Baylor Professor: We're asking the wrong question.
March 2, 2009
Interesting article in today’s Waco Tribune-Herald. Guest columnist Robert Baird wrote about gays, lesbians, and justice. Here’s an excerpt:
There is, however, a prior and deeper debate — the debate over the attitude we as Christians should have toward homosexuality and gays and lesbians, many of whom, by the way, are included in the class of “we as Christians.”
Sexuality is such a fundamental dimension of who we are, and it is a given. I do not remember choosing to be heterosexual. Surely the same applies to homosexuals.
I know that some sexual proclivities are immoral — desires that, if expressed, violate the other; rape, for example.
But the noted Christian philosopher Robert Adams in his work Finite and Infinite Goods expresses his belief that “homosexual practice is not essentially violative of persons.”
The fundamental question we should ask of any human activity is this — does it violate the dignity of the other?
My daughter and her husband are involved in California in the pursuit of justice for gays and lesbians. In that context, I had a conversation with two women who are building a life together. Far from violating one another, they are lovingly committed to one another, helping one another pursue successful professional careers and successful lives.
The Baptist minister and author Will Campbell, in a presentation at Baylor years ago, said that there would come a time when we Baptists would apologize for how we treated homosexuals as we now apologize for how we once treated blacks. Surely that is so.
Robert Baylor is Chair of The Philosophy Department at Baylor University, a historically conservative and private Baptist university, and has edited several volumes of essays on controversial issues, including 2004′s Same-sex Marriage: The Moral And Legal Debate.
