SingleDad

John E.D.P. Malin

Since I am unable to read your mind, I must depend on your actual words to infer your argument.

Like reason, logic, common sense and other pesky details.

If consent is involved, there's certainly a strong presumption of moral neutrality.

Assuming that you mean children, children are not capable of establishing consent. That is why they are under the care of their parents.

Generally standards of adult responsibility.

Frankly, I would prefer that you excerpt and summarize arguments from references. However there are some problems with the references you've cited.

Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis was written in the 19th century (with the 12th and final edition published in 1922), so this hardly qualifies as a modern scientific work.

It is embarassingly ludicrous to suggest that the Catechism of the Catholic Church has any sort of plausible expert authority with regard to any form of sexuality.

I'm not aware of the specific work that the Kinsey Instutite has done on bestiality. It's my recollection that Kinsey views homosexuality and anal sex morally neutrally.

Dover's Greek Homosexuality appears to be cultural and historical and neither moral nor biologically scientific in nature. I fail to see the relevance.

Throwing out book titles off the top of your head to not a logical, scientific or evidentiary argument make.

It is entirely pertinent for me to point out the failures of your logic from the perspectives of appropriateness, etiquette and releveance.

And you continue to fail to prove it.

Since we are speaking English, I will tend to use the English and not Latin meanings of words such as <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=judge" target="_blank">judge</a> (to form an opinion or evaluation), <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=opinion" target="_blank">opinion</a> (a belief or conclusion held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof), and <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=moral" target="_blank">moral</a> (of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character).

You have been corrected on this point with sufficient frequency to make it difficult to most charitably view your obduracy as resulting from mendacity or incompetence.

You are making a statement only about the preponderance (not universiality) of an opinion, not about objective fact. Moreover it is not established that even a preponderance of people people "abhor" homosexuality (and believe it morally wrong), merely that they do not choose to practice it. Indeed, the fact that homosexuality is legal in most U.S. states (and those states that do hold it to be illegal are generally viewed with derision) on can infer that the preponderance of people do not hold it to be morally wrong.

Again, it has been noted that bestiality is not universally despised, and that even the universiality or preponderance of opinion is not evidence of the objective truth of a claim.

You have no idea what philosophical morals are; indeed the question of just what morality is is not well-established, much less a philosophical consensus on what specific morals should be.

Again, it should be noted that bare assertions from your personal authority are not arguments, they are evidence only of a dogmatic and self-righteous personality.

When one is addressing a philosophical question to determine objective fact, yes, one should use neutral descriptive terminology. Again mere vitriolic assertions of an opinion constitute only polemics and propaganda, not reasoned argument.

Indeed the only conclusion that one can draw from an outburst such as this is that your character is self-righteous and intolerant, and that you are incapable of actually using logic and reason to argue your position. Indeed the abusiveness of such a description (given that the preponderance of opinion of this community is that anal sex is unobjectionable) is immoral (by your definition) and entirely inappropriate.

Perhaps you would be more comfortable at <a href="http://www.godhatesfags.com" target="_blank">God Hates Fags</a>; you would seem to fit right in with their mindless intolerance and irrational vitriol.

As many answers as there are people to self-define dignity.

My sex life is not at issue here. Indeed neither is yours (and I most emphatically do not want to know about it).

[ December 15, 2001: Message edited by: SingleDad ]</p>

SingleDad

John E.D.P. Malin

I have seen literally no evidence that you are any kind of scholar. I have seen no careful logical argumentation and no formal citation of expert authority. Both of these are qualities characteristic of even the most superficial scholar.

I think you could use a dictionary; your understanding of the plain meanings of common English words (most notably universal) appears entirely deficient.

Actually Latin prose composition will teach you to write "literally" in Latin. A basic understanding of Latin can be of assistance in writing in English, but it is certainly not necessary.

No, she apparantly wished to make fun of you, but I must say that her humor fell short of the mark of self-parody you have so far displayed.

Had you presented any valid argument in this thread, this objection might be meaningful. But you haven't, and it's not.

We encounter inferior minds right here at home in the USA, and we do appreciate your offering yourself as an example.

