Martha Nussbaum talks marriage, revulsion, and wearing leather

Professor Nussbaum (of the Law School, the Philosophy Department... anywhere in the University that can get its hands on her) has an interview with Deborah Solomon of the New York Times this week.

It looks like she has a book coming out in February about sexuality, disgust, and the opposition to same-sex marriage!

Your inquiries have lately revolved around the politics of physical revulsion, which you see as the subtext for opposition to same-sex marriage.

What is it that makes people think that a same-sex couple living next door would defile or taint their own marriage when they don’t think that, let’s say, some flaky heterosexual living next door would taint their marriage? At some level, disgust is still operating.

In your book “From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law,” which will be out in February, you draw a distinction between primary disgust and projective disgust.

What becomes really bad is the projective kind, meaning projecting smelliness, sliminess and stickiness ontoa group of people who are then stigmatized and regarded as inferior.

I don't have a lot to say right now about her theories on the relationship between revulsion and bigotry, but I am really excited to get this book because I think it could help me flesh out my B.A. topic. Currently, I'm planning on writing an extension of that research paper I wrote last Spring on the VA court case Bottoms v. Bottoms—a custody battle between a lesbian and her mother. What fascinated me about this case was how the courts conflated sexuality with one's ability to parent a child—when one would logically seem to me to have nothing to do with the other. Likewise, a certain negative association against any non-normative sexuality can lead people to demonstrate prejudice in the working world, the family/legal arena, and virtually all walks of life.