No, I disagree. Although bisexuality is more common in the wild than exclusive homosexuality, exclusive homosexuality is found as well. If you like, I can post links to studies about that.
No harder than I would proving that any human being experiences anything of the kind. Strictly speaking, it’s impossible to prove either of those, since I am not party to anyone else’s subjective experiences, nor able to convey my own. That an animal with a complex nervous system experiences sexual desire is a reasonably assumption, however, or just as reasonable as the assumption that human beings (other than myself) do.
Now you’re just being deliberately obtuse. What you were claiming was neither of the above. You were claiming that sexual orientation was a learned response to stimuli, I suppose capable of being modeled using either classical or operant conditioning theory. This does not follow from the well-established fact that people repeat pleasurable behaviors.
Actually, what WE are talking about, if we are talking about homosexuality, heterosexuality, and bisexuality, is not only behavior but also the desire to engage in that behavior, which in this case IS sexual desire. I am saying that what you are arguing does not match my own experiences upon reaching puberty. I have never found myself interested in having sex with other men or even in experimenting along those lines. I did not learn to be attracted to women by pleasurable contact with women; I was always attracted to women and not to other men. It’s just the way I’m wired, seemingly.
Absent evidence to the contrary, I find it reasonable to suppose that homosexuals have had similar experiences, only they are wired differently than I am (as are heterosexual women, of course). Especially since that’s what they tell me.
That homosexuality is an anomaly is a statistical truth, but it is hardly established as any other kind of truth. And from the fact that it is a statistical anomaly, one may draw no expectations about how it arises. In the roll of two dice, the snake-eyes roll is also a statistical anomaly, but it arises in the exact same way as a roll of 7, which is far more common.
I really don’t see any evidence in favor of it w/r/t either lying or homosexuality. Children lie from the point where they are capable of putting words together. Lying AND telling the truth, depending on circumstances, seems from observation and common sense to be the human norm, not doing one or the other exclusively.
All homosexuals I have personally known have said that. And this includes some that have experimented with heterosexual behavior.
This has nothing to do with the fact that they are physically attracted to men, indeed it doesn’t even say THAT they are.
How were they persuaded to even try gay sex in the first place? If there was no desire prior to engaging in the act, it’s hard to see how the act could have taken place at all, unless it was rape – and rape, generally speaking, doesn’t feel good for the victim.
If these men were attracted to both genders, but chose to live a homosexual lifestyle, then what they are innately is bisexual, because they are attracted to both men and women. Homosexuality is not a lifestyle choice. It is a sexual attraction. It is possible to make that choice, if and only if one is in fact bisexual. Otherwise, one has no choice to make.
Why did they like it better? And again, what prompted them to try it in the first place? I’ve never had the slightest inclination to experiment with gay sex myself, so clearly these men (and lesbian women) have innate desires that I do not share.
Again, if they found themselves attracted to both men and women, but chose to live a gay lifestyle, then what they are in terms of sexual orientation is bisexual. A bisexual living a gay (or straight) lifestyle does not cease to be bi, any more than a person living a monogamous lifestyle ceases to be attracted to others outside their relationship.
Sexual orientation is defined by attraction, not by behavior.
Since this is exactly what I am challenging, you do NOT agree with what I said, and it is disingenuous for you to say that you do.
Which gender – male, female, or both – we find sexually attractive is innate; that’s what I’m saying here. I see much evidence in favor of this, and none whatever calling it into question.
I've probably seem them already- I've seen ones about wolves, goats, and fruit-flies for example. What I'm saying is that there's a difference between "An animal that has engaged in same-sex acts" and an animal that is a homosexual, the way we apply that term to humans- if you have a study that shows these animals have been observed to be [i]exclusively[/i] homosexual, I'll look at that- but even those studies wouldn't rule out the notion of it being a conditioning issue.
That’s exactly right- the only thing that makes it easier with humans is that you can rely on experience, and trust that other humans share that experience with you. Technically, defining human homosexuals by what they desire is useless as well for just this reason- at least, if you try to get any meaningful statistics of how many of each group exist, and how they behave.
It's a reasonable assumption among those species that seem to mate for pleasure- and that's not all that common, even among higher mammals. This limits your group of allowable creatures for the studies quite a bit. I think defining homosexuality by what the creature [i]does[/i] and not what it [i]feels[/i] would be much easier.
Well, technically what I'd claim is that sexual orientation is a fiction altogether. I would claim that the sexual behaviors that people choose to engage in is based on conditioning and what they learn from experience, and that what they lust after or desire is based on the sexual behavior they have found pleasureable- which is complicated by things like the television, internet, and even imagination- people can fixate on sexual acts they've never directly experienced.
As far as I can tell, the only novel claim I'm making is negative- that sexual orientation doesn't exist. I can't provide evidence for a negative claim, other than to say that plenty of people who call themselves 'homosexual' and especially 'bisexual' relate experiences that are nothing like the 'born with it' paradigm.
Well, there's two things there- the fact of sexual desire, which is probably biological, and the question of [i]who[/i] and [i]what[/i] people desire sexually, which it's clear to me, is not.
It was firmly established, until about 25 years ago, but I digress. What, I have to establish now that homosexuality is a fringe behavior that almost everybody throughout the world, and throughout history, has found perverse and immoral? Modern liberal sexual thought is not only correct, but it erases the fact of past belief? I would say that homosexuality is an anomaly in several ways, even if it’s been ‘discovered’ to be ethical in recent times.
I disagree, but it’s hardly important. Snake-eyes is not an anomaly, snake eyes showing up much more or much less than one roll in thirty-six( if my math is right) is an anomaly. Anomaly implies a violation of expectation, and not just rarity, which is why I used the term.
But they tell the truth so much more often that their lying is statistically irrelevant- when a child lies, they lie [i]for a reason[/i]. When a child tells the truth, it's because they don't have a reason to lie, not because there's some special reason to tell the truth. Similarly, I'm saying when a person 'becomes homosexual', it's because something happened to them, and when they remain heterosexual, it's because that thing didn't happen to them.
Even if you don't agree, I'm arguing for plausibility- there's no reason to assume[i] by default[/i] that homo and heterosexuality must different outcomes of the same process. That has to be proven somehow, and I've only seen it suggested by intuition.
Then we've talked to different samples. I've talked to homosexuals who engage in their lifestyle because they couldn't get girls to notice them for their first few years of sexual maturity, and then after that period of rejection, they were given an opportunity for gay sex and took it. I've talked to homosexuals who say they got that way because they were taken advantage of when either young, drunk, or both, and they had no interest in it before hand.
Not only is this a gross oversimplification of the levels of manipulation and cohersion that can happen during sex, you're taking the 'orientation' paradigm for granted- you seem to be saying "If he was willing to experiment, he must have been secretly bi even if he showed no previous signs and denies it." This puts sexual orientation in the realm of faith-based beliefs, and I can't argue you out of your faith. It reminds me of some Christian fundamentalists who swear that once you're 'saved', your saved for life- if you end up becoming an atheist or an Episcopalian or something, then you must never have 'really' been saved in the first place.
Isn’t it more reasonable to see that they were simply horny, had no particular compunctions in that moment against trying something new, and decided they liked it? This happens all the time with everything other than sex, and in fact, it happens with sex too, talking about positions and fetishes. Why is gender special in this regard? This is an important point, so I’ll repeat it:
A man who has always, in his mind, found anal sex to be a disgusting notion, can end up one day trying it with a girl and liking it. Do we feel the need to invent myth-stories about this man’s psychology, saying that he must have been anally-oriented ‘all along’ or else he would have never tried it?
A man who has always, in his mind, found sex with another man to be a disgusting notion, can end up one day trying it and liking it. Right?
Now you're just playing with words. What, there's all these people out there that could have heterosexual sex and enjoy it, but because of circumstances in life, they engage in homosexual sex exclusively? That's what [i]I'm[/i] arguing- I just think this group is quite a bit larger than you do, and that many of them call themselves 'homosexual'. Even if these people do have something biological that allows them to be attracted to both genders, they are still by-choice homosexuals in behavior, that could easily choose to be by-choice heterosexuals if they wanted to. But I don't think it is biological.
Do you see how this 'sexual orientation' is sounding more and more like a fantasy creature? If this is all true, we have bisexuals pretending to be heterosexuals, bisexuals pretending to be homosexuals, people who are bisexual and don't know it yet (because someday they will go to prison and 'discover' their bisexuality, apparently) and so on.
They apparently have desires you don’t, but to make the leap and say they are innate is groundless.
That's because your faith won't allow you to. If any apparently straight person engages in a homosexual act (say, in prison, or at an orgy, or whatever), you're free to claim they were 'bisexual all along', which is irrefutable by evidence, only logic can address it. The logic of the situation is this:
If a person is blindfolded and given oral sex, it will
A) Feel good, and
B) Be impossible to tell if it’s a man or a woman performing the oral sex.
So this is a case where a person can learn that a sex act with whatever gender they are not, allegedly ‘sexually oriented’ to feels just as good as one to whom they are. One can imagine all sorts of situations where something analogous to this could happen.
Now, in a situation where sex with the 'wrong gender' is available, but sex with the 'right gender' is not, I claim that the person with this experience is free to persue sex with the 'wrong gender'- if they have a compunction not to, it will be moral or cultural, and NOT because they don't desire it, or know that they would enjoy it. That seems obvious to me- every other sort of pleasure a person can experience works in this way. All I'm claiming is that sexual desire works like other desires.
