by As we await the Court’s decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, I’d like to reflect on an aspect of last month’s oral argument and what it may suggest about our culture’s view of sexuality.
Repeatedly, the justices turned to whether CLS was discriminating on the basis of status or belief. Did CLS exclude people because of their sexual orientation – their status –or because of their convictions about homosexual conduct – their beliefs? CLS maintained it was the latter, but at least some justices were skeptical. Here, for example, is an exchange between Justice Sotomayor and CLS’ attorney, Michael McConnell:
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: [A]re you suggesting that if a group wanted to exclude all black people, all women, all handicapped persons, whatever other form of discrimination a group wants to practice, that a school has to accept that group and recognize it, give it funds, and otherwise lend it space?
MR. McCONNELL: Not at all. . . . Race, any other status basis Hastings is able to enforce. But they may not tell a group . . . that you just have to let [people] in that don’t agree with you.
To be sure, some justices accepted CLS’ distinction, and CLS may ultimately prevail. But Justice Sotomayor’s skepticism may reflect a growing cultural consensus that, when it comes to sexual orientation, it is wrong to distinguish between status and belief. Many people apparently dismiss CLS’ assertion that it does not wish to exclude gay people, but only people who disagree with traditional Christian teachings about homosexual conduct.
Now, the distinction CLS is trying to draw is straightforward and, in traditional Christianity, very familiar. Christianity tries to distinguish between what it conceives as the sinner and the sin; Christians are taught to love the sinner but hate the sin. CLS is saying, in effect, “We don’t object to gay people as people; we’re all sinners. But we think homosexual conduct is a sin, and we don’t want people who disagree with our convictions about that to be in our group, just as we wouldn’t want people who disagree that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He died for us.”
I don’t think people would find this distinction so troublesome in other contexts. So why do many people find it implausible in this one? First, CLS’ critics might think that the distinction is just a pretext for anti-gay bias. CLS leaders might say they’re not homophobic, but critics don’t believe it. Second, critics might think that the distinction, though logical, is illusory in real-world terms. In the context of sexuality, these critics would argue, conduct and status are too closely linked to be meaningfully distinguished. If you express negative views about homosexual conduct as conduct, you must also hold negative views of gay people as people. In the real world, you cannot “hate the sin but love the sinner”; you must hate or love both, or neither.
It’s hard to predict how the Court will decide Martinez. If I’m right, though, that the oral argument suggests a growing impatience with the traditional distinction CLS is trying to draw, it means that, whatever the Court decides, traditional Christians – and perhaps other religious traditionalists too – will find it increasingly difficult to engage the larger culture on issues of sexuality.
It seems to me that there are actually three terms to be distinguished in these matters: belief, conduct, and status. Maintaining these distinction is vital, I think, not just for analytical clarity, but in the interest of civil peace in a pluralistic society. In such a condition, people are inevitably going to disagree in many of their moral judgments. So it’s imperative that people be able to say, “I disagree with your beliefs, and/or I disapprove of some aspects of your conduct, but I can still accept or respect or even love you as a person.” Conversely, as these distinctions break down, disagreement or moral disapproval inevitably come to be equated with rejection or disapproval of persons themselves. As hatred.
I think we see this sort of dissolution and its fruits all around us these days. Sadly, the Supreme Court has contributed to the destructive tendencies. Justice O’Connor’s concurring opinion in Lawrence v. TX, for example, quite peremptorily rejected the conduct/status distinction, declaring that by disapproving of homosexual conduct, Texas was necessarily disapproving or acting hostilely toward a class of persons– i.e., homosexuals.
No doubt Justice O’Connor, and the Court, were attempting to promote a more tolerant, just, peaceful society. Unfortunately, by undermining one of the principal devices that can support pluralistic peace, their well-intended efforts have likely been counterproductive.
If sexual orientation is defined in part by the inclination to certain conduct, and that conduct is regarded as sinful, the inclination and orientation must be regarded as defective in some sense, usually as “unnatural” in some normative sense (an objective disorder, I think the Catholics call it). It seems to me O’Connor is right to see the disapproval of the conduct, to the extent the conduct results from the inclination, as implying a disapproval of the person and class of persons too. Maybe I’ve missed something there.
