# Request for previous concepts "are against natural law", especially old-timey articles **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 18, 2020, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936 "2020-09-18T18:20:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Disheavel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@Disheavel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Disheavel)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2020, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/1 "2020-09-18T18:20:51Z")
My non-Trump loving but still very conservative parents read and shared their take on a recent Time magazine article [about Gender Creative Parenting.](https://time.com/5885697/gender-creative-parenting/) They were appalled and had never heard of anything like this before. (I have no idea how deep the rock under which they’ve been is. Our kids were raised very neutrally until they defined themselves but we never labeled it.) and my Dad is in a tizzy about how against “natural law” this is. They obviously aren’t supporters of gay marriage or LG people in general in recommending lifelong abstinence- and certainly not BTQIA. So I was put on the spot and didn’t have enough concrete pushback as at least my dad is willing and interested to hear out conflicting information. But I have been searching without good luck this morning for outdated articles which use the “natural law” argument against other topics. Some ideas that I came up with are: Geocentric theory (pre-Copernicus) Evolution/Scopes Monkey Trial Segregation (my parents are absolutely not racist themselves as far too many BIPOC marriages and cousins, but they fully recognize they are voting for them) Interracial marriage Social Darwinism (this one is weak as doesn’t really have solid Christianity backing that I know). but surely there are others you can think of. If you have any other ideas that shatter “natural law”, I would appreciate them! And if you have any contemperaneous articles or books which use a natural law argument, I’d appreciate any references. (I am a scientist so much better at finding up-to-date research than older sources!) Thank you! ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2020, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/2 "2020-09-18T18:26:49Z")
Just as an aside, it always amuses me to see how these people think that “natural laws” can be upturned by a trend. I mean, if it’s really a natural law then casual efforts can’t possibly change it, right? They seem to lack actual conviction in their beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2020, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/3 "2020-09-18T18:30:40Z")
If they’re fans of Thomas Jefferson, he seems to have held that “our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” ---
**Author:** ![Disheavel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@Disheavel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Disheavel)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2020, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/4 "2020-09-18T19:37:32Z")
Along those lines, and for an anecdote from the discussion, I went in the direction of what does natural mean? Reproduction, right? to keep the line going. So wouldn’t it be thus unnatural to sequester away the best people, those most in touch with God from being natural?.. Then how do you justify the abstinence of priests and nuns as being part of your natural law? Response was bible and Jesus, of course, to which I stated, “there is literally 0 mention of nuns at all and not really any mention of abstinence, so it really seems that you are conflating your natural law with just tradition” and thus the relevance to your comment about laws that seem to be able to be changed! ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2020, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/5 "2020-09-18T19:43:56Z")
It’s amazing how much congruence there is between “natural law” and “my personal prejudices.” Funny how that works, innit? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2020, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/6 "2020-09-18T20:04:05Z")
Ask him which element of his day-to-day existence is remotely “natural”. From his cell phone to the TV to his car to his morning coffee to his 40-hour-a-week (or whatever) job to basically everything in his day to day life. If he’s had a medical condition of any kind, ask if he should even be alive now if it were up to nature. Humans spent most of their few hundred thousand years of existence in tribes of a hundred people or so and no more technology than fire, spears, and basic clothing. Anything past that is a very recent divergence from the “natural” state of our species. Even keeping solely to social elements, the typical American nuclear family is very different from tribal life; as much different as any gender whatever parenting style. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2020, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/7 "2020-09-18T21:26:56Z")
Don’t know if this fits your description of “natural law,” but - there is indeed a certain natural law about gender. In many sports or physical contests, for instance, men will outperform women. That’s not sexism or transphobia, that’s just truth. The U.S. women’s national soccer team - indisputably the best women’s team in the whole world - [lost by three goals to a bunched of teenage boys (age 14 and under) in a scrimmage.](https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/a-dallas-fc-under-15-boys-squad-beat-the-u-s-womens-national-team-in-a-scrimmage/) The Australian national women’s team - themselves no slouches either - [lost 7-0 as well to teenaged boys, age fourteen and under.](https://www.goal.com/en-au/news/4016/main/2016/05/26/23940362/australia-womens-team-loses-7-0-to-under-15-mens-side) Only women get pregnant, only women menstruate, and so forth. To an overwhelming extent, yes, there is a natural law that governs issues about gender, and they can’t be handwaved away by “I want to be a boy instead of a girl” or vice versa. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2020, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/8 "2020-09-18T21:32:01Z")
Too late to edit - I realize that was probably a hijack of sorts since it’s not exactly what the OP was asking for. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2020, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/9 "2020-09-18T21:41:44Z")
