I was reading The Bulverism of Same-Sex Marriage Supporters by Leroy Huizenga. It begins well, with a C.S. Lewis quote (can’t beat Lewis for clear prose), but soon descends into an opaque thicket of un-argued metaphysical statements:
Many find it inconceivable that opposition to gay marriage could be rational because they’re operating not only with a faith-reason split but also with a truncated view of reason. They see it rooted not in respect for nature but rather in the desire to conquer nature in service of human will. It’s a view of reason which can say little more than “the right to swing my fist ends when it meets another’s nose,” but until then anything goes so long as done among consenting adults.
The problem with making consent the sole criterion of the Good is that it’s merely a social convention. “Consent” is an idea forged in the wake of the widespread death of metaphysics and it thus lacks any ultimate grounding. It will disappear once a majority of the strong decides it’s no longer useful to their interests.
I’m posting this not to respond to Huizenga (if you’re interested in reading a civil debate about natural law, check out the comments to this post on “Unequally Yoked”), but to comment on the “fist and nose” aphorism. “The right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins” is nowadays seen as a individualistic statement, and I’ve often heard libertarians bring it up to argue for minimal government. But that’s not what it originally meant.
John B Finch was an orator and prohibitionist, who traveled the country arguing for anti-liquor laws. According to the website Quote Investigator, Finch’s speeches are the earliest known version of the “the right to swing my fist” argument, although Finch’s version was not so concise. Here’s a bit of a speech Finch gave in 1882:
I go over there with these gentlemen and swing my arm and exercise the natural right which you have granted; I hit one man on the nose, another under the ear, and as I go down the stairs on my head, I cry out:
“Is not this a free country?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have not I a right to swing my arm?”
“Yes, but your right to swing your arm leaves off where my right not to have my nose struck begins.”
Here civil government comes in to prevent bloodshed, adjust rights, and settle disputes.
Finch’s point was that individual liberty didn’t include the right to drink liquor (the arm) if drinking liquor caused harm to the larger community (the nose).
Other prohibitionists took up Finch’s argument, and through repetition it became short and polished. By 1887, prohibitionists were saying stuff like this:
The only leading argument urged by the anti-prohibitionists in this campaign for keeping open the bar-rooms, is personal liberty. A great man has said, “your personal liberty to swing your arm ends where my nose begins”. A man’s personal liberty to drink whisky and support barrooms ends where the rights of the family and the community begin.
This argument is, interestingly enough, similar to the argument made today by many people who oppose marriage equality. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine someone today saying that “a gay couple’s personal liberty to get married ends where the rights of the family and the community begin.”
(Of course, the prohibitionists had an understandable, reality-based account of how drinking harmed the family and the community. SSM opponents, in contrast, seemingly have only metaphysics.)
In the end, prohibitionists were wrong both because they undervalued individual liberty, and because they didn’t understand (or perhaps didn’t care about) the harm their laws would cause.
But still. I enjoy thinking about John Finch, dead for 125 years, except for a tiny scrap of his oratory, which still lives on, animated by millions of water-cooler arguments and blog posts. Would Finch be pleased at this tiny bit of immortality? Or irritated that it’s so often used to mean the opposite of what he intended?
Amp, this is fascinating, and a lovely example of meaning inverting over time, which is always fun. Another example, a simpler one, is “groovy”, which used to have a connotation of “good”, and now apparently often carries a dismissive connotation (though some of that may be coded in the intonation with which the word is spoken).
Finch’s aphorism is now employed opposite to his usage. When he speaks of respect, Huizenga also has it exactly wrong. Though this was not the focus of your piece, I find myself wanting to comment on it.
Huizenga:
This is completely backwards.
Huizenga wants to “respect” nature by asserting that he has it all figured out. Same-sex marriage proponents, if I may generalize, want to respect nature by acknowledging that nature is complex and that traditional human beliefs about it are simplistic at best.
Every time we think we have nature figured out, we find exceptions. People used to assert that animals did not engage in same-sex sex acts. Then we looked, and found it all over the place, pretty much every place we looked. But we had to look. Aristotle taught that men had more teeth than women, a “truth” which hung on for almost 2000 years, until Andreas Vesalius bothered to … that’s right, LOOK. (And then, when Vesalius told people about his findings, what did they do? That’s right, they cited Aristotle to prove him wrong, which is like saying, “Oh, look, it’s raining outside” and hearing, “No, it’s not – look, all the weather forecasts say ‘sunny’.”)
Galen believed, and taught, that women only released their seed upon orgasm, which only happened if the woman was enjoying herself, which only happened if the woman consented … and where have we seen THAT chain of logic recently?
Now, because we are human and limited, we need general rules to get by, day-to-day. We can’t each independently verify every possible exception to every general rule – there aren’t enough hours in a day, or years in a lifetime. But it’s telling, just how wrong we can be when we don’t check.
In the face of that experience, have a choice. We can assert, “Yes, but THIS TIME we have it right, and we’re SURE!” Or, we can say, “Well, this is the model, and it works most of the time, but it might be wrong sometimes. It might not hold for all cases. Let’s check it out, and tread lightly in the meantime.”
You can try to respect Nature by paying attention and keeping an open mind, or you can try to respect Nature by feeling secure in your received wisdom and not bothering to ask the questions and listen to the answers.
That’s the choice, vis-à-vis Nature.
If you were interacting with a human being, rather than Nature, which would be more respectful?
Grace
PS:
Huizenga:
This might confuse people who believe in private property. Poor dears, they still think that taking something from them without their so-called “consent” is something to talk about. Won’t they be surprised when this whole “consent” delusion disappears after the “majority of the strong” have come through.
Grace
That’s right, they cited Aristotle to prove him wrong, which is like saying, “Oh, look, it’s raining outside” and hearing, “No, it’s not – look, all the weather forecasts say ‘sunny’.”)
I would suggest it’s even worse: they’re consulting an almanac from two thousand years ago and saying it’s supposed to be sunny.
I bow before the superior metaphor. ;)
Grace