From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law (Inalienable Rights) |  | Author: Martha C. Nussbaum
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
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Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 256
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Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1
ISBN: 0195305310
Dewey Decimal Number: 342.73087
EAN: 9780195305319
ASIN: 0195305310
Publication Date: February 18, 2010
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Product Description
A distinguished professor of law and philosophy at the University of Chicago, a prolific writer and award-winning thinker, Martha Nussbaum stands as one of our foremost authorities on law, justice, freedom, morality, and emotion. In From Disgust to Humanity, Nussbaum aims her considerable intellectual firepower at the bulwark of opposition to gay equality: the politics of disgust.
Nussbaum argues that disgust has long been among the fundamental motivations of those who are fighting for legal discrimination against lesbian and gay citizens. When confronted with same-sex acts and relationships, she writes, they experience "a deep aversion akin to that inspired by bodily wastes, slimy insects, and spoiled food--and then cite that very reaction to justify a range of legal restrictions, from sodomy laws to bans on same-sex marriage." Leon Kass, former head of President Bush's President's Council on Bioethics, even argues that this repugnance has an inherent "wisdom," steering us away from destructive choices. Nussbaum believes that the politics of disgust must be confronted directly, for it contradicts the basic principle of the equality of all citizens under the law. "It says that the mere fact that you happen to make me want to vomit is reason enough for me to treat you as a social pariah, denying you some of your most basic entitlements as a citizen." In its place she offers a "politics of humanity," based not merely on respect, but something akin to love, an uplifting imaginative engagement with others, an active effort to see the world from their perspectives, as fellow human beings. Combining rigorous analysis of the leading constitutional cases with philosophical reflection about underlying concepts of privacy, respect, discrimination, and liberty, Nussbaum discusses issues ranging from non-discrimination and same-sex marriage to "public sex." Recent landmark decisions suggest that the views of state and federal courts are shifting toward a humanity-centered vision, and Nussbaum's powerful arguments will undoubtedly advance that cause.
Incisive, rigorous, and deeply humane, From Disgust to Humanity is a stunning contribution to Oxford's distinguished Inalienable Rights series.
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Cogent, thoughtful, and above all humane March 4, 2010
J. A Magill (Sacramento, CA USA)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
Into the vitriolic debate about homosexuality and society, esteemed philosopher Martha Nussbaum's "From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law" arrives like a breath of well reasoned air. Combining rigorous logic, thorough research, and humanity, Nussbaum examines our legal tradition to explain how the insidious notion of "disgust" is offered as a basis to deny rights to the "unworthy." Few will read her history of invectives used to demonize "the other," whether black, Jewish, or immigrant by association with disease, bodily fluids, odor, germs, and excrement, without feeling a chill.
Examining the legal status of homosexuality, she contrasts the views of two British thinkers. Philosopher John Stuart Mills, "abhor[ed] the tyranny of public sentiment over personal choice," and thought government had no place in regulating the activities of equal, competent, consenting adults. In opposition to Mills, she offers Lord Patrick Devlin, a British judge and Neo-Burkian, who opposed ending the legal sanction against homosexuality arguing that the state can and should use force to encourage social solidarity and enforce a common morality. Devlin saw sodomy laws as just and necessary, setting bounds on what is acceptable; according to Nussbaum, Mills would have seen them as nothing less than an assault on liberty. And though at times casting Devlin against Mills can feel like an intellectual middleweight taking a beating from Mohammed Ali, one's sympathy quickly passes.
"From Disgust to Humanity" explores the jurisprudential history of our "right to privacy," explaining cogently how the justices grounded it in the Constitution. In matters of privacy in general and homosexuality in particular, she demonstrates how jurists are divide followers of Mills and Devlin. In the case of the latter, arguments always track back to disgust, homosexual being "others" and "deviants," engaging in behavior that exists only in deranged fantasy. Thinkers such as Justice Scalia and Leon Klass, Chair of the Bioethics Council under President Bush, both of a Devlinian bend thinking disgust as a basis for sound ethics, receive an intellectual drubbing. Nussbaum continually beats them with a simple question: given their views of homosexuality, how can they claim they wouldn't have felt the same way in 1967, when the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia invalidated miscegenation laws, at a time when an overwhelming number of Americans thought interracial marriage wrong and unnatural?
