BOOK REVIEW
Gay rights and
the politics of humanity
Nussbaum has put her finger on our generation’s great moral choice:
Do we extend equal rights to homosexuals?
E very generation is faced with moral
choices. We may wish that it were
otherwise, or that we lived in
easier times, but, that does not make it
so. For us, we have to do the right thing
in the here and now, with one eye turned
toward posterity. We must remember
that history will judge all of us, whether
or not it remembers our names.
One person whom history will judge
kindly is Martha Nussbaum, a major
political philosopher at the University of
Chicago. The Ernst Freund Professor of
Law and Ethics, who has authored diverse
works on moral psychology; gender
and social justice; the ethical life of the
ancient Greeks; and much else.
She springs from an intellectual
line of descent that stretches from the
nineteenth century abolitionists and
prison reformers to the twentieth century
civil rights activists and conscientious
objectors. Just as these prior activists
recognised the moral requirements of
their time, so Nussbaum has put her finger
on our generation’s great moral choice:
do we extend equal rights and sympathy
to homosexuals, or, do we regard them as
base, vile, or unworthy?
In From disgust to humanity, Nussbaum
provides an answer.
Nussbaum begins by taking aim at two
major thinkers who practise what she
calls “the politics of disgust.” These are
the British lawyer, Patrick Devlin, and the
contemporary US bioethicist, Leon Kass.
By “the politics of disgust,” Nussbaum
refers to the belief that strong feelings of
distaste or repugnance are good reasons
to legally ban certain kinds of behaviour.
Devlin expressed such a belief in mid-
century Britain, and used it specifically
to target homosexuality. He declared
24 March/April 2010
By Joshua F Leach
that the typical “man on the Clapham
omnibus” feels horror at the thought
of homosexual acts, and since nearly all
ordinary people share this emotion, it must
represent an integral aspect of our social
fabric. It is a moral standard we all share,
and to violate it by making homosexuality
legal would destroy our collective life.
Kass makes a rather different case,
in many ways even stronger than that of
Devlin. He does not simply argue that we
ought to respect the feelings of the man
on the omnibus, but that those feelings
are necessarily correct. They contain an
inherent wisdom which keeps us from
transgressing our God-given human
nature. Implied, if not explicitly stated,
From disgust to humanity
Sexual orientation and constitutional law
By Martha C Nussbaum
Oxford University Press, 2010.
Independent World report
in Kass’ argument is a stance against gay
equality.
Devlin and Kass provide rather
highbrow arguments for this position.
Yet, Nussbaum suggests that they are not
really so different from the arguments
used by the more aggressive homophobes
and anti-gay activists on the ground, who
also practise the politics of disgust.
She quotes the astonishing words
of anti-gay activist Paul Cameron, for
instance, who accused homosexuals of
drinking blood and ingesting faeces. In
one interview conducted in the 1980s,
Cameron waxed nostalgic at the memory
of how “homosexuals were hung three
hundred years ago in our society.” A few
lines earlier, he urged the authorities to
“screen and quarantine [homosexuals]
until we come up with a cure.”
This is of course where the politics
of disgust ultimately leads us. If we
regard widespread feelings of disgust as
legitimate moral barometers, we may
well arrive at some nasty conclusions.
Disgust is a notoriously unreliable
emotion, and every time it has been put
into political practice, it has been used to
violate the equal treatment and dignity of
underprivileged groups.
Nussbaum points to caste hierarchy
in India, anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany,
and racism in the United States: all
cases in which some groups have been
stigmatised as inherently putrid and
disgusting. There is generally no evidence
to back up such assertions, but none is
required. Every advertising agent can tell
you that reason has little impact on our
fears and desires.
Nussbaum does not spurn the entire
notion of disgust. We may well feel
disgust at unjust acts, cruelty, or sadism.
We are disgusted when people eat dogs
or cats or make coats out of their fur.
However, in all of these cases, harm is
being done to the innocent, which makes
it a qualitatively different situation.
In the case of homosexual acts, the
only harm being inflicted is upon the
worldview of homophobes. Just as the
feelings of racists need not be taken into
consideration when deciding to grant
rights to African Americans, so it is in the
case of gay rights.
