>> a abcaeight. great. the bishop of the wrap this up. my instructions are to save the sample instructions are, thank you for attending this session. we hope you enjoyed it. it being this subject, i think, you know, i am a moderator. i am not supposed to get involved. thanks a lot. >> thank you. applauding] >> lynn olson is the author of numerous books including "troublesome young men" and "freedom's daughters." she's a former correspondent for the moscow sun and the associated press. the virginia festival of the book is the host of the program.

to find out more go to vabook.org. >> in her book "from disgust to humanity," martha nussbaum discusses the sexual orientation in the united states. politics and prose bookstore is the host of this talk. it lasts about an hour. >> on behalf of our owners i would like to welcome dr. martha nussbaum to politics and prose bookstore. [applause] we are always honored -- that's okay. we are always honored to be located at this juncture of world class academics and the

general reading public. but, of course, d.c.'s readers are pretty world class themselves and we're pleased in particular to welcome martha nussbaum from her newest work. i'm personally overjoyed that she's coming to us from the university of chicago, which is my own alma mater. dr. nussbaum,, however, is the sort of academic who talks about the ivory tower and brought many conversations about practical jurisdiction, goodness back into the academy with her. as a philosopher, professor nussbaum strives to be a lawyer for humanity. with an early background in drama she has moved into classics and then philosophy and then constitutional law. she talked for 20 years at harvard and brown and is a professor of law of ethics at the university of chicago. she divides her time between the philosophy department, the divinity school and the law

school and if that's not enough, the department of south asian studies and also the human rights program. she's a world expert on virtue ethics and was written and talked on the emotions and ancient ethics of sexuality, hinduism and the emotion of shame and disgust as they relate to constitutional law. this is a topic she picks up once more in this most recent book which is part of oxford press's inalienable lights she appears on top of 100 top intellectuals and this past year was awarded the american philosophical prize and she has the distinction of being the sort of philosopher who seems not tothave lost sight of philosophy's first goal which is to be good. and thank you, professor nussbaum, for coming. [applause] >> well, thank you so much. and thank you all for coming out here.

it's really great to see such a large group in this wonderful bookstore. so thank you. i'm going to introduce the book a little bit and then focus on the chapter on same-sex marriage. so i knew this was the path that i wanted said a young gay man to sociologist rich williams about his experiences with other male teens and i knew that i was on it. i knew that some could sort of experience what i was. and i knew that other people would think of it as being pretty disgusting. this book, although it's concerned with abstract issues of constitutional law, is about the divide the teen saw before him. the people who can sort of experience what a gay teenager goes through. and people who simply think of those desires and no doubt the teenagers themselves as being disgusting. for a long time our society like

many others has confronted same-sex orientations and acts with a politics of disgust. as many people react to the uncomfortable presence of gays and lesbians with the deeper version akin to that often inspired by bodily wastes, slimy insects, spoiled food and then they cite that very reaction to support a range of legal restrictions from sodomy laws to bans on same-sex marriage. partisans of the politics discuss barely can think of what that gay teenager did with his friends and say that stuff makes me throw up and they turn away from the reality of gay life. loathum to the body politic. although this political approach has lost a lot of ground in recent years, it continues to influence the ways in which many people think. disgust so describes seems pretty nasty a fundamental refusal of another person's full

humanity. one might therefore just think it's obvious that it's a bad basis for law-making in a pluralistic society. disgust, however, has had some highly respectable and influential defenders in the law. in britain in the 1950s, lord patrick devlin argued very prominently that the disgust of an average member of society was a sufficient reason to make a practice illegal even if it consensual and caused no harm to nonconsenting third parties. he was writing directly in response to the commission's recommendation to decriminalize same-sex consensual acts, which he strongly opposed. he argued that society would decay from within if it did not make law in response to the majority's feelings of disgust. more recently, in the u.s., leon cass who until very recently was the head of the president's

council for bioethics under president bush argued that repugnance has an northwestern wisdom. -- inherit wisdom. it steers us away from destructive and terrible choices. like devlin, cass concludes that disgust is a sufficient reason to ban a practice that causes no harm to nonconsenting parties. nor are these positions only academic. they're in tune with widespread forces. in recent years large sections of the christian right practiced a politics based on disgust depicting it as vile and revolting. they discuss that such practices contaminate and defile society producing social decay and degeneration. like cass and devlin, they seem to believe that disgust is a reliable guide to law-making. although the influence of those appeals piqued perhaps in the