Sexual orientation theory would claim that there's a powerful, innate force that would spring up in a person, beyond ethics and culture, to make them not seek out a behavior they have already learned to enjoy. In fact, it would not matter how many times this situation was repeated- no matter how much good oral sex with the 'wrong' gender a person was manipulated into experiencing, they would never ever seek it out themselves. For if they did, that would mean that sexual orientation could be changed by environment- and then there's no need for sexual orientation at all, since it exists specifically to say environment is not the factor.
Since we know that otherwise straight males will seek out gay sex in prison, we have precedent for the above example- straight people will engage in gay sex in unusual situations, and apparently enjoy it. All the sexual orientation crowd has left to fall back on is the faith-based claim that all those guys were 'secretly bisexual'. A simple comparison of incidents of gay sex in prison to incidents of bisexuality in the general population should dispell that notion.
In which case it’s hardly worth my while to post them, yes?
Actually, the only thing that makes it easier with humans is that humans can talk. I have just about as much reason to believe that non-humans with a complex and advanced nervous system have subjective experiences comparable to mine, as I do to make the same assumption with humans, but those animals can’t tell me about it in words.
What language-game are we playing here, speaking of words? Sometimes you seem to be talking as if the assumptions of behaviorist psychology, or perhaps those of logical positivism, should be taken for granted. (Which makes me wonder about some of your morality statements, which have no meaning in the context of either of those systems of thought.) If so, please consider them challenged as of this moment, and take them for granted no longer. If you wish to defend them, be my guest.
If you are going to bind yourself by the restrictions of behaviorist psychology or logical positivist philosophy, yes. I choose not to.
It’s not all that common among animal life generally, but if you’re going to claim it’s not common among higher mammals, you need to back up your statement.
I know of no evidence of homosexuality except in the more intelligent species of mammals and birds, and frankly would be surprised to find any. Consider the assertion suitably modified, if it was misunderstood not to imply that.
No doubt. But inaccurate, if you’re trying to gather an understanding of human sexual behavior, from which feelings are inseparable and to which they are crucial.
Yes, that’s what I understood you to be saying. I’ve been asking you for any evidence to support your assertion, and so far you’ve provided none. All you’ve done is to reinterpret common knowledge to say that what is observed means what you’re saying. But you’ve also said some things like the following, which are open to criticism based on ordinary experience:
But that doesn’t work in my case, because what I lusted after and desired at the age of 12 was something that I did not actually experience until the age of 20.
But why do they do so? This, you have never come close to answering. Having experienced no sexual activity at the age of 12, why was it that all of my erotic images involved women and not men?
Your theory just does not match with the experiences that most people go through. Also, I would suggest that it does not account for the relative rarity of homosexuality. The exact percentage of humanity that is homosexual is in dispute, but all estimates make it a fairly small minority, the highest I’ve ever seen being 10% (from Dr. Kinsey). If it’s just a matter of imaginary feedback and conditioning, if there were no biological hardwiring involved, why isn’t a much larger percentage of the population homosexual?
On the other hand, if sexual orientation is innate, and due either directly or indirectly to genetics, then the low occurrence rate makes perfect sense, because a fertility rate consistent with the survival of human precivilized societies would be selected for. Such a society could tolerate a few homosexuals, but not a majority of its members leaning that way, given the normal constraints of fertility, child mortality, etc.
You are NOT claiming that sexual orientation doesn’t exist. You are claming that the usual EXPLANATION for sexual orientation is incorrect, and offering a competing one. That is a positive claim, not a negative one.
So far, you have yet to relate any of these experiences for us. The ones that you have related are entirely consistent with the “born with it” paradigm, that is, what you have presented as alternative explanations are quite capable of coexisting with an inborn (or at any rate, developed by puberty and hardwired) tendency.
So you’ve said. But again, you have yet to offer any evidence to support that assertion. It may be clear to you, but you have yet to make it clear to anyone else.
“Believed” does not mean what I mean by “established” in this context.
No, what you have to establish is that homosexuality is aberrant in some way other than statistically. That people have thought bad thoughts about it in many cultures does nothing to establish this.
You can start by defining what you mean by “fringe behavior,” assuming (as I do) that you mean something more by it than “behavior engaged in by a minority of persons.” If all you mean is that many cultures have found homosexuality to be “perverse and immoral,” then I will concede the fact while denying that it has any significance except historically.
Actually, I can account quite easily both for the common taboo against homosexuality found in preindustrial civilizations, and for why that taboo is now fading. It has to do with population limits and how they have changed. With the development of agriculture, and the consequent development of civilization, the optimum population of a society grew much larger than it had been in precivilized times, and rapid population growth became a competitive necessity in almost all cultures. A certain range of sexual morality, as well as the subordination of female reproduction to male control, is found in just about all preindustrial civilized cultures (but not in either modern industrial societies or any precivilized hunter-gatherer societies that survived into historical times), I think for that very reason. As we now face the necessity of controlling our population growth rather than pushing it to the maximum, the common mores are changing once again.
All right. State what ways you are talking about, please.
If snake-eyes is not an anomaly, then neither is homosexuality, or at least you haven’t given us any reason (other than historical popular opinion) to believe it is. In exactly the sense you described above, homosexuality would be an anomaly if it occurred in, say, sixty percent of the population. That it occurs at all is not an anomaly, it is normal.
If on the other hand you are looking not at the entire probability distribution but at a single occurrence, then both homosexuality and snakeeyes become anomalous in the sense that they are not what one should expect most of the time.
If you know of studies to support your assertion that children lie less than adults, I’d be interested in seeing them. As for your second statement, which of course has nothing to do with the first one – doesn’t everyone who lies, lie for a reason? I’m not saying a good reason, mind you, but they did have SOME motivation for doing it.
That’s a sufficiently broad statement that it can hardly help but be true – except that I would disagree with the implication that everyone starts out heterosexual. In terms of feelings and behavior, everyone starts out asexual. If sexual orientation is directly determined by genetics – which nobody knows at this point – then everyone starts out with a genetic tendency to become gay, straight, or bi, but that tendency doesn’t manifest right from birth. At some point in maturation, either at puberty or perhaps somewhat before that, sexual feelings emerge, and then it becomes meaningful to say that someone has a sexual orientation (other than in genetic predisposition – if in fact that’s true).
In any case, I can certainly agree that a person becomes either heterosexual or homosexual “because something happened to them.” The question then is what exactly it was. Being conceived with a certain type of genes? Being exposed to certain hormonal balances in the womb? Either of those is possible, and either would fit your statement – while denying what you are actually trying to assert here.
You’ve suggested that sexual experiences themselves are what causes sexual orientation through operant conditioning. I’m still waiting to see any evidence in favor of this assertion.
Actually, there is. It’s called Occam’s Razor. It’s not sufficient grounds for us to ignore actual, affirmative evidence that homosexual sexuality develops through a significantly different process than heterosexual sexuality, but it’s enough that we should assume to the contrary in the absence of such evidence.
Anyway, what you were saying earlier was that they WERE different outcomes of the same process, namely the operant conditioning supplied by erotic experiences. Yes?
Doesn’t conflict with the idea of an innate attraction to their own gender.
Doesn’t conflict with the idea of an innate attraction to their own gender, and in fact as an explanation this falls before the fact that most victims of homosexual rape do NOT end up gay.
As an explanation for why someone is homosexual, no, it’s not. What you’ve outlined there is a good model to explain why heterosexual men in some cultures (ancient Greece, prison) sometimes engage in homosexual behavior. For many young Greeks males, their first sexual experiences were homosexual. Yet they went on to be primarily heterosexual in adult life. Those that actually were gay, were frowned upon by Greek society (dallying with pretty young boys was one thing, preferring to get it on with other grown men something else again).
What this says to me is that, while the ability to occasionally enjoy a barely-pubescent boy’s backside may be a learned behavior (as is masturbation, or a liking for a particular kind of sexual act), the gender to which one is attracted is not.
I doubt it, actually. What I think, rather, is that there are a lot of men who live entirely heterosexual lives, when they are actually attracted to both genders. Bi men who try to live gay lives are rarer, though they do exist (I’ve personally known one). And when they are found, generally they know that they are bi. Bi men living straight may sometimes not know, or not admit it to themselves.
Among ostensibly lesbian women the occurrence may be somewhat larger.
No, except in the first thing you mentioned (bisexuals pretending to be straight). Anyone who is bi before going to prison and there “discovers” his sexuality has feelings of attraction for other men before getting to the Big House, and is conscious of those feelings whether or not he openly admits them. Anyone without those feelings will not come away from prison as a homosexual, merely as a rape victim.
Excuse me. I am not talking about “engaging in a homosexual act.” I am talking about reporting homosexual feelings. Anyone can engage in a homosexual act. Anyone. What defines a homosexual is sexual desire for his or her own gender.
A person who engages in homosexual behavior and remains homosexual thereafter had feelings of attraction for his or her own gender before engaging in that behavior. Question such a person closely, and you will find this to be true. There’s a falsifiable statement for you. Have at it, but please stop it with the “faith” false comparisons.
Yes, that’s true. But it’s also true that the person will have feelings of attraction towards either men or women (or both), before ever being given oral sex (or any other kind). And thus, the pleasure of getting a blow job from someone cannot be what causes those feelings of attraction through a process of operant conditioning.
Well, that’s overstating the case slightly, mainly because you are confusing a particular type of sexual behavior with a type of sexual attraction common to those who engage in it. Let me give you a hypothetical. Suppose that a straight man goes to prison and gets raped. Suppose, further, that he finds he likes taking it up the butt, that this gives pleasurable sensations. It remains the case, though, that hairy legs, two-day beard, and pectoral muscles don’t turn him on. The sexual act is one thing, the gender of attraction something else.
