However, the differentialist argument, necessary for the affirmation of a healthy and happy identity, arouses perverse reactions: on one hand, the universalist, normative, and heterosexist argument classically interprets it as a
symptom
, claiming that the obsession with difference would lead to narcissism, the refusal of otherness, and immaturity. On the other hand, it is overtaken by a heterosexist argument that is progressive, liberal,
tolerant
, and happy with a festive sexual plurality. However, this sympathetic position has its limits as soon as one leaves the private sphere: for the same person, the father quickly overshadows the close friend. There is a sense that, if at night, a plurality of sexual practices can exist, come morning, there can only be one symbolic, heterosexual, order. The homosexual is required to be-have differently in specific environments or situations; any open expression of homosexuality in public is likened to
exhibitionism
, even
proselytism
.
The differentialist argument thus tends to lock homosexuality away as a passionate research subject in the intellectual sphere, or in the private sphere of an extremely exotic universe; and each time this occurs, the heterosexist presupposition of public space and law remains unchanged.
Segregationist Differentialism or Obligation to be Different
The terrain of difference is, therefore, extremely slippery: the (theoretical) right to be different quickly becomes the difference between (actual) rights. According to heterosexist and differentialist logic, at best, the homosexual deserves his or her own specific space. Respect becomes social estrangement. Social recognition of a difference in sexual orientation is not trivial; it is in part the foundation of another distinct society. A tacit social contract is broken, and scission becomes inevitable. Segregationalism appears to be an unfortunate compromise, born from a blockage, between the guardians of heterosexist order and radical gay militants. The former keep the threat of gender confusion at a safe distance, preserving the universality of the model, while the latter are finally free to live their lives completely by their sexual orientation: to each his own, in his own
ghetto
, whether homosexual or heterosexual, each defined by his sexual practice and reduced to it, from an
essentialist
perspective. Homosexuals and heterosexuals remain linked by the smallest common denominator: the idea of giving sexual orientation a determined value. This retreat results in the exclusion from common law and by the eventual granting of special rights, such as PaCS, allowing for the preservation of the universalist illusion (since it applies to everyone, gay or straight) all the while confirming the differentialist reality, which objectively underscores the
discrimination
that forbids
marriage
for gays and lesbians.
Accepted in the private sphere, between
consenting
adults (as practices that most resemble crimes and misdemeanors), homosexuality once again becomes problematic when it aspires to universal heterosexual tasks, starting with the ability to become parents. Having children is the clearest symbol of a heterosexual prerogative in the sphere of perpetuating the human race, to the point of justifying beforehand marriage as a privileged, universal form of union for the purpose of conception. According to this view, heterosexual couples, being the only ones who are capable of biologically conceiving, would be the most
appropriate
choice for raising them.
Psychoanalysis
offers the arguments of the universality of the Oedipus complex in the make-up of the personality. The child who is raised and educated by homosexuals would be condemned to psychological stagnation or deviation; he would literally be denied access to a collective unconsciousness, to universal gender and generational differences, to the symbolic. The refusal of otherness is dangerously transmitted from social parent to child. In this view, homosexuality should remain what it is, a sexual and affective particularity: it should not acquire a following, neither publicly nor privately. It cannot aspire to institutionalization; it must remain shapeless, dispersed. It is the difference that individuals encounter by chance, on the fringe of the socially, logically, and biologically necessary universal.
What do we say then to gays and lesbians who, nonetheless, desire equal rights, or even a visibility equal to that of heterosexuals? Universalists would argue that by defining themselves thusly, they are renouncing themselves, committing a sort of crime against social biodiversity, initiating a standardization of their difference, a regrettable decline of their folklore (no doubt linked to the sulfurous perfume of the forbidden). In short, that they acknowledge the acceptance of a heterosexual order:
an assault on their own difference
. On the other hand, they are accused of wanting their cake and eating it too; of wanting to profit from heterosexual rights without rising to responsibility of universality.
