How to Make Immorality Unjudge-able: Redefine Identity
Sexual libertines long sought to transform cultural disapproval of homoeroticism into approval, and one way they pursued this goal was to co-opt the fight of blacks for racial equality. Hence, sexual libertines pursued the inclusion of homosexuality (and now “gender identity”) in anti-discrimination law. To that end, sexual libertines relentlessly compared those two groups (i.e., blacks and homosexuals) who had been historically mistreated, suggesting without proving that since blacks have been stigmatized and mistreated and homosexuals have been stigmatized and mistreated, the two conditions are ontologically the same and must be thought of and treated in all contexts as identical.
In short, this is what libertines think—or pretend to think—in the service of normalizing sexual deviance:
- Blacks were stigmatized and mistreated
- Homosexuals were stigmatized and mistreated.
- Therefore, skin color and homoeroticism are equivalent.
But if mistreatment of people because of cultural disapproval of their volitional acts renders them the ontological equivalent of blacks, then zoophiliacs, “minor-attracted persons” sibling-lovers, polyamorists, and “sex-workers” (i.e., prostitutes and porn actors/actresses)—all of whom are at times stigmatized or mistreated—are analogous to blacks.
But subjective homoerotic attraction and volitional homoerotic activity do not constitute a condition analogous to race or a condition that deserves special legal protections. Neither does the desire to be the opposite sex or pretending to be the sex one is not constitute the ontological equivalent of race. And if they do, then so do all other conditions constituted by subjective desires and volitional activities.
The fallacious and odious comparison of race to sexual perversion has been an effective stratagem in our increasingly non-thinking culture, but there was yet more rhetorical gimcrackery to come.
Homosexual activists began transforming the concept of “identity.” They sought to recast identity as something intrinsically inviolable, immutable, and good. They sought to refashion identity in such a way as to make it culturally taboo to make judgments about any constituent feature of identity. They re-imagined identity in such a way as to move homoeroticism from the category of phenomena about which humans can legitimately make moral distinctions to one about which society is forbidden to make judgments.
Identity in its former incarnation simply denoted the aggregate of phenomena constituting, associated with, experienced and affirmed by individuals. Identity was “the set of behavioral and personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group.”
Identity was not conceived of as some intrinsically moral thing, because identity could refer to either objective, non-behavioral, morally neutral conditions (e.g., skin color) or to subjective feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts that could be good or bad, right or wrong. Prior to the new and subversive conceptualization of identity, there existed no absolute cultural prohibition of judging the diverse elements that constitute identity.
By conflating all the phenomena that can constitute identity, “progressives” demanded that society should no more make judgments about feelings and volitional acts than they should about skin color.
In short this is what libertines think about identity (except when it comes to those whose identity is found in Christ):
- All phenomena that make up identity are off-limits to moral judgment.
- Homosexuality (or cross-dressing) is part of identity.
- Therefore, homosexuality (or cross-dressing) is immune from moral judgment.
But if all conditions constituted by powerful, persistent, unchosen desires and the behaviors impelled by such feelings are part of this new and culturally destructive understanding of identity and, therefore, immune from moral judgment, then so too are zoophilia/bestiality, “Minor Attraction,” “Genetic Sexual Attraction,” polyamory, and sex work immune from moral judgment. And a society with no judgments about sexual morality—a sexually untethered, boundary-free culture—is a chaotic, corrupt society unfit for raising children.
The left demands that society affirm all subjective feelings not only as good but also as signifiers of objective reality, and this demand results in sometimes hilarious conundrums for those who know that reality exists and that the emperor is buck naked. For your chuckle ‘o’ the day, watch this short video to see the ideological Gordian knot from which post- Dolezalians can’t seem to extricate themselves:
People of all faiths and no faith have the right to make moral judgments about subjective feelings, beliefs, and volitional activity—even if others choose to place those phenomena at the center of their “identities.” In fact, moral creatures have an obligation to make such judgments.