APA, Homosexuality, and Discrimination

This time, a petition is being started to get the APA to ban those universities from advertising in the JFP.

The APA Board of Officers expects that all those who use the APA Placement Service will comply with the letter and spirit of all applicable regulations concerning non-discrimination, equal employment opportunity and affirmative action.

That might address your worry concerning orientation and behavior. I'm sure that those who drafted the statute would say that schools that discriminate against those who engage in homosexual conduct are not complying with the spirit of the protection given homosexuals.

Fwiw, I think it's a bad idea to bring in the point that these schools discriminate against sex outside marriage rather than homosexuality. They will discriminate against happily married homosexuals when homosexuals finally win the right to marry and would not think retrospectively that they should have refused to hire an individual in an interracial relationship when the law did not allow interracial couples to marry. I'm pretty confident that the first conjunct is true. I hope that the second is true. If some school refused to hire Mr. Loving because he was in a committed relationship with a woman of a different race at a time when Mr. Loving would only have been allowed to marry a white woman, I'd hope we could all say that they were in the wrong and ought to be banned from the JFP.

I have a worry similar to Andrew's. Not to put too fine a point on it, analogies that appeal to culpable discrimination against interracial couples, or based on race, seem to beg the question at issue. Isn't the question whether there is some moral reason R such that, it is epistemically possible that R justifies the claim that engaging in gay sex is immoral, but does not justify the claim that hiring people of race G is immoral? It would be quite something to know that there is no such R; I don't think it would be easy to know that. What I can't follow (Mark van Roojen has been pushing this line) is the idea that obviously there could not be such a reason. Are we supposed to know this a priori? I'm supposed to believe that one of the parties to the discussion obviously holds beliefs that are necessarily and a priori false? I don't think I know that, and all the nudging to sign petitions mindlessly bothers me a little.

Not to put too fine a point on it, analogies that appeal to culpable discrimination against interracial couples, or based on race, seem to beg the question at issue. Isn't the question whether there is some moral reason R such that, it is epistemically possible that R justifies the claim that engaging in gay sex is immoral, but does not justify the claim that hiring people of race G is immoral? It would be quite something to know that there is no such R

I tend to play the interracial relationship card and tend to agree with MvR that there's no such R. However, in this context my point was simply that the R, as it were, is not that homosexuals have sex with partners without being married to them. We all realize (right?) that when an unjust law prevents couples from marrying, it would be a bad moral theory that says that the unjust law gives couples that cannot marry because of that law a reason to remain celibate or find other partners. At a minimum, it had better be that if this sort of argument works for homosexual couples the law that discriminates against homosexuals is not unjust in the way that the law that prevented the Lovings from marrying was unjust.

For my own part, I don't use the example of interracial couples to establish anything about the moral status of homosexuality but only about the use of tests that would justify a policy of discrimination. I don't see how such an argument could work. Presumably it would have to be an argument from analogy and I think we all know that the parties who are supposed to be convinced by this argument don't find the analogy between interracial couples and homosexual couples all that convincing. They tend to think that one transgresses a kind of moral rule that it seems has scriptural support and the other does not.

I spent a lot of time on this discussion topic on Leiter’s blog a couple of years ago when this was discussed, but that experience pretty much turned me off of trying to think through the problem in that forum.

Clayton, I don’t think the relevant meaning of ‘marriage’ in the Wheaton et al. policies is civil marriage. States could not, on the Wheaton view, make it true that my wife and I are not married. So whether a state introduces civil marriage for same-sex unions isn’t to the point.

I share Mike Almeida’s worries. It seems apparent to all on Leiter’s blog that Wheaton’s policy does violate the APA norm. That isn’t obvious to me. I assume the following definition of being discrimination: being either targeted detrimental action or action with an unjustified adverse impact. (This is a moralized definition. If you think ‘discrimination’ here has a nonmoralized meaning, then please produce it, and offer evidence that this is the relevant sense that the APA has in mind.)

Wheaton’s policy is not discriminatory on the first criterion, because it does not target those with a same-sex orientation. It does not target those with a same-sex orientation, as ‘same-sex oriented’ and ‘not willing to refrain from being sexually active with members of the same sex’ are neither intensionally nor extensionally equivalent. This is Andrew Moon’s point.