If he REALLY likes getting boned from behind, he can look for a kinky lady willing to do him with a strap-on, or else take matters into his own hands with a variety of toys. But merely enjoying anal attentions isn’t going to make him gay.
Edit: Further along this line, and avoiding hypotheticals, it is a fact that many lesbian women enjoy getting their furrows plowed, they just prefer that it be done by another woman. Which of course requires the use of either fingers or an accessory. Enjoyment of the physical sensation does not translate into a desire for an actual living penis.
Pleasurable sensations are indeed reinforcers. But gender attraction seems to have a life of its own separate from this.
Considering the degree of political bias in most such studies, and groups like the APA that back them, that’s right, it probably is.
I’m neither of those things, so far as I know! But the fact remains, you can’t define people (or animals!) by what they desire in any useful way, because what they desire changes, and because you are relying on them to report the information to you accurately.
Well, the two situations are incongruent in any event- if you want to talk about the homosexuality that is defined by the hidden desires of a person, then we can- but it will be hard to procede, since we aren’t telepathic.
As I said, heterosexuality is normal, and does not neet to be accounted for, whereas homosexuality is abnormal and needs to come from somewhere. This is all very well described in the second link (which was not there until a few minutes ago) at the bottom of my signature.
That's because most people aren't homosexual, and I'm not talking about them. Things such as what kind of women you find sexually desirable (body shape, psychological make-up, an so on) would be a closer comparison- these are things that develop over time, in ways that we aren't always conscious of.
Despite his flaws, Kinsey is a perfect example of someone who acknowledged that sexual orientation existed on a scale, and was subject to radical change over an individual’s life, and hence not innate. Or so I’ve been told.
The same reason most people don't have sex with cattle, I reckon. Give it a couple more generations taught under the ethic that there's nothing wrong with it, and bisexuality will rise dramatically.
Now, let me say here and now that there may be some 'biological hardwiring involved'. There may be certain factors in a person's biological make up that make them more likely to prefer homosexual sex to heterosexual sex- what I'm arguing is that nothing like 'sexual orientation' exists, in the way you (and many, many others) seem to be presenting it.
That’s true. Either model- homosexuality being rare because it’s taught to be immoral, or homosexuality being rare because it’s a recessive trait, would explain it’s low occurance. What we need to see is if cultures that have a higher degree of acceptance of homosexuality (now and in history) also have a higher occurance of homosexuality, or if it’s consistant. My understanding is that homosexual activity is on the rise in the US.
Yeah, I can concede that point- my model of ‘sexual orientation’ is one of constant, random change based on environmental conditions, with most homosexual and bisexual people reducing or eliminating such behavior as they age. That’s what orientation is like, as far as what it is, it’s just an arbitrary group- it’s useful to refer to ‘homosexuals’ at times, to mean people who are doing or wanting to do certain sorts of behavior. But it says nothing about their past behavior, makes no predictions on their future behavior, and is otherwise useless for describing a class of people.
So, you really want me to tell you a “One time, there was this guy, and he told me…” type of anecdote? I was under the impression that it wouldn’t make any difference if I did- it’s a pretty weak sort of evidence. But yeah, say the word, and while away the hours telling you about different people I’ve talked to.
“Almost everybody thinks it’s immoral, and almost everybody always has” doesn’t satisfy for ‘abberant’? What, are you going to pull a standard of ethics out of your hat that clearly doesn’t condemn homosexual activity, and then demand that I prove homosexuality is unethical based on that same standard? I’m well aware that if you trick-out a “As long as it doesn’t hurt anybody…” standard of morals just-so, then homosexuality is a-ok.
That’s half of it- by fringe behavior I mean a behavior engaged in by a minority of people, and with the understand that the minority should keep the behavior to themselves, and out of mainstream society. For example, “Playing the flute” would not count as a fringe behavior- a minority of people do it, but not because society pressures people not to.
Wait, why does the taboo against homosexuality, and especially the current fading of it, need to be 'accounted for'? The people who believe the behavior is immoral will tell you why they think so, and the people who think it should be accepted will tell you why they think so, and neither of them will say anything about population control in pre-civilized times. Is your explanation intended to be dismissive- that is, are you trying to say that homosexuality's being universally condemned is somehow irrelevant or incorrect because of your reasons?
OK. Homosexuality is an anomaly because it’s rare. Homosexuality is an anomaly because it’s immoral. Homosexuality is an anomaly because from studying human anatomy, it’s clear that the parts are intended for things other than what homosexuals use them for. Homosexuality is an anomaly because obsession with it precludes the ability of procreation, which is rather important. Homosexuality is an anomaly because I don’t like it. Homosexuality is an anomaly because most people, in most places, don’t like it.
That’s every sense I can think of in which I can mean “homosexuality is an anomaly”. I think all of those are true, but most of them are irrelevant.
I don’t mean to say children lie less than adults, I mean to say children lie less than they tell the truth. A child lying is an unusual behavior that we can rightly seek an explanation for. A child telling the truth is just normal, and requires no explanation.
I don’t know if everyone starts out heterosexual or not- it’s entirely possible that in some cases, a person’s environment influences them to desire homosexual acts before hetersexual acts.
That's not what I said. I said people become homosexual because something happened to them, but they are heterosexual because that thing [i]didn't[/i] happen to them. Heterosexuality is a default state- the vast majority of homosexuals feel pulled towards heterosexual behavior throughout their lives, to the extend that many of them abandon homosexuality entirely. The vast majority of heterosexuals simply stay heterosexual. You'll ask for a citation- it's the study at the bottom of my signature, which is quoting the Laumann study.
Sexual experiences as well as exposure to sexual ideas, media, and so on. There are perhaps some non-sexual influences as well. Give me an example of what evidence for this there could possibly be. A study that says heterosexuality is firmly rooted, and homosexuality is 'a phase'? Cited. Anecdotes from people who claim that they became homosexual because of sexual experiences? Ready and waiting. People who claim to have changed their sexual orientation through therapy and further conditioning? Easy to find on your own. Examples of people who engage in homosexual behavior out of convenience and lack of heterosexual availability? Cited through the example of prison.
In other words, people start of one orientation and become another. People engage in behavior from one orientation while claiming to be another. Every possible combination of behavior that could disprove the notion of innate sexuality does in fact occur, but it will never count as evidence because you have the “They were secretly bisexual” line to fall back on.
I surely didn’t mean to say that. What a person desires sexually will be a result of erotic and non-erotic life experiences, this including body structure, sexual positions, and gender. A person will be heterosexual by default if their life experiences don’t do anything to screw this up. I am comparing desiring sex with a man to desiring sex with a person with a particular hair color.
Well, except that they claim there was no such innate attraction, and they only developed such an attraction as the concept of homosexual sex being available, and heterosexual sex not, was hammered home again and again.
Most isn’t interesting. “Equal to or less than the occurance of homosexuals in the general population” would be interesting. The amount of people who become homosexual (or bisexual!) after an incidence of rape could be double or triple the statistical average, and still not be ‘most’.
And again, it conflicts because according to the anecdote, the person didn’t have this attraction until after the experience. Also, keep in mind that you’ve used the term ‘rape’ to cover what I said was ‘taken advantage of while drunk, young, or etc.’. That’s acceptable- I have no problem with those sorts of situations being called ‘rape’, but if you cite statistics later that apply only to violent rape, those statistics will be irrelevant to the point.
If you're going to contend that a heterosexual (not bi-sexual) can, in the right culture, engage in and enjoy homosexual sex acts from time to time throughout their lives, and not thusly be defined as bi-sexual, then sexual orientation is worse than non-existant, the whole concept of it is completely uninteresting.
My perspective is similar to the above in a way. I think all occurances of homosexuality are like the Greek example- people (just people, not homo-this or bi-that) engaging in acts that feel good, some of which are abberant, some not. Occaisionally, due to their environment, they become obsessed with the more aberrant acts. Many of them grow out of it, unless they are convinced that they need to find their 'identity' in this behavior, or that growing out of it betrays their fellows.
I further agree that heterosexuality [i]is probably not [/i] a learned behavior, though if at least some experience was required to teach a person target of their sexual feelings, I wouldn't be surprised.
The room for 'sexual orientation' as a hard-wired preference to do any work in understanding is getting so very small. We have bi-sexuals who choose one gender and stick with it, and we have gays and straights to occaisionally engage in sexual behavior with the 'wrong' gender, apparently without that making them bisexual. We even have Greek youth who's sole sexual experiences have been homosexual and consentual, who are properly defined as straight! All that's left is this unprovable (and apparently false, according to the study I cited) notion of a person's desire for a gender being innate and fixed.
Again, it comes down to blind faith on your part. You're assuming here that the only people who go into prison straight and have gay sex are rape victims, which means you're assuming that anyone who engages in such acts consentually must have been 'bisexual all along' despite what they did with their lives. I'm not a positivist- I think what you're saying is meaningful [i]despite[/i] the fact that there's no way on God's green Earth you could prove it.
At this point, we don't have anything further to argue about, I don't think. You acknowledge that anybody regardless of their alleged orientation can come, through conditioning and environment, to enjoy any sex act with any gender. That's been my point. That you believe in an unprovable, innate 'sexual orientation' that can be overridden by culture and cannot be identified by a person's behavior or testimony is beyond my ability to challenge in this medium.
Did you mean one of those ‘homos’ to be a hetero or a bi? I’m having a hard time understanding your claim here as anything other than a tautology if you didn’t, so I’ll wait. But yes, if you meant it just the way you said it, then I have no trouble agreeing.