Against various arguments as to why homosexuals should not enjoy their fellow citizens' rights to marriage and intimacy, Nussbaum brings an irresistible vanquishing logic, wielding Equality and Liberty as her foil. In places she demonstrates a sharp sense of humor, as when she muses about why legislators (doubtless mostly men) seem so often preoccupied with gay male sex, but are inclined to give lesbianism a pass.
Yet more thrilling than Nussbaum's rhetorical skills and the soundness of her argument, is how she weds both to an appeal to our basic and essential humanity, to reject the hyperbolic language of hate and oppression in favor of recognizing the essential rights with which we are all endowed.
Thoughtful, Cogent, and Humane April 6, 2010
Sacramento Book Review (Sacramento, CA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Into the vitriolic debate about homosexuality and society, esteemed philosopher Martha Nussbaum's //From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law// arrives like a breath of well reasoned air. Combining rigorous logic, thorough research, and humanity, Nussbaum examines our legal tradition to explain how the insidious notion of "disgust" is offered as a basis to deny rights to the "unworthy." Few will read her history of invectives used to demonize "the other," whether black, Jewish, or immigrant, by association with disease, bodily fluids, odor, germs, and excrement, without feeling a chill.
Examining the legal status of homosexuality, she contrasts the views of two British thinkers. Philosopher John Stuart Mills, "abhor[ed] the tyranny of public sentiment over personal choice," and thought government had no place in regulating the activities of equal, competent, consenting adults. In opposition to Mills, she offers Lord Patrick Devlin, a British judge and Neo-Burkian, who opposed ending the legal sanction against homosexuality arguing that the state can and should use force to encourage social solidarity and enforce a common morality. Devlin saw sodomy laws as just and necessary, setting bounds on what is acceptable; according to Nussbaum, Mills would have seen them as nothing less than an assault on liberty. And though at times casting Devlin against Mills can feel like an intellectual middleweight taking a beating from Mohammed Ali, one's sympathy quickly passes.
//From Disgust to Humanity// explores the jurisprudential history of our "right to privacy," explaining cogently how the justices grounded it in the Constitution. In matters of privacy in general and homosexuality in particular, she demonstrates how jurists are divide followers of Mills and Devlin. In the case of the latter, arguments always track back to disgust, homosexual being "others" and "deviants," engaging in behavior that exists only in deranged fantasy. Thinkers such as Justice Scalia and Leon Klass, Chair of the Bioethics Council under President Bush, both of a Devlinian bend, thinking disgust as a basis for sound ethics, receive an intellectual drubbing. Nussbaum continually beats them with a simple question: given their views of homosexuality, how can they claim they wouldn't have felt the same way in 1967, when the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia invalidated miscegenation laws, at a time when an overwhelming number of Americans thought interracial marriage wrong and unnatural?
Against various arguments as to why homosexuals should not enjoy their fellow citizens' rights to marriage and intimacy, Nussbaum brings an irresistible vanquishing logic, wielding Equality and Liberty as her foil. In places, she demonstrates a sharp sense of humor, as when she muses about why legislators (doubtless mostly men) seem so often preoccupied with gay male sex, but are inclined to give lesbianism a pass.
Yet more thrilling than Nussbaum's rhetorical skills and the soundness of her argument, is how she weds both to an appeal to our basic and essential humanity, to reject the hyperbolic language of hate and oppression in favor of recognizing the essential rights with which we are all endowed.
Reviewed by Jordan Magill
Moving from the "politics of disgust" to the "politics of humanity" March 11, 2010
Todd Bartholomew (Atlanta, GA USA)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
The first half of the title neatly sums up Nussbaum's central argument regarding public opinion and public policy as it relates to the LGBT community, same-sex relations and their push for legal redress though the courts and the legislative process. Nussbaum explores how those opposed to the LGBT community and public policy granting them equal rights have used emotionalism, particularly the disgust and revulsion attached to gay sex to rally supporters to their cause, often using factually incorrect, but emotionally charged statements. Nussbaum includes a number of recent statements made by state legislators, activists, and others that driver her point home. They are by turns irrelevant, childish, bizarre, and often just factually incorrect. In the process those opposed to same-sex rights have created what Nussbaum terms "the politics of disgust". If you can stigmatize, demonize, and otherwise vilify your opponents causing others to share in your revulsion of them, then mission accomplished. As was done to blacks generations before, the "politics of disgust" is bound up in the fear of disease, contagion, and blood, an argument heard in defending segregation in the Jim Crow era.