So whether it is discriminatory will turn on the second criterion. Wheaton’s policy has not been shown to be discriminatory on the second criterion, because it has not been shown to have an unjustified adverse impact. To show that it has an unjustified adverse impact (a) we would need to know to what extent those who are willing to adhere to the other, unobjectionable criteria of employment at Wheaton — including the requirement to adhere to all of the commitment to creedal statements, etc. — are burdened by the no-homosexual-conduct constraint, and (b) it would have to be shown that this level of detriment is unjustified in light of the good to which Wheaton is aiming: a community in which the beliefs and norms of traditional Christianity are pubicly endorsed and fostered.

No one has made any case with respect to (a). We would need to know both how extensive this burdening is, and even harder, we would need to know how to assess these as burdens — is it appropriate to assess these in some neutral, secular terms, or is it appropriate to assess these burdens in terms of the belief system to which those who are employed by Wheaton are (ex hypothesi) legitimately required to endorse? (I note that celibacy has a very different meaning within, say, Catholicism than within generic secularism.) No one has made the case with respect to (b). There have been some claims that we now know that natural reason arguments against homosexual conduct are failures. Well, maybe; but even if they were not, what would need to be shown is that it is knowable that, say, God does not impose this norm of conduct on those who are Christians. (An argument for this could be: to impose this norm is so evil, and is known to be such, that no God could impose it. But no one has even hinted at such an argument.)

I think the best read on the situation is not that the APA is ignoring its own policy, but that the APA is refusing to commit itself on the question of whether Wheaton is engaged in discrimination. And this refusal to commit is probably a fine idea, given the sort of disagreement on this question present within the APA (if not within the posting membership of Leiter's blog).

For my own part, I don't use the example of interracial couples to establish anything about the moral status of homosexuality but only about the use of tests that would justify a policy of discrimination. I don't see how such an argument could work.

The use of the analogy is a familiar rhetorical device which suggests that, just as we were benighted concerning race, so we are benighted concerning gay sex. And that's pretty much all there is to the "dispute": dark ignorance on one side and bright enlightenment on the other.

At a minimum, it had better be that if this sort of argument works for homosexual couples the law that discriminates against homosexuals is not unjust in the way that the law that prevented the Lovings from marrying was unjust.

Right. We are looking for a moral basis for the discrimination. Not all discrimination is immoral, obviously, I justifiably discriminate throughout the day on a variety of things.

For my own part, I don't use the example of interracial couples to establish anything about the moral status of homosexuality but only about the use of tests that would justify a policy of discrimination.

I don't follow that. I'm not sure what you have in mind by "tests". We agree that the universities in question claim to have a moral basis for the difference in treatment between those who engage in gay sex and those who don't. The practice, they claim, is morally wrong and they have an argument for this position that natural law theorists and others have found persuasive. So, to show that the university policies are unjust, you'd need to show that the moral basis is mistaken. That's going to take some work and discussion. To simply assert, as van Roojen does, that there couldn't be a moral basis for the difference in treatment is wildly to overstate one's epistemic position. It's politics cross dressing as philosophy.

1. Actually, a civil law by itself cannot stop a couple from marrying, since all that natural law requires for a marriage is that the couple exchange commitments to one another as husband and wife. (This is the view of the Catholic tradition. It was also Luther's view. I don't know how much of the Protestant community has followed this view.) So the only way a couple can be stopped from a natural law marriage is by physically preventing communication between them. (Things are slightly complicated for Catholics, because we are additionally bound by canonical requirements such as that a priest or deacon be present unless the priest or deacon is unavailable; but that's because there is more at issue for the Christian than natural law. And the point that civil by itself cannot stop a couple from marrying remains, because canon law expressly allows for marriages that are not reported to civil authorities.)

2. I don't think one should talk about "the spirit" of a non-discrimination policy of the APA. The policy was arrived at by people who use words carefully--philosophers!--and those who voted in favor of it knew what the words meant. There may, for instance, have been some who voted in favor of the policy precisely because it prohibited discrimination on account of orientation but did not prohibit discrimination on account of behavior. A policy prohibiting discrimination on account of orientation should be intrinsically largely uncontroversial (except in special contexts; it would be reasonable for a girls' school to refuse to hire a heterosexual male or homosexual female physical education teacher and for a boys' school to refuse to hire a homosexual male or heterosexual female physical education teacher), whatever one thinks of the morality of same-sex sexual activity. (I say "intrinsically", because it would be reasonable to be worried about illicit extensions from orientation to behavior.) A policy prohibiting discrimination on account of sexual behavior would be controversial, and one should not simply slide from an uncontroversial to a controversial policy.