My contention would be that a male heterosexual who desires and enjoys the occaisional blow-job from a guy is indistinguishable from a male bisexual who desires and enjoys an occaisional blow-job from a guy. If you’re contention is that the heterosexual will always be quietly wishing it was a chick during the act, then that’s unprovable.
I agree these are two different things, yes. By the same token, there's plenty of women that aren't attracted by any of the things you listed. Are they gay? Indeed, being turned on by hairy legs is one thing, being turned on by pectoral muscles is something else. Sexual orientation cannot simply be an attraction to a set of physical features, since for any gender-sterotypical physical feature (or set of features) you name, there will be apparently straight people that doesn't appreciate that feature (or features)- while still desiring the opposite sex. More importantly, gender-stereotypical traits are not universal, with the exception of the presence of genitals. Ironically, I know plenty of members of both genders that find the genitals of the opposite sex to be the least attractive part of them- while remaining most assuredly straight.
Before replying to your post at length, I’m going to cut to the chase here. The passage quoted below supplies, I believe, the primary areas of disagreement between us, and also most of the reasons why you choose to believe as you do. (Although there may be a few other reasons that would make for an interesting discussion in the area of pure psychology.)
Agreed, as already stipulated.
On what basis do you consider it immoral?
That amounts to a teleological argument. Unless you are advancing an intelligent design theory, human body parts aren’t “intended” for anything.
I disagree that procreation is particularly important for any individual, unless that individual chooses to make it important. I agree that procreation is important for the species as a whole, but disagree that homosexuality presents any problem in that regard. And finally, I disagree that homosexuality, in an era of high-tech medicine, precludes procreation.
That doesn’t make it an anomaly.
Neither does that. Most people, in most places, don’t like fleas. Fleas are, unfortunately, not in the least an anomaly.
Regarding the change in morality and the shift from an agrarian to an industrial base of society: Yes, I do believe that traditional sexual morality can be dismissed. Whatever the reasons people give for believing as they do, the fact that this sort of restrictive morality was universal among preindustrial civilizations arises from the fact that it served a universal good, namely putting population growth in the fast lane. It’s not a matter of conscious choice so much as it is one of natural selection: those societies that did not adopt such standards tended to be conquered and assimilated by those that did, because those that did ended up with higher populations.
Since the industrial revolution, we have seen many changes in morality, and not just sexual morality either. The prevailing and accepted type of politics has shifted from absolute monarchy to the democratic republic. The advanced nations now universally advocate gender equality, where once this was considered a radical notion throughout the world. Chattel slavery, which either in itself or in some substitute form of forced labor such as serfdom, was the basis of every civilized economy for thousands of years, has been abolished and is universally condemned. Environmentalism has emerged as a component of modern-day morality. And so on.
All of these changes make perfect sense when we consider the ways in which the economic basis of society has been altered since the industrial revolution. We now need an educated populace, which is more compatible with democracy than it is with monarchy. We no longer need to subordinate women to men for procreative purposes, since we now need to restrain our birth rates rather than maximize them (and for the same reason, we no longer need to condemn homosexuality). With machines to do drudge work, and with the need for a highly mobile and skilled work force, chattel slavery has become economically much less valuable, which leaves us the room to despise it on moral grounds (as it always deserved). And with our increased ability to damage the life of the earth, environmentalism is a natural concern.
Of course, none of that necessarily and absolutely means that the traditional morality of agrarian civilizations is, according to some absolute standard (wherever one might find such), wrong. But this may help you to understand why, when you say that most cultures throughout history have condemned homosexuality, I can agree with that as a factual statement, but at the same time simply shrug. The truth is, I don’t much care about that, nor grant it any great significance other than as a matter of historical interest.
I’ll have more to say about some of the other things you’ve said (starting with your rather interesting assertion that heterosexuality does not require any explanation, but should be treated as the “default”) after you answer the points made above.
As to why I consider homosexuality immoral, that’s primarily based on my take on religion, and how that impacts my morals.
Now, while I have no problem invoking design to account for objects having a function (and in fact, I think it’s necessary to knowledge to grant such), I find it curious that you’d think function in natural objects requires design. It doesn’t seem odd to you to deny that eyes are specifically for seeing or that testicles are for reproduction? Anatomy and medicine seems largely built around the idea of our parts being for something.
This goes back to proper function- whether or not procreation is important for the individual to live their lives, it’s clear that a great deal of their anatomy exists for that purpose, and that both culturally and biologically, it is a central aspect of humanity. A person consciously choosing for any reason not to procreate would be an anomaly- which in this sense, is not to say that it’s bad.
Me not liking something certainly does make it an anomaly to me- the nature of evil, or the ugly, is that it’s something that ‘sticks out’ and interrupts our natural, unconscious appreciate of what’s around it. Same goes for most people not liking it. Not a terribly relevant use of the word, but I felt like being exhaustive! Your point about fleas is well taken, though- certainly stastisical anomalies and asthetic (sp) ones can contradict.
This seems like a far too-bold assertion to me. I’m not a great fan of sociology, though. To me, morality cannot be seperated from people’s beliefs about morality so easily. Something is immoral (to that person) for the reason they say it’s immoral. Now, you could argue that cultures in which homosexual was immoral thrived because they had a procreation-centered ethical system, sure. But saying “This is why a particular moral belief thrived” is not the same as saying “This is why a particular thing was immoral,” unless you’re coming from an absolutely cultural-relative perspective on morals, in which case, I really don’t see the benefits in discussing morality at all.
It’s interesting that you point out that homosexuality being immoral in most times and places is irrelevant to you. I can totaly see where you’re coming from- that I happen to live in a time and place where it’s immorality is in question is entirely irrelevant to me, at least as far as my moral thoughts on the issue are concerned.
My own rejection of any condemnation of homosexuality similarly arises from my religion, and how that impacts my moral system. To me, it isn’t simply that condemning homosexuality makes no sense, it’s that it’s affirmatively wrong, does harm to innocent people, condemns others unjustly, and is a moral evil.
Actually, no, that doesn’t seem odd at all. Objects have a purpose if and only if they were chosen or designed by an intelligence capable of supplying that purpose. Thus, a hammer is specifically for pounding nails, because a hammer was designed by a (human) intelligence for that purpose. We may also say that, in the absence of a hammer, a particular rock may also be for pounding nails, because a (human) intelligence picked it up and chose it for that purpose.
We can say “eyes are meant for seeing” as a kind of shorthand, but strictly speaking this is not true, unless we are also saying that a (divine?) intelligence designed the eye for that purpose. (Medicine is neither science nor philosophy and doesn’t have to be so precise, except where precision is necessary for practical reasons.) Absent such a designer, all we can say is that eyes have the capability of seeing. We can make similar functional statements about genitalia, but that is more complicated, because genitalia do a number of different things. Yes, they do procreate, but they also provide physical pleasure, and help cement emotional bonds between people, aiding in socialization. Even if we do posit a designer, which of these functions are genitalia actually “designed for”? Must we not in the end say that they are designed for all of them?
That isn’t what I was saying. Actually, I wasn’t making any statements about whether something was or was not immoral (except that I did slip a bit and make one about slavery). “This is why a particular moral belief thrived” is exactly what I was saying, and also “this is why it begins now to decline.” And I was pointing out just why I place little importance on the fact that most (perhaps all) agrarian civilizations have condemned it, and don’t feel in any way bound by this.
But let me go into this a little further. Morality, it seems to me, derives from two sources: what might be called “natural” morality and societal dicta. What I mean by “natural” morality is what is determined by empathy for others – an altruistic imperative, concern for one another, a rejection of malice, respect for others’ persons and feelings. Societal dicta are rules of morality that are laid down by society, which sometimes reinforce natural morality but sometimes run counter to it. When it runs counter to it, there is almost always some reason for that, some positive good accruing to the society (or at least to its governing elite) from the departure from natural morality. The most obvious example is a society’s military imperative – the duty to serve a country in war. Fighting and killing other people runs counter to natural morality with a vengeance, but if war happens, a society needs its people to fight it, or all of them will suffer badly. So societies lay down a dictum that fiercely proclaims, “When you go to war and kill your country’s enemies, you are doing good, not evil. When you refuse to do this, you are doing evil, not good.”
But a better example for purposes of the present discussion, better because it represents a moral change in relatively recent history, is supplied by slavery.
Slavery obviously runs counter to natural morality. Yet throughout history up until the industrial revolution, almost all civilized societies enacted dicta that permitted, encouraged, and enforced slavery. And those that did not, substituted some other form of forced labor, such as serfdom. Why? Because slavery was key to allowing the elite to enjoy their privileged positions of wealth and power, while allowing the non-elite free population to enjoy such liberty as they did. And generally speaking, the privileges of the elite also served societal purposes, since these were the society’s military and political and religious leaders, doing very necessary service to the society.
With the industrial revolution, however, came a decline in the need for slavery, and also the rise of a new elite to challenge the old one, that had no use for slavery at all. For a downtrodden and oppressed labor force, yes, but not for one that had to be bought and sold; industrial capitalism is highly market-driven and needs to expand and contract its labor force with greater flexibility than the institution of chattel slavery permits.
Now – was this change the reason why emancipationists in 19th-century America condemned slavery? Not at all. They condemned slavery because it was cruel, barbaric, and unjust – an offense against natural morality. But slavery had always been cruel, barbaric, and unjust, as much so in ancient Rome as in the antebellum South. Why, then, did opposition to slavery succeed in 19th-century America, while such movements as Spartacus’ rebellion failed in ancient Rome? Very simply, because society’s need changed, and the societal dictum in favor of slavery was no longer needed and was dropped.
