An article in the New Zealand Herald reports of a school, Ponce de Leon High School in Florida, whose principal engaged in a "witch hunt" against homosexual and lesbian students. The incident was initiated when a lesbian girl complained to the principal of harassment based upon her sexuality. His response was, in the words of the New Zealand Herald, "[to tell] her homosexuality is wrong,[to out] her to her parents and [to order] her to stay away from children."

The principal, David Davis, proceeded to suspend a number of the girl's friends, who openly protested the principal's actions, and enacted an inquisition in which he asked a number of students if they were gay, or otherwise associated with homosexuals. The article is not specific about to what ends he wished to pursue this "witch hunt," but eventually his activities reached the ears of the ACLU, who sued the school at the request of a junior at the institution. In the end, Davis was demoted and the other faculty were required to undergo "sensitivity training."

And what, exactly, is the school's justification for this behavior?

Steve Griffin, the county's superintendent, is reported as saying (emphasis mine): "We are a small, rural district in the Bible Belt with strong Christian beliefs and feel like homosexuality is wrong."

Feel like homosexuality is wrong. A more ridiculous justification has never been uttered. For it begs the question: why does homosexuality feel wrong? And is this feeling justified? So incomplete and insubstantial is this explanation that it is hardly worth calling an explanation at all. Yet this kind of faulty moral reasoning is gaining more official sanction.

For example, the Bush administration is pushing regulations that would force hospitals, through the allocation of funding, to allow doctors to refuse to participate in procedures they consider morally objectionable, be the reasons personal or religious. The main procedure being targeted is abortion, but it is not inconceivable that doctors could deny treatment, without fear of punishment, if they find their patients to lead reprehensible lifestyles. Lifestyles such as homosexuality, or perhaps even atheism or Islam.

The justification of both the Bush administration's regulations and Davis's inquisition lies in the purview of the autonomy of individual conscience. It is a very American, "democratic" belief that individual conscience trumps the laws of the (often corrupt) society in which said individuals live. If we were denied the freedom to live according to our own conscience, America would look a lot different than it does today.

But living according to one's own conscience does not come without risk or responsibility. Mark Twain once described his character, Huckleberry Finn, as being a good-hearted boy with a bad conscience. For though he was fundamentally compassionate and saw the escaped slave Jim as being human, his antebellum-Southern conscience still saw Jim as being someone's property, and made him guilty for assisting the ex-slave in his escape. Few would consider such guilt to be an admirable quality, these nearly nine score years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Thus becomes apparent the possibility, however disturbing it may be, that conscience can be mis-calibrated. Good people can have the wrong beliefs about morality, and feel guilt, shame and righteous anger based upon those misconceptions. It is not enough, then, that a person's moral decisions are respected simply because they feel something is wrong. There must be a more objective method of determining morality.

Ethics are based upon two pillars: compassion and reason. But compassion is not mere sentiment. It is a recognition of the fundamental similarity between ourselves and other sapient creatures. It is an identity of self with other, and the realization that we have every reason to want for others what we want for ourselves. That is to say, the expression of our vital powers. Reason allows us to determine what is beneficial for us and hence for others, and to mediate when the interests of two conflict with one another.

Individual conscience, therefore, must stand the test of reason. It could be said that the willingness to examine one's own moral beliefs is true conscientiousness, for it involves a humility that the moral evangelist lacks. To protect doctors, teachers and principals from having to exercise that humility invokes a tyranny of conscience, in which the mores of those in authority, from doctors to politicians to religious leaders, suppress the moral dissent of the people. By stressing belief over reason, morality becomes increasingly arbitrary, and the only possible result of such a stress in the absence of dissent is oppression, willingly suffered by those gullible enough to mistake professed knowledge for fact.

Allow us to return to one of our original topics: homosexuality. Seen through the lenses of compassion and reason, we find there is nothing objectionable about the practice. For something to be immoral, it must, by nature, infringe upon the fundamental rights of another person. Gays do no such thing: homosexuality is simply romantic love for a human being of the same sex as yourself. If romantic love is a moral good, then it does not matter who it is for. Arguing that it is unnatural does not stand the test of reason: religions, cities, and medicines are not "natural," yet we do not consider these evil because of their unnature. Nor does increased risk of STIs: that makes homosexuality dangerous, not immoral. If danger, even when all parties fully consent to an activity, were immoral, bungee jumping would be the greatest of sins. This is clearly absurd, therefore, any health problems that could arise out of practicing homosexuality cannot be used as evidence of moral infraction.

What I suspect, then, has welled up in the case of Ponce de Leon High is a moral superstition: a collection of false beliefs about what is right and wrong, how to determine what is right and wrong, and about the moral character of gays and lesbians. At its core, I suspect, is the belief that sex is somehow wrong, but that is a topic for another essay. For now, all that needs to be said is that the tendency to unquestionably accept personal moral choices allows for the promulgation of these moral superstitions. As we ask fewer questions, and are prevented from holding ourselves and others responsible for even our well-meaning ethical foibles, we lead ourselves into an increasing haze of ignorance, the only result of which can be oppression. It may be self-imposed oppression, or manipulation by a charismatic leader, but it will be oppression nonetheless.