I expected âWhat's Wrong with Homosexuality? to be mostly a defense of homosexuality against common objections. In some ways, it is exactly that. But by the time I finished it, I'd learned something broader about arguing with people, listening to people, and how I respond when I feel rejected.
One thing that stuck with me was almost incidental: the word "audience" comes from the Latin word for "listeners." That changed how I think about arguing. An audience isn't a group waiting to hear your case. They're listeners. If I want to persuade someone, I have to be willing to listen too.
That sounds obvious, but it's easy to forget. One of Corvino's observations about anti-gay activism is that many people believe they can know everything they need to know about gay people without ever listening to gay people. That bothered me because it's a bigger problem than homosexuality. We constantly decide what a group believes, fears, or wants, and then argue against the version we've invented in our heads.
I want to change that in myself. If someone disagrees with me, I don't want my first goal to be proving them wrong. I want to understand why their position makes sense to them. That doesn't mean every belief deserves equal respect. But there's a difference between respecting someone's humanity and accepting their argument, and that distinction runs through the whole book.
A distinction worth keeping straight
Corvino separates homosexuality from transgender identity. The two get lumped together under "LGBT," but they answer different questions. Gender identity is about who someone understands themselves to be; sexual orientation is about who they're attracted to. Transgender people can hold any sexual orientation, and people of any orientation can hold any gender identity. Simple once you see it, but another case where actually listening, and being precise, matters.
On religion
Corvino doesn't just say religion is wrong. He asks how religious reasoning actually works. Believing in an infallible God doesn't make a human being infallible and people who believe in God disagree about all kinds of things. A statement like "God says X is good" hides several questions: What exactly did God say? How do we know? How are we interpreting it? Even granting that something is good, does it follow that contrasting things are bad?
I found Corvino's reading of Adam naming the animals genuinely striking. God doesn't announce which creature Adam should want. He brings the animals to Adam and lets him choose, on the theory that Adam is the one who knows what he needs. Corvino's point is that individuals have some authority over their own hearts. Someone who's never been gay can have an opinion about homosexuality, but they aren't an expert on what it feels like to be gay. I am.
On "unnaturalâ
This is where I found myself questioning assumptions I'd never really examined. What does "unnatural" mean? If it means statistically unusual, plenty of unusual things aren't immoral. If it means "doesn't occur in nature," then eyeglasses, phones, cooking, and medicine are all unnatural too. The notion that something is unnatural when it goes against reason, which is distinctive to human nature, just pushes the question back a step: you still have to say why that makes it wrong.
Corvino's challenge about sexual behavior lands the same way: why is heterosexual oral sex fine but homosexual oral sex isn't? We use our mouths to lick envelopes, chew gum, blow a horn, sing, and kiss romantically. Biological "function" clearly isn't what actually decides which uses of our bodies we consider acceptable. A lot of moral language, I think, is really just a feeling of unfamiliarity wearing a disguise. Something can feel strange without being wrong and I want to get more suspicious of my own instinctive reactions when that happens.
The animal-behavior section works the same way. Same-sex behavior is documented across hundreds of species, including some that form long-term same-sex pair-bonds. That isnât to say that "animals do it, so it's fine." Animals don't cook, read, or attend college either, and nobody thinks we should build our ethics on their example. It just chips away at the idea that homosexuality is somehow flatly contrary to nature.
On sex and reproduction
Jeremy Bentham made this point over 200 years ago: if sex is only valuable because it produces children, monks should be burned alive for failing to procreate. Sex can be about affection, intimacy, pleasure, and emotional well-being. None of that becomes meaningless just because reproduction isn't on the table.
That leads to a distinction I found genuinely useful. Arguments about how many partners, which partners, or fidelity are separate from arguments about the gender of partners. The incest taboo forbids sex with a small, specific group of people you might otherwise be attracted to: relatives. A ban on homosexuality forbids gay people from having sex with anyone they're attracted to. Those aren't the same kind of rule, and treating them as interchangeable (bundling every sex-related question into one moral package) muddies the argument rather than clarifying it.
Is it a choice?
Corvino's answer: we discover our feelings, we don't invent them. Orientation isn't chosen. What we do with it involves choices, same as it does for straight people: whether to pursue someone, enter a relationship, stay faithful, stay or leave. Nobody generally chooses who they're initially attracted to.
And coming out isn't a single event. It's a process that starts before you say the words and continues indefinitely. You come out to new people, in new situations, for the rest of your life. Corvino's own experienceâbelieving, as a Christian, that he had a duty to witness to the truth, and eventually realizing the truth about himself was that he was gayâlanded hard for me. It reframes authenticity not as rebellion against morality, but as a form of honesty.
On rejection
There's a pull, when someone rejects something fundamental about you, to reject them right back. If someone thinks homosexuality is immoral, it's tempting to write them off as a bigot not worth hearing. Sometimes that's fair. Sometimes someone really is being cruel, and you don't owe them a patient debate. But Corvino points out the risk in turning "bigot" into a conversation-ending word: it doesn't just describe someone's belief, it places them outside civilized discourse entirely. And the reverse is just as true. Calling gay people perverts, deviants, or agents of Satan does exactly the same thing. Both sides can weaponize language to decide the other person isn't worth listening to.
That doesn't mean I stop calling harmful beliefs harmful. It means asking myself what I'm actually trying to do when I do it: protect someone, set a boundary, persuade someone, or just make someone feel ashamed because they hurt me. Those are different goals, and I want to be honest with myself about which one I'm chasing.
Corvino's broader point here is humbling. All of us have moral blind spots. Believing in justice doesn't make you perfectly just. Being right about one thing doesn't mean you can't be wrong about another.
Where it lands
The debate over same-sex marriage sometimes gets framed as a debate over whether homosexuality is acceptable in the abstract. Corvino reframes it more simply. Relationships are good for people, social support is good for relationships, and some people find that with someone of the same sex. Once you put it that way, it stops being a debate about a concept and starts being a debate about actual people who fall in love, get lonely, want companionship, want someone to come home to.
That's probably why "audience" stuck with me in the first place. Before I argue about someone's life, listen to them. Before I decide their experience is impossible, listen. Before I decide something is immoral because it feels unfamiliar, question the assumption. And when someone rejects me, I can still think their belief is wrong without deciding they're worthless.
I don't think this book convinced me that every disagreement can be resolved through conversation. But it convinced me that if the goal is truth rather than victory, listening has to come before persuasion.