Bentham, eh wot

We take you now to the world of philosopher Jeremy Bentham, one of the founders of utilitarianism. (Grossly, ya calculate what's best for the world as being what causes the most happiness.) The famous egghead wrote an essay titled "Offences Against One's Self: Paederasty" back around 1785, believed to be "the first known argument for homosexual law reform in England."

It was first published in 1978. No typo -- it took almost 200 years for this thing to see some ink. Homosexuality was punishable by hanging back then, and Bentham had some "anxieties" about expressing his views in public.

In fact, you couldn't even exactly say what you were saying, as noted here: "In law books and in parliamentary debate, homosexual behavior was referred to stereotypically by the Latin formula, 'peccatum illud horribile, inter Christianos non nominandum' -- 'that horrible crime not to be named among Christians.'"

But death for same-sex woo-hoo made no sense, Bentham felt: "I have been tormenting myself for years to find if possible a sufficient ground for treating them with the severity with which they are treated at this time of day by all European nations: but upon the principle utility I can find none."

First off, heterosexuals were doin' it for themselves: "It seems to be more common for men to apply themselves to a wrong part in women," notes Bentham, "and in this case grave authors have found more enormity than when the sex as well as the part of the object is mistaken." The good philosopher was unable to see why this was anybody else's business: "If there be one idea more ridiculous than another, it is that of a legislator who, when a man and a woman are agreed about a business of this sort, thrusts himself in between them, examining situations, regulating times and prescribing modes and postures."

Bentham noted the fear that, if allowed to flourish, homosexuality would attract so many converts that the human race would die out from lack of the wee ones. "On the contrary the country in which the prevalence of this practise... is most conspicuous happens to have been remarkable for its populousness." Bentham suggests that big humanity's greatest impediment to little humanities screeching and careening through the house is... the ritualized celibacy practised by priests.

Lesbians were left out of the criminal equation, of course, though Bentham kindly gave a whole paragraph to the contradiction. "Where women contrive to procure themselves the sensation by means of women, the ordinary course of nature is as much departed from as when the like abomination is practised by men with men. The former offence however is not as generally punished as the latter. It appears to have been punished in France but the law knows nothing of it in England." (Men, of course, use this as a way of showing how much greater is their suffering, but I digress.)

Bentham goes through all the arguments and finally comes to the crux of the issue. He questions whether gay male homosexuality reduces the happiness of heterosexual women. Because under utilitarianism, that would be bad: "A more serious imputation for punishing this practise [is] that the effect of it is to produce in the male sex an indifference to the female, and thereby defraud the latter of their rights."

But not to worry, he writes: "In the first place the female sex is always able and commonly disposed to receive a greater quantity of venereal tribute than the male sex is able to bestow." So -- no worries. (The word "venereal" comes from Venus, goddess of love.) And women aren't allowed to get it from all over, anyway, as they are intended only for marriage. One rod's enough!

Exclusive homo-male couplings are fine, then, unless there's a man shortage. In which case, I guess, we'll have to re-do the happiness calculation.


(Thanks to Samantha, whose interest in His Victorian Nibs led me to this post.)