3. At least from the Catholic point of view, one possible difference between the interracial and the homosexual case is that the same climactic sexual acts that are prohibited to same-sex couples are also prohibited to opposite-sex couples.

I'm not sure what you have in mind by "tests".

By 'test', I just meant a procedure that identifies a discriminating feature that would (purport to) justify a hiring practice that discriminated against non-celibate homosexuals. Above, Andrew noted that homosexuals cannot marry their partners (true) which suggested that these schools could use as their rationale for the discriminatory policy a policy that discriminates against these couples on the grounds that they engage in sex outside of marriage rather than discriminate against them b/c they engage in homosexual sex acts. That test does not discriminate homosexuals from heterosexuals since heterosexuals could fail to pass it, but that test does discriminate against groups we shouldn't (e.g., those who belong to interracial couples who cannot marry because of local laws that we regard as unjust).

It wasn't intended as an argument that there could be no test that would justify a discriminatory policy, only an argument that the test focuses on a feature we have good reason to think shouldn't be the focus of a test. It doesn't address the natural law arguments you allude to in your comments.

I don't think one should talk about "the spirit" of a non-discrimination policy of the APA. The policy was arrived at by people who use words carefully--philosophers!--and those who voted in favor of it knew what the words meant.

Alex, I'm pretty confident that you're wrong on this point since the people who used the words chose to use the words "the spirit" in the statement of the non-discrimination policy. Either you're wrong about their level of care or you're not paying attention to the verbiage. I think either way, we ought to be paying attention to "the spirit" of the policy.

There may, for instance, have been some who voted in favor of the policy precisely because it prohibited discrimination on account of orientation but did not prohibit discrimination on account of behavior.

There may have been. But, if you look at the threads that developed over the years it seems the view amongst philosophers that discuss this stuff has been that there is a tension between the APA policy and the APA practice. We will have to wait and see, but there may well be a critical mass of philosophers who think that it's just not good enough to protect the orientation. I'm on that side, for example, and I've petitioned the APA. I don't think that my view is non-standard.

(Clayton: I missed that "the spirit" was a part of the statement. That seems unfortunate in a quasi-legal context, but alas you're right that it's there.)

On the obviousness side, here's a thought. Consider the following propositions:
1. God exists
2. God exists and there is a class K of sexual acts that God is permitted to prohibit such that all climactic sexual acts that same-sex couples can engage in are in K and not all climactic sexual acts that opposite-sex couples can engage in are in K.
3. God exists and there is a class K of sexual acts that God is permitted to prohibit such that all climactic sexual acts that same-sex couples can engage in are in K and not all climactic sexual acts that opposite-sex couples can engage in are in K and God in fact prohibits all the members of K.

Now, if (3) holds, then there is a morally relevant R of the sort Mike was talking about.

If it is obvious that there is no such R, then it is obvious that (3) is false. Is (3) obviously false? There are, I think, three different ways that (3) could be obviously false. It could be that:
i. (1) is obviously false, or
ii. (1) is not obviously false but (2) is obviously false, or
iii. (2) is not obviously false but (3) is obviously false.

Now, I don't think (iii) is the case. Once one grants that God would have the right to issue such a command, it becomes an a posteriori affair to figure out whether he in fact has done so. So unless (2) is obviously false, (3) isn't obviously false.

I think we should dismiss (i). Given the present state of discussion in philosophy of religion, it seems implausible to suppose that God obviously doesn't exist. (Except in the irrelevant purely subjective sense of its seeming obvious. But in pretty much the same sense, it seems obvious to me that climactic sexual acts that are not procreative in type are wrong.)

So, those who think that obviously there is no R are, probably, going to have to go with (ii). So it has to be obvious that God is not permitted to prohibit any class K of sexual acts with the indicated features.

But it's not obvious. Consider the following options. (a) God prohibits all sexual acts except for those engaged in by two particularly honored couples chosen by him, and these two couples are in fact opposite-sex couples. (b) There is some sexual act that only opposite-sex couples can engage in that has some special symbolic value making it worthy of permitting, and all other sexual acts are prohibited in order to train us in the virtue of self-control. (c) God desires to wean us from slavery to the pleasures of the flesh, and thus prohibits all sexual acts except those intended to result in procreation. Assuming it's not obvious that there is no God, these claims are also not obviously false. One needs to examine the a posteriori evidence about whether there are divine prohibitions and whether they include these to see if these are false.

