Ayn Rand, Homosexuality, and Human Liberation
REVIEWS
ILANA MERCER,WORLD NET DAILY (9 JULY 2004).
Return to Reason: Ayn Rand, Homosexuality, and Human Liberation
Mercer writes that Lindsay Perigo, author of the foreword to this monograph, "is
a man on a mission" to challenge Rand's views of homosexuality. "Perigo
has chosen the right man for the job. Sciabarra
characteristically proves more than able. His book gets high marks from me.
It is an elegantly written and riveting read. Sciabarra is eloquent in his
description of the emotional damage suffered by gay objectivists as a result of
the cruelty of their objectivist brothers and sisters. A chapter titled,
'The Horror File,' is given
over to personal accounts that document this unkindness."
Still, Mercer argues that the discussion of homosexuality is
not a part of Objectivism. She believes that sexual orientation is innate,
"but how one lives one's sexuality is a legitimate object for ethical
judgment." Sex, she believes, is not "a function
of personal liberation," but "an
elevated union between two outsized personalities, who are united in values and
life force; a savage yet spiritual act of conquest. Sex to Rand had little to do
with sexual expression and affirmation per se. Both are concepts that belong in
the collectivist arena of gender and identity politics."
Mercer thinks that many of the personal testimonies that
Sciabarra documents lend themselves to "a liberal and permissive
narrative about sexuality that serves to denude sex of its Randian majesty and
meaning." She "prefer[s] Sciabarra's perceptive
emphasis on the paramountcy of the 'private'
to 'Rand's moral and cultural vision.'"
She points to the late Nobel Prize-winning novelist Patrick White as
exemplifying "the heroic and creative inner struggle of an older generation of
Gay Greats," whose attitude "was Randian at its best: silent and stoic,
principled yet private. White was a hero in the Greek tradition."