yguy

There was no need, since I never implied otherwise. My finding a thing morally repulsive doesn't make it immoral, but immoral acts do produce moral revulsion in those who see them for what they are.

Tell you what: give me your best example of a paradigm (just give me a brief synopsis) that doesn't fall into one category or the other, and I'll show you that it does.

I didn't say it would necessarily lead to that, but that one could easily justify doing so under such a paradigm.

Only if one presumes that objective morality allows for the treatment of humans as animals, which it doesn't. If you are implying that the Bible is the basis for objective morality, it isn't as far as I'm concerned.

It is possible for a person to divorce himself from conscience, the link to objective morality. From your POV, this would appear to give them plausible deniability, in which case there is no moral grounds whatever for any punishment of such people.

If the immorality of murder is not self-evident, what is?

Bill Snedden

I'm sorry, I thought we were discussing the moral status of homosexuality. The questions in your post were certainly framed that way.

There are many reasons to be concerned with ethics. As I see it, ethics are principles that describe how we should live. So, if we're concerned with how we should live, then we turn to the study of ethics.

No doubt. Let's not worry about it as it was overkill, anyway.

I brought it up because your list of "benefits" provided by gambling, overeating, smoking, alcohol abuse, SUVs, etc. didn't include it and it is certainly a material consideration in a democratic society founded on personal liberty (like the U.S.?).

You need only be concerned with it if it matters to you. If you find slavery preferable, I'm sure there are tyrants everywhere who will be happy to oblige you.

If you'll note, I'm including all the text here to facilitate the ability of lurkers and other readers to see the difficulties inherent in carrying on a conversation with you.

Your response seems only tangentially connected with what I wrote. Allow me to dissect the responses piece by piece:

You wrote, "I can't conceive of any possible world where sensations alone can possibly become a reason to act, can you?"

I responded "Well, as to sensation becoming a reason to act, pain would be a very good example."

Your response: "we aren't free to ignore pain."

Well, no duh! That's exactly what I said!! :banghead:

In your original statement, quoted above, you set forth the idea that the primary function of the anal sphincter should somehow be connected with the moral status of it's use as an entrance for sexual pleasure. I responded by refuting that contention, but you completely ignore this. You ramble on about "delivering pain" and how you don't "feel my pain"...What in the world does any of that have to do with what I wrote?

In addition, you took me to task later in this post for "clipping text included in my response". I didn't actually do that, but I understand what you meant and I'm endeavoring to improve. Now, I would like to ask you to please confine your responses to the material quoted immediately prior to your response. You've responsed above to something you've quoted below. Specifically my response to your "good and evil" statement. It makes it exceedingly difficult to reply in the sentence-by-sentence style that your obfuscation has forced upon me.

And here we go again.

You responded previously regarding "good and evil", but your response doesn't demonstrate that anal sex is "evil".

I wrote that pleasure and freedom are material considerations as benefits that must be weighed in a moral calculus.

You responded by saying that "...pleasure alone is not a reason to act, so can't possibly be ethical in and of itself."

But, of course, I never claimed that it was. I indicated that it was a material consideration, but I never said that it was the only one.

I also argued that "homosexuality" and "anal sex" are not necessarily connected in a rebuttal of your attempt to associate homosexuality with what you contend are negative consequences of anal sex. You failed to respond to any of that.

But what I wrote doesn't "take up the issue." In fact, it rebuts that it's an issue in this discussion at all as you haven't demonstrated a necessary connection between "homosexuality" and "promiscuous sex". You either failed to grasp this or you failed to respond.

Another distraction.

I wrote, "...there's no necessary connection between promiscous sex and homosexuality..."

You wrote, "There is a necessary connection between promiscous sex and the epidemic of stds gays suffer..."

Your comment is irrelevant. I'm not arguing that there's no connection between STDs and promiscous sex. I'm arguing that there's no connection between promiscous sex and homosexuality. Can you grasp the difference?

There may indeed be a connection between promiscous sex and the transmission of STDs. The problem is you've demonstrated no necessary connection between promiscuous sex and homosexuality.

I must admit I'm completely unable to see where I've done anything like that. However, if you felt that I did, for that I'm truly sorry.

