everlastingtongue

Very well-put – I couldn’t agree more.

yguy

While I believe the inordinate desire for self-gratification is at the root of homosexuality, it is also at the root of adultery, gluttony and the like. I do not confuse correlation with causation. Like the other aberrant behaviors, homosexuality is a symptom...but symptoms tend to become proximate causes of yet more symptoms.

everlastingtongue

Isn’t the inordinate desire for self-gratification the root of all sexuality?

yguy

Then on what grounds do we proscribe incestuous marriages between adults, or public masturbation? Are liberty and license synomymous in your view?

It would appear then, that you believe in objective morality. If it is objectively wrong to deny the presumption of innocence, perhaps it is objectively wrong for two men to copulate as well.

I'm glad you see that assertions to the effect that Rome in its latter days was not morally degenerate because of its nominal Christianity are unfounded.

Of course they are. Pat Kelly spent quite a few pages pointing this out in his apology for pedophilia.

yguy

The desire is, yes, but not the inordinate desire.

Alonzo Fyfe

I believe in objective morality, but not intrinsic morality. All moral claims relate states of affairs to desires. That which fulfills desires is good, that which thwarts desires is bad.

Descriptions about the relationships between states of affairs and desires are as objective as descriptions about the relationship (on a map) between one city and the next. There is a fact of the matter to be discovered, a fact that does not change regardless of who is actually looking on the map.

The presumption in favor of liberty fits this description. Free people are better able to fulfill their desires than those who are subject to another. Thus, liberty (and a love of liberty) both come out as (objectively, but not intrinsically) good.

This includes a liberty to engage in homosexual acts, because this fulfills desires as well.

Public masturbation, on the other hand, can easily be categorized as thwarting desires. It may fulfill the desire of the person who engages in it, but it thwarts the desires of those who come across this. It would be no different than putting a stinking pile of refuse in one's yard. Though we must all tolerate a certain amount of offense on the part of others. If, for example, a neighbor were to put something in his yard having the stench of a pile of rotting corpses, the offense to others who would have to endure that stench justifies a prohibition.

Do incestuous relationships thwart desires as well? Evolutionary reasons suggest that we have an innate aversion to incest (where an aversion to X is simply another way of saying a desire that not-X). Evolution developed this aversion because those who had such an aversion had healther offspring than those who did not. We are the decendents of those with such an aversion. The nearly universal presence of such an aversion suggets that, where an incestuous relationship exists, it is more likely than not that one of the participants is averse to the relationship but is trapped in it, rather than a willing participant. More desires would, then, be fulfilled overall by prohibiting such relationships than by permitting them.

In my original argument, my conclusion was not that a case cannot be made against homosexual relationships. My argument was to the effect that the burden of proof rests with the person who would deny freedom, not the person who would protect it.

Yes, a burden of proof is required as well for those who would argue for prohibiting public masturbation and incestuous relationships. Yet, in these two cases, I think that such a burden can be met. If I am wrong, then they should be permitted. Homosexual relationships fulfill the desires of the partipant, and nothing has value except in virtue of its capacity to fulfill desires. That which fulfills desires is good, that which thwarts desires is bad.

The person who would prohibit homosexual relationships is somebody who thwarts desires.

I thank you, by the way, for the opportunity to once again say that the details of this position can be found in my series of posts on Ethics Without God. The first chapter, by the way, deals explicitly with why one cannot obtain a reliable system of right and wrong from religious sources.

yguy

That is patently false, as anyone who attempted suicide and later got over whatever trauma drove them to the attempt will tell you.

yelyos

My standard of morality is slightly different, Alonzo. It is based on the amount of present and future happiness experienced by humans because of an act.

If the act will probably increase the total happiness of people, it is moral. If it will decrease happiness, it is immoral. Homosexual acts, IMO, cause the people who commit them to become happier than those people who dislike them and thus are made unhappy by such acts. Therefore, in my books, homosexuality is moral.

It goes beyond desires, as yguy pointed out.

everlastingtongue

So, in your opinion, homosexuals inordinately desire self-gratification while heterosexuals do not? What do you base this on?

yguy

Of course not. Promiscuity is hardly limited to homosexuals.