A thoughtful, pro-petition response from a Christian philosopher

This was put up on the Prosblogion by Keith DeRose. This doesn't by any stretch of the imagination answer all of my difficulties with the original petition, but it does show that a good deal of the pro-petition rhetoric is self-defeating, and that if one wants to defend the petition one should refrain from claiming that a religiously motivated ban on homosexual conduct is irrational and bigoted.

I still do have concerns about the move from "puts people of gay orientation at a disadvantage" to "discrminates against people of gay orientation." I keep going back to the fact that if I were an unmarried person who didn't consider myself "the marrying kind" I would be put at the same disadvantage as a gay person by these institutions.

Further, I have been in secular institutions where there was no code of conduct concerning faculty sexual behavior, and to my mind there should have been.

If the asterisk just means "this is seen by the majority of APA members as discrimiatory," that could be distinguished from "these people are bigots." It not only matters what is said, but how it is said.

Is it really about gay rights?

To be perfectly honest, I don't think that this petition business is about upholding gay rights. (You know any active gays who are disappointed that they can't get jobs at Wheaton or Biola?) It is about attacking and marginalizing conservative versions of Christianity. I would have thought that a national philosophical organization would be about generating and facilitating philosophical discussion, not about maintaining political correctness. The nondiscrimination policy had been in place for two decades and had never been interpreted to include codes of conduct. If "discrmination against orientation" is insufficient for these people, then they should introduce wording that includes discrimination against sexual conduct. The idea that we discovered, all of a sudden, in 2009, that some of the leading Christian colleges in America have been violating the APA discrimination code that had been in place for the last 20 years, is insane.

For atheists who think that Christianity is a "mind virus," who believe that religion poisons everything, who see God as a delusion, who seek then end of faith except for a few Baptists to be put in cultural zoos (so long as they don't try to teach their children that naturalistic evolution is false or that gay sex is a sin), this is an ideal tool.

Let me reiterate, I voted no on the marriage definition initiative (similar to California's Prop 8) here in Arizona, and would do so again. I am not even denying that the hostile environment that gay people face in many Christian environments is unfortunate. The hostile environment that many Christians face in some secular philosophy departments is no picnic either, let me assure you.