And we now face a similar situation with respect to homosexuality. Condemning people for their sexual orientation is cruel, barbaric, and unjust, an offense against natural morality. It happens anyway, and people feel justified in doing it, because they are obeying a societal dictum that says homosexuality is wrong. But just as with slavery, the underlying practical justification for that dictum no longer exists, and so what we are seeing in today’s political and social debate on the subject, is a conflict between that antequated dictum, that relic of an irrelevant past, and the natural moral imperative that has always whispered to us against being cruel to other people who have done us no harm.
As it did with slavery, I am confident that in this struggle natural morality will in the end win out. I trust that the ultimate victory will be achieved with less bloodshed, though. So may it be.
That’s cool, it’s nice to discuss this with someone that isn’t coming from a position of vague relativism for a change. So what do you think, should we discuss the morality of homosexuality and the restriction of it, the origins and causes of homosexuality, or is there enough time in the day to do both? One is probably doomed to lead to the other no matter what we do, I imagine.
I'm not sure I agree. I think a unintelligent mechanism can select things for purpose, too- seems to me that's how evolution works. These eyes populate better than those eyes, because they serve the purpose of seeing better, which serves the purpose of survival better. Now, it's true in an atheistic setting that there's nothing [i]recognizing[/i] that purpose, and making an act of choice based on it, but the purpose still seems to be there.
Anyways, since I [i]do [/i]think there's a divine intelligence behind the universe, either I way I would stand behind the notion that our organs are [i]for[/i] something.
Your point is well taken here, but if you're saying that in the absence of a designer, we put purpose on things ourselves, then it's plausible that we do that even in the presense of a designer as well, right? That is, all the purposes we find for something are not necessarily purposes the designer intends, right?
But that you 'don't feel in any way bound by this' is a [i]moral[/i] statement, as I read it. What I see you saying is, "The condemnation of homosexuality thrived because X, and since X is no longer the case, we aren't obligated to condemn homosexuality." If X isn't the reason why homosexuality is immoral, this statement makes no sense.
I'm mixed about this. I think nature gives us the sensation that there is such a thing as morality- we are designed to recognize goodness and badness, but I haven't decided yet if nature alone leads us to any actual moral statements about what is right or wrong.
I agree with you in general that things that would otherwise be wrong can be good because of the specific circumstances of a society, or vica versa.
Now this I agree with- but it doesn't go to the correctness of the movement. I can certainly see that society has changed in ways now that a movement for acceptance of homosexuality could succeed now, where 100 years ago it would have no chance of succeeding, even though the nature of restricting homosexuality is basically the same in both cases. However, it doesn't follow that lifting that restriction is the right thing to do, just because society is 'ready' for it, or 'open' to the idea. For example, the particular culture, technologies, and economic situation during the formation of the United States made the extermination of the Native Americans something the colonists were very open to, whereas in an earlier time and in different circumstances, other points of view may have prevailed. But that says nothing about the rightness or wrongess about them exterminating the Indians. In a similar vein, the reason why it's easier to push for the acceptance of homosexuality these days is because in many other respects, we're becoming a society of perverts compared to past standards anyhow. It had very little to do with population issues, and very much to do with how sex has been regarded the past couple generations.
I get where your coming from, though- the restriction of homosexuality runs against natural morality because of specific societal reasons, and once those reasons are gone, natural morality should take the helm again. I'm just not convinced there is such a thing as natural morality, or if there is, that it's anywhere near as informative as what you're saying. For example, I believe that cultures and institutions can be a good in themselves, worthy of protection and support- I don't think natural morality could evaluate that, though.
the way homosexuality is defined cannot be applied to animals. It’s either men who engage in sexual activity exclusively with the same sex, or men that tell you they can only couple with the same sex, because they “just can’t love the opposite sex.” Most animals don’t care about loving the other creature they are screwing they do it just because it feels good, now certainly there are humans like that, and that’s understandable because sex feels good.
The question arises when you come to morality. What makes the fetish behavior of homosexuality more “moral”, than beastiality, pedophilia, ebophilia, polygamy, incest, bondage, etc.
What this comes down to, is them trying to make a political issue about the way they like to get busy. Some heterosexual men, like to jack off on to women’s feet, should we make a special class for them, so they can be more open about their fetish desires? Some guys like to get off with inflatable women… Why shouldn’t he be able to marry his inflatable woman?
I think it’s immoral too, but because society as a majority thinks it is. The problem is, the hyper-partisan ship of both sides, makes it impossible to truly discuss this issue. The advantages and consequences of homosexual behavior, and why it truly develops. (the genetic line is bull.)
Let me go over a quick couple of consequences:
You will not be able to have children naturally, thus you will not be able to fulfill your desire to propagate.*
You have an unhealthy relationship with someone (by definition of what’s healthy in society.) Shock therapy was a horrible option, but so is doing nothing. Many homosexuals are probably repressing something that happened to them in the past. Instead of dealing with that, they choose to “live the homosexual” lifestyle. I have no problem with that, I do have a problem with the way the gay activists try tearing down what’s normal, so that they can be normal.
*Although they could adopt, their are many statistics from children from such households where promiscuity and experimentation are factors of an order higher than a normal household. Speaking of normal households, I think the breakdown of the family caused by the acceptance of homosexual culture has led to many cut and run relationships… sure their are times when it’s the best option like abortion… but to use it whenever you can’t get along with your partner? Totally ludicrous, and destructive to our moral core as a nation.
Well, I have my own ideas about “moral relativism,” namely that nobody really believes in it. It’s a subversive argument, a way of undermining the moral certainty of an entrenched value system, when the real goal is replacing that entrenched value system with a new one. I prefer to be up front about that.
On the other hand, while I don’t believe that morality is genuinely relative, what I do believe is that it is not absolute in the sense of being “for all time.” Times change, circumstances change, and as with the example of slavery, what is judged to be right in one era can become wrong in another.
Well, yes. The morality is the real discussion, and the orgins and causes questions become important only because they impinge on the morality discussion. They do that because, if homosexuality is not a choice, then it is not a moral issue, because only an act that is willed can be judged good or evil. Hence the Catholic Church’s position that only homosexual acts, not homosexuality per se, is a sin, because people don’t choose to be homosexual.
For me, the causes of homosexuality are vaguely interesting as a matter of scientific curiosity. But the moral questions are more pertinent.
No, evolution theory posits no teleology at all. It’s a purely from-behind, cause-and-effect thing. That’s the biggest difference between natural selection and deliberate selection by human animal or plant breeders, which in terms of mechanics work exactly the same way: those organisms with certain characteristics breed in preference to those without, hence those characteristics are emphasized in succeeding generations. But whereas the human breeder has a purpose in mind and deliberately chooses the characteristics to be bred for, nature (in standard biological understanding anyway) does not make any choices as we understand choice. It just happens that some characteristics are more likely to result in survival and reproduction than others. Nature doesn’t “choose” this, any more than it deliberately “chooses” who will survive and who will be killed in a car crash.
I’m not saying this is necessarily the case. It might be that there is some kind of conscious intelligence at work. But so far, no compelling evidence has been found for one, and so biological theory does not incorporate that element. And in the absence of one, any appearance of purpose to evolution is illusory.
Ah, there we go. Well, since we’re talking philosophy not science, that assumption is permitted, arguendo. So let’s proceed on the assumption that you’re right, that we are intelligently designed and so our organs do have a purpose.
Going back to what I said earlier, then, and recognizing that genitalia not only reproduce, but also create physical pleasure and facilitate social bonding, on what grounds can we conclude that their purpose is solely procreative? Moreover, even if we recognize that their purpose is partly procreative, which is logical, would not that purpose be served through artificial insemination and adoption of the resulting offspring by one of the parents? Gay people who wish to have children do this all the time. And meanwhile, because of their sexual orientation, their genitalia work to form pair bonds only with members of their own gender, not the opposite one.
Well, I actually do believe that X was the reason why homosexuality was considered immoral. Part of my reason for believing that, is that no other reason has ever been given. “It is an abomination” is not a reason, it is merely a restatement of “this is wrong,” without providing any clue as to WHY it’s wrong. And indeed, you’ve been offering exactly what I said as a large part of your own reasons for condemning it: homosexuals are not using their genitalia for their “intended” purpose, which is breeding.
I can put it in terms of evolution and social organization as fits our species. We are a social species, not a solitary one. We are meant to work together for the common good of the group – that’s how our ancestors survived in a precivilized setting, which is how human beings lived for about 10 times as long as we’ve been civilized and the state for which our instincts evolved. Perhaps deriving from that status, perhaps for more cosmic reasons (and I can certainly express it that way, too, but it would become more controversial and less self-evident), most human beings have a sense that helping others is good and harming others is bad. This is universal and transcends all cultural factors, and so is what I meant by “natural morality.”
Let me draw this back to homosexuality once more. Condemning homosexuality hurts people. It subjects certain people (homosexuals) to societal sanctions. It forbids them to marry the people they want to. It socially ostracizes them. Depending on the severity, it may sever the bonds of love, subject people to employment or housing discrimination, put them in prison, or kill them.
If this is all the information we’re given to go on, the only reasonable conclusion is that this is the wrong thing to do. But, for example, we do put murderers in prison. We have a good reason to do so – they are dangerous to others, and we wish to deter murder by punishing those who commit that crime. And this reason overwhelms the inherent evil of putting someone behind bars, and makes that act a good one, on balance, in the case of a murderer. Or at any rate, so most people would judge.
What good is obtained by socially ostracizing gay people, refusing to let them marry their loved ones, or subjecting them to employment, adoption, military service, or housing discrimination, that outweighs the inherent evil of doing these things to people?
I have suspected that, and ultimately I agree with you, but the way positivism is applied to religion has made me leary of telling people what they ‘really’ believe when they claim things.