An attack on the universal
. They are thus commanded to be like everyone else when they appear different, and of being different when they attempt to be like everyone else.
Without a doubt, it would be progressive to do away with all need to classify the “homosexual species,” a need that necessitates, beforehand, a universal gender. Thus, two blends are put into practice: on one hand, heterosexuality, general, becomes universal. On the other hand, homosexuality, different, becomes
abnormal
. By ceasing to criminalize homosexual practices, the Revolutionary penal code in France initiated the general rule of legal indifference with regards to each person’s sexual life. The road toward a social indifference with respect to sexual orientation remains to be discovered.
—Dalibor Frioux
Agacinski, Sylviane.
Politique des sexes
. Paris: Le Seuil, 2001.
Delphy, Christine. “L’Humanitarisme républicain contre les mouvements homos,”
Politique: La revue
, no. 5 (1997).
D’Emilio, John.
Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities:The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970
. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1983.
Elacheff, Caroline, Antoine Garapon, Nathalie Heinigh, Françoise Héritier, Aldo Naouri, Paul Veyne, and Heinz Wismann. “Ne laissons pas la critique du PaCS à la droite!”
Le Monde
(January 27, 1999).
Fassin, Eric. “L’Epouvantail américain: penser la discrimination française,”
Vacarme
, no. 4/5 (1997).
Favret-Saada, Jeanne. “La-Pensée-Levi-Strauss.”
Journal des anthropologues
, no. 82–83. (n.d.)
Fraïsse, Geneviève.
Muse de la raison
. Paris: Folio, 1995.
Lehendre, Pierre. “Nous assistons à une escalade de l’obscurantisme,”
Le Monde
(October 23, 2001.)
Macé-Scaron, Joseph.
La Tentation communautaire
. Paris: Pion, 2001.
Pollak, Michael. “L’Homosexualité masculine, ou: le bonheur dans le ghetto?”
Communications
, no. 35 (1982). Revised edition in
Sexualités occidentals
. Edited by Philippe Ariès and André Béjin. Paris: Le Seuil, 1984.
Théry, Irène. “Différence des sexes et différence des generations,”
Esprit
(December 1996).
Further Reading:
Spektorowski, Alberto. “The French New Right: Differ-entialism and the Idea of Ethnophilian Exclusionism.”
Polity
33, no. 2 (Winter 2000).
—Abnormal; Against Nature; Anti-PaCS; Communitarianism; Decriminalization (France); Essentialism/Constructionism; Exhibitionism; Gender Differences; Ghetto; Heterosexism; Marriage; Medicine; Otherness; Philosophy; Psychiatry; Psychoanalysis; Rhetoric; Sterility; Symbolic Order; Tolerance.
UNNATURAL.
See
Against Nature
UTILITARIANISM
Utilitarianism is a philosophical doctrine formulated by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill that establishes a mathematical rapport between the individual and the collective. Its main implications lay within moral, political, and economic spheres, as well as the sphere of criminal law.
In Chapter One of
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
, Jeremy Bentham states the following: “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters,
pain
and
pleasure
.” Bentham imagines utilitarianism as being founded on the principle of utility, which he synthesizes into a basic formula: it is the “principle of the greatest happiness for the largest number of individuals.” Happiness is likened to pleasure and can be quantified in terms of probability and duration, according to an “arithmetics of pleasures.” Thus, utilitarianism proposes reforms allowing for the best possible functioning of society that encourages human beings to search for happiness (maximum pleasure and minimum sorrow) in the most natural way possible.
Throughout his life, Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) wrote hundreds of manuscript pages on the subject of homosexuality, but none were published during his lifetime. Even to this day, few of these texts are available. One exception is “Essay on Paederasty,” 1785, in which Bentham formulates a strong utilitarianist criticism of penal measures directed against the crime of homosexuality by analyzing the foundation of hostility. In it, he attempts to determine what exactly the crime is and questions whether it is a crime at all.
