More on Homosexuality and Hiring Practices

I received a very detailed comment on my previous post which reveals some ways in which what I said there was less clear than it should have been. I'll address the commenter's points in detail here. I strongly encourage readers to read the comment before reading my response.

First, I agree that to some extent my previous post runs together the three issues that the commenter refers to. Whether he's right that the answer to (1) is "no" depends on whether there is a genuine distinction to be drawn between orientation and behavior. Though others in the original thread on this issue have attempted to dispute that such a distinction can be made at all, I'm prepared to grant that it can (the idea of a chaste homosexual is not incoherent). I don't think that the distinction, in the end, justifies the commenter's view on issue (2), or in fact on issue (3) (though I'm less certain about (3)). In any event, the commenter is right that I don't dispute his view on (1), nor do I care to.

(3) is an extremely difficult issue, much more difficult, I think, than the commenter acknowledges (he goes so far as to say that (3) may be even more cut-and-dry than (1), a thought that I find extraordinary). He notes that in the case of Bob Jones University, the result of their ban on interracial dating was not that they were closed down, but merely that they lost some of the privileges (e.g. tax breaks) that are normally granted to private educational institutions. Now perhaps BJU should not have been closed down because of their policies, but it seems to me that merely taking away some tax breaks does not go far enough. I'm not prepared to offer a settled view on what appropriate government action would consist in with respect to BJU and similar institutions, but there are some important points about these institutions that we should keep in mind. The commenter points out that the right of private religious institutions to operate according to their religious views is a "bedrock principle of the modern liberal consensus on religious freedom," and to a large extent I agree. A private religious or, indeed, non-religious organization (including groups like the KKK) has, and ought to have, the right to restrict membership as it sees fit, to advocate whatever views on morality and other issues that it accepts, etc.; the government should not interfere with such organizations doing any of these things, even if the speech of such groups does indirect harm (say, by encouraging hate) to others. But when a private organization, religious or not, opens a school, a business, etc., that is, when it becomes an employer, there are certain regulations that it then becomes subject to and that the government is entitled to enforce. Equal employment opportunity is a staple of liberal thought just as much as religious freedom is, and as I pointed out in my previous post, sometimes we have to weigh different values against each other in deciding which policies to adopt. If the result of allowing religious institutions to hire on the basis of their religiously-based moral beliefs was to seriously limit the employment opportunities of a certain class of citizens relative to other classes (imagine a society in which a significant percentage of employers were private religious institutions opposed to homosexual behavior), then it seems to me there would be a compelling liberal case for refusing to allow religious institutions this freedom. If Wal-Mart and other major private employers decided tomorrow to become religious institutions, and to refuse to hire practicing homosexuals because their executives wanted to create a certain kind of religious community within the companies, this would clearly create a situation in which the employment opportunities of homosexuals would be severely diminished relative to their heterosexual compatriots. I contend that this would be unacceptable from a liberal perspective, and that the government would be entitled to refuse to allow such companies to invoke religious beliefs to justify these policies.

Now one might respond by claiming that the existence of private religious colleges that refuse to hire practicing homosexuals does not seriously limit the employment opportunites of homosexuals, and therefore in their case religious freedom should win out. But I'm not so sure that religious employers, insofar (and only insofar) as they are employers, shouldn't be subject to the same anti-discrimination laws as all other employers. After all, this policy would not infringe on the right of any private organization to create the kinds of communities that they wish to create - they could still do so, and would have many ways of doing so available to them; they would simply be prohibited from operating schools or businesses whose policies would contribute to making employment opportunities unequal for any protected group of citizens. Having such a policy is not only consistent with, but is actually recommended by, certain liberal principles that rank right up there with religious freedom, and have an impact on the lives of individuals that is at least arguably as significant as the aspect of religious freedom (keep in mind, this policy would be FAR from a wholesale rejection of the notion of religious freedom, and would in fact merely be an extension of restrictions on religious freedom that are already in place, e.g. laws against racist hiring policies) that would be limited.