I tend to believe that morality is subjective, yet not relative. In other words, the moral law (or some morals laws, in any event) is what it is because a Subject ultimately decided it should be that way, but that Subject isn't likely to change His mind with the times, or based on our wishes.
For me, the issue of origins isn't about the absolute morality of homosexual acts, it's more about what to do with people who are uncomfortable with what they consider to be their own deviant sexual desires. If I defend my moral notions of homosexuality based on it's being non-innate, it's because the critic of my moral stance has made the connection, not because I necessarily do.
Also, I'd like to note that I have never meant to say that homosexuality is a [i]choice[/i], per se. What I've said is that it's not innate- it comes about through environment, and a great deal of the environment is based on where we choose to put ourselves. Saying "nobody chooses to be a homosexual" is probably true, but "nobody chooses to be a crack addict" or "nobody chooses to be poor" are both probably true in the same way from my perspective.
Yup. I honestly feel like I’ve been drug into the scientific aspect because I had to be in order to discuss the moral aspect adequately.
Oh, I know that nature (under a materialist view) doesn’t ‘choose’ anything delibrately. What I’m saying is that I’m not convinced that conscious choice is a requirement in something having a purpose. The notion that an eye “just happens to see” doesn’t sit right with me. Maybe this is a problem with the notion of unintelligent design rather than the nature of purpose, though.
Well, figuring out the purpose of the Designer would be purely speculative based on own reason- once we acknowledge that we [i]do[/i] have the ability to give things purpose, there would be no way to discern between the purposes we give things, and the purposes the Designer gives things. Unless, of course, the Designer went out of His way to tell us- which is what I believe has occured.
Well, then we come back to the notion of sexual orientation being a myth, again. If these groups are essentially arbitrary, and a person is 'gay' because of their particular life circumstances at the time they identify as 'gay', then it's entirely possible that that gayness is keeping things from being used for their proper function- which, by the way, is one of the reasons most often cited for people wanting to correct their homosexual tendencies- desire to raise a familiy. Remember, this all came about from me saying that homosexuality not using parts to their full function is one of the ways in which it is [i]anomalous[/i], not immoral. Somebody choosing not to have kids isn't immoral.
That is true- the Bible in general is short on explanations for [i]why[/i] something is wrong, at least until Paul comes along. However, much as I hate to say it, that comes packed in with it's own reason. The intended message, I believe, is that homosexuality is wrong because God has said not to do it. Whether God has decided this subjectively or whether He is pointing out an extension of some objective law (or neither or both) is something for folks like you and me to puzzle out, it makes no difference to the everyday life of your typical ancient Jew. I guess the question would be, granting theism, is "Because God said so," qualitatively different than "Because Mike said so"?
Well, it trancends all cultures, but does it transcend the concept of culture itself? The very notion of a culture implies some ways in which humans interact (that they do interact) and some ways they don’t- so something being universal to all cultures doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t learned.
Granted.
Granted.
Well, there would be different answers for different situations. For example, if enough people are convinced that homosexuality is vile and disgusting, to the extent that it will affect their behavior in adverse ways, then it could be very good to keep practicing homosexuals out of the military or other situations where morale is of the utmost importance. In that sense, even an incorrect morality can be moral to act upon, at least for a time.
In general though, there is no purpose intended in restricting homosexuals, and other than sodomy laws (which I oppose, for the record) no [i]active[/i] restrictions on them in the US exist. If there were, I would be against them. Gays are allowed to have a marriage ceremony and live monogamously with anyone they choose, a Church is allowed to saction the marrige if they choose, insurance companies, hospitals and all the rest are allowed to recognize these arrangements if they choose. And they all choose not to. In terms of the law, and permissing behavior, the real question is what are the relative goods/bads of[i] forcing[/i] people to accept behaviors and arrangements that they aren't naturally inclined to accept? The obvious answer is because it extends freedoms and confort to a class of currently oppressed people. And that's where the science comes in:
If homosexuality is flexible (people can and do change where they fall on the Kinsey scale greatly and regularly), if homosexuality is an imprecise grouping, then the class strictly doesn't exist. If there is no "Gay man" who is doomed to live a life of persecution in the sense that a Black man is doomed to such in the days before equal rights, then the issue changes.
If homosexuality is harmful (people detest their own homosexuality, it gets in the ways of behaviors and goals they want to accompish, and in general leads to mental unwell-ness) then there's a strong subjective reason to [i]not[/i] promote or support the behavior- in otherwords, forcing people to accept homosexuality will actually cause a degree of harm that could balance or exceed any good it brings about.
If homosexuality is immoral, then we have an [i]objective[/i] reason not to force or promote the acceptance of homosexuality, since an immoral behavior ought not be promoted, or forced to be accepted, full stop.
So those are the three big factors. I believe that homosexuality is not a class of people, I believe that it’s probably not any more harmful than smoking or over-eating, and I believe that it’s immoral. More than anything, I believe that the first of these two areas have not been fully examined, and that research that doesn’t favor certain conclusions has been supressed for political reasons.
Since you capitalized the word Subject, may I assume that the Subject you refer to is God?
If so, then what you are talking about is an objective morality and not a subjective one. An objective morality being: one that is valid independent of the moral judgments of human beings. That is precisely what I do not believe in. And I’ll have a bit more to say on that down the road.
I think that’s it: that you have a conceptual problem with the idea of unplanned, undirected, and unintended evolution having the observed results, and for that reason (as well as religious ones) you insert a designer into the picture. With a conscious designer involved, you DO have purpose, but it does involve conscious choice, and so does not present the oxymoron of unintended purpose.
And that is exactly why authoritarian religious systems such as traditional Christianity become so pernicious: they ask that we surrender our own moral conscience, our right and duty to make moral choices, to the authority of another.
No God that is deserving of worship would ever ask such a thing. That is why I do not believe that the God of the Bible is real (or part of the reason anyway) – but even if I were convinced otherwise, I could not, in good conscience, obey. The God so described is a vicious, villainous tyrant who needs to be overthrown. And I could never take the part of such a monster.
That’s setting aside the fact that, in practice, all authority which is claimed as God’s is actually exercised by mortals ostensibly in His behalf and in His name.
Depends on what you mean. It transcends culture in the sense of being independent of culture, of not being culturally determined. It does not in the sense that it cannot exist outside of human culture, but then, neither can human beings, so the whole question becomes meaningless since it is human behavior we are discussing.
Even if we only consider legal restrictions, that is untrue. It varies from state to state, but generally speaking gay people are forbidden to legally marry (I could go into why I don’t think legal marriage as an institution should even exist, but that’s another subject), and in some states discrimination in employment and housing on the basis of sexual orientation is permitted (although not here in California).
But outside the law, general cultural attitudes toward homosexuality – although changing – act to do harm to gay people. That is an inevitable outcome of the attitude that homosexuality is morally wrong, or viscerally disgusting. And so, unless that attitude can itself be justified by showing that gay people do harm to society such that suppressing, condemning, and ostracizing these people is a net good, I must regard it as an evil.
And in some cases, we should IMO conclude that such forcing is a positive good, while in others we should not. For example, I see a net good in forcing insurance companies, hospitals, and the law in general to recognize gay marital rights (as long as we are going to continue doing that with marriage in general). I cannot, however, see a net good in forcing people to change their religious beliefs by law – nor, of course, would that be permitted under the U.S. Constitution. For that, there is no substitute for the noncoercive evolution of culture, using the medium of free dialogue and the marketplace of ideas.
Not really. For the sake of argument, although I don’t even begin to believe this, let us suppose that a person who is gay can, with the right therapy, become heterosexual. We are still talking about punishing people who do not choose to avail themselves of that therapy, through social and some legal sanctions. If we are going to do that, we still need to show why changing gay people into straight people is a good that justifies the evil done in service to it.
Yes. That is exactly the “if” that needs to be answered. And to my way of thinking, the second “if” follows directly from the first, while also being dependent on homosexuality being a choice. If it is not a choice, then it is not immoral; if it is a choice but is not harmful, then it is not immoral.
One thing you mentioned was homosexuals being disgusted with their own sexuality. It is important to distinguish in our thinking between a harm resulting from homosexuality itself, and one resulting from society’s attitudes towards it. We may draw a parallel here with the situation of black people in the pre-Civil Rights South (where I grew up incidentally, so I know a fair bit about that first hand). In that period and place, stores in black neighborhoods did a good business in cosmetics and hair products that were intended to make black people look more like white people. Here we had a situation where people looked upon their own racial characteristics with disgust – but did that disgust arise from the fact that they were black, or from the fact that white society looked down on black people?
I would say the latter, and I would say the same about being gay today. A homosexual must deal with a lot of blows to self-esteem and self-image. It is no surprise if many of these people grow to loathe themselves for what they are. But what they are is not to blame for that. Society’s attitudes toward what they are represent the real culprit.
I would say that the portion of the above sentence before the comma is an understatement, and that both smoking and overeating are far more harmful than homosexuality. And I would also say that, if homosexuality is not harmful, then it also cannot be immoral.
Well, the way YOU are (conveniently) (re)defining it, obviously not.
Let’s put it this way. Non-human animals have been observed engaging in same-gender mating. They have also been observed forming exlusive same-gender pair bonds, and not engaging in cross-gender mating when that opportunity arose.
If you do not wish to call this “homosexuality,” that’s your privilege, but the objective fact of what is observed, by whatever name you choose to call it, remains unchanged.
Why not a thing, but that’s the wrong question to be asking. What needs to be asked is, what makes homosexuality less IMMoral than all of those things. And in the case of some of them, not a damned thing is the answer – and so what? We shouldn’t be condemning them, either.
