Patriarchal Religion, Sexuality, and Gender: A Critique of New Natural Law

Legal theorists are familiar with John Finnis's book Natural Law and Natural Rights, but usually overlook his interventions in US constitutional debates and his membership of a group of conservative Catholic thinkers, the 'new natural lawyers', led by theologian Germain Grisez. In fact, Finnis has repeatedly advocated conservative positions concerning lesbian and gay rights, contraception and abortion, and his substantive moral theory (as he himself acknowledges) derives from Grisez. Bamforth and Richards provide a detailed explanation of the work of the new natural lawyers within and outside the Catholic Church - the first truly comprehensive explanation available to legal theorists - and criticize Grisez's and Finnis's arguments concerning sexuality and gender. New natural law is, they argue, a theology rather than a secular theory, and one which is unappealing in a modern constitutional democracy. This book will be of interest to legal and political theorists, ethicists, theologians and scholars of religious history.

Bamforth and Richards argue that the new natural lawyers' views - which were advanced before the U.S. Supreme Court in $ Texas (concerning decriminalization of gay sex)-are neither of a secular character nor properly consistent with the philosophical aims of historical Thomism. Instead, their positions concerning lesbian and gay sexuality, contraception and abortion serve as a defense of the conservative doctrinal stance of the Papacy a stance now properly rejected by many thoughtful Catholics. The book suggests that the new natural lawyers arguments are rooted in an embarried defense of the highly patriarchal structure of Catholic religious authority, and as such are $$$ appealing in a modern constitutional democracy. Alternative interpretations of Christianity, not flawed in the way that new natural law is are both possible and more constitutionally acceptable.