H: What to make of the homophobia of our predecessors? We have with us today a man known for his love for the human heart, and yet whose record of homophobia and misogyny would have disqualified him from appearing at a women’s or pride march. Mr. Rousseau, or Jean-Jacques as you prefer to be called, let’s start off by setting the record straight—though that would be a poor choice of words for our topic. In your Confessions, you described in great detail your first encounter of same-sex desire. An Arab man who fancied you. How did he approach you?

JJ: Enflamed by the most brutal lust.[i]

H: What did you do about it?

JJ: I blabbed so much that the next day one of the administrators came to me early in the morning and reprimanded me rather sharply, charging me with bringing scandal and making much ado about nothing.[ii]

H: About nothing, huh? This administrator told you about his own gay experience, too. Did that shock you?

JJ: I came to believe that the thing was undoubtedly a usage received in the world, but about which I had not hitherto had occasion to be informed.[iii]

H: So he got you to be OK with it?

JJ: I listened without anger, but not without disgust.[iv]

H: Disgust, but without anger… you would fit in right well with those vocal – but peaceful! – opponents of gay marriage, Jean-Jacques. You ought to know that times have changed. Today, many thinkers and scientists have debunked many of the myths surrounding sexuality. Perhaps, an apology on your part wouldn’t hurt.

JJ: I am human, and I write books; so I also make mistakes.[v]

H: Are you surprised that, despite sparing no detail about your own sexuality in your Confessions, you could not see your error coming?

JJ: I don’t doubt that there is more that neither me nor others have seen.[vi]

H: Very well, Jean-Jacques. Now let’s pick your brain about it. You are a fan of legislation. What is the basis for LGBT rights?

JJ: Right does not come from nature, and must therefore be founded on conventions.[vii]

H: Conventions? We’ve had those, and some, for a long time, criminalized homosexuality.

JJ: We are obliged to obey only legitimate powers.[viii]

H: Granted, but we are confronted with the challenge of legitimizing legitimate laws.

JJ: The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.[ix]

H: Your famous general will theory, I see. It’s interesting that you insist on caring for individual freedom. But what if that freedom is abused? In hate speech, for example.

JJ: But the maxim of civil right, that no one is bound by undertakings made to himself, does not apply in this case; for there is a great difference between incurring an obligation to yourself and incurring one to a whole of which you form a part.[x]

H: So you’re saying that LGBT rights should, ideally, not be imposed on someone, but rather they should be innate to them?

JJ: Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived, and on such occasions only does it seem to will what is bad.[xi]

H: And how do we go about enlightening such people?

JJ: It’s education that should guide their opinions and tastes.[xii]

H: So education predisposes us to accept LGBT rights without resistance. Sure. But what about today, Jean-Jacques? There are populist movements, controversial deputies, unapologetic world leaders, who are all working hard to repeal some of our most progressive laws. Imagine a parliamentary hearing right now. You’re in it. What would be your strategy to uphold what you call the general will? 

JJ: If, when the people, being furnished with adequate information, held its deliberations, the citizens had no communication one with another, the grand total of the small differences would always give the general will, and the decision would always be good.[xiii]

H: Adequate information; that would be a never-ending hearing! Does this mean that legislation on LGBT rights is, in the present, doomed to fail?

JJ: Indeed, as soon as a question of particular fact or right arises on a point not previously regulated by a general convention, the matter becomes contentious. It is a case in which the individuals concerned are one party, and the public the other, but in which I can see neither the law that ought to be followed nor the judge who ought to give the decision.[xiv]

H: So there should be no decision, that’s it? 

JJ: In such a case, it would be absurd to propose to refer the question to an express decision of the general will, which can be only the conclusion reached by one of the parties and in consequence will be, for the other party, merely an external and particular will, inclined on this occasion to injustice and subject to error.[xv]

H: Interesting. So, Time is the legislator’s worse enemy. Can we ever achieve LGBT justice?

JJ: Such equality, we are told, is an unpractical ideal that cannot actually exist. But if its abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we should not at least make regulations concerning it? It is precisely because the force of circumstances tends continually to destroy equality that the force of legislation should always tend to its maintenance.[xvi]

H: So, activists, in your opinion, ought to appreciate small victories, such as civil unions before gay marriage. I see. What about those voices of resistance that keep popping up long after their supposed acquiescence to the general will?

JJ: The particular will tends, by its very nature, to partiality, while the general will tends to equality.[xvii]

H: And what does this rule tell us about our fight against homophobia?