None of the arguments opposed to private homosexual relations between consenting adults stand up to utilitarian analysis, as homosexual relations do not produce any primary harm, only pleasure. While, like many progressive authors of his day, Bentham expresses a certain disapproval of homosexual practices, he concludes that it is impossible to determine a logical basis for the severity with which such practices are punished. Thus, Bentham questions the legal notion of a “crime
against nature
,” which is neither a crime against peace nor law and order. Moreover, he argues that homosexuality does not harm women, since
marriage
remains the most common bond, nor does it harm population growth, for if an increase in population were a social priority, it would be logically necessary to forbid celibacy among priests and monks. Furthermore, homosexual relations between men are sources of pleasure that do not lead to unwanted pregnancy; they represent more of a social benefit than a social problem. Louis Crompton states that, in his final manuscripts on the subject, Bentham goes even further, abandoning the conventional language of disapproval and considering sexuality without the objective of procreation.
In 1814 and 1815, Bentham wrote many long critiques on traditional homophobia, which he regards as an irrational prejudice leading to cruelty and intolerance. When Bentham explores the basis of hostility towards homosexuality, he discovers its reasoning in (1) the propensity to confuse physical impurity with moral impurity, (2) a philosophical prejudice against pleasure, and (3) religion. Utilitarians use, notably, the notion of a third party against whom the crime is committed, which allows for the development of a new concept for qualifying behavior that was merely opposed to the official morality as criminal. The reference to the third party makes the existence of a precisely identifiable harm necessary, and leads to the condemnation of an action committed against an individual or an institution only, rather than the classical moral repression of the individual acting against him or herself.
The
philosophy
was very influential during the debates surrounding the
decriminalization
of homosexuality in English-speaking countries. The utilitarian notion of happiness is linked to other fundamental notions of English philosophy: namely individual liberty and the protection of
privacy
, which leads to the principles of minimal interference of the state, and the protection of the individual against the state’s meddling in moral, political, and sexual matters of choice.
During the debate on decriminalization in Great Britain that began with the Wolfenden Commission’s report in 1957—recommending the decriminalization of homosexual acts between consenting adults based on classical liberalism—H. L. H. Hart expressed utilitarian arguments
(Law, Liberty and Morality),
unlike Patrick
Devlin
, who formulated a series of classical arguments for partisans of
criminalization
.
Hart asserted that the law cannot prohibit homosexuality under the pretense that certain persons will feel morally assaulted at the thought of relations of which they disapprove occurring in the private sphere. “Punishing people because they cause this type of affliction would be equivalent to punishing them simply because others object to what they are doing; and the only liberty that could coexist with this extension of utilitarian principles is the liberty to do things against which no one can seriously object. Such liberty would be absolutely in vain and useless.”
Hart also exposed that penal law inflicts suffering by requiring individuals to repress supposedly antisocial impulses. However, there is a radical difference between the homosexual act and “ordinary crime,” and this difference must be taken into account in any legislation regarding homosexuality. The treatment of relations between persons of the same sex as criminal leads to a personal repression of the most fundamental impulses. When a state imposes a sexual morality, it leads to repercussions on society and on individuals that go much further than laws simply destined to limit underworld criminality.
Beyond its historical role in homosexual decriminalization, utilitarianism, with regards to reflection on homosexuality and gay
parenting
, allows for the application of the following principles: the individual can be dissociated from the collective; the happiness of the individual does not necessarily supersede the need for universal application of a society’s morals.
Thus, the preponderance of utilitarianism, in association with humanism and
Protestantism
in Northern European countries—in which each individual is given the most likely chance of happiness in a society—brought about the first civil dispositions favorable to gays and lesbians. The first legal unions of same-sex couples without consequence on gay parenthood were adopted by Denmark (1989), Norway (1993), Sweden (1994), and the Netherlands (1997). Icelandic law (1996) on cohabitation or common-law marriage, and the Dutch proposition regarding changes to family law (1998) are also relatively favorable to gay parenting.
—Flora Leroy-Forgeot