I was referring to the fact that you agreed with me that the ethical status of an act depends at least in part upon intent, but that your entire argument up to this point has dealt with the spread of STDs. As I wrote below, unless you're also arguing that every male who engages in anal sex with another male does so with the intent to cause harm, the STDs of which you speak are unintended consequences. However, you've been trying to argue that homosexuality is immoral due to those consequences.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. If unintended (which to me assumes that appropriate precautions are taken), the transmission of STDs is not immoral.

The key word here, of course, is necessarily. You've provided no reason to think that everyone who engages in anal sex necessarily threatens another person.

This appears to be more distracting material. You have now introduced the term "degenerate" but it's unclear why. However, from your own argument, it's clear that a "degenerate" is not free and has "no judgement over the acts he commits by compulsion". Again, by your own argument, and I quote (emphasis mine): "...when a person with full knowledge freely commits to a course of action that necessarily threatens another person, that course of act is unethical, and the person by committing to it becomes unethical." a "degenerate" cannot be considered unethical. If you meant to equate homosexuality with "degeneracy", you've just shot yourself in the foot. If not, it's still unclear why you introduced this concept.

You would do well to avoid flinging around epithets like "irrational".

Of course, it's ironic that your response here is yet more of the distractions for which you've now become so well known.

You originally posted statistics dealing with the spread of STDs.

I responded in agreement with you that the intentional spreading of disease was unethical, but noting that you have still failed to connect this with homosexuality.

Your response is to call my behavior "irrational" and then proceed to weigh in with yet another irrelevancy. You ask how we should mitigate the threat to children and answer your rhetorical question by saying that we should teach them ethics in the context of HIV/AIDS.

I quite agree. But what has this to do with my previous statement? NOTHING. You have still failed to address the point: you have not yet demonstrated nor have you argued a necessary connection between the deliberate and willful spreading of STDs and homosexuality.

This is getting pretty long, so I'm going to split it and continue my response in a second post...

Regards,

Bill Snedden

Bill Snedden

Yes, but you've given us no reason to believe that you possess a way to tell the difference nor have you provided any way for us to differentiate revulsion simpliciter from moral revulsion. You indicate that there are things that revolt us and yet are not immoral, but how do we tell the difference? You say, "why, that's self-evident.", but unfortunately that's not helpful to those of us who simply don't see it.

If by "societal consensus" you meant to say "subjective", then I'm sure you could. My point was that "societal consensus" doesn't exhaust the complexity of subjective moral systems.

One possibility would be ethical egoism, in which all moral values derive from the individual. It is necessarily subjective, but not subject to "societal consensus" as the impetus for value is not society but rather the individual. Under ethical egoism, there is no "common good" and ethical societies are built around the value of the individual rather than the other way around.

Another possibility is any one of a variety of intersubjective moral theories. While such theories do depend upon values determined between individuals by consensus, they are not necessarily limited to any particular society.

No, one could not unless the paradigm were amenable to it. Many would not be.

Some brands of ethical egoism would not be amenable. Most consequentialist or utilitarian theories would also not fit as well as other intersubjective theories.

Ha! You mean that your brand of "objective" morality doesn't allow for it. Unfortunately, others do as your nod to the Bible indicates. How do you know that your "objective" theory is the right one? Is it "self-evident?"

Not from my POV. And my conscience tells me that homosexuality is not wrong. Does that mean it's objectively moral?

Oh, wait, it's self-evident. That must mean my conscience isn't working properly. But how do you know that it's not your own that's not working properly?

Talk about loaded questions!

I would say that my own existence is self-evident. I might even say that the existence of other minds and an objective reality is self-evident, but I know there are people who would take me to task on that (and some who'd take me to task on the first as well).

Regards,

Bill Snedden

yguy

If we are talking about theoretical human beings instead of real ones, all kinds of shcemes could be devised which don't fall one way or the other. In the real world, rejecting the idea of common good would produce a society that wouldn't last more than a generation, if only because the ability to raise families is essential for the society to sustain itself - and no one with half a brain would try to raise a child in a society where the neighbors' sense of ethics allowed them to copulate in the middle of the street.

A paradigm cannot preclude moral insanity, no matter what it is theoretically amenable to.

I don't have a theory. I just know wrong when I see it.

I submit you are misstating the fact. More likely, your conscience does not tell you homosexuality is wrong.

Or your ability to rationalize drowns it out.

