Is Sex Just Like Race?

by Matthew J. Franck

July 8, 2011

Race and sex play qualitatively different roles in our interactions with each other, making sex rationally relevant to our social and political policies in a way that race is not.

After one year as president of the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C., John Garvey took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to announce a change in his university’s policy for housing students on campus: a return to all-male and all-female residence halls, and the gradual elimination of mixed-sex buildings. According to the Washington Post, Catholic University first changed to “co-ed” housing over two decades ago and currently houses both sexes in eleven of its seventeen residence halls—though men and women remain in separate floors or wings, unlike the latest fashion of shared suites, bathrooms, and even sleeping quarters at some universities.

President Garvey’s stated reason for separating the sexes into their own buildings, starting with the incoming freshmen in the fall of 2011, is to combat the pattern of binge drinking and “hooking up” among the students, and the consequent risks to body, mind, and soul of these behavior patterns. He made no claim that separate living arrangements would magically cure the ills he diagnosed. But why contribute to the problem when you can at least foster solutions?

It ought to be surprising that Catholic University ever experimented with co-ed housing. But this essay will not be about the University’s decision to reverse course on student residential policy. It will instead be about a revealing remark made by one of the opponents of the decision.  the rest

Banzhaf’s blithe parallel, however, of treating sex just like race is lately a favorite rhetorical turn of the campaign for same-sex marriage.