Nussbaum, a prominent professor of law and philosophy at the University of Chicago and the author of many books, does an outstanding job of explaining the evolution and creation of the "politics of disgust" and that sort of demagoguery is nothing new. But the larger philosophical question Nussbaum poses here is whether pursuit of "the politics of disgust" is a sustainable political tool. Nussbaum points out how societies have eventually transitioned away from the "politics of disgust", such as in India's abandonment of the caste system, the decrease in Antisemitism in some parts of the world, and the ending of legally sanctioned segregation in the USA and South Africa. Nussbaum argues that societies have been able to transform beyond their pasts and transition to what she terms "the politics of humanity". In the process they come to see these vilified "others" as fully human, with similar hopes, fears, and desires. More importantly Nussbaum is probably the clearest thinker on this subject, avoiding the emotionally charged rhetoric of both sides, writing in a manner that is dispassionate and objective. But Nussbaum methodically picks apart the arguments against LGBT rights in such a manner that by the time she's done it's clear that the opponents are exposed as frauds, unsupported by any data, or as hateful demagogues basing their ideology on disgust, fear, and a manipulation of religion and history.
There have been many books written on the subject of gay rights, both pro and con, but of those I've read few have left as great an impact as "From Disgust to Humanity." Nussbaum clearly has hope for the future regarding LGBT equality and points to the changes in public opinion over time. As she points out equality will come in time, but it will require greater understanding of what both groups have in common and to empathize with each other more, ceasing to view each other as "other". In the end a sense of justice will win out although it may take many years as witnessed by the experience of other groups. As Nussbaum points out, making law and public policy out of fear typically never stands.
Same-sex Issues and the Law July 4, 2010
Amos Lassen (Little Rock, Arkansas)
Nussbaum, Martha C. "From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law", Oxford University Press, 2010.
Same-Sex Issues and the Law
Amos Lassen
Martha Nussbaum takes a look at the legal issues of same-sex relations and shows how disgust has been a factor in legislation and public opinion. This disgust is directly related to fear of contamination and a loss of solidarity. Nussbaum also looks at the politics of humanity to bring about mutual respect. She maintains that sexual orientation rights are necessary to bring us into a world where happiness where there will be no discrimination. She shows us how disgust is insidious. Nussbaum presents a cogent and politically charged case against the unconstitutional legal arguments that have inhibited the privacy, marriage and full civil rights of gays and lesbians in the United States. Here is a book that gives a hard case for the legalization of same-sex marriage.
Nussbaum has the authority to make these statements because she is a deep thinker and distinguished law professor. She is one of our foremost authorities on law, justice, freedom, morality, and emotion. She aims argument at the opposition to gay equality that she calls the politics of disgust.
Nussbaum argues that disgust has long been among the fundamental motivations of those who are fighting for legal discrimination against lesbian and gay citizens. She believes that the politics of disgust must be confronted directly; it contradicts the basic principle of the equality of all citizens under the law. In the place of disgust she suggests the "politics of humanity," which are based on respect and love.
Nussbaum looks at the writing of John Stuart Mills who was against the influence of public opinion and sentiment on personal choice. According to Mills, government has no place in regulating consenting adults and how they behave. In contrast to Mills she shows us Lord Patrick Devlin who was in opposition to ending the legal sanctions against homosexuality by showing that the state must use force to bring about social solidarity and a common morality must be enforced. He felt that sodomy laws were not only just but necessary. Mills, on the other hand, saw the same laws as an assault on liberties.
"From Disgust to Humanity" explores the jurisprudential history of our "right to privacy," explaining cogently how the justices grounded it in the Constitution. In matters of privacy in general and homosexuality in particular, she demonstrates how jurists are divide followers of Mills and Devlin.
She uses equality and liberty to back up what she says and has a sharp sense of humor especially when she writes about why legislators who seem to be preoccupied with gay male sex, that they say nothing about lesbianism. She brings together an appeal to basic humanity to cast aside hate and oppression and accept the rights that we all should share.
The impact of the book is that it makes us look at the issues with new and different eyes. Nussbaum lets us know that equality will eventually come and this can be seen in the changes in public opinion that have come about. However, in order for it to come there needs to be greater understanding and there must be no group that is the "other". In the end a sense of justice will win out although it may take many years as witnessed by the experience of other groups.
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