(Even if you don’t care about the issue discussed in this mail bag edition, it might be useful to see how we approach problems around here because this is the same process we use for our investments. It is probably the most revealing example of the thought process we bring to capital allocation than anything else I’ve written.)
First, the usual caveat: I sincerely hate this issue (gay marriage) because I am so tired of talking about it or hearing about it on the news. Marriage equality is inevitable so I wish we could just fast forward to the end of the culture wars so we can focus on important things like building high speed trains or figuring out how to solve the budgetary deficit without causing a massive deflationary depression. But I’m a news and political junky. You’re talking to the guy who skipped major parts of 4th grade to watch the Clinton impeachment trials on CSPAN.
In another five years, I imagine we’ll be at full equality; game, set, match. Equality wins. People can live their life without the American Taliban trying to shove their own version of Sharia law down their neighbors’ throats. And I can stop thinking about it because you – the readers – will stop sending me questions about my beliefs. After all, when was the last time I had to write a post about a black person getting sent to the back of a bus or a woman being denied the right to vote? But we aren’t there, yet. So this is germane to the zeitgeist.
The Question That Stumped Me
It takes a lot to stump me. In the ten years I’ve been writing online, I have responded to more questions than I can even estimate – easily in the tens of thousands. But well over 90% of questions posed have to do with investing, economics, finance, business, management, or entrepreneurship. Sure, there is the occasional, “Let me get back to you, I want to check something.” But very rarely do I have to reflect on a topic and run it through the full list of mental models and my five rules for serious conversation. I got two such questions this week. One of them, I can’t discuss since it was a private question about a specific situation that isn’t likely to be repeated by anyone on the blog so it doesn’t do any good to explain it.
The other was a conversation that happened in the comments section of one of the previous mail bag posts. And the worst part is, it stumped me on a topic I hate more than almost any other except communism – gay rights.
Is Heterosexuality More Moral Than Homosexuality?
Thank you for standing up for gay marriage Joshua, it’s one of the many reasons I consider your writings always worthy of my time and attentions. It says a lot about your character that you’d stand up for what’s right, especially when you’re surrounded by people who are wrong (*gasp* I just referred to what some people consider a subjective opinion as right or wrong, such a cardinal sin…) It’s one thing to stand up for gay marriage in San Francisco, quite another to do it when you live in the Midwest. Do people automatically assume that you’re gay when you do so?
There’s an interesting implict assumption that is -sometimes- (not always) present in the argument you used, that gay people can’t change and therefore should be left to their own devices. Assuming for argument’s sake that it is possible to change your sexuality on a whim, is it more moral for gay people to become straight if they could do so without negative affect? Is it more moral for a bisexual man to marry a woman than another man? – Crabhooves
First, We Have to Define Morality and Understand What a Moral Action Is
You are asking about morality. Words mean something so I have to identify what it is to be “moral”. That means we need to frame the parameters. A few hours ago, I sat down to my desk and wrote an essay called “What Is Morality? Are Morals Relative to Circumstances?”. There is no way you can understand my response without reading that essay first. Take a moment to do it. This article will still be here when you are done. I’ll wait.
Before We Can Discuss the Morality of Homosexuality and Heterosexuality, We Need to Define Sexual Orientation and Sexual Behavior
Now that we have defined morality, we have to define sexual orientation.
- Sexual behavior is what someone does. If a man has sex with a woman, that is heterosexual behavior.
- Sexual orientation is who you want to have sex with. If a man sees another man and wants to sleep with him, his sexual orientation is homosexual.
There are two components to sexual orientation:
- Sexual desire – Who you want to bed
- Emotional desire – Who you want to kiss, grow old with, and cuddle next to on the couch
Most people are an integrated whole. That is, you are either heterosexual or homosexual. Most of the studies I’ve seen show that true bisexuality does exist but it is far more common in the female population (the current consensus, if there is one, has to do with the way the arousal mechanisms work, with female attraction being far more fluid than males, who tend to be hardwired based on visuals). That is, when men were shown various pornographic images during brain scans, the arousal areas lit up based upon sexual orientation but far fewer men were truly bisexual. Whatever causes men’s visual wiring resulted in an almost consistent binary outcome. Women were far more complex.
