Emancipation Bible
Robert P. George on the Pro-Choice Arguments for Slavery & Sodomy
In a posting on a law professor’s weblog, a scholar who argues for the revision of Catholic teaching to accept homosexual conduct in “loving, committed relationships” claimed to be struck by similarities in the use of Scripture between the contemporary debate over homosexuality and the nineteenth-century debate over slavery.
What he, and others who offer the same argument, have in mind, it seems, is that both Christian defenders of slavery in the nineteenth century and Christian critics of sodomy today use biblical passages in a literalist manner as “proof texts” for their views, and that the arguments of the second will someday be seen to have been as indefensible as those of the first. To my mind, however, it is the differences between the nineteenth-century debate over slavery and our debate that are more striking.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University (web.princeton.edu/sites/jmadison). His books include In Defense of Natural Law (Oxford University Press) and Conscience and Its Enemies (ISI Books). He has served as chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
33.1—January/February 2020
on a Saint's Charism That Cures Toxic Perfectionism by Colleen Carroll Campbell
32.3—May/June 2019
on the Implications of Changing the Pater Noster by John M. McCarthy
32.2—March/April 2019
Misguided Mercy & Dante's Infernal Purgation by Joshua Hren
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