So in response to the commenter's claim that since religious institutions are allowed to refuse to hire those who don't share their religious views, and since religious views and sexual behavior are both choices, there seems no basis on which to refuse to allow them to refuse to hire those who engage in sexual behavior that they find immoral, I'm somewhat drawn to the view that perhaps such institutions shouldn't be allowed to refuse to hire those who don't share their religious views. I admit that in some ways this is an unattractive view, but this, like many, is a difficult issue on which it's not easy to construct a coherent view free of any implausible elements. Often in order to avoid inconsistency, some of our strong intuitions must be abandoned, and in many cases it's not easy to decide which ones. I realize that many will find this view unacceptable, and I'm certainly open to the possibility that I'm mistaken in being drawn to it at all, though at this point I think it's better than the alternative. The commenter is right to point out that if we allow that job descriptions that include the requirement to promote, in part by example, the religious convictions that guide the institution, are themselves legitimate job descriptions, then in many cases engaging in homosexual behavior will prevent individuals from fulfilling the requirements of a job in the same way that failing to share the institutions' guiding religious beliefs would. The only coherent alternative to the view I've reluctantly advocated that I can see is allowing religious institutions to use any moral beliefs at all in their hiring practices, and since this could, at least in principle, result in very unequal employment opportunities for different classes of citizens, I'm inclined to reject this view. I don't think that the view that I've (again, reluctantly) advocated would seriously inhibit the ability of individuals to form communities structured around their religious or other views; they simply would be prohibited from using those views to inform hiring practices. This would inhibit their ability to run schools like Weston, Wheaton, Bethel, Bob Jones, etc., but since I'm dubious of the value of such schools anyway (I don't think a school dedicated to advancing ANY ideology, religious or otherwise, is likely to provide students with the kind of open educational atmosphere that should be part of any student's college experience), this is a consequence that does not particularly concern me, since there are plenty of other ways to develop such ideologically oriented communities that would not require practicing employment discrimination.

Finally, I'll turn to some issues raised by the commenter that defenders of Christian institutions that refuse to hire homosexuals have brought up many times, and which I think are hopeless as attempts to distinguish this policy from those like BJU's. Very often, I think, what defenders of the likes of Weston/Wheaton/Bethel/etc. say on these issues simply reflects an underlying distaste for (or even hatred of) homosexuals. I'll quote the commenter at length before replying:

I think that there's plenty of room to make meaningful distinctions between the BJU policy (or the policy of your hypothetical institution) and those of Westmont, Wheaton, and Bethel - distinctions that go beyond "if you're a religious institution, you can do whatever you want short of physically hurting people". For example, we can ask: is the Bob Jones policy really rooted in Christian ethics, or is it just racist?; or, is there even a *minimally* sensible rationale for a ban on interracial dating (or touching), as opposed to homosexual activities? It seems to me that the answers to these questions are "no" and "no", and I find it rather frightening to find people so insensitive to the content of Christianity that they're unwilling to see this. It seems to me that just as our court system is able to decide, or at least try to decide, that certain associations are religions while others are not (if they couldn't do this, our constitutional system would be in pretty deep shit), we should be able to try and make meaningful distinctions like this one. If you honestly don't think there's a meaningful distinction to be made between a ban against interracial dating and one against homosexual activity, then I really find myself at a loss for words. (It stinks of a self-imposed blindness.)

First, on the question whether BJU's policies were "really rooted in Christian ethics": This question is irrelevant to whether such a policy might be acceptable on religious grounds. We can certainly imagine a religion with a tenet that interracial dating is immoral; the question is whether we will allow that religious belief to justify refusing to hire individuals engaged in interracial relationships. Whether such a policy is "really Christian" or not is neither here nor there. Also, who is to decide if a policy is "really Christian"? There are innumerable interpretations of the Bible and of what Christianity requires of individuals (and throughout history many such interpretations have been explicitly racist), and the whole point of religious freedom is to allow those with different interpretations to act according to their own preferred one. To allow someone (or some group of people) external to any particular religious organization to determine whether some tenet of the group is "really" part of the religion's doctrine is entirely antithetical to the aim of religious freedom. The result would be that some religions would be allowed to use their beliefs in hiring and others wouldn't, and even those who find my view unacceptable should find this one even worse.