Same way I know murder is wrong.

I recently had a conversation with a woman whose mother punished her for something she didn't do at the age of 6. Even now, thinking of it makes her angry, as of course she was when it happened. Why was she angry? Because even though she probably didn't know the word "injustice", she knew what she was seeing. Without ever having been told, she knew that it's wrong to punish for a crime not committed. I'm sure all of us can identify that at some level; therefore it appears that the idea of justice is endemic to the human psyche.

Dr Rick

Really?! Wow, me too! For instance, I just know that homophobia is wrong....

yguy

Well I don't know about that, but I guarantee you can't any more justify your belief than I can mine.

keyser_soze

And yet the sweet christian nature within you wants to punish people for doing something that is their nature(as all humans are sexual beings).


The only way you get out of this without being a homophobe is if you can prove your bias against homosexuals is valid. To do that you must prove that their actions are wrong. Please, by all means show us how only anal sex between men is wrong(which is odd, since the number of married couples who engage in anal sex is no trivial number). Don't pull out the card "they don't engage in promiscuous sex", because as you well know, a LOT of people have extra-marital affairs. And since you don't have a problem with lesbians(which I assume will change just as soon as you can burn all the gay men and you need a new scapegoat for societies woes).

But then again, you want to base your whole basket on "god says it's wrong". But considering some of the ethics proposed in the bible, I think you would be hard pressed to find homosexual behaviour the worst of anything in that trash novel you people pray to.

So what's it to be? Please lay out WHY you believe that homosexuals should all burn in hell while you cheer from the bleachers. Remember not to use crappy, easily refuted studies from fundy sites that are long on rhetoric and short on fact. Go ahead and lay it out brother, give it to us. We can handle it. Hmm..You know, I think it's just an insecurity thing, every homophobe I've ever seen has been scared shitless that some gay guy is going to hit on them...I wonder if that's the fear, or if they are just scared they might say yes? Spent so much time around gay folks in the last few years, I think I have a pretty good feel for them. And not being an unattractive male, I don't think I've been hit on but once, and I took it as a complement. Man, it's just like the fundies are scared of anyone having fun...even themselves.

Or maybe you have a RATIONAL reason as to why a behavior exhibited by other species in the animal kingdom, of which we belong....is taboo? Is it disease propogation? Sorry, plenty of heteros are getting that as well. Everyone is at risk that has sex. But then again, STD's have been killing humans for several thousand years. It's the price you pay for close proximity to other humans. I don't see you complaining about the chinese keeping swine in their homes, after all, the flu kills more people in asia each year than aids by far. But that's them, and not us...is that it? Come on, TRY to come up with a good supportive argument for you position. Try to leave god out of it, as he's less supported than the rest of your tragically flawed argument.

keyser_soze

Sure, didn't you know theres a diagnosis for open mindedness? I mean if theres one for homophobia, racism, etc...surely theres one for being ACCEPTING, and not BIGOTED. Surely.

The wife hinted that she might want some loving tonight...do you guys think I ought to try and get a little bit of the booty while I'm at it? Just for the fundies? Man, that would be funny, knowing that they're spewing their hate all over the place, while someones doing it at EXACTLY THAT MINUTE. Someone they are familiar with? Yep, that settles it, special request going out for all you uptight people scared of your sexuality. Gonna be riding tha thing tonight! Just for you guys!

yguy

I told you before I'm not a Christian. And I don't give a damn about punishing anybody. My concern is that people who see wrong for what it is are allowed to say so in no uncertain terms.

And just who gets to pass judgment on said proof's veracity? We gonna do a poll on whether yguy's a homophobe?

Kindly direct requests for proof of any statement towards the person who has made it. In this case, that would not be me.

I don't have any more problem with lesbians than I do with male homosexuals. I think both activities are wrong.

Haven't we been over this before? Have I not made it abundantly, even tediously clear by now that I'm not a Bible literalist?

Again, you are confusing me with someone else.

Maybe you have a rational reason why we should look to the animal kingdom for justification of our behaviors?

keyser_soze

The first one was to DK, the second was to you. You really should learn to pay attention.

As to whether or not you're a christian, please, don't even pretend. Your particular faith is quite obvious to everyone. What's wrong? Did it feel like I was stepping on YOUR toes?