> [@Disheavel](#): > > But I have been searching without good luck this morning for outdated articles which use the “natural law” argument against other topics. Well, there’s tons of 19th-century propaganda [such as this](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28148/28148-h/28148-h.htm), arguing that Africans are naturally inferior and divinely intended for slaves: > [@](#): > > The African slave sees that nature herself has marked him as a separate—and if left to himself, I have no doubt he would feel it to be an inferior—race, and interposed a barrier[[593]](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28148/28148-h/images/593.png) almost insuperable to his becoming a member of the same society, standing on the same footing of right and privilege with his master. > > That the African negro is an inferior variety of the human race, is, I think, now generally admitted, and his distinguishing characteristics are such as peculiarly mark him out for the situation which he occupies among us. Anti-suffragist advocates used [the same sort of arguments “from nature”](https://speakingwhilefemale.co/womans-vote-markham/) to oppose women’s right to vote: > [@](#): > > [U]nlike our Suffragist friends, we do not fly in the face of hard facts and natural law. > > We believe that men and women are different — not similar — beings, with talents that are complementary, not identical, and that, therefore, they ought to have different shares in the management of the State, that they severally compose. […] > > The Suffragists tell you that the possession of the vote is the symbol of liberty. I ask you to consider that its absence is a symbol of something even greater — the symbol of disinterested service. […] > > Fighting and struggling for your own hand — we say that this is a bad game when played by men; it would be an abominable game played by women. > > Suffragists claim to stand for the spiritual forces of the future. I tell them that they have not yet learnt the elementary spiritual truth that renunciation is eternally a greater thing than possession. […] > > And we hold that it is through the faithful fulfilment of duty, through service, not self-assertion, that woman will arrive at a true conception of her place in the body politic. There are similar screeds about the “natural” inferiority and/or separateness of the Irish, the Jews, you name it. Tell me what your parents are proudest of being and I can probably come up with some historical source arguing that “natural law” requires it to be placed in some kind of subordinated or inferior position. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2020, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/10 "2020-09-18T21:48:33Z")
There’s a quote from The African Queen that might fit nicely here. From the very proper missionary played by Katharine Hepburn to the rough riverboat captain played by Humphrey Bogart, “Nature , Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.” ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2020, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/11 "2020-09-18T21:51:48Z")
[The Cornerstone speech](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech) “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.” ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2020, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/12 "2020-09-18T21:53:33Z")
The words “natural law” don’t appear here but these are some examples much along the same lines – much was made of the “unnatural” speed of new-fangled technology like steam locomotives and later, automobiles. Notice, incidentally, the misogyny underlying all three of the examples here, especially the one about women being psychologically unfit to drive cars: > **[Early Trains Were Thought to Make Women’s Uteruses Fly Out](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/67806/early-trains-were-thought-make-womens-uteruses-fly-out)** > > Hold on to your uterus: Early modes of transportation had some fretting that their bodies would be forever changed. ---
**Author:** ![Disheavel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@Disheavel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Disheavel)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2020, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/13 "2020-09-18T23:02:12Z")
These are all great and definitely expand significantly upon my ideas! Thank you all! ---
**Author:** ![lobotomyboy63](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobotomyboy63/32/2900_2.png) [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2020, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/14 "2020-09-19T00:09:22Z")
Mistreatment of native tribes, Trail of Tears, reservations, noble savages, manifest destiny, naming sports teams after them, etc.? ---
**Author:** ![whitetho](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whitetho/32/1059_2.png) [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2020, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/15 "2020-09-19T08:01:48Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.” Notice that this speech is invoking “science”, not “natural law”. And I recently read an interview with the president of Hillsdale college which claimed that persons who made arguments in favor of slavery based on so-called “scientific reasoning” were therefore “progressives”. (Note: Hillsdale is a conservative college where “progressive” is considered a negative term.) ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2020, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/16 "2020-09-19T09:18:13Z")
What is the difference between “Science” and “natural law” ? And the words are “natural and normal condition” not “Science” so isn’t it claiming a natural law? ---
**Author:** ![Uniqueorn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/uniqueorn/32/2807_2.png) [@Uniqueorn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uniqueorn)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2020, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/17 "2020-09-19T10:11:30Z")
Laws can be broken and I think that certain people might feel that breaking a “natural law” should lead to punishment. ---
**Author:** ![whitetho](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whitetho/32/1059_2.png) [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2020, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/18 "2020-09-19T11:43:24Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > What is the difference between “Science” and “natural law” ? Definitions vary according to political leaning, but from listening to conservative comentators, I think they believe they differentiate between “regular” laws as “man made”, and “natural law” as “coming from” or “inspired by” God, although the details are fuzzy. I suspect they also would list science as a human activity that isn’t always related to God. I also suspect there are numerous books on this topic that I have never read because, as noted above, it seems like in most cases “natural law” is just persons claiming that “God wants the same thing that I do”. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2020, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/19 "2020-09-19T12:08:45Z")
“natural law” is usually just used as a pretense for to give legitimacy for one group to control another. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2020, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936/20 "2020-09-19T13:37:36Z")
Citing natural law is an indication of willful ignorance. My grandmother did this when we talked to her about gay people, but then again, she was born in 1891. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/request-for-previous-concepts-are-against-natural-law-especially-old-timey-articles/920936.md?page=2)