Similary, the question of whether there is a "minimally sensible rationale for a ban on interracial dating...as opposed to homosexual activities" can only be answered relative to specific views about whether such behaviors are morally acceptable. Those who accept the religious views of BJU think there is such a rationale for a ban on interracial dating, and that this rationale is religious in nature. On what basis might we conclude, as the commenter seems inclined to, that there is no minimally sensible rational for proscribing interracial dating but there is such a rationale for proscribing homosexual behavior, other than the view that the latter is wrong while the former isn't? To draw this conclusion, and to use it to treat BJU differently than Wheaton/Weston/Bethel/etc., would be to limit the religious freedom of BJU, but not the others, on the basis that one shares the views of WWB but not those of BJU. This is, again, contrary to the entire purpose of religious freedom. The commenter says that he "find[s] it rather frightening to find people so insensitive to the content of Christianity that they're unwilling to see [that there is a minimally sensible rationale for banning homosexual behavior but not interracial dating]." But again, whether there is such a rationale is not a matter of what the "content of Christianity" is (and it seems to me there is no single content to Christianity anyway); it's a matter of whether the behaviors in question are actually wrong. The question we must answer is whether we will allow institutions defined by certain religious beliefs to refuse to hire those who engage in the behavior in question. If we are to protect genuine religious freedom, we cannot answer this question by determining which beliefs are "really Christian" and which aren't.

Furthermore, to claim that those who don't acknowledge a distinction between banning interracial dating and banning homosexual behavior are "insensitive to the content of Christianity" is simply absurd. Christianity has a long history of racism, and the Bible has a hell of a lot more passages endorsing slavery and racism, including the infamous story of Ham used to justify enslaving blacks, than it does passages condemning homosexuality (there are only 2 of these, neither in the New Testament). It's true that Christianity, as it's practiced currently in the United States and other places, is more anti-homosexual than racist (though to a significant extent, at least in some U.S. churches, it's still racist too), but as I'll argue below, this is entirely irrelevant to the issue at hand.

In this vein, one could appeal to public opinion, which currently goes pretty overwhelmingly against BJU (though I doubt not really as much as the numbers indicate; I'm sure plenty of white suburban people who would say that BJU's policy is wrong would be less than pleased if their own child brought a black boy/girlfriend home) but not at all against WWB, in order to claim that there is a minimally sensible rationale for prohibiting homosexual behavior. But if one takes this route, then one must admit that not too long ago in this country there would have been a minimally sensible rationale for policies such as that at BJU, since back in the 1950's and into the 60's opposition to interracial marriage was extremely high, especially among religious conservatives. But whether there is a minimally sensible rationale for refusing to hire those who engage in a certain behavior is not relative to prevailing public opinion, it is relative to the facts about the moral acceptability of the behaviors in question. So the fact that a lot of people still think homosexuality is wrong, but far fewer (at least claim to) think that interracial marriage/dating is wrong does not give us any reason to distinguish the two cases.

Finally, the commenter suggests that if we think, as I've argued, that no relevant distinction between BJU and WWB can be drawn, perhaps we ought to simply allow all religious institutions to use their moral beliefs in hiring decisions, and the APA ought to allow the likes of BJU to advertise in Jobs for Philosophers along with WWB. That is not an entirely implausible position, though I've argued that the liberal commitment to equal employment opportunity should override religious freedom in these cases, and that this should inform the APA's policy on JFP ads. But I want to conclude by examining what the commenter says about such a policy:

So suppose I agree, and say that the APA should be willing to accept advertisements from the likes of Bob Jones University as well. What would be so bad about this? The reason I ask this is that racists of the BJU ilk are a really massive minority in our society, and to some extent I think it's wise to let their bigotry have its minute in the sun so we can address it head-on rather than keeping it closeted and pretending it's not out there. Sure, their dating policies are stupid, arbitrary, racist, fear-mongering, and what have you - but so what? It's not as if our republic - or our "philosophical association" - is going to come crumbling down because we let some idiots take out an ad looking to hire other idiots. Perhaps we should just let them expose themselves for the idiots they are.

I'm inclined to think that some of what the commenter says here is plausible enough, and so perhaps as long as BJU and other similar schools are permitted to continue operating with their racist policies, the APA should simply allow them to advertise jobs and highlight the fact that they have such idiotic policies. Neither the country, nor the APA, would collapse, and the facts about such bigoted institutions would be out there for everyone to see. And perhaps despite the fact that homophobes in America vastly outnumber BJU type racists, it would be better to simply let Wheaton/Weston/Bethel/etc. advertise jobs as well, so that reasonable people will be made aware of their idiotic policies.

In any event, just as the commenter is concerned that people like me don't recognize (what seems clearly false based on my reading of the Bible) that the "content of Christianity" supports anti-gay policies but not racist ones, I'm concerned that many in his camp use such strong (and appropriate) language to condemn the racism of BJU while at the same time endorsing policies that do serious harm to another marginalized group in our society. Hopefully there will come a time in the not too distant future when the majority of Americans realize that the policies of places like Wheaton/Weston/Bethel/etc. are just as idiotic as most already consider the policies of BJU.