(In fact, it's not even obvious that God is not permitted to prohibit us from all sexual activity. After all, he could be intending to toughen us in this life, and then postpone our sexual activity to the afterlife.)

Mark:

I have nitpicking worries about defining discriminatory action as "being either targeted detrimental action or action with an unjustified adverse impact."

1. In the second disjunct, do you mean "unjustified adverse differential impact" or something like that? Inducing a headache in all human beings (say, through some sort of orbiting transmitter) would have an unjustified adverse impact on Poles, since it is contrary to the interest of Poles to have headaches. But it is not discriminatory, since all suffer (more or less) equally.

2. I assume the first disjunct applies to targeted detrimental action even when this targeted detrimental action produces an overall benefit. (For instance, a policy of punishing failures of academic integrity by blue-eyed students (with no policy for anybody else) would be intended to produce an overall benefit for blue-eyed students--they would be deterred from cheating, and that is surely overall good for them. But the policy would be discriminatory.)

"The policy was arrived at by people who use words carefully--philosophers!"

To add to what Clayton said, a philosopher "using words carefully" would want to respect norms of implicature.

It seems to me that it would be difficult to have a policy prohibiting behavior-based discrimination against homosexuals. How would one formulate it?

Maybe:
1. "A school must not prohibit any act jointly done by two men or two women that it does not prohibit when jointly done by a man and a woman."

But the question of the identity of act types will make this impossible to apply without begging the question. Thus, the folks opposed to homosexual acts may well think that it is not the case that there is one thing, "sex", which people of the same sex and people of the opposite sex do with each other. Moreover, such a policy would require a reform of bathroom policy. For instance, on a hallway on which there is exactly one men's room and exactly one women's room, it is currently prohibited for two men (say, by joint agreement) to go into different bathrooms (because then one of them would have to go to the women's room), but it is permitted for a man and a woman to go into different bathrooms.

Or maybe something more graphic:
2. "The following sexual acts may not be prohibited to persons of homosexual orientation: A, B, C, D ...."
But it's really hard to come up with a principled reason why these particular acts may not be prohibited.

Or maybe:
3. "No behavior is to be prohibited which is characteristic to people of homosexual orientation."

But this would require significant empirical work to figure out which behaviors are in fact characteristic to gays and lesbians. Moreover, the notion of a "characteristic" behavior would need clarification. Maybe "A behavior is characteristic to a group provided that most members of the group at some point engage in the behavior." This definition would have the interesting, and I expect unintended, consequence that if it turned out that there are a lot more homosexuals than people think, but a lot of them are closeted and never have sex with someone of the same sex, then same-sex sexual acts are not characteristic of those with homosexual orientation. Besides, this definition would be very culturally dependent.

Or perhaps:
4. "No behavior defined in terms of the sexual orientation of an agent is to be prohibited."
But that's useless, since in fact prohibitions against same-sex sex make no reference to sexual orientation. Moreover, plainly it is quite permissible to have policies against behavior defined in terms of sexual orientation. Thus, it seems quite permissible to have a policy against claiming (say on an affirmative action form) to have a sexual orientation that you know you do not in fact have.

The following is maybe more effective:
5. "Excepting for cases of incest, no pair of adults who have freely vowed exclusive sexual commitment to each other for life are to be prohibited from any privately done consensual and physically harmless sexual act that involves no other agents or patients." But that would be quite a sweeping rule, embodying a particular view of the norms of sexual morality both for heterosexuals and homosexuals. The rule would also prohibit schools from prohibiting adultery in those cases where the adulterous couple has vowed fidelity to one another. (Maybe one then modifies the rule by adding the qualifier that the adults have no made such vows to others. But this gets really ponderous.)

1. Maybe I fallaciously slid between what is a priori obvious and what is a posteriori obvious? I think what I said is right about a priori obviousness, but maybe not about a posteriori obviousness, especially if obviousness is not taken to be infallible. We do not have any a priori reason to rule out the hypothesis that when men wear skirts, this incites them to punch others in the face. We do know that it doesn't, but we know that only a posteriori. Now, when there is no evidence to the contrary, we have the right to assume that an action is permissible. And so we have the right to assume that it is permissible for men to wear skirts, barring evidence to the contrary.