1980s and 1990s and has a little bit declining, the politics of disgust continues to exercise influence often in more subtle and underground ways. so we need to understand why it's not a good approach to politics and law in a democratic society. well, to begin with the politics of disgust is profoundly at odds with the abstract idea of a society based on the equality of all citizens in which all have a right to the equal protection of the laws. it says that the mere reason that you inspire some pretty strong emotions in me is reason enough for me to seek the aid of law to treat you as a social pariah denying you some of your most basic entitlements as a citizen. even the u.s. supreme court held in romer vs. evans that legal deference to this type of animus as they put it violates the very idea of the equal protection of the laws in its most basic and general form.

it also violates a fundamental paradigm of political rationality. laws made to such responses lack a rational basis. despite such legal setbacks in recent years the politics of disgust as i say is alive and well in america. as groups often put forward other arguments on the surface but when you press them and i think we'll see this in the minute with same-sex marriage the politics of disgust ultimately reveals its hand. so i think a closer study of the emotion of disgust and the ways in which it's been used politically throughout history will help us understand what's going on and suggest some very powerful arguments against disgust apostles in theory and in practice by showing how that emotion expresses a universal human discomfort with bodily reality. but then uses that discomfort to target and subordinate vulnerable minorities.

and i use often parallels to woman-hating and the role played by disgust and the idea of contamination in american racism to make my case. now, disgust today has two opponents. each increasingly powerful in our social political and even legal life respect and sympathy. the idea of equal respect for persons surely a key concept throughout the history of american democracy combined with a high valuation of personal liberty suggests to many citizens that even when they don't think well of someone's intimate personal choices, they should give them space to make them so long they don't violate other people's rights. such a politics of equal respect and equal liberty has long been our norm in the area of religion. where we're just used to the idea that we must live on terms of equal respect with people's whose choices we think is not

very good or perhaps sinful and to the related idea that such deeply meaningful personal choices require the protection for all. and on a basis of equality of spheres of personal liberty. the object of respect is the person not the person's actions. but respecting one's fellow citizens as equals a long tradition holds requires seeing them as choosers and seekers who need a wide area of liberty around them whether they use that liberty from one's own point of view well or poorly so long they don't trample on the rights of others. many people, i included see sexual orientation as similar. a characteristically intimately connected with a meaning of life and, therefore, whose something which is an abridgment or perfection has profound harm to the very requested of equality. equal respect precludes the exception of such limitations on those who simply seek to act on

their buyers without violating the rights of others. a politics of equal respect is also by now the norm in the areas of gender, race and disability. where we've gradually come to see the deep-seated characteristics are not a legitimate basis for this systemic subordination of a group. many people now feel once again that sexual orientation is an important ways like these other areas. like race and gender, sexual orientation is a deep-seated characteristic that has profound meaning for people. affecting their possibilities for self-expression and for happiness. it should not be turned into a systemic source of social inequality. it requires not converting a person's sexual orientation into a reason for denying them a wide range of political entitlements on a basis of equality with others. any more than a person's race or gender or disability would be such a reason. now, that gay teenager needs and

deserves equal respect and a sphere of liberty equal to that enjoyed by others. before he's likely to get those things, however, something else has also to be present in our world as his own perceptive comments suggested. the capacity to imagine his experience. and that of other gay and lesbian citizens. disgust feeds on moral obtuseness. its possible to view another human being as a slimy slug or a piece of revolting trash only if one ever made a good faith attempt to see the world through that person's eyes or to experience that person's feelings. humanity does not automatically reveal itself to strangers. no placard hung on the front of a fellow citizen announces that this one is a full-fledged human being and not a bug or a piece of refuse. seeing the shape of a human being before us we always have choices to make. will we impute full equal humanity to that shape or something less?

only by imagining how the world might look through that person's eyes does one get to the point of seeing the other person as a someone and not a something. that crucial imaginative engagement has been sadly and sorely lacking in majority dealings with lesbian and gay lives. that sounds like that's quite far from the law but what i argue in the book is that it's the obtuseness of imagination is a key feature in some of the bad legal decisions in this area. i think the transition from bowyers vs. hardwick which has nothing in common with what straight people seek and lawrence vs. kansas where there was an ability that these are shared pursuits of something of considerable importance. is really, i think, just that transition. in imagination. so what the book does it begins by investigating disgust and

what the politics of disgust is like, how it's worked in these different areas of social life. but then i turn systematically to the different areas of constitutional law. first of all, the history of sodomy laws, the vindication of the sodomy laws in bowyers, the final overthrow in lawrence. but then the clarity of where we are after lawrence which i think was very unclearly argued. then i turn to the whole area of antidiscrimination and to the colorado conflict in which i actually played a part as an expert witness in romer vs. evans and the issue was whether the state by referendum could pass a law that forbade citizens to seek local nondiscrimination protections for gay and lesbian citizens. and the landmark supreme court decision romer vs. evans did -- was the one that referred to animus and repudiated it.

