Ed Brayton and Jonathan Rowe have good posts attacking Robert Bork, my own bête noir. I hope readers do not get the idea from their comments that what Bork says is somehow out of the mainstream. Bork is contemporary conservatism. This is the great tragedy of conservatism.
Rowe singles out a priceless sample of the sort of refuse that passes for logic in Bork’s “mind”: Bork argues against the legalization of gay marriage on the grounds that “equating heterosexuality and homosexuality, by removing the last vestiges of moral stigma from same-sex couplings...will lead to an increase in the number of homosexuals.” Yes, you read that correctly—if Jonathan Rowe goes out and gets married, Timothy Sandefur and his children are more likely to turn gay. Now, Bork says this is a bad thing, not just for society, but for these newly minted homosexuals themselves: “Despite their use of the word ‘gay,’ for many homosexuals life is anything but gay…. Attempted suicide rates are…high for homosexuals.” From this he concludes, not that we need a more tolerant society, not that we need to treat these “poor” homosexuals with more compassion, not even that we need federally-funded sexuality counselors, but that we need to “avoid the consequences of making homosexuality seem a normal and acceptable choice…”!
The cure, you see, for the misery of homosexuals in a society which condemns homosexuality, is to ratchet up the persecution. This is the logic of Torquemada, for Christsake! How can this man be taken seriously? And yet he is not only taken seriously; he is the intellectual leader of today’s conservatives. He is alluded to by the President of the United States in the presidential debates. He is fêted and admired and quoted and cited respectably by members of the Federalist Society (of which he is one of two leaders). He is at the forefront.
Those interested in Bork’s routine intellectual fraud are invited to consult Harry V. Jaffa’s outstanding Storm Over The Constitution, as well as my own article “Liberal Originalism,” in the current issue of the Harvard Journal of Law And Public Policy.
Comments policy