2. I don't think the fact that a command appears arbitrary to us is very strong evidence that the apparent command is not divine. Here all the things that skeptical theists say become relevant. We have good reason to think that some commands from a being much much knowledgeable than us would appear arbitrary. Suppose, for instance, that I told an 18th century doctor that he should wash his hands before delivering a baby. This might well appear like some kind of arbitrary ritual. Yet it is eminently reasonable.

3. Thus, the appearance of arbitrariness is only very weak evidence against the divine origin of a command. It is, in particular, insufficient by itself to defeat claims that God has revealed such-and-such a command when there are somewhat plausible a posteriori arguments in favor of the revelation claim. For while we have reason to think that most divine commands would appear non-arbitrary, we also have reason to think that some would appear arbitrary.

4. And this makes for a distinction between the skirt and the same-sex sexual activity cases. For while there are no plausible a posteriori arguments for a claim that God has revealed to us a prohibition against wearing skirts, there are plausible a posteriori arguments for the same-sex sexual activity case--say, the arguments of Catholic apologists in favor of the claim that whatever moral or theological claims have always been held by Christians are true (to apply to the same-sex sexual activity case, just use this criterion back-dated a hundred years or so). The mere presumption of permissibility and appearance of arbitrariness is too weak to undercut such arguments.

5. Moreover, the claim that a certain prohibition is arbitrary in a sense of "arbitrary" that makes it obviously false would be undercut by the existence of a well-developed, moderately simple, tightly-integrated, fairly general moral theory that would entail the claim. Compare a physics claim. Normally the claim that gravity repels two macroscopic bodies when their mass is exactly the same would seem arbitrary, and we would dismiss it as an unevidenced unnecessary complication (even though we don't actually have any direct empirical data to the contrary, since we never in fact meet two macroscopic bodies whose mass is exactly the same). However, supposing that we had a well-developed, moderately simple, tightly integrated physical theory that entails this claim (for instance, think of a theory of symmetry breaking that entails that symmetric situations function in a different way from non-symmetric situations), then the claim would no longer be arbitrary, and its apparent arbitrariness would not be evidence against that theory. For on that theory, it's not arbitrary, and the fact that a well developed, etc., theory exists on which it's treated differently itself shows that the difference is not arbitrary. But there are well-developed, moderately simple, tightly integrated, fairly general theories of sexuality on which the only climactic acts that are permissible are contracepted heterosexual intercourse. So the claim that same-sex sexual relations are wrong is not arbitrary. As far as I know, there are no such theories in the case of skirts.

Mark,

I completely missed your comment earlier. Sorry about that. You wrote:
I don’t think the relevant meaning of ‘marriage’ in the Wheaton et al. policies is civil marriage. States could not, on the Wheaton view, make it true that my wife and I are not married. So whether a state introduces civil marriage for same-sex unions isn’t to the point.

I hadn't anticipated that response, but now I'm just genuinely curious what Andrew's point about nonmarital sex amounts to. GIven the logic of the situation it seems the view would have to be that heterosexual couples can have marital sex without being married by any authority but homosexual couples cannot have marital sex regardless of whether some civil or religious authority has married them. It seems to me that on this reading, the justification for treating heterosexuals and homosexuals differently really just is that one engages in heterosexual sex and the other does not. That's fine, I suppose, but then it isn't really an advance.

There's something about the entire discussion in this thread that I find confusing. We can debate the moral status of homosexual conduct and we can debate the moral status of discriminating against those who engage in the conduct. We should be subtle enough to know that the connections between these statuses are complex. Isn't the issue being hashed out over at Leiter's blog really this: right or wrong, the APA is not doing enough of what it has promised (threatened) its members it would do. It has a policy and it might be objectionable for some reason for it to use that policy in a way that is bad for Wheaton but the policy seems to many of the people responsible for its creation to require either doing something in response to Wheaton or admitting that the policy won't be enforced.

Clayton:

On the marriage point, I think some conservative Protestants may say that having had a civil marriage is a necessary condition for a valid marriage (at least ordinarily), but not a sufficient one.

Anyway, as to the discussion in general, there are somewhat difficult questions about whether what Wheaton does is a violation of the policy. That its framers think it is does not entail that it is, for instance because the framers do not have sole authority over its interpretation (there are more voters than framers, and it is the voters' interpretation that matters more).

