Punishment and Personal Responsibility

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What is the present view of homosexuality? It is interesting to note
that little efforts seem to be made to explain homosexuality. The sexual
orientation is increasingly regarded as normal or unproblematic. This
illustrates a final important aspect of the explanations/excusesdiscussion.
It is only as long as long as a behaviour is regarded as prima
facie blameworthy that excuses become relevant. A biological explanation
of homosexuality, were this to be pursued, would still explain in a way
that exclude responsibility, but it is only as long as homosexuality is seen
as morally problematic that the need to excuse emerges.
7.5 VARIETIES OF EXPLANATIONS: WHY DIFFERENT EXPLA-
NATIONS ARE EQUALLY EXCUSING
One could argue that the case just mentioned is way too glib. Small wonder,
a critic could object, that explanations are excusing if we consider
biological explanations. It is not difficult to accept that explanations are
excusing in theory, and perhaps also excusing in practice, if we consider
physical explanations such as neurological, genetic, or biological ones.
The notion that homosexuals are not responsible for their disposition if it
is inscribed in their genes or the architecture of their brain is trivially
true. But, the critic could continue, not all types of explanations are biological
or physical. There are other kinds of explanations, and many of
them seem less excusing. In fact, Brown mentions such explanation: the
idea that homosexuality is constructed.
There is some truth to this claim, although I in general find it to be
overstated. Some explanations do not threaten responsibility. The clearest
example is explanations that include freedom of the kind required for
responsibility among their premises. 237 Brown’s “constructivism”, with
237 Conrad and Schneider, for instance, in Deviance and Medicalization argue that
unlike the “positivist” approaches to deviance, their “interactionist” approach
assumes that “the behaviours called deviant are by and large voluntary and that
people exercise some degree of ‘free will’ in their lives” (1992: 2) Clearly, such an
assumption rules out that “interactionist” explanations threaten responsibility.
The authors have already assumed that the explained behaviour is “freely” un-