Homosexual Acts are Immoral

It is a pleasure to be debating WriterDave on this topic. In this round I will argue against homosexual acts on the basis of classical natural law. I will also attempt to preempt several common objections to natural law ethics.What Is Natural Law?According to natural law ethics, morality is grounded in natural facts about what constitutes proper functioning for rational agents. Hence when the natural law theorist speak of what is "natural," he refers to what is proper for a given organism. Similarly, "unnatural" refers to what is not proper for a given organism. The goal of a moral life is to live excellently. This is achieved when our acts align with how we ought to function given the kind of being we are. Consider a knife. Because it is the kind of thing whose proper function is cutting, we call itgood if it cuts well and bad if it doesn't. The conditions for its flourishing are set by its nature. Likewise, because the heart is a type of thing oriented toward pumping blood as its purpose, a heart which pumps blood well is a good heart, whereas one that is impaired is bad. We see from these examples that goodness and badness are attributive properties; their content depends on what they are being predicated of. [1] There are good cars, good books, and good professors. All of these are good in the sense that they are fulfilling of their respective functions.Of course, all of the aforementioned examples involve some non-moral good. We don't hold knives morally responsible for failing to cut properly. But, insofar as human persons are free agents capable of rationally choosing whether or not to pursue their flourishing, this becomes moral goodness. [2] Knives are incapable of rational deliberation and free action, but people are. We hold a bank robber, but not a knife, morally responsible because the robber could have and should have known and done better. Now since goodness is defined in terms of what is proper for something, the kind of substance that something is gives us an objective standard of goodness by which we can evaluate its performance. The good for us as humans lies in the ability of our reason to direct us to those ends which accord with the proper function that our various bodily faculties have. Acts are bad or evil if they involve the direction of our reason against our bodily goods as such. [3] That is to say, an act involving a bodily faculty is wrong if is actively directed to a purpose other than the one it should take by nature. We act against the natural purpose of a given bodily faculty if, when engaging its powers, we direct them to an end other than its inherent purpose. Thus, because the function of our sexual organs is to procreate, directing their powers to an end other than the creation of new life frustrates their purpose and is thus immoral. The sexual powers should be directed toward procreation, but are actually directed to some other end (say, pleasure) in homosexual acts. Homosexual acts are thus immoral. By the same token, masturbation, oral sex, bestiality, and contraception are also immoral. This is not to say that all sex must be had with the intention of procreation in mind, only that actions involving our sexual faculties must be consistent with this purpose by being a procreative-type act. [4]I now turn to objections.Objection #1: Eyeglasses, medicine, and a host of other things are unnatural! This objection falsely equates unnaturalness with being a man-made artifact. As previously stated, when the natural law theorist uses the term "natural," he refers to what is proper for a given organism's function. If anything, these actually enhance the functions of what they are directed at. Eyeglasses enhance and correct the seeing power of the eyes and medicine corrects bodily malfunctions. A similar objection which states that homosexuality is found in animals also fails for this same reason.Objection #2: Shaving, wearing earplugs, and applying antiperspirant are unnatural!None of these actions frustrate the powers associated with the various faculties because they do not involve the active use of those faculties. Shaving does not frustrate the purpose of hair because we are not actively engaging the powers associated with hair to some contrary end. Neither do we frustrate the purpose of our sweat glands when applying antiperspirant because we are not using the sweat glands to some contrary end. The same is true of hearing: we are not directing our hearing to some contrary end. All of these examples involve passive as opposed to active frustration. As Stephen Jensen indicates, “[n]ot every instance of inhibiting some natural function, therefore, counts as a voluntary error. We must voluntarily use some power that directs to some end or some material, but we divert that power to some other end or material.” [5] Objection #3: Using a gun to kill someone is using it properly, hence it is good to kill someone!No. Natural law is primarily about the flourishing of agents. That is, acting in a way which fulfills our nature. Our nature in turn includes our various bodily faculties and their proper functions. An act is good if it is conducive to the flourishing of these bodily faculties. It is not wrong to use a gun contrary to the gun's purpose, since the gun is not part of your nature nor is it an moral agent. It would be wrong, however, if you used the gun as the means by which you interfere with the flourishing of another agent.Objection #4: You can't derive an "ought" from an "is"! According to Hume's famous fork and G. E. Moore's naturalistic fallacy, one cannot derive an “ought” from an “is.” But this is plainly false. Given a teleological account of human nature, there is no fact-value distinction, for value is built into fact from the very beginning. If the purpose of eyes is that they see, then it follows straightforwardly given their telo sthat eyes which see well are good eyes. Nature is not merely descriptive, but also prescriptive. "Ought" claims are not derived from "is" claims, but present to begin with. [6]Objection #5: The purpose of sex is pleasure, not procreation! This is mistaken. Pleasure exists not as an end in itself, but as a means to some other end. Eating is pleasurable, but we would not want to say that pleasure is a purpose of eating. Rather, pleasure itself is purposed toward motivating us to eat for the final purpose of nutrition. There are many things which taste pleasurable to us but which harm the body with respect to nutrition. Pleasure thus is subservient to the primary function of the faculty it is associated with. Similarly, the pleasure associated with sex serves to motivate us to procreate. It is not to be sought after as an end in itself.Objection #6: There are no such things as "functions" or "teleology"!To deny outright that there exists function in biology is implausible. Surely our hearts have the function of pumping blood and our eyes have the function of seeing. These are objective facts that are inherent to our biology. If denied, the entire discipline of medicine falls apart, for medicine is inherently normative and is concerned with restoring our organs to the way they ought to function. [7]Moreover, the denial of teleology is ultimately self-defeating. Consider the mind, which has the function of thinking rationally. Now if functions do not exist, then the mind does not have the function of thinking rationally. But in that case, we have no reason to trust any of our thought processes as being reliably aimed toward the truth – including the ones which produced the very objection! The objection, as it turns out, removes its own warrant. If our minds are not aimed toward rationality, then what reason do we have to trust the beliefs that we hold now? One cannot deny function without implicitly relying on it. Unfortunately, my space has run low, otherwise I would preempt several other objections. I will leave that to the coming rounds. The resolution stands affirmed.Sources: http://tinyurl.com...;