One question is whether a case of discrimination against a behavior is a case of discrimination against the orientation towards that behavior. I think this is to a large extent an issue that depends on the intentions of the discriminators. Thus, it is quite possible for a person to be disgusted at an orientation, and discriminate on the basis of the behavior because that is more socially or legally acceptable. In such a case, we would be right to say that the discrimination is based on the orientation. This is like the case of a racist who chooses a correlate of race, rather than race itself, to base her policies on, and chooses it precisely because it is a correlate of race.

But it is also quite possible for a person to disapprove only of the behavior, and intend to discriminate against it, without disapproving of people who have the orientation towards that behavior. As a clear case, suppose that our discriminator does not even know that there is such a thing as an orientation towards that behavior. I don't think this will count as discrimination, just as it would not be racial discrimination if one discriminated on the basis of a correlate of race without having any concept of race.

There are (defeasible) counterfactual tests for checking which category a particular discriminator falls in. For instance, we might see how the discriminator would view and treat people who have the orientation but lack the behavior, and how she would view and treat people who exhibit the behavior but without the orientation (say, in prison situations).

In the case of homosexuality, there are Christians who might well discriminate on the basis of the orientation. Thus, a chaste same-sex-attracted (his terminology) friend of mine once wrote an article for a conservative Christian publication where he gave the thought experiment of whether one would prefer that one's son be a chaste homosexual or be a heterosexual living with his girlfriend. My friend thought that it was clear what a Christian should say: obviously, it is much preferable to have a son who does not sin against chastity than an unchaste one. And he was right that that is what the Christian should say. But as a matter of fact, there was a letter in the next issue disagreeing.

However, my hope is that Christian institutions of higher learning would be motivated by encouraging faculty to behave in morally good ways (I would also hope that unless sexual misconduct involves abuse of authority, the institution would have more of a redemptive than a punitive focus), rather than by a desire to root out people with inclinations to sinful behavior. At least, it is charitable to assume this is the motivation absent strong evidence to the contrary. And if so, then they are not discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, just as an institution that, in order to promote civility, prohibits students and faculty from raising their voice in the classroom above a certain low decibel level is not discriminating on the basis of an excitable disposition. And if Wheaton is not in fact discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, then it seems they are not violating the APA policy.

Alex,

You wrote:
On the marriage point, I think some conservative Protestants may say that having had a civil marriage is a necessary condition for a valid marriage (at least ordinarily), but not a sufficient one.

I was working from that assumption initially when I raised the issue of interracial marriage, but Mark suggested that this was mistaken because no civil authority could prevent couples from being married in the relevant sense. Further evidence that philosophers are not infallible at conveying meaning in their choice of words!

You also wrote:
And if Wheaton is not in fact discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, then it seems they are not violating the APA policy.

I don't disagree that there's a difference between a policy that discriminates against behavior and one that discriminates against orientation but my guess (and this is based on some empirical evidence) is that a critical mass of people believe there's an inconsistency. Myself, I think if we hit a critical mass, the insistence that they are getting it wrong is like telling me I've misnamed my ship. But, I'm guessing one way to correct this is to have a referendum on a new anti-discrimination policy.

A referendum, rather than the stretching the interpretation of existing rules, does seem to be the institutionally correct way of handling such restrictions. Generally, restrictive rules should be interpreted narrowly, and permissive rules should be interpreted widely. (At least that's what canon lawyers say, and it seems generally right.) If one wants to widely interpret a restrictive rule, as is the case here, one should put into place a new rule that specifies this wider interpretation. And then one needs to settle the difficult question of how exactly one specifies the new rule. Does one, for instance, prohibit an institution from discriminating against those who have sex outside of a civil marriage? Does one prohibit an institution from requiring celibacy?

I just wanted to chime in to say (a) I totally agree with Mike Almeida's position above, and (b) "politics cross-dressing as philosophy"is the funniest, cleverest, quip I've heard in a long time. I'll probably steal it at some point!

By the way, there is now a counter-petition. :-)

I am, by the way, curious what people would say about an institution founded by followers of Andrea Dworkin who forbade their faculty from engaging in heterosexual intercourse. Would that be forbidden discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation? (Dworkin's objection to heterosexual intercourse wasn't based on its heterosexuality, but on its penetrative geometry and its social meaning.) I would think it would be silly, but not discriminatory on the basis of orientation.