JJ: It proves that the general will, to be really such, must be general in its object as well as its essence; that it must both come from all and apply to all; and that it loses its natural rectitude when it is directed to some particular and determinate object, because in such a case we are judging of something foreign to us, and have no true principle of equity to guide us.[xviii]

H: Your understanding tone is wonderful, Jean-Jacques, but perhaps I ought to better paint the picture for you. For example, there was just recently a straight pride parade in Boston. That’s food for thought because in some way we can think of it as a rite for a straight community, as though all the previous pride parades had only been beefing and propping up a community that never existed. You have written extensively on community-building, Jean-Jacques. Most notably, when you were commissioned to advise on Poland’s new constitution amid Russian threats. What was your biggest tip for them as a community?

JJ: If you make sure a Pole can never become a Russian, I assure you that Russia can never subjugate Poland.[xix]

H: Right, your essay was filled with this idea of fostering a sense of nationhood, especially via education. What’s your ideal teaching?

JJ: At twenty years old, a Pole must not be another man; he must be a Pole. I wish that while he is learning to read that he reads things about his country; that at ten years old he knows all its productions, at twelve all its provinces.[xx]

H: That’s a rigorous patriotism program. An idea that unveils one of your many contradictions as a political theorist, Jean-Jacques. You were just telling us about the need to work toward a general will, so that the fragments composing it never have to rebel against each other. And yet, here you are advocating for a national education that fosters a sense of patriotism, one which makes a person blind to diversity and, therefore, incompatible with a general collective. I can only imagine who you’d have voted for in the last EU elections.

JJ: There is no longer today the French, the Germans, the Spaniards, even the English, no matter what one said; there are only Europeans. All have the same taste, the same passions, the same mores, because none received a national form from a particular institution.[xxi]

H: I know a lot of Brexiteers who would disagree with you. But you know, I’m beginning to see the connection between community and identity. That straight pride march might be the same symptom as a call for an EU referendum – a malaise with the collective, as you call it, a need to distinguish one’s self. Perhaps that distinction requires alterity. What do you think of those simpler countries that are not familiar with such an identity crisis?

JJ: Simplicity in mores is less the fruit of law than that of education.[xxii]

H: Denmark, I heard, has a top education system. It was recently crowned the happiest place on Earth. Coincidence?

JJ: Almost all small nations prosper because they are small.[xxiii]

H: And what happens in big nations?

JJ: The weak run the risk of being swallowed up.[xxiv]

H: So, in some way, for the weak to avoid being swallowed up, for their rights to be heard, they must distinguish themselves? Is that why, at a time when sexuality is fluid and labels obsolete, we nevertheless end up with and maintain an LGBT community? As a necessary evil?

JJ: It is important to manage at any cost a period of tranquility during which one can, without risk, act.[xxv]

H: A period of tranquility during which one can, without risk, act. What a great way to end our interview, Jean-Jacques. That leaves me with a final question for our audience. At a time when LGBT and other rights are threatened as never before, are we truly in that period of tranquility, and if not, should we risk by not acting or act without risking?

 

Notes:

[i] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Confessions: Book 12. Belford, 1856. p. 90.

[ii] Ditto.

[iii] Ditto.

[iv] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Confessions: Book 12. Belford, 1856. 91.

[v] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Oeuvres Completes de J.-J. Rousseau: Volume 3. Hachette, 1856. p. 393.

[vi] Ditto.

[vii] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract and Discourses. Gutenberg Project, 2014. p. 101.

[viii] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract and Discourses. Gutenberg Project, 2014. p. 107.

[ix] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract and Discourses. Gutenberg Project, 2014. p. 121.

[x] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract and Discourses. Gutenberg Project, 2014. p. 125-26.

[xi] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract and Discourses. Gutenberg Project, 2014. p. 144.

[xii] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne. Bibliothèque Paul-Emile-Boulet, 2002. p. 17.

[xiii] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract and Discourses. Gutenberg Project, 2014. p. 145.

[xiv] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract and Discourses. Gutenberg Project, 2014. p. 150.

[xv] ditto

[xvi] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract and Discourses. Gutenberg Project, 2014. p. 190.

[xvii] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract and Discourses. Gutenberg Project, 2014. p. 139.

[xviii] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract and Discourses. Gutenberg Project, 2014. p. 149.

[xix] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne. Bibliothèque Paul-Emile-Boulet, 2002. p. 12-13.

[xx] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne. Bibliothèque Paul-Emile-Boulet, 2002. p. 17.

[xxi] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne. Bibliothèque Paul-Emile-Boulet, 2002. p. 13.

[xxii] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne. Bibliothèque Paul-Emile-Boulet, 2002. p. 16.

[xxiii] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne. Bibliothèque Paul-Emile-Boulet, 2002. p. 21.

[xxiv] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract and Discourses. Gutenberg Project, 2014. p. 182.

[xxv] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne. Bibliothèque Paul-Emile-Boulet, 2002. p. 75.