[ December 15, 2001: Message edited by: SingleDad ]</p>

tronvillain

John E.D.P Malin:

I have searched your post thoroughly, yet I find no trace of an attempt to either <a href="http://dictionary.msn.com/find/entry.asp?search=compress" target="_blank">compress</a> or <a href="http://dictionary.msn.com/find/entry.asp?search=synthesize" target="_blank">synthesize</a> our supposedly obdurate remarks. Do you actually understand what those words mean?

Anyway, I do not appreciate being called a <a href="http://dictionary.msn.com/find/entry.asp?search=sodomite" target="_blank">sodomite</a> - I am simply someone who enjoys anal sex. While I prefer to do the penetrating, I'm not averse to a little prostate stimulation.

You asked several questions, but did not answer them:
I'll answer them with "yes", "possibly", and "if you like, but it may not be especially useful." It is not at all clear that these questions apply any more to anal sex than they do to any other sexual activity, making them somewhat meaningless to this discussion.

Now, you suspect that "bestiality and sodomy will destabilize a human personality in time", but why do you suspect that, and what does it even mean? As to why anal sex has been prohibited in the past, one possible explanation is that it enhanced reproductive fitness by maximizing vaginal sex, but it could simply be because of its association with homosexuality. Your speculation that engaging in it somehow creates an unhealthy mental outlook that does not foster survival under extreme stress is totally without support, with no mechanism and no evidence.

While you may not wish to be judgemental here, you are, and claiming otherwise simply undermines your position.

Finally:
Actually, I have no desire to live in such a society either, but you have yet to present anything that would lead me to believe the sexual activities we are discussing would result in one.

sentinel00

According to the Revised Oxford English Dictionary, there are 615,000 words in the English Language. Technical and scientific terms add millions more.*

Sounds like you aren't all the way there. Perhaps you should narrow your focus to the only ~200,000 words currently in use in common parlance. That way, instead of having a higher quantity, you could use words to better quality.

Also, learning Latin only makes you competent to speak and write in Latin. It lends no weight to your (ab)use of the English language.

I guess we should make that 600,001 words in the English Language! "Literately" doesn't seem to appear in my dictionary! How many more have you made up?

Perhaps you were thinking of the word, "literarily?" It's an adverb that means, "in a literary way or manner." Whatever the case, you f*%cked up, Mr. Webster!

*From: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380715430/InternetInfidelsA/" target="_blank">Mother Tongue, English & How it got that way</a>

Monkeybot

Christ sake`s what? Or do you mean "Christ's sake"? Of course, far be it for me to correct a classical scholar.

Hey now, don`t insult the intelligence of the thesaurus. By the way, that's thesaurus.

Doesn`t look like you mastered that one.



As a matter of fact, I studied Latin for four years in high school. Latin grammar is quite different from English grammar; for example, the usual sentence pattern in English is subject - verb - object, while Latin, like the Romance languages it spawned, has the subject - object - verb pattern. In addition it has many grammatical constructions which simply have no equivalent in English.

I won`t deny its usefulness in terms of vocabulary, but it`s about as useful as Japanese with regards to writing "literately" in English.

Why the hell would I want to learn to write in a dead language, anyway?!

You of all people choose to display elitism? How cute.

Yes, you have already amply demonstrated this for us.

Oh and by the way, you are misusing the term argumentum ad hominem. It refers to the fallacy in which the argument is assumed to be false because of some quality of the arguer. I have never touched your "arguments" about bestiality, and thus cannot be said to have engaged in that particular fallacy. (At least not on this thread.)

*edited for code

[ December 15, 2001: Message edited by: Monkeybot ]</p>

tronvillain

As much as I like the attempt sentinel00, it appears in <a href="http://dictionary.msn.com/find/entry.asp?search=literately" target="_blank">mine</a> (the adverb at the bottom).

SingleDad

John E.D.P. Malin

Ah, I read this word as an attempt at "literally" instead of "literarily". Still, again it is hard to see the inference; it is possible to write English literarily with no knowledge of Latin; presumably almost two millennia have significantly altered the standards of literary composition.

sentinel00

I can't imagine a correct use of the word. Can one write illiterately? I'm not sure MSN has that right (not that I myself am always right... even in this instance).

Monkeybot

Haven`t you been paying attention to Lord Malin`s posts?

sentinel00

Haven`t you been paying attention to Lord Malin`s posts?

I happily stand corrected!