I say “initial thoughts” because it’s November. Exams are coming and going. Reports are nearby. Finals are approaching. Not enough time. Not exactly the best moment for a blog post. Hence, initial thoughts—no time for compiling and laying down the research. Just enough time to jot down some nagging thoughts. <— This is when I thought about putting “initial thoughts” into every blog post where I’d just ramble and then I realized how bad and annoying that sounded.
You know the original title of this blog post would have been: “Should the (moderate/non-socialist) LGBT community divorce themselves from liberalism—and find a third alternative besides liberalism and socialism?”
That would be controversial. Why? Because, I must clarify: I am no expert at all on queer theory, or any sort of political theory at all. I am also a cis heterosexual who is not exactly the best practicing Catholic out there—so I’m clearly not an authority on anything tangent to the subject matter of this blog post.
I just follow a bunch of people from Twitter. That’s it.
Anyways.
Here’s my ramble of disorganized thoughts:
One of the strongest issues that traditionalist conservatives (and by “traditionalist conservatives,” I mean “Catholic” and more specifically, “traditionalist Catholics” because I find that online—there’s no difference) have against Liberalism is that there’s no common good being promoted.
Everyone’s free. Everyone has rights. Freedom is the most important thing in Liberalism. What that means is—you can’t dictate to me how I should live my life, so long as I’m not hurting anybody. Which many think is fair, right? I live my life, you live yours.
A cultural relativism sets in. Conservatives hate this. If my freely determined “lifestyle” is worth as much as your freely determined “lifestyle,” I cannot exactly say which “lifestyle” is absolutely better—the implication being that I cannot exactly say which values (which underpin these lifestyles) are better.
This is bad because cultural relativism-cum-absence of common good leads to/is accompanied by rampant individualism—and all of this adds up to an atomized society of alienated human beings shorn of genuine human connection to society and to each other.
Liberalism —> Freedom is Only Value —> No Coherent Common Good —> Atomization —> Alienation
This is where Integralists come in. Integralists assume the following, if I understand correctly. Society should be “integrated” with the Catholic Church. Society should thus share the common values—the common good—of the Catholic Church. This is to restore the “common good” in (Western) society and reverse the atomization and alienation which plagues (Western) society.
Being gay is “wrong” for traditionalists not just because God says so—but because prioritizing freedom (in this case, sexual freedom) under Liberalism erodes society’s sense of common good which leads to atomization and alienation of (Western) society.
That’s how I understand the conservative stance on gender politics.
And I agree to an extent. Not that being gay is bad—I strongly disagree there—but that a sense of common good is necessary.
Not everyone can be radically free, radically accountable. Not everyone can live up to the expectations of Liberalism. Some people just want someone to tell them what to do—or have a clear set of (nonetheless arbitrarily set) rules to fall back on. Not everyone can be their own boss. People want certainty, as much as freedom.
It’s the collapse of that certainty that leads to alienation. I don’t know, therefore I drink.
Liberalism cannot fulfill that desire for the common good. It becomes associated to atomization and alienation. Liberalism is about being crushed by the weight of freedom.
LGBT advocacy—tied to Liberalism if premised on (sexual) freedom primarily/alone as an extension of freedom under Liberalism—is therefore weighed down by Liberalism. Conservatives tie the freedom to be gay to the unrestrained freedom which leads to alienation and atomization.
We need a way to argue that LGBT rights do not lead to alienation and atomization. The ground must not be ceded to the conservatives. However, to do that means justifying the existence of the LGBT outside of Liberalism. What does this mean?
The socialist answer is easier to my very limited understanding. Class ties up race, gender and sex anyways. True freedom is restrained by capitalism. Bring down capitalism, and ensure everyone’s freedom by extension.
But I think of all those in the LGBT community who wouldn’t consider themselves socialists. What’s their alternative to the normative assumptions of Liberalism?
Maybe the Philippines can do that better than the West considering our native culture (e.g. Babaylan) accommodated LGBT persons outside of a liberal framework. If I understand correctly, the Babaylan were recognized for their queer identities in so far as their queer identities allowed them to be seen as conduits of spirituality in pre-colonial native society. They therefore had a social role that definitely prevented alienation and atomization—and promoted the opposite: affirmation and togetherness in society.
The common good doesn’t just lie in the traditionalist conservative’s (read: traditionalist variant of Christianity, e.g. Catholicism) sense of common good. To prove conservatism wrong is to demonstrate that secular society can come up with an equally viable common good to cohere society and ward off atomization and alienation.
Unfortunately, I am unsure how Liberalism can do this. And for moderates—the hidden question is heavy. What’s the alternative?
(Again, I know I’m not qualified to say anything about this being—well, just some random straight dude—but this just has been nagging at me.)
Thinking Aloud 