The distinction between sin and sinner is useful, as Steve points out, but it’s also problematic, and perhaps can’t always do all the work we’d like it to. Many gays loath it as it applies to their sexuality, as they see it as not quite hiding lack of respect for what they experience as a good, healthy and essential part of who they are. I don’t think Christians have any choice but to make the best they can of the distinction in general, but it may have special problems where sexual orientation is concerned.
Bob, good post, but… I think a problem with what you’re calling the “traditional” Christian distinction between “sinner” and “sin” is that I’m not sure it really captures the “traditional” Christian view of what “sin” is all about.
“Sin” isn’t just the breaking of some law that is external to a person’s being. Rather, “sin” relates to an ontological status. When St. Paul speaks of people being either “in Adam” or “in Christ,” he is making an ontological distinction, just as he is when he says, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17).
So, in terms of Christian theology, the distinction between “conduct” and “status” is facile. Really, such distinctions between “conduct” and “status” are Greek / gnostic ideas, not Biblical ones.
Perhaps this is another aspect of the problems that arise when Christian communities attempt to squeeze themselves into the categories of 18th Century social contract theory. It just doesn’t work. The truth is that the ekklesia is rooted in ontological distinctions.
We practice a certain kind of sexuality because we are a particular people for whom sex has a sacramental function in which two souls, one male and one female, are united into “one flesh” in the context of the community of God’s people. We exclude people who practice different kinds of sexuality from leadership in the ekklesia because they are not being a certain kind of people. I don’t want to compromise that communal reality in order to obtain Ceasar’s blessings.
Well, maybe “status” and “conduct” aren’t the best terms. But some such distinction seems to me both commonsensical and necessary– necessary not only civilly but theologically as well. All of us do things that are wrong or sinful, often that we ourselves know to be wrong or sinful, and often these actions arise out of “inclinations,” as Sanpete puts it. We’re in a fallen condition. But we think that we ought to avoid these sinful actions and if possible overcome these inclinations, through repentance or grace; and the crucial point is that we don’t think we destroy our personal identity through such repentance/purification/sanctification (or whatever you want to call it). In fact, we may believe that in this way we become more really and fully ourselves. I think that’s basically what the distinction between “conduct” and “status” is trying to capture. And I don’t think there can be anything heretical about the basic idea here.
It’s true that it can be difficult to tell which of our various inclinations are in fact integral to who we really are. I appreciate the point Sanpete makes– that sexual orientation might understandably seem to many to be integral to identity. Even so, it seems fair to say that from the point of view of the person who morally disapproves of homosexual conduct (and who, as Sanpete says, may think the inclination is in some sense defective), homosexual conduct and inclination are not understood to be essential to identity. This person and view might be mistaken, of course. But it seems to me that given this view of the matter, the person who holds this (possibly mistaken) view is not condemning persons.
@steve — yes, I basically agree with you on this question of “condemnation.” But the reason those of us who have a different view of sexuality aren’t “condemning” gay people is not because we think “conduct” is separate from “identity.” It’s because we know we are sinners too, and therefore we aren’t fit to condemn anyone. When we speak publicly about our understanding of morality, grace, and sanctification, it’s in the posture of “one beggar showing another beggar where to find bread.”
But with respect to Constitutional law, the question isn’t whether there’s moral condemnation in the sense of some kind of ultimate judgment that really belongs only to God. It’s a much finer issue — whether there is “discrimination” as to something integral to personal identity, where “personal identity” is understood in a radically pluralistic Dewey-esq / Rawlsian kind of way. If we are going to play on this radically pluralistic ballfield, there is just no way to win the game, I’m afraid — distinctions between “identity” and “conduct” seem to me just sophistry in this context. It seems to me as clear as rain that in the Rawlsian liberal pluralism in which our Constitutional jurisprudence is situated, there is no doubt that excluding a person based on sexual orientation is an exlusion based on identity.