Abstract

In ‘Aeon’ magazine, 2 August 2017, Professor Paul Russell maintains that identities such as race, gender and sexual orientation have equal ethical standing because they cannot be discarded and they are not constituted by beliefs, values or practices. We should, he says, resist attempts to present those who identify as gay as making a choice and affirming certain values and practices that they are capable of shedding. However, such identities can be discarded and they are in part constituted by beliefs, values or practices. Russell’s defence of homosexual equality, because it focuses on the inclination to homosexuality, is pointless and useless. A proper defence of homosexual equality focuses on homosexual lifestyles and argues that the choice of such lifestyles is not wrong. Whether people who choose homosexual lifestyles do so because of a natural and unchangeable inclination, or whether environment or choice plays a part in bringing about that inclination, is an interesting question for science but of no concern for politics.