i turn to same-sex marriage and i'll talk about that now and a in a final chapter on private sex clubs and the whole question of what the private/public distinction -- the confusions that it's foisted upon us in thinking well about the whole issue of sex outside the home. okay. so any of those things i'll be glad to talk about in the discussion. but now same-sex marriage, okay, i want to talk about the arguments against it and why i think they don't add up to very much. as we examine the arguments against same-sex marriage i think we have to keep two questions firmly in mind. first, does each argument really justify legal restriction of same-sex marriage for everyone or only some groups attitudes of moral and religious disapproval? we live in a country in which people have a wide range of different religious beliefs. and we agree as i said in

respecting the space in which people pursue those beliefs. we do not, however, agree that those beliefs in and of themselves are sufficient grounds for legal regulation. typically we understand that some arguments including some but though not all moral arguments are public arguments bearing on the lives of all citizens in a decent society and others are intrareligious arguments. thus, orthodox jews abhor the eating of pork but others don't want to do it but whether it's to make it illegal for everyone. the prohibitions rests on religious text that that can't be based and that a religion that people could all sex. in the same-sex marriage whether the arguments against same-sex marriage are expressed in a

neutral or shareable language are in a certain doctrinal language. if the arguments are moral arguments rather than just textual arguments, they start to look better but we still have to ask whether they're compatible with core values of a society dedicated to giving all citizens the equal protection of the laws. many legal aspects of our history of racial and gender discrimination were defended by what looked like secular moral arguments but that didn't insulate them from constitutional scrutiny. second we have to ask whether each argument justifies its conclusion or whether there's reason to see the argument as a rationalization of some deeper sort of aversion or animus. all right. and the first and most common objection to same-sex marriage is that it's immoral and unnatural. similar arguments were widespread in the antiwoman decrease hating debate and in

these cases these arguments are typically made in a certain and doctrinal way. judges, for example, referred to the will of god in keeping the races apart. and that was said by judges in court cases. they argued that racial mixing is against the will of god. but it's difficult to cast such arguments in a form that could be accepted by citizens whose religious teaching is different. they look like jewish arguments against the eating of pork. good reasons for members of some religions not to engage in same-sex marriage but not sufficient reasons to make it illegal for all citizens in a pluralistic society. a second objection and perhaps it's the one that's most often heard today from thoughtful people insist that the main purpose of state sanctified marriage is procreation and the rearing of children. it's a legitimate public interest and so the argument goes there's a legitimate public interest in supporting potentially procreative marriages.

now, of course, there's still already we don't see why it should also follow that there is also a public interest in restricting marriage to only those cases where there may be proeducation. -- procreation. and i think we should agree the procreation and the safe rearing of children is an important public purpose but it's not clear we ever thought that purpose that best restricting marriage to the potentially procreative. if we ever did think like this we certainly haven't done anything like it. we've never limited to the marriage to the fetter -- fetteril and bly the marriage of two het sexuals or the marriage between two men and the procreation argument looks two-faced.

approving in heterosexuals but refusing. but in sterile heterosexual marriages somehow support the efforts of the procreative, well, we can certainly reply that lesbian and gay couples who don't happen to have or raise children may support or help other couples. sometimes the argument is put a little differently. marriage goes is about the protection of children. and we all know that children do best in a home with one mother and one father. so conclusion, there's a legitimate public interest in supporting an institution that fulfills this important purpose. well, put this way then, the argument again puts forward a legitimate public reason to restrict same-sex marriage namely, the interest in protecting children. its main problem, however, is with the facts. again and again, psychological

studies have shown that children do best when they have love and support. and there's some evidence that two-parent households do better at that job than single-parent households for obvious reasons of economic stress. there's no evidence, however, at all that same-sex couples do any worse than opposite sex couples. there's a widespread feeling that those results can't be right. living in an immoral atmosphere must be bad for children. but that feeling rests on the religious judgments of the first argument. when the well-being of children is assessed in a religiously neutral way, there is absolutely no difference. a third argument is that by approving state approval on something that many people believe to be immoral and unnatural same-sex marriage will force them to bless and approve of it thus violating their conscience.

