QX tackles a new book that asks us: What’s Wrong With Homosexuality?
What’s Wrong With Homosexuality? is a deliberately ambiguous title, but John Corvino has not written a polemic railing against the evils of gay people. Instead he systematically and thoroughly takes on every main argument made against gay rights, and analyses why it is inherently flawed. He does this as a gay man, as a defender of gay rights and as a professor of philosophy, his academic status affording him the logic and authority to sensibly dissemble even the most intricately wrought of anti-gay arguments.
But then neither is Corvino’s book a straightforward bash of gay bashers; it consistently pulls its punches from joining the hysteria or adamant fury of some gay rights fighters. Not that hysteria or fury, when transformed into passion at a protest or rally, are bad things, but Corvino necessarily must make this text appeal to both sides of the party in the ‘what’s wrong with homosexuality?’ argument. Clearly he is on the side of homosexuality, but if his book is solely read by people who already believe in what he is saying then he is preaching to the converted. To get anti-homosexual protestors to read his book may actually convert others, by the strength and clarity of his arguments.
He begins with a quote from a gay rights campaigner at one of his debates who says ‘we shouldn’t even be having this discussion’, of whether homosexuality is wrong or not. ‘This mentality gets us nowhere, regardless of which side holds it,’ writes Corvino. ‘It’s all well and good that you think your position is obvious. But in the real world, the one we actually live in, intelligent, decent people disagree with you… They shape policy, they vote, they influence others’ votes. Perhaps, in some morally ideal realm, ‘we shouldn’t even be having this discussion,’ but in the real world, the discussion matters.’
Which is why it is important to get this readable and well-written book out there into the public sphere, and not just the gay sphere. Buy it, read it, and then give it to you anyone you might know who’s straight and might still have a problem with homosexuality. If you don’t know anyone, leave it in a known homophobic church or at an EDL rally. As Corvino eloquently exposes the weak links in hackneyed arguments made against gay people, from religion to ‘It’s Not Natural’ to the homosexual lifestyle being ‘risky’, even the most hardened of anti-gay campaigners may be moved to think again.
