Everyone hates our criminal law professor because...well, of many reasons. Anyway, one of the primary of those is that he argues that homosexuality is against public morality.
It's kind of one of his favourite topics actually, and due to my...ahem...pervert instincts, I find it wildly interesting, even while others die of his rant about the Naz Foundation case. So he goes on to say what a dire judgment it is, for it is detaching criminal law from the precepts of public morality. And then everyone goes nuts because mahn, we are so elite, and how can we ever think that homosexuality is NOT the norm!
Well, let's consider what public morality really is. Ummm...no that's a really hard question to consider in such limited space, so it could be something you could just mull upon. But consider this. We say it is NOT immoral to be homosexual. Yet honestly how many of us are really comfortable with it? I know for one that my next-door neighbour definitely is not.
Morality is not a redundant concept. It is visible in the way we react to things. Immorality manifests not only in the instance of Ram Sena chasing harried couples, but also when one discreetly sniggers at PDA-ers. Simply saying that Public displays are okay, then does not make it moral for the person saying it. Because the comfort level with the thing is still absent.
Now notice that the people who contend homosexuals to fall within the moral ambit, do live within the symbolic where morality is the sanction to righteousness. They do not try to blur the boundaries of morality, rather kinda strengthen it, by recognising it exists, and then recognising its importance by heavily parading (or trying to), the morality of homosexuality. In other words, the attempt is just to try to expand the boundaries of morality, rather than blur it.
All this points towards, first, how important morality is to our society; and second, homosexuality is still not a part of public morality, because the personal comfort level with it does not exist. A homosexual is something exotic...and for us elite, something exotic to be patronised. A homosexual is NOT mundane...howsoever much we try to act that way ( in order to slash the accusations of being the elite patron against us), but in our minds, a homosexual is still excitement, a new possibility, something off-the-track. It's not mainstream, howsoever much we try to convince ourselves by saying it aloud. A homosexual is still a deviant. Hence, not within the public morality. That's why it's easier to let go off a pass made by a hetero, than by a homo. The latter is scary or more exciting...in any case, it persists longer in the memory.
But some food for thought: Is it so bad being qualified immoral if you are homo? I mean as long as you get your due rights...via the rights jurisprudence, which is taking over the criminal law jurisprudence, as propounded by Habermas? ;) That's where Dr. Shukla needs to be questioned, if you will.... heehee.
On the other hand, what makes an immoral being so ostracising that morality HAS to be attributed to him? In other words, morality really is an essential if one wants to persists in a society, isn't it?