now, this one has been put forward by a reputable intellectual in which fried argues against sodomy laws and spheres of liberty around people but he draws the line at same-sex marriage about this idea he has enforced approval. well, what precisely is the argument here? fried does not suggest that - recognition of same-sex marriage would constitute the free exercise clause of the first amendment and that, i think, would be a totally impossible position to take. presumably then his position is that somehow or other the state has a legitimate interest in banning same-sex marriage on the grounds that it just offends many people. but this argument contains many difficulties. first it raises an establishment

clause problems because religions vary in their attitude in same-sex marriage. my religion, reformed judaism has performed same-sex marriage and well does conservative judaism and there's wide variation here. so the state following freid's argument is the same. there's things a modern state does that many people deeply dislike and they cite religious ground public education teaches things many religious parents don't like such as the theory of evolution and the equality of women. parents often bring that to court but typically they lose. because these are essential values for our society. public health regulations licensed butchers who cut up pigs for human consumetions. jews don't want to be associated with that practice but nobody believes they have a right to ask the state to impose their

religiously grounded objection and abhorrence on all citizens. the old order amish don't want their children to attend public school until 14 saying the schooling is destructive of community and the state respects that choice for amish children. the state even allowing amish children to break the law that requires them to be in school past age 14. but no one would dream of thinking that the amish have a right to expect that the state will make school end at age 14 for everyone. part of life in a pluralistic society that values the nonestablishment of religion is an attitude of live and let live. whenever we see a nation that does allow the imposition of a religiously grounded preference on all citizens as with some israeli laws limiting activity on the sabbath and as with laws in india banning the slaughter of cows, we see a nation with a religious establishment.

we've chosen not to take that route and i think quite wisely. so to the extent that we do often choose work days, holidays and so on, that coincide with the religious preferences of the majority, we bend over backwards to be sensitive to the burdens that this may create for minorities. so i don't think that freid's argument works and it's quite revealing that right in this part of his book he does mention the issue of disgust. namely, he says we can get to the point of understanding why sodomy laws are a bad idea only if we stop ourselves from -- ourselves, of course, meaning the straight readers of the book -- stop ourselves from thinking about it being performed by lesbian and gay people. that's an interesting argument. the fourth argument which appeals to be a legitimate public purpose focuses on the difficulty marriage seems to be

nag our society pointing to rising divorce rates and evidence that children are being damaged by lack of parental support. people say we need to defend traditional marriage not to undermine it by opening it up to people who don't support its traditional goals. well, we could begin by contesting this blanket characterization of same-sex couples in large numbers, of course, they do have and raised children. marriage for same-sex couples as for other couples provides a clear framework of entitlements and responsibilities as well as security, legitimacy and social standing for children. and, in fact, the states that have legalized same-sex marriage in massachusetts, connecticut and iowa have among the lowest divorce rates in the nation. and the massachusetts evidence which is, of course, goes on for the longest time shows that the rate has not risen as a result of the legalization. we might also pause before granting that an increase in the divorce rate signals social degeneration. often in the past, women stayed

married enduring neglect and even abuse. because they had no marketable skills and no employment options. so i think often the simplest explanation for the rise in the divorce rate is the growing options for women. but let's concede for the sake of argument that there is a social problem. what then about the claim that legalizing same-sex marriage undermines the effort to defend or protect traditional marriage? if society really wants to defend traditional marriage as it surely is entitled to do and probably should do, many policies suggest themselves. family and medical leave, drug and alcohol counseling on demand, generous support in health policies for mental health counseling and marital strengthening laws against domestic violence and enforcing them better. employment counseling and financial support for those under stress during the present economic crisis. and, of course, tighter enforcement of child support laws.

such measures have a clear relationship to the stresses and strains facing traditional marriage today. the prohibition of same-sex marriage does not. if we were to study heterosexual would find a single caseb3[ñ wh the parties felt the primary reason for their divorce was the availability of marriage to same-sex couples. divorce is usually an intimate personal matter having to do with the nature of the marital relationship. the objector at this point typically makes a further move and it's here that we start edging onto the terrain of disgust. the very recognition of same-sex marriage as on par with traditional marriage says the objector demeans traditional marriage makes it somehow -- sullies it and makes it valuable. what's being said it seems is something like this. if we include in the hall of fame baseball players who got