Consider, in the light of this suggestion, the above quotation from p.174. There is an
ambiguity in the assertion that concerns about harm to others do not ‘account for’ the
importance accorded to the moral prohibition against homosexual conduct that, in someversion or other, has been part of so many different social moralities throughout humanhistory. An opponent of formalism is not committed to the belief that considerations of harmprovide an adequate justification for that prohibition; after all, he may reject the prohibition asprofoundly mistaken. The question is whether we can make sense of it as a
moral
prohibition,as evidently we can, without seeing it as bearing some intelligible connection to significanthuman interests. And, plainly, it does bear all manner of such connections, connections thatseem to be essential to its status as a moral standard. Sexual relations are a source of profoundhuman fulfilment and also the object of powerful, and potentially highly destructive,emotions. Moreover, there is a manifest human interest in reproduction, the rearing of
children and the maintenance of a community’s life across generations. It is against these
genuine background interests that a norm prohibiting homosexual relations
–
a norm, say, thatconfines sexual activity to contexts in which biological reproduction is some sense apossibility
–
makes sense as precisely a
moral
norm, irrespective of whether or not ultimatelywe judge it to be sound.