That means that your sexual orientation is not determined by your sexual behavior. A gay man could sleep with women his entire life and he is still a gay man who is having sex with women. Likewise, a straight man could be in prison and engage in a homosexual act but it doesn’t change the fact that his sexual orientation is heterosexual.
Furthermore, sexual orientation is not just about sex. If a man is unable to copulate due to medical issues or old age and he is heterosexual, he is likely to still desire a wife, a family, and the emotional connections of that. After all, long before Viagra, old men still dated old women in nursing homes.
Virtually all people are either heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. There are asexual people but they are a statistical anomaly when viewed as a percentage of the population and therefore not relevant to this particular discussion.
From Here, We Need to Use Decision Trees to Help Determine the Morality of Heterosexuality versus the Morality of Homosexuality
At this point, we need to break out a useful tool called the decision tree.
First, we need to determine if there are any costs associated with either heterosexuality or homosexuality.
- Costs of heterosexuality: Increased population, potential for out-of-wedlock births and teen pregnancy leading to higher social program expense and taxes
- Costs of homosexuality: Lower population (recent trends in surrogacy and reproductive technology have changed this).
Some might argue that homosexuality has enormous costs such as AIDs or sexually transmitted disease. This is incorrect because:
- They are, in fact, costs of promiscuity not homosexuality
- Lesbians have far lower rates of HIV, AIDs, and other STDs than any other group. Unplanned pregnancy is virtually impossible in lesbian relationships. I say “virtually” because it remains theoretically possible that in a world of 7 billion people, parthenogenesis could happen. If we use this as a metric for morality, lesbian relationships would be the “most moral” of all.
Is Procreation a Necessary Requirement for Marriage?
Now, we need to determine whether procreation is a necessary part of heterosexual unions. Or, as reader KansasKate put it:
Assuming for argument’s sake that it is possible to change your race on a whim, is it more moral for black people to become white if they could do so without negative affect? Is it more moral for a biracial man to marry a black woman than white woman?
Remember the movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”? I feel certain that when it was made in the 1967, mixed-race marriages were still illegal in some states, and they were definitely viewed as immoral by many.
Do the same people who today see same-sex marriage as immoral also see mixed-race marriage in the same light? Are the people who today support (or at least don’t oppose) mixed-race marriages also willing to support (or at least not oppose) same-sex marriage?
As for the “moral imperative” of biological reproduction… I’m straight, my husband’s straight, and we’ve been married for over 25 years. We are child-free by choice. Does that make us any less married than a couple with 6 kids? Not legally. The judge who married us says we’re married. The State of Kansas says we’re married. The IRS says we’re married. Does it make our marriage less “moral”? One could argue the opposite — that people who, for whatever reason, choose not to have children should not be pressured into having them. Having children when one is not fully committed to caring for every aspect of their upbringing — that’s what I call selfish, wrong and perhaps even immoral.
But questions like these are sort of pointless without first defining what is meant by “moral” and, if that morality is based on Christianity, where does that leave those of us who are not christians? Are we to be forced into following a conservative interpretation (or any interpretation, for that matter) of christian dogma? And if so, would that not be prohibiting the free exercise of religion?
Kate sums up the question of morality in reproduction eloquently: Is she and her husband of 25 years “less married” than a comparable couple who has had six children? Is she and her husband any less married than two teenagers forced into a shotgun wedding due to an unplanned pregnancy? I’d say no.
Is my grandmother less married to her husband of 20 years because they don’t have any children together? Of course not. Would any of my aunts or uncles that suffered reproduction difficulty be any less married if they adopted rather than had biological children? No.
Thus, procreation is not a necessary component of morality.
In fact, I would argue that reproduction can become immoral, such as a single woman who has 12 or more children, cannot support them, suffers from a drug habit, and constantly turns her children over to the State to exist on the taxpayers’ dime.
What Are the “Switching Costs” Involved?
