Irrationality and the APA's proposed JFP advertising policy

I've never liked the term 'homophobia'; 'heterosexism' seems more appropriate. The kind of opposition to such things as gay marriage and laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation I have been seeing lately really does strike me as so irrational and virulent as to be more like a psycho-pathology these days.We have Utah State Senator Buttars calling "the gay-rights movement 'probably the greatest threat to America,' liken[ing] gay activists to Muslim radicals and dubb[ing] same-sex relationships 'abominations' (Salt Lake Tribune). I suppose I could go on and on, but a Google News search for 'gay rights' or 'gay marriage' will glean tens of thousands of hits to support my contention that there is a concerted attack on gay rights. This is no surprise to anyone who watches the political scene in North America. What might be a surprise is that a few philosophers seem to be getting in on the action. A few members of the American Philosophical Association (perhaps, there's little guarantee that any of the signatories are members of the APA or even that any of the signatures are authentic. A number of 'signatures' of prominent philosophers seem to have been removed, perhaps because they were fraudulently posted (via Brains).

The American Philosophical Association currently allows institutions that prohibit homosexual acts among their faculty, staff, and students to advertise in 'Jobs for Philosophers.' A petition recently submitted to the APA alleges that this practice is inconsistent with the APA's anti-discrimination policy and calls for the APA either to "(1) enforce its policy and prohibit institutions that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation from advertising in 'Jobs for Philosophers' or [to] (2) clearly mark institutions with these policies as institutions that violate our anti-discrimination policy" (Maintain APA's existing JFP advertising policy Petition : iPetitions.com).

This strikes me as an eminently reasonable. I would be attracted to the first option above, but certainly agree that the second is at least required under anti-discrimination policies. Let's be clear here. Let's not get hung up on a pedantic complaint taht any kind of distinction-drawing involved discrimination and thus all of these sorts of policies are silly, unjustified, irrational, etc. The point is that morally irrelevant discrimination is, well, morally prohibited. Let's try to keep our eye on the ball here.Here is the objection itself:

We reject the suggestion that there is an inconsistency between the practice in question and the APA's anti-discrimination policy. Institutions can require their faculty to agree to abide by ethical standards that forbid homosexual acts while not ipso facto discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. The conceptual distinction between a certain kind of act and a disposition to perform that kind of act is one that no philosopher would fail to acknowledge in other ethical contexts. We fail to see why it should be ignored in this one.

Well, let me try to explain then. The anti-discrimination policies are in place to prevent decisions based on morally irrelevant features, such as ethnicity or sex. I think it is an incredibly disingenuous argument to say that the disposition to act in a certain way and the act itself is somehow is disconnected in such a way as to read anti-discrimination policies as referring to 'dispositions to act'. Ethnicity is not a 'disposition to act.' Neither is sex. This is a clear straw man (straw person, if you prefer). No such policy is put in place to defend against a person's 'set of dispositions to act' whatever that might mean. These polices are in place so that where ethnicity and sex are morally irrelevant to the situation, one may not irrelevantly discriminate on that basis. You might as well argue, according to the logic presented in the quote immediately above, that 'a disposition to act like a woman' and 'acting like a woman' are two different things: the prior being protected and the latter not. 'A disposition to act like a black man' might be to perform a speech act such as 'I am a black man.' Clearly this is not the intent of anti-discrimination policies. Those that oppose these policies simply wish it were so.

Historically, many of the greatest philosophers have argued that homosexual acts are morally objectionable. The position implied by the proposed policy--that this view is philosophically beyond the pale and should be stigmatized by the APA--is indefensible.

The inappropriate appeal to authority here is what is beyond the pale. Besides, another straw person emerges: supporting a policy is not seeing any opposing view as 'beyond the pale.' I suppose though the opposing view is being stigmatised: if being considered wrong is stigmatising.

Removing ads from these institutions from JFP would do a disservice to APA members by making it more difficult for them to learn about available jobs for which they might want to apply. It would also harm the profession by making it more difficult for institutions to find good philosophers.

Well, this misses the point. In including advertisements from those institutions that prohibit 'homosexual acts' among their communities, the APA is tacitly (perhaps, overtly) recommending these institutions to their membership. Taking what I have said above into account, APA members are not only being paid a service, but they are sending a strong moral message to the community: discrimination on morally irrelevant reasons is not morally defensible.

The present policies of the APA prohibit discrimination based on religion or political convictions. But the policy recommended attempts to segregate and penalize religious institutions for abiding by their long-standing and coherent ethical norms. Moreover, this policy would foster an environment that would encourage discrimination against philosophers whose religious, political, or philosophical convictions lead them to disapprove of homosexual acts.

This in my view is another disingenuous argument. If we take these folks at their word, then as long as these philosophers refrain from acting on their dispositions which are constituted by their religious, political, or philosophical convictions then there should be no trouble. Heterosexists would then not being discriminated against on the grounds of their dispositions to act—only the speech acts themselves, in the same way that homosexuals would not be discriminated against on the basis of their dispositions to act but on the basis of acts themselves.I am very confident that they might complain that this was not analogous (well, they'd be wrong), but also on the grounds that freedom of speech overrides here. It strikes me that the freedom to be whom you are and engage in relations with other like minded people as long as no one else is relevantly harmed is just as worthy a freedom to defend.

We therefore call upon the APA to reject the petition in question and to maintain its current practice without alteration.

Another discussion of all of this can be found on the Leiter Reports here and here. Take a peek at that as well.