Why does the Christian Right keep citing Paul Cameron, despite the fact that he has been discredited in most serious social scientific, medical and legal forms? I suspect that they’ve imported yet another premodern,
prescientific concept from remote history.

However, can this concept be used to boomerang back against them?

Aristotle theorised the existence of akrasia in his
Nicomachean Ethics (Book VII). This was defined as the
immoderate and unbridled pursuit of pleasure. Saints
Augustine and Aquinas mapped akrasia into medieval                                               theories about sexuality, where it underpinned
“luxuria” (lust) and “licensia” (promiscuity). 

“Sodomy” discourse arose from this in the eleventh to twelfth centuries.

Given this pedigree, it is not surprising that the
Christian Right hates any idea of “safe sex.” It
believes that people cannot undertake sexual pleasure
through rational strategies. Because akrasia underpins
their concept of “sodomy,” they are predisposed to
view us as uncontrolled hedonists who are not governed
by rationality or ethical principles. There is an additional concept called the akolastos, which is a person who cannot control his or her desires, which has also been inserted here.

Nonsense. Gay men use condoms because we feel an
ethical obligation to protect ourselves and others
from HIV/AIDS and STI risks. In doing so, we are
making practical ethical choices about self-protection
and communal responsibility toward one’s partners.
Safe sex is situated within a shared gay male culture
of desire for other men’s bodies, sex is viewed as an
affirmative act of social interaction, and it is not
divorced from considerations of rationality and
ethics, no matter how hot, sweaty and exciting it also
gets.

The Christian Right  can easily be rebuffed whenthey are seduced by assumptions of  akrasia and use it to underpin images of the uncontrollable and uncaring polymorphous gay male pervert cliche.

However,  some wry questions occur to me
about uncontrollable homophobes and the
akrasia of hysterical homophobic hatred and anger, at
the cost of rational debate and discussion.

 If one accepts that akrasia is about lack of self-discipline and moderation, then Fred Phelps’ histrionics,Paul Camerons pseudo- scientific vitriol and other outbursts take on new and interesting dimensions.

Why has the New Zealand Christian Right lost the debate over LGBT issues?

Is it because they have forgotten these classical definitions of vice, which they have now become enslaved by, themselves? Alas, yes…

Recommended Reading:

Aristotle: Ethics of Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics:
London: Penguin: 1976.

Mark Jordan: The Invention of Sodomy in Medieval
Christian Theology: Chicago: University of Chicago
Press: 1997.

Cindy Patton: Inventing AIDS: London: Routledge: 1990.