Homosexuality and Ethics ed. by Edward Batchelor, Jr.

Abstract

490 BOOK REVIEWS unknown forces, moving to achieve first indirect contact as a mind/body continuum and finally full recognition of negative life factors. At a time when the four major schools of psychotherapy (analytic, behavioral , humanist, and personalist) divide, according to some accounts, into more than one hundred sub-schools, there iii seldom full disclosure of the philosophical underpinning of a preferred therapy. Not so with Koestenbaum 's clinical philosophy: he avows his chosen ontology. The reader may take this option or not. But most realists surely will choose to modify the image of person presented rather than scuttle it. JOHN B. DAVIS, 0. P. Providence College Providence, Rhode Island Homosexuality and Ethics. Edited by EDWARD BATCHELOR, JR. New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1980. Pp. 261. This book is a collection of essays and excerpts from essays by twenty-one authors, critiques of these essays, and then some statements from various churches and professional bodies concerning the ethical character of homosexual actions. There are many common themes in these essays and critiques , and it can be assumed that most readers are already familiar with them. Most of the essays argue in favor of at least the toleration of homosexual actions, if not their approval, even though some of the essays totally or conditionally condemn them. Arguments totally opposing the morality of homosexual acts usually are grounded on either the natural law or a divine command which limits permissible sexual acts to those of heterosexual marriage. The case for homosexual acts, based on the natural law, usually employs a post-Reformation manualist conception of the natural law, which is inherently rigid, static, and legalistic. This deficiency could be more readily overcome by returning to the more dynamic Thomistic predecessor, but few have chosen to do this. J\lfost arguments tolerating or approving homosexual acts are established by the intuition that more desirable psychological and relational states of affairs are brought about by these acts than by the repression of homosexual drives and inclinations. This notion creates serious problems for the moralist in that it reduces the moral good of reason to the psychological good by trying to account for the rational good as a set of psychological or relational states of affairs. If the rational good can be explained as a set of psychological states of affairs, then why cannot it be explained as a set of sociological, cultural, political, or racial states of affairs? Another serious problem with this mode of arguing is that psychological and relational states of affairs such as fulfillment, trust, self-acceptance, or creativity BOOK REVIEWS 491 are all future contingent singulars in relation to the homosexual act, and their actualization is by no means necessarily entailed by the homosexual act. This being the case, the grounds of justification of these acts can be eliminated if these states of affairs are not realized. This problem has been ignored, in large part, by those advocating approval of homosexual acts. Some writers contend that homosexual acts are permissible because of the impossibility of homosexuals living the celibate or married life. What is obscure here is the meaning and content of this mode of impossibility. Is it a logical, psychological, rational, volitional, or practical impossibility? These distinctions must be made, for they bear heavily on the moral judgments that are to be made. Related to this is the lack of discussion, by those contending that homosexuals cannot adapt to other life styles, of the role of grace in the life of the homosexual. One gains the distinct impression from reading many of the authors in this work that the lot of many homosexuals is so desperate and hopeless that it is totally immune to the movements of grace and the Holy Spirit. Some of the moralists in this volume argue that homosexual acts are imperfect and not to be morally approved, but only tolerated and not condemned. Based on a notion that some sinful acts and states must be tolerated because of the sinfulness of the world, this " compromise " theory urges the promotion of tolerance and the withholding of judgment. The theory of compromise is notoriously elastic, however, and it is not at all clear under what conditions...