Where the line should be drawn is where a sexual practice involves coercion. Sex acts are fine, provided they occur among consenting adults. If they don’t, then you have the harm done that justifies the evil of suppressing or punishing the activity, making that punishment a net good.
Is there a problem in our society with widespread condemnation of foot-fetishists? Are foot-fetishists subjected to employment or housing discrimination? Do high-school kids call each other “toe freak” as a term of opprobrium all the time? Is there a word for foot-fetishist that has become a slang word for “bad” or “stupid”? Are foot-fetishists exluded from military service by law?
If the answer to these questions is “yes,” why, then definitely, we should protect foot-fetishists from the harm so many people are stupidly and callously trying to do them. I was under the contrary impression, though.
Defined that way, then yes, I suppose I believe in objective morality. I call it subjective because I don’t think this morality can be proven through reference to other objective facts, like science or math or so on. I also call it subjective because I’m open to the idea that God chose the moral rules He did for reasons we could call subjective if they applied to humans- taste, preference, a desire to produce a certain kind of world. Not because He ‘had to’ or because it was in some sense ‘correct’.
I don't think Christianity makes much of a secret of that, no. The primary relationship between God and man is one of man surrendering things to God. However, I disagree in the sense that I think it's impossible to surrender our right and duty to make moral choices- we've all been in situations where we knew without question the right thing to do, and yet the chocie is still difficult. Knowing what is right doesn't eliminate moral choice.
And I believe that this position stems from an over-estimation of humanity in the grand scheme of things. If God was some guy, who rose from among the rest of us to wrest power for Himself and declare how things have to be, you'd be spot-on. The concept of a tyrant implies illigetimacy to me- a tyrant is bad because he commands an authority he does not deserve. God deserves the authority He has, we deserve to be in the position we're in with regards to Him.
What I mean is, the things you're citing as natural morality stem from the fact that humans happen to congregate with each other in mass and work together to achieve ends. This is uniform to all cultures, so this natural morality could still be culturally-dependant, it's just dependant on cultural traits found in every culture.
Legally marry? You mean, they aren't given a certificate in recognition of their marriage? That's a far cry from a restriction. Like I said, two men can have a marraige ceremony, have rice thrown at them, and go off to live a long, happy, monogamous life together, and nobody in the US is going to fine them or take them to jail for it, nor should they. As far as housing and employment 'discrimination', I'm of mixed thought about that, since I don't believe in sexual orientation as a fixed classification of people in the first place, this sort of discrimination comes down to behavior. Should a workplace be able to restrict certain sorts of behavior, like homosexual public displays of affection? Absolutely. Should they be able to restrict these [i]moreso[/i] than heterosexual displays? Absolutely- since there is no sexual orientation, this isn't discrimination against any 'kind of person', other than in the sense that any restriction is discriminatory against people defined by their desire to do what has been restricted. Discrimination in housing? That's tougher. I generally think what a person is doing in their own home is a private thing, and I see no reason why it ought to be restricted. But then, I haven't seen the arguments on the other side.
Agreed. Whether there’s a net good depends on what I was saying about flexibility, morality, and harm, though.
No, actually we don't, unless we're considering the proposition of new restrictions on homosexual behavior. If someone wants to [i]force [/i] the acceptance of homosexuality, declaring it a net good, then they would be obligated to prove that there's a fixed class of people called homosexuals, or else the discrimination argument is false.
And I'm not arguing that homosexuals 'can' change through extensive therapy that they have to choose to be dedicated. I'm arguing that most "homosexuals" abandon or reduce their homosexual tendencies quite naturally as they procede through life. Ironically, therapy doesn't seem to work that well.
You're defining 'homosexuality' as 'engaging in homosexual acts' here, I'm assuming? Assuming that, it's obvious that it's a choice. If you do mean homosexuality as defined by desire, then it's obvious that it's neither a choice nor immoral, but equally obvious that homosexual acts are certainly chosen and may certainly still be immoral, unless you want to argue that acting on an unchosen desire is never immoral, which I know you won't do.
I knew this argument had to come up sooner or later. I’ve seen biased studies that say that societal pressure is one of the smallest reasons that people seeing therapy to change their orientation do so- the leading reason is that they want to address psychological trauma that they feel lead to their unwanted desires in the first place. Even still, I think wanting to change because society is pressuring them to change is a perfectly valid reason- people try to correct obsessive behavior all the time on no basis other than the fact that the behavior is socially unacceptable, yes?
That is a good comparison- there are situations where a person ought not try to change because of society, namely because they can’t, or because society is being unfair towards them. This, like so much else, comes down to the question of whether gays are more like black people, defined by innate traits, or more like tennis coaches, defined by behavior.
I cannot disagree that homosexuals would have a much easier time in life if society didn't disparage the behaviors they desire. One could say the same thing about folks who want to have sex with dogs. And don't you tell me there's not a community of people out there who believe having sex with animals is a powerful, innate desire within them- you Google it and see for yourself, I've paid my dues.
I believe that the concept of harm, and indeed, our very ability to reason, comes after morality and not before, so I can’t agree with you that discerning if something is harmful can tell us if it is immoral. Though, the two do happen to coincide most of the time.
Well, I’m going to call you on that one, too. I believe that morality can’t be proven objectively, because it involves questions of value rather than questions of fact. You, on the other hand, seem to believe that morality CAN be proven objectively (albeit not scientifically), by reference to the alleged Word of God, and the questions of value reduced to questions of fact regarding what is written.
That is where we disagree.
What I mean by “making moral choices” includes deciding what is right, rather than allowing an authority to decide for us. Thinking that someone else knows what is right (which is really what you are talking about here, not actually knowing what is right ourselves) eliminates the most important part of moral choice, if admittedly not quite turning a person into a robot devoid of free will.
Whether a ruler is a tyrant, whether he deserves his authority, depends in large measure on how he exercises that authority, as well as on how he obtained it. Compare two equally-illegitimate historical dictators, Gaius Julius Caesar of Rome and Adolf Hitler of Germany. Both used quasi-legal maneuvering to obtain dictatorial powers over their societies. But whereas Caesar implemented many much-needed and benign reforms, and ruled well and wisely, Hitler implemented viciously racist policies that resulted in genocide, and plunged his nation into ruinous war.
Measured by the standard of legitimacy, which I am willing to acknowledge should not apply to God, both men were tyrants. But measured by the standard of results, which I absolutely contend SHOULD apply to God, only Hitler was a tyrant, Caesar was not.
I have no problem with the idea of God assuming power to which He was not elected or otherwise entitled by the legitimate machinery of human government. But I have a very serious problem with anyone who governs in a way that is clearly brutal, vicious, and tyrannical. And that applies to someone whose ascension was itself completely legitimate, too. More to the point, this is one way we may judge whether something alleged to be a divine command really is one.
A tree is known by its fruits, as someone once said. If that which is alleged to be God shows wisdom and love, then perhaps it really is. But if it shows cruelty and folly, surely it is not. And not only do we have a right to make that judgment, we have a responsibility to do so.
Arguably so, but since all morality is cultural in that sense, I don’t see that as a very pertinent observation. Morality does not exist outside of human culture.
I mean that they are not allowed the privileges that come with married status. A spouse is the presumed heir in the absence of a will. A spouse has visitation rights in a hospital. A person may name his or her spouse to an employer’s medical policy (as well as a child). And so on. It goes far beyond a mere piece of paper.
Whether it should or not, with respect to any couples regardless of their gender mix, is as I said another subject.
A workplace should be able to restrict excessive public displays of affection, yes. I do not believe it is right to restrict such displays solely because they are same-sex, though.
I disagree.
That is a mere legalistic quibble. It it discrimination against THIS person because he wishes to publicly kiss THAT person rather than THE OTHER person – whether you wish to acknowledge a label to apply to the persons in question is irrelevant.
Why new? Why not old ones as well? Would you apply the same protected standard to the Jim Crow laws, which had been in existence for almost a century when the Civil Rights Act rendered them null and void? It seems to me that if we are apply a standard to a proposed NEW restriction, the same standard should apply to the existing old ones as well.
Not at all. Punishing people for their chosen sexual behavior is inherently an evil even if the behavior is freely chosen and may be freely dispensed with. We may say that about interracial sex, for example – there is nothing in my genetic or other makeup that makes it imperative I have sex only with nonwhite women (being a white man myself). And while I cannot choose not to be white, nor can the women in question choose to be white, miscegenation laws do not apply to the races themselves but to a freely-chosen sex act between them. This makes them fundamentally different from, say, laws forbidding black people to be employed in certain capacities. Yet we still say that such laws are discriminatory.
I think you are entirely wrong about the nature of homosexuality as an objective fact, but that doesn’t matter. Even if you’re right, to punish people for preferring to mate with their own gender is still an inherent evil and still must be justified as enacting a greater good.
No, actually I meant “being attracted to one’s own gender.” But it works either way. The only difference is that I believe engaging in homosexual acts IS a choice (for homosexuals anyway), since they have the alternative of being celibate.
Being gay is not, I believe, a choice, nor is it harmful, therefore it is not immoral. Engaging in homosexual acts is a choice, but it is not harmful, and therefore it, too, is not immoral. But at least the moral question properly arises, which it does not about the state of being homosexual.
If you are looking at the matter purely from the individual’s perspective, and taking society’s position as an unalterable given, then yes. However, society’s position isn’t an unalterable given, and so we may also legitimately ask whether it ought to be different than what it is.
