The Latest Christian Martyr

This post by Timothy Kincaid is probably the most level-headed response I've seen to the "firing" of the U of I professor who decided an e-mail to prep for an upcoming test was the ideal place to rant against gays.

The tone of the e-mail is quite reasonable, but there are a couple of places where it goes entirely overboard:

But the more significant problem has to do with the fact that the consent criterion is not related in any way to the NATURE of the act itself. This is where Natural Moral Law (NML) objects. NML says that Morality must be a response to REALITY. In other words, sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same. How do we know this? By looking at REALITY. Men and women are complementary in their anatomy, physiology, and psychology. Men and women are not interchangeable. So, a moral sexual act has to be between persons that are fitted for that act. Consent is important but there is more than consent needed.

First off, his "Nature Moral Law" has nothing to do with reality, in spite of his protestations. His "reality" is an entirely theologically-driven human construct based on a limited and highly selective idea of what's desirable, not what's natural. (Oh, and the "consent" argument, which comes in the paragraph before, is so much BS, to the extent that I saw no point in dropping it in here. You can go read it if you want.)

OK -- he's still in the realm of Catholic theology, and even though it's wrong, I can't object to that.

However:

One example applicable to homosexual acts illustrates the problem. To the best of my knowledge, in a sexual relationship between two men, one of them tends to act as the "woman" while the other acts as the "man." In this scenario, homosexual men have been known to engage in certain types of actions for which their bodies are not fitted. I don't want to be too graphic so I won't go into details but a physician has told me that these acts are deleterious to the health of one or possibly both of the men. Yet, if the morality of the act is judged only by mutual consent, then there are clearly homosexual acts which are injurious to their health but which are consented to. Why are they injurious? Because they violate the meaning, structure, and (sometimes) health of the human body.

Sexual relationships between men: he can't get away from the dichotomous male/female point of view. 1) we do not automatically fall into "man" and "woman" when we're having sex. There are lots of alternatives, even in the most functional reading of that idea. 2) "a physician has told me. . . ." is not a valid argument; we have no way of knowing whether the physician is qualified to opine on this subject. I have seen the argument that anal sex (which the good professor is too coy to actually name) presents a greater vulnerability for the receptive partner in HIV transmission, but I've never seen any evidence of the "microscopic tears and abrasions" that a number of physicians claim are the result. 3) based on the fallacies he's presented so far, this conclusion has no weight.

Here's the capstone of the nonsense:

Natural Moral Theory says that if we are to have healthy sexual lives, we must return to a connection between procreation and sex. Why? Because that is what is REAL. It is based on human sexual anatomy and physiology. Human sexuality is inherently unitive and procreative. If we encourage sexual relations that violate this basic meaning, we will end up denying something essential about our humanity, about our feminine and masculine nature.

Again, one can take this as a legitimate exposition of Catholic doctrine, although presented in a heavy-handed, authoritarian manner that doesn't allow for the recognition of another point of view. That doesn't mean it's correct, and if you take into account his insistence on reality, it's obviously nonsense. In case anyone was wondering, people don't have sex to procreate. They have sex because it's fun. (There was actually a recent study published on this, which I can't find online. Sort of blows the procreation idea out of the water, though.)

The parting shot is priceless:

As a final note, a perceptive reader will have noticed that none of what I have said here or in class depends upon religion. Catholics don't arrive at their moral conclusions based on their religion. They do so based on a thorough understanding of natural reality.

This is a howler on the order of William F. Buckley, Jr.'s famous dictum that "morality is absolute." It's also a flat lie.

And now to the controversy. (I hadn't actually planned on dissecting the e-mail, but it was just too ripe.) A student complained, the university investigated, and decided not to renew his contract. He's an adjunct professor, and basically serves at the university's pleasure. The university was not pleased.

You will hear many fulminations about freedom of speech and academic freedom. They don't apply here -- he's a teacher in a position of responsibility, and to present provable falsehoods as truth is an abuse of that responsibility. He's presented Catholic doctrine not as doctrine, but as objective reality, which it is not. For that alone, he deserves to be given his walking papers.

Update: The paragraph about gay sex being bad for your health calls to mind nothing so much as Mat Staver's insane ravings about shoving penises up rectums and calling it love. I have a solution for Mr. Staver: