Casting The First Stone

The well-known hostility of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia toward homosexual physical relations is always a challenge for me. He has, for instance, claimed that he cannot understand how it is permissible to take a strong moral stance against murder, but be criticized for finding homosexual relations equally morally reprehensible. I do not see that they are of the same category of behavior, the former being, an act of will, the latter of nature. In Catholic parlance the former is a sin, that is, a knowing contravention of the law of God, which I believe is the understanding of that moral category. Sin is often given an etymology that derives it from an Indo-European root of "to be," which is more obvious in the Latin forms esse, sunt, etc. In any case that would underscore the important sense that sin is a considered opposition, a positive defiance of the law of
god. One can contrast this with the well known ancient Greek word transliterated into our script as hamartia which is the noun for the verb hamartano 'to miss the mark,' referring to an arrow which the archer has aimed at a target and missed. The latter is an important word in Aristotle's Poetics often mistranslated as 'tragic flaw' in his discussion of the tragic hero's course of action. It seems clear enough that Aristotle is talking about human beings who aim for the good, but who for whatever reason mistake their aim or the nature of their action which thus ends for them in disaster. The ancient Greeks in general considered that human beings are good, strive to do the good, and 'evil' is thus not the creative force in the universe which Christians call Satan. Scalia, like so many others, must believe that gay males "choose" to have sex with other men. Obviously that is true in the particular instance, but even the merest superficial study of the subject demonstrates rather conclusively that gay males do not "choose" to be gay. Furthermore, most scientific studies, certainly incidence in twins, and in blood relations, would suggest that gay persons are innately disposed to their sexual desires, and thus cannot be judged for what is only natural. What is so disconcerting is Scalia's insistent
certainty in his thundering denunciations of gay activity. Here is where I feel impossibly tested since my instinct is to react in anger, although my rational reaction is to assign his attitude to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church of which he is a communicant, indeed a member as well of Opus Dei, the can we say band of zealots within that faith? Just as he is exhibiting nasty prejudice in his denunciation of homosexuality I can sense the temptation to surrender to the prejudice heard so often at
my mother's knee, that Catholics are slaves to dogma, that a lifetime experience of the Church and its history will turn anyone into the profoundest of hypocrites, and in fact find confirmation for my initial proposition in his alleged angry denunciation of a former colleague at the University of Chicago who claimed that his Roman Catholic beliefs
informed all his decisions.