With her characteristic mixture
of moral philosophy and detailed
psychology, Nussbaum dissects the
emotional landscape of disgust. She
reveals that our disgust at primary objects
– such as faeces, blood, and bodily fluids –
is evolutionarily useful. We feel horror at
those things which remind us of our own
mortality and vulnerability because we
rightly care about our own survival.
However, there is nothing rational
or natural about repugnance for specific
human groups. Just as people from India
would not understand the feelings of
white racists in the United States, so too
Westerners would not understand Indian
caste prejudice. Those hatreds which a
society regards as natural or timeless are
really nothing of the kind.
Rather, it is useful for each society to
transfer disgust at mortality and decay
to a specific group. This helps us to
absolve ourselves and to forget our own
weakness and humanity. When Cameron
accuses homosexuals of grotesque sexual
practices, he allows heterosexuals to
ignore the reality of their own sex lives.
This is projective disgust, declares
Nussbaum, and it is a dreadful guide to
political behaviour. It was used in Nazi
propaganda to generate anti-Semitic
feeling. It has also been used to restrict
the rights of women, minorities, and
many other groups throughout history.
Of course, Leon Kass would surely
not recognise the wisdom of projective
disgust. He would also no doubt reject
any association with Nazism or racism or
apartheid. In this, he reflects an age-old
conservative tendency which has existed
as long as there has been moral progress.
He retroactively admits that defenders
of human equality were correct in their
past struggles, against racism or fascism,
say, yet he continues to oppose those
movements in the present which seek the
same thing on behalf of other targeted
groups. We are disgusted when
There is no doubt whatsoever in my
mind that future generations will regard
people eat dogs or cats or
today’s opponents of gay rights the way make coats out of their fur.
we now regard Southern segregationists
or those who opposed women’s suffrage.
However, in all of these
The conservatives of tomorrow will be cases, harm is being done to
embarrassed that they did not support gay
rights when the choice mattered. Yet, they
the innocent, which makes
will still oppose whatever humanitarian it a qualitatively different
issue happens to be significant at that
future date – animal rights, perhaps, or
situation. In the case
something else entirely. of homosexual acts,
Does this process ever end? From
what I have written above, it may sound
the only harm being
that I am perfectly sanguine about the inflicted is upon the
endless march of new and better rights.
However, I ultimately feel that this is not
worldview of homophobes.
enough, as does Nussbaum. Just as the feelings of racists
Rights are necessary, but they are
not sufficient. In today’s world, the
need not be taken into
international community has supposedly consideration when deciding
granted rights to every single human
being. However, we constantly find that
to grant rights to African
people’s most basic rights to life and Americans, so it is in the
liberty are violated on a daily basis. They
are poor, they starve, and they die in
case of gay rights.
conditions of squalor and injustice.
It seems to me that in such a world, standards of the community. The
more rights granted on paper will not standards of any human group can and
solve our problems. My hope lies more must change. Such change need not undo
in the direction of moral regeneration the cohesion of all society, in fact, it can
and egalitarian social justice. Nussbaum’s reduce conflict by helping us to recognise
solution, which I greatly admire, also goes each other’s worth.
beyond mere paper rights: it is the politics I believe we are already entering a
of humanity – a daily practice of moral world in which most people do not feel
education which emphasises imaginative any particular disgust at the thought of
sympathy with the plight of others. homosexuality. After all, homosexuals
However, one should not spurn the play a large role now in our social and
importance of rights to this ultimate cultural life. I am sure that what will
goal, as legal rights may actually help us revolt and disgust the people of the
attain it in the long run. We have seen future is not homosexual behaviour, but
throughout history that legal changes homophobia, cruelty, and the paranoid
often precede moral changes. For rhetoric of people like Paul Cameron.
instance, African Americans were once Hopefully these already do. �
regarded as objects of disgust in the US.
Racism today, though still rampant, does
not generally take this form. People are
far more likely to feel disgust and fear
at the sight of lynchings or Klu Klux
Klan imagery than at unoffending black
people. This is genuine moral progress,
not merely a legal revolution.
This is, therefore, the best argument
to marshal against thinkers like Devlin Joshua F Leach – – currently a student at
who worry that moral change, even the University of Chicago – is a writer and
moral progress, will destroy the ethical human rights advocate.
Independent World report March/April 2010 25