Next, we have to examine “switching costs”. If a heterosexual chose to behave like a homosexual or a homosexual chose to behave like a heterosexual, what are the consequences?
- Lack of emotional fulfillment. If a boy dreams of marrying Prince Charming and having kids, he’s never going to feel the same way about having a wife as he would having a husband
- Lack of sexual fulfillment. If a boy gets turned on by other boys, sex is going to be a chore. Sex should never be a chore.
Over time, the emotional toll of maintaining behavior that is diametrically opposed to orientation is likely to be significant.
I would be inclined to say that it would be immoral to live in a manner that is inconsistent with your sexual orientation. However, humans have free will. If someone suffers emotional pain from religious beliefs that make them want to change, they may be more at peace by remaining celibate than they would be in a same-sex relationship.
But here is the catch: The question is complicated because Crabhooves, in his original message, asked whether or not it was moral for a gay person to become straight if they suffered no negative consequences.
If a heterosexual person could become homosexual and a homosexual person could become heterosexual without any consequences to their own personal happiness, and we have already determined that biological reproduction is not a necessary moral imperative for marriage, it is morally neutral. Neither is morally preferable.
The Rules Change If Aliens Attack
Now, in the previous essay, we talked about how it becomes a moral imperative to protect the human species in the event of a population crisis due to a global disaster. If another “black death” occurred or mankind was obliterated down to a few thousand people due to a meteor strike, reproduction becomes a necessary moral act. But reproduction is not tied to sexual orientation. Gays and lesbians could reproduce just as quickly as heterosexuals and would likely be encouraged to do so. That doesn’t require them to be in love with the person with whom they are copulating.
In other words, if the entire world except West Hollywood and San Francisco were wiped out, humanity would still survive because you would just have mixed-orientation couples reproducing and raising kids together. Every family would very quickly look like the Duggars with 19 kids and counting. Only with better music and clothes.
(Seriously, I like the Duggars. I really, really do. But sometimes I wish Michelle Duggar would just get on a plane, treat herself to a Bergdorf Goodman trip, and take a page out of Sarah Palin’s stylebook. (Say what you will about Palin, but that woman knows how dress. She may not be able to tell you which newspapers she reads but she knows Saks and Neiman Marcus. Any woman would be lucky to look half as good as she does.))
That means reproduction becomes a moral imperative but heterosexuality does not. Elton John has a kid. Ricky Martin has a kid. Their sexual orientation was not an impediment to their reproduction.
The Bottom Line – The Answer To Your Question
If a man is perfectly bisexual – that is he is 50% attracted to men and 50% attracted to women – and he has a choice to fall in love and date either gender, is one choice more moral than the other?
It comes down to the person with whom he wants to spend his life. It is, frankly, none of society’s damn business. Nor is it the business of the United States government. Sexual orientation is an ingrained trait that is just like left handedness. It is not chosen. Sexual behavior in regards to which gender a person sleeps with has no negative consequences in and of itself and, in fact, behaving in a way that is inconsistent with orientation can have significant detrimental effects on a person’s mental health; harm comes from manifestations of that behavior (e.g., not remaining in a monogamous relationship, not using a condom, etc.)
That means that a gay couple is in no way morally superior or inferior to a straight couple any more than a blond is morally superior to a brunette or a white person is morally superior to a black person. The entire notion is absurd.
Take This One Off the Charlie Munger “Too Hard” Pile
Now … I don’t want to think this hard for a long time. This took far too much energy to work through given my schedule. But at least now I can cross that off the “too hard” pile Charlie Munger talks about and I followed the five rules for serious conversation.
1 Most of what people call moral is nothing more than pure, unadulterated, learned hatred no different than Germans were taught to hate Jews or Romans were taught to persecute Christians. It is borne of fear, misunderstanding, and prejudice. It’s entirely cultural, not religious (after all, the Bible calls people who herd animals abominations because they are unclean and says it is an abomination to eat food after three days because it is no longer fit for consumption). That means there is a sin shelf life on your Thanksgiving day leftovers and you don’t see anyone worrying about that, anymore.