Research Paper on "Moral Persuasion Hypothetical: Homosexuality"

Research Paper 7 pages (2564 words) Sources: 6

[EXCERPT] . . . .

We would have to rebrand heterosexuality as something disgusting, a new meme like "faggot" that relies on visceral disgust sense (perhaps by calling heterosexuality an "overpopulation rancid milkshake made of moldy sausage and rotten fish," where the moral objection that heterosexuality causes overpopulation is linked to the visceral sense that the genitalia of both partners in a heterosexual encounter are somehow made more disgusting after participating in this act).

What is interesting is that Haidt actually approaches the issue of disgust after approaching the issue of moral persuasion differently in his 2001 APA solo article on the "social intuitionist model" of moral psychology (2001, 814). Here Haidt's initial thought experiment entails a story about sexual behavior designed to invoke disgust -- in this case, relying on incest not homosexuality to invoke the sexual disgust -- but the story is constructed so that all the most common objections to the behavior (like the possibility of deformed children) are met in advance. Thus, the person confronted with the story would be able to find no rational objection to the details, and would only be objecting out of a mute sense of disgust alone. Haidt (2001) determines that essentially social intuition is a way of approaching moral and ethical questions without reasoning, but instead by perceiving the social traces -- through expressions of disgust and aversion -- of why certain behavior is interdicted, ultimately to suggest that "artificially increasing the strength of a gut feeling increases the strength of the resulting moral judgment" (825). For the idea of our hypothetical scenario, the notion of social intuition is crucial, because it suggests that moral judgments are essentially reinforced by social behavior, which works to maintain the status quo. We know for a fact that some societies -- classical Greece, the Sambia of present-day Papua New Guinea in Melanesia -- do structure themselves around ritualized homosexual behavior, indicating that there is no intrinsic biological determinism against homosexuality. If this were the case, situational homosexuality -- of the sort experienced in correctional facilities or British boarding schools, where otherwise heterosexual people engage in homosexual activity in the absence of opposite sex partners -- would also not exist. It is the social aspect that reinforces the behavior, and thus a linguistic change would not be sufficient to persuade America to go gay. It would also require strategies of social reinforcement that build up what Haidt calls social intuition.

However Graham Haidt and Nosek in 2009 expand this idea of social behavior into a larger notion called the "moral foundations hypothesis" which ultimately argues that different political groups are taking different moral criteria into account when assessing the validity of a given behavior (1029). They note that liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations, which may help to explain why, in 2015, liberals and conservatives frequently have such different attitudes toward the issue we are examining, homosexuality, regardless of whether or not they engage in it: we are familiar with the "straight ally" of homosexuals who tends to be politically liberal, and we are familiar with the person who engages in homosexual behavior but is politically conservative and therefore denounces or persecutes such behavior in public, hypocritically. These familiar contradictions are a good way of approaching Graham Haidt and Nosek's insight here, because essentially they demonstrate that conservatives are more easily spooked by taboos that in some way hint at a violation of the idea of sanctity. For our hypothesis, this means that homosexuality would have to overcome the longstanding religious prohibitions against it, or at least come up with a plausible religious structure that promotes homosexuality. If we cannot dismantle Christianity, we would have to revive the worship of Priapus or find some other way in which to suggest that homosexuality serves a sacred purpose. It might be enough to mount a public advertising campaign suggesting that homosexuality can help to deal with planetary overpopulation, and thus might be the one thing that could save the planet.

Ditto Pizarro and Tannenbaum (2009) have noted that the flaw in hypothetical moral scenarios is that "at the end of the day, most moral judgments are not based on written descriptions of the implausible plights of 'Jones' and 'Smith' but rather are made about friends, enemies, criminals, and politicians -- people about whom we cannot help but feel strongly" (334). It is impossible to overstate the importance of this insight, especially when we realize that the increased public acceptance of homosexuality in 2015 has largely been won simply by people coming out of the closet -- once homosexuals are numbered among the friends of a straight person, suddenly the strong feelings are more likely to incline toward tolerance rather than revulsion and condemnation. But we can see that, in order to get everyone to lean in the direction of encouraging and promoting homosexuality would require changes on the level of linguistic practice, social practice, political organization, and possibly even ideas of the sacred. The example of ancient Greece proves that our hypothetical goal is not entirely out of reach, insofar as societies that are not heteronormative but precisely the opposite and organize themselves to promote and institutionalize homosexual behavior do indeed exist. But the amount of social engineering that would be required to redefine the level of disgust that is felt with one sexual act rather than another is considerable. It is unlikely that America in 2015 could be reorganized to resemble a cross between Socrates' Athens and Sappho's Lesbos, simply because the changes that can be made are probably only likely to encourage tolerance -- in a way that has been remarkably effective as of 2015 -- rather than to encourage behavioral change. If aversion therapy was generally unsuccessful in trying to make gays into straights, it is unlikely the reverse process could be performed successfully either.

References

Ditto, PH, Pizarro, DA, and Tannenbaum, D. (2009). Motivated moral reasoning. Psychology of learning and motivation 50: 307-338.

Graham J, Haidt J, Nosek BA. Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96(5): 1029-1046.

Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog… READ MORE

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