Well, you have put two considerations together here, and only one of them comes down to that question. Whether they can change does. Whether society is being unfair to them does not. Please observe my example of interracial sex taboo above. Race cannot be changed; a preference for interracial sex partners can; nonetheless, was not society being unfair by forbidding that preference?
On this, we have an irreconcilable disagreement. It boils down to your belief in an authority-based moral code, and my position that such a code is anathema. All I can say in answer to it is that the United States is not a Christian government, and that by design. And so any moral positions taken at law in this society must be justified on the basis of a secular morality such as I’ve outlined.
Uccisore, I didn’t respond to your statement above regarding bestiality. I am of two minds about this. The arguments against bestiality that I have seen involve the fact that the animal is under human domination and cannot freely consent to the sex acts, and that consequently this amounts to animal cruelty. If that is the case, which it certainly is sometimes if not always, then bestiality represents something which differs from homosexuality in a morally important way. It would represent a better comparison not to homosexuality but to pederasty, a desire to have sex with children (regardless of gender mix).
In the case of pederasty certainly, as in the case of rape, we have a situation where a greater good arguably renders punishing the pederast or the rapist a net good. I do not see that same argument applying to homosexuality.
well you’re wrong, I’ll try to explain why briefly (don’t have alot of time right now.)
Immoral and moral are decided by the society, sometimes correctly in that a debate happens to determine what is good and bad about a behavior, sometimes incorrectly, like what happened with homosexuality and abortion. All pro-homosexuality behavioral proofs are based upon a 1957 study. Do we know what this person herself was trying to prove? What’s the most likely scenario is the same of that of Kinsey… He was involved in behavior that was deemed by society to be immoral, so he set out with a conclusion in mind… that it WASN’T.
That’s not science. That’s fallacy. Of course the same crap happens in other quasi religious sciences, like global warming… We have the politician, setting out to prove global warming thusly he compiles all the “proofs” that prove it is manmade.
but back to morals:
Morality is determined by the majority, and right now we have hyper-partisans in charge of morality. The “advocate” side wants to okay every sort of behavior as moral, the only disqualifier is that it “that they are consensual”. The other side, wants to pretend that all morals come from god.
Neither side is right, and until they realize that we can’t have a real discussion or studies about the advantages and disadvantages of homosexual parents/behavior etc.
My personal stance is that people can partake in any immoral behavior they wish to… they just have to be willing to deal with the consequences. Most advocates like yourself, try changing the definition of the consequences, without realizing the consequences of doing so.
There are REAL consequences to sexual promiscuity, whether it’s hetero or homosexual… There are REAL consequences to having same sex parents, and promoting abortion.
Of course stating that is going to have you state the obvious:
“prove it.”
The studies are out there… you’ll ignore them because they come from hyper-partisans. (christians, who are out to prove that homosexuality is immoral all the time.)
But, even without the studies, one need only look at how children try emulating adults to see that loose parents, whether homo or straight are a problem. And homo parents set up an unrealistic family standard… families need both male and female to properly work. Imagine a correct family unit as a scale… male and female and child in the center… modern feminism (which is tied to the homosexual movement) destroys the masculine part of the balance. That’s the reason our society will eventually collapse, because we don’t have any REAL men left in society, just a bunch of sex starved pansies.
Hey, if you want to call that objective, I won’t fight. Just don’t come at me with that whole Euthyphro dilemma crapola down the road!
Well, if there’s any objective morality at all, then we don’t get to decide what it is anyways, so I don’t see religion as being very special in that regard.
Is this going to turn into a ‘Problem of Evil’ thing?
Well, the pertinence would be that if natural morality is a result of culture, it might be absent in someone who wasn’t properly socialized. If it has to be taught, it’s not disctinct from the other sort of morality you pointed out.
Hospital visitation and insurance policies are both under the reign of private institutions, not the Government. It is a freedom that hospitals can rule on visitation as they wish, and insurance companies can give out policies to who they wish in regards to this issue. So again, what you're talking about is a restriction on how a company can do business.
As far as being an heir goes, that’s such a small, trifling thing to the institution that is marraige that I’m surprised you brought it up. Yes, a homosexual couple will actually have to make the effort to write wills when a straight couple won’t. Yes, these wills could be contested if the families have a problem with it. That a homosexual marraige will be disadvantaged in these tiny ways is simply not moving to me, I’m sorry. You can’t toss around the word ‘discrimination’, make comparisons to black people and slavery, and then toss this sort of thing in as the example. For all intents and purposes, gay couples are allowed to live as married couples in the United States.
As an aside, I do agree with you that the Government may as well not acknowledge any marriages anyways, though I wonder if it would make their role in child welfare more difficult.
I acknowledge that it's discrimination, it's just not class discrimination, and that IS an important difference- a workplace dress code forbidding sandals is discriminatory against that guy who wants to wear sandals instead of dress shoes.
Which old ones? I already said I'm against sodomy laws, and the other 'restrictions' you're talking about aren't laws on the books at all- they're simply the absence of laws forcing private individuals to recognize and endorse behavior they see as immoral. I don't need to come up with some grandiose defense for why a certain law has never existed!
Since I'm against sodomy laws, I don't see the relevance here. If by 'punish' you mean 'don't treat as normal', we're already doing that with anyone who practices BDSM, bestiality, pedophilia, and a host of other sexual behaviors harmful, harmless, and somewhere between. Sexual taboos are a part of every culture, legislating them out of existence is an unwarranted infringement. Even inter-racial marriage isn't something I would support the forced acceptance of, [i]except[/i] that is was attached to the notion of racism as a whole. If there was a culture that was somehow not racist, and yet saw inter-racial marriage as sick, I'd have no problem with that either. My disagreement would be a combination of taste, and my unprovable moral beliefs.
Nevertheless, even with society in constant change, the usual response to not fitting in is to either change oneself, or simply accept not fitting in. Trying to chance society to make yourself and your minority marginally more comfortable is either an act of stupendous arrogance, or, it a last-ditch effort that comes from the demonstrable fact that the subject cannot change, and cannot live comfortably with being marginalized. Neither one of those things are evident.
If you grant that that the United States is not a Christian Government, then you'd have to grant that treating homosexuals in the (apparently) secular way we've always treated them isn't a function of religion motivation. As it stands, me and my fellow Christians aren't the ones advocating we change anything here. If everybody sat on their ass and did nothing at all, things would go my way. So any claims about how we have to 'keep this country from becoming a theocracy' or stuff like that are completely inane from my perspective.
The issue of morality where it apples to bestiality and pedophilia is very tricky. I’ve written a lot about it here in the past, and my fingers are too tired to repeat it all. Simply put, I think that since we eat animals and bathe children, there must be something uniquely morally dicey about the nature of sex- consentual or otherwise- for pedophilia and bestiality to be immoral. If you think we need to go into this deeper, I’ll dig up my old stuff on it and paste it.
I don’t believe there is. I said that. I also believe that deciding what morality is, is our responsibility, and to throw the whole thing onto an authority such as Church or Bible is to abdicate responsibility.
No, not really. The Problem of Evil, as I understand it, is the logical contradiction some imply exists in the idea of God as omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good, yet allowing evil to exist.
That’s not what I’m talking about at all; I’m talking about judging whether something alleged to be God really is God, not based on whether evil exists, but rather on whether the thing alleged to be God is itself evil.
In this case, “not properly socialized” means “totally isolated from other human beings from birth,” in which case the person could not survive anyway. This is an impossible hypothetical, and so need not be considered.
Absolutely. Let me give you a truism about for-profit business: Where any act provides a competitive advantage, business will tend to perform that act, regardless of moral considerations, to the extent allowed by law. We can say this in shorthand, more or less, as “business sinks to the level of depravity that the law allows.”
With a very few exceptions such as producing desirable and marketable products, business must be required to do anything good; they will not do it on their own.
A lot of gay couples don’t seem to agree with you. Obviously they see some advantages in being able to marry that you are not seeing here.
What you are talking about, though, is a workplace dress code that forbids sandals only to some of the employees while allowing others to wear them. A blanket restriction on sandals for all employees is not discrimination. A restriction on some employees wearing sandals is, and needs to be justified.
A restriction on French-kisssing in the hallways is not discriminatory, either. A restriction on French-kissing only by same-sex couples is.
No, only for why it ought not to exist now. What you were arguing above is in essence that it ought not to exist because it doesn’t yet.
That’s true. We cannot change the culture by law. We can forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the workforce, legally recognize gay marriage, and do a few other things at law. But the work of changing hearts and minds needs to be done on another level using other tools.
It’s not at all clear what you mean by “forced acceptance.” Forced to say in public that you approve of it? Forced to conduct religious ceremonies marrying interracial (or gay) couples? Or do you mean simply forced to provide goods and services to such people at the prices you normally charge regardless of who they are, to consider them for employment positions purely on merit without regard to the fact they are an interracial (or gay) couple, and similar actions?
You don’t have to “accept” anything. You can hold whatever private opinions you want. You can express them as well, exercising your right of free speech. The law must always govern actions, not thoughts.
Another irreconcilable disagreement, perhaps. If everyone who was ever on the outside looking in took that attitude, many of the very positive changes in our history would never have taken place. Progress happens when it is struggled for against those who would prevent it, and without that struggle it does not happen.
Only if I accept that this treatment was apparently secular in origin and motivation, which I do not. In any case, our discussion leading up to that point had to do with your stated justification for believing homosexuality to be immoral, which is Christian. You have not stated any other justification so far.
We only need to go into it if you are going to go on comparing homosexuality to pederasty. And your conclusion above is unwarranted. As adults, we have a responsibility to protect children from all kinds of exploitation; pederasty is morally identical in this regard to child labor or child abuse. There is nothing mysterious about it