Gay Marriage and Natural Kinds

insidecatholic.com ^ | 12/04/08 | David R. Carlin

[Publius804]

Gay Marriage and Natural Kinds

by David R. Carlin

What does Aristotle have to do with same-sex marriage?

Aristotle held that the human race, in addition to being divided into male and female, was also divided into slave and free. This latter division was not merely conventional or legal; like the male-female division, it was a product of nature. Just as nature had made some humans male and others female, so it had made some free and others slave.

I mention this Aristotelian idea, not because I want to discuss slavery and freedom, but because I want address the idea that the human race can be divided up into what may be called "natural kinds."

It's an idea that has surfaced again and again in human history. Almost all ancient Greeks in Aristotle's time, and for a few centuries earlier, believed that there was a difference in nature between Greeks and those they labeled "barbarians" -- that is, all non-Greeks, whether living in a pre-civilized condition (like the Scythians of the north) or living in a highly civilized condition (like the Persians and Egyptians). And this was not just a distinction in kind, it was also a distinction in rank: Nature ranked Greeks above barbarians. Greeks were superior by nature, barbarians inferior.

With only very rare exceptions, a distinction of natural kinds has always been seen as a distinction in rank between superior and inferior. Throughout the centuries, scholars may have said, "The X people are different from us because they have a different religion or different environmental circumstances or a different education," but most regular people, it is safe to say, would think, "The X people are different from us because nature (or God, the author of nature) has made them different -- and made them inferior as well."

[JHBowden]

The fallacy of progressive thinking is progressivism. Literally. Progressives believe history is moving in a linear direction, with the good automatically following the bad. That’s why they don’t make the distinction between good and bad change.

Fortunately, history serves as a laboratory for many ideas and behaviors, and displays the results for everyone to see. One can go back to the days of the Roman Empire in its decadence to see the effects of free love in practice.