ethics, surely you know that all such professional/academic associations have these guidelines. Even advertising agencies and fast food chains have them. It’s a private club, they are entitled to set the parameters of membership. If I want to get choice gigs as a translator, I have to fork over money to the Translator’s Association. They also have a similar non-discrimination policy. I understand the duality which I believe you are trying to point out: the non-discrimination policies are tantamount to discrimination toward those with views that run counter to those espoused by the group. All trades have a natural tendency to form guilds, if not outright unions. As US universities are mostly profit-based enterprises, one can expect all academics to create such entities to enhance their members’ success in the field. Philosophy, in the American context, has no other choice than to act like a business. The tradition among such businesses (professional guilds) is to establish a code of ethical guidelines. To ask philosophers – or translators, or doctors, or scientists – to not take measures that ensure their continued ability to make a living is unrealistic in a society where everything is a commodity – and where everyone expects such groups to operate under some form of moral mission. True, philosophers, doctors, translators, etc. all existed before the advent of the university. But the advent of the university has changed the playing field. Your argument leads to a situation in which the rights of association are threatened. If universities all have a code of ethics that separate acceptable from unacceptable applicants, it is predictable that the various groups that serve as vendors to universities establish similar guidelines. I may have some sympathy for the overall point you’re making, but it doesn’t reflect the way in which institutions now function. We don’t much question the American Medical Association’s adherence to the Hippocratic oath. But the oath is discriminatory toward those who nowadays lean toward the “death with dignity” movement that promotes euthanasia for those who do not wish to end their life in prolonged pain. All such codes of ethics will eventually run into contradictions. Americans tend to think in black and white terms, where there is no room for any shade of gray. We crave ideology and loathe pragmatism. This is one of the inevitable results of that way of thinking.
@ gay senior
I’m with you: I read his column because he’s cute… Thank goodness he knows how to write. If my discriminatory shallowness leads me to learn something new, however, I guess I can live with it… And while many accuse him of apostasy and apologism, I find his non-black, non-white thinking very refreshing. So not only is he cute, he’s flexible to boot. Drool.
With spokespeople like Corvino, we don’t need enemies. I suppose he has some philosophical justification for opposing ENDA or keeping “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” intact. Or continuing to allow gay people to marry. One can always justify discrimination and the denial of equal rights, especially if one is willing to quibble over “fine lines.” Give me a break.
philosopher (a wise person who is calm and rational; someone who lives a life of reason with equanimity)
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, justice, beauty, validity, mind and language.
So what part of rational thinking does forced discrimiation play in being a Philospher? Somehow Philosophy only dwells within the confines of a piece of paper claiming you are “Philosophical” or a group of you who clamor together for self recognition? That seems to me to go against the concept of Philosophy.
How is it that religious institutions can claim to be Philosophical when by definition rationality has something to do with it? Talking snakes, humungous boats carrying pairs of animals, walking on water,72 virgins, 8 armed Gods?
There were no degrees in Philosophy when colleges didn’t exist yet there were many Philosophers. Stop getting caught up in your own self adulation. Every person at some point in time is a Philosopher even if your group doesn’t recognize them as such. A rational, thinking person who seeks justice and truth shouldn’t even be part of an organization that claims these principles. Is your claim that if all of you who form this clique join together in ideas and concepts that it makes them so? The very definition deems that by even thinking about deliberate discrimination that none of you are acting Philosophically. If you have a predetermined structure in place then by definition you have already excluded a principle or concept rather than rationally discussing it, exploring it and so forth.Philosophy doesn’t close doors, it opens them.
By automatically ruling something out in advance then you are not seeking the truth nor are you searching tirelessly for truth and justice. How can this even be an issue for you “Philosophers” when it completely contradicts being a Philosopher?
Philosphers don’t pander or convince. They simply share conclusions they have reached through unending quests for truth and justice and all the other things.
Having a code of conduct contradicts the exploration or search for ideas that you may not have answers to.
If you want to be a Philosopher you should go “balls to the wall” seeking truth and justice. Not this tepid hierachical struggle with group membership and policies.
A policy reinforces a preconceived notion and therefore the quest has ceased and the truth will never be found out.
I just can’t understand how a group of Philosophers can even pass a petition around. It goes against the concept of trying to figure things out. You shouldn’t err in either direction. You are just supposed to be on a perpetual quest. That quest never reaches an end because it is conceptual and not finite. As the world changes so goes Philosophy. More will always be revealed so why stop looking?
Somehow having your group sign a document about my “conduct” diminishes what you are all claiming your own higher ground.
To even question the concept of discrimination means that none of you are Philosophers. You are just self important eggheads thinking you have the inside scoop to what we should all be doing.
I am just guffaw at the premise of professional Philosophers. To me it’s an inside job.
So while I laugh at anybody who tries to limit the sexual behavior of nature I laugh just as hard at people who claim to be “Philosophers” who have a professional affiliation. Can you seek the truth without a paycheck being your motivation? Can you speak to injustice without having to have a few letters added to your title? Can you positively influence humanity without expecting money, property, and prestige?
Morality has no part of Philosphy. Morals are determined, Philosophy is a quest.
Why would anybody want to have a job where their private sexuality is a requirement for pay. If you settle for a job with such requirements then you are self serving rather than a Philospopher anyhow.
you poor thing John….you feel ousted by your own group….yet you side with them…You are the reason we struggle so much. If a fag philospher falls in the forest, does anyone care? If your answer is no, then blame nobody but yourself for the result. You’ve already been abaondoned by your so-called “conservative friend” at the mere thought of staying at your home. This new development surprises you? really? Perhaps they ought to reevaluate your PhD….your critical thinking skills seem to need some sharpening up.
I think Mr. Corvino is dipping a bit too much into the beer barrel because his thinking seems muddled, unforcused,and confused. Bigorty is bigorty, there is no such thing as just a little bigotry. It’s like saying a little bit pregnant! Unless these offending universities have a global policy that prohibits sexual contact of any kind, regardless of the person’s sexual orientation, it is discrimination. And how ludicrous would it be for a university that is not a monastery, a seminary or a convent to have such a ludicrous no sexual contact policy, right?
Using a prohibition of a non criminal behavior is only a veiled form of discrimination–but it is still discrimination.
So I would be allowed to apply for a job as long as I left my partner of 15 years while no such requirement would be placed on a heterosexual? That is discrimination based on sexual orientation, no matter what you call it.
It must be nice to never have a dilemma. To never have to consider conflicting thoughts within oneself.
To be absolutely certain that every thought that enters your mind or decision you make is beyond reproach.
What constitutes “homosexual conduct”? Does this mean that a student could not go on a same-sex date? Is a kiss improper conduct? Ten dollars to a donut any school prohibiting homosexual conduct would not approve of same-sex dating, kissing, hand-holding, etc. Do these schools prohibit heterosexuals from these activities? I bet not. By prohibiting conduct they mean homosexuals stay out.
Once again all these issues and difficulties in dealing with same-sex behavior comes from the fantasy of religion. It is so sad that humans have and will continue to waste so much emotional energy on something make-believe.