Right, pseudo-sciences, traditional values and LGBT people

Translated in collaboration with Sonia Della Sala

What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.

(Friedrich Nietzsche - On Truth and Lies in extra-moral sense)

It is not an easy time for ethical truth, for unquestionable values, for principles so "right and natural." Our time, namely since 1900, has opened the door to a challenge of those absolute values, : on which ethics and the legal systems of the states pre-World Wars were based.

It is certainly open, because of this crisis, an interpretation of man as "relative", no longer bound to the great absolutes of the past.

Nowadays, in fact, a certain amount of relativism has affected every environment, and where there was, in a certain way, the certainty of a value or a lack, even in his condemnation, now this has been significantly reduced. In 1600-700,  in many countries around the globe being   homosexual, or belonging to a different race or religion, was enough to be considered a human who belonged to the "second-class" (and often, to tell the truth, condemned to death), not falling within ethical principles and absolute rights of majority of people.

Of course all this was due to the importance that religion had in that historical period. In fact, in the West that is "Christian" and  in Muslim countries, could - and still is for the latest - can be noticed  the presence of absolutist visions. These visions were transmitted in  the instrument - or one of the tools – of imposition of ethics in society,  that is to say, the law.

With the loss of importance of religion, the secularization of society, these absolutes are muted, even within religions themselves, which are now more open to the acceptance of the objective or, at least, to a less unitary way to be "human." Consequently, legal systems have accepted and are harmonized with this evolution of thought, certainly allowing a big step forward to the condition of those who belonged to the "second-class” of mankind.

Today, however, the truth was certainly not neglected, but evolved, giving to science the role of one who establishes "the true." If this can be seen as a step forward, at least for the scientific method with which it is conducted, the science-truth is not free from the danger that was present in the ethical and religious one. In fact, if we consider that science is conducted by man, and therefore subject to all the errors and misunderstandings, doubts and developments and new discoveries that distinguish it, we can understand how it is fallible. In particular, some parts of the "science" are more subject to error, and in particular are more likely to affect the principle of man-truth of which we spoke earlier.

In fact, qualifying the branches of sciences less prone to error, and then those that can only weakly established as such, is especially dangerous. I am referring to the so-called human sciences (or social sciences). These so-called sciences cannot in any way provide objective truths,  conversely subjects such as physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and so on may.

The danger of assuming these sciences as unquestionable truth can be noticed in the connection with the truth-law. Try to think of a regulation based: on Nazi eugenic theories, on the criminal anthropology of Cesare Lombroso, or on scientific and psychological racism. These creepy theoretical examples, that we believe to be far from our reality, have turned into the actual reality in the abominable asylums. Foucault, in his works, described asylums in their orderly "scientific" rawness and segregation. It was enough to indicate an individual as scientifically corrupt, degenerate, unnatural, dangerous from birth to find rules against him/her: to exclude, lock down, or kill the latter.

It has extremely dangerous, in any of its forms, to indicate something as natural, as a unique model, absolute. Even today, this danger has not entirely disappeared. It reappeared in guise of religious ideology.

If we think about the current controversy that the "LGBT thought" sparked and the request of equal rights and opportunities by these individuals, we can get a more specific idea. In fact, to counter this "gender theory" (and the members of the families), the defence of the natural family, of the traditional one, is often mentioned by the supporters of the only true and right family: they often mention the nuclear family. If we open any book on anthropology or history, we realize how much this natural and traditional family is reduced to the traditional Christian family.

In fact, there have been many types of "different families", from the extended family to the multiple family, with several historical examples that are still present in Africa and Asia. No one can define the right family, even if they configure as a de facto family or if it consists of LGBT people. In fact, this choice may be made due to personal, religious, sexual or ethical reasons, but certainly it does not deserve a "second class" legislation or have less rights than others. For this reason, no one should be limited or damaged.

In the delirious arguments of Cesare Lombroso, the applications of the pseudo-science and the identification of individuals as dangerous "by birth" are equally dangerous. Sadly, even today there are authors, such as British Professor Adrian Raine, who seek in the people’s genetics the causes of violent or antisocial behaviours, that is the "criminal nature". Even today, people look for reasons to label, identify, manage, and suppress certain individuals rather than others.

In conclusion, it is always better to leave the "truth" elsewhere and not in the legal systems that are subject to very human choices. For this same reason, certainly not qualifying in terms of "naturalness".

Therefore, going back to what is the bottom line of the address book of this month - the dramas of our time - I believe that the absolutes lead to catastrophic consequences, especially in the hands of a majority or of those who can coerce: absolutes in law have been one of the dramas of our time in which, perhaps, we have not said enough.