Why Homosexuality is Abnormal

Abstract

This paper defends the view that homosexuality is abnormal and hence undesirable?not because it is immoral or sinful, or because it weakens society or hampers evolutionary development, but for a purely mechanical reason. It is a misuse of bodily parts. Clear empirical sense attaches to the idea of the use of such bodily parts as genitals, the idea that they are for something, and consequently to the idea of their misuse. I argue on grounds involving natural selection that misuse of bodily parts can with high probability be connected to unhappiness. I regard these matters as prolegomena to such policy issues as the rights of homosexuals, the rights of those desiring not to associate with homosexuals, and legislation concerning homosexuality, issues which I shall not discuss systematically here. However, I do in the last section draw a seemingly evident corollary from my view that homosexuality is abnormal and likely to lead to unhappiness. I have confined myself to male homosexuality for brevity's sake, but I believe that much of what I say applies mutatis mutandis to lesbianism. There may well be significant differences between the two: the data of [51, for example, support the popular idea that sex per se is less important to women and in particular lesbians than it is to men. On the other hand, lesbians are generally denied motherhood, which seems more important to women than is fatherhood?normally denied homosexual males?to men. On this matter, [5] offers no data. Overall, it is reasonable to expect general innate gender differences to explain the major differences between male homosexuals and lesbians. Despite the publicity currently enjoyed by the claim that one's sexual preference is nobody's business but one's own, the intuition that there is something unnatural about homosexuality remains vital. The erect penis fits the vagina, and fits it better than any other natural orifice; penis and vagina seem made for each other. This intuition ultimately derives from, or is another way of capturing, the idea that the penis is not for inserting into the anus of another man?that so using the penis is not the way it is supposed, even intended, to be used. Such intuitions may appear to rest on an outmoded teleological view of nature, but recent work in the logic of functional ascrip tion shows how they may be explicated, and justified, in suitably naturalistic terms. Such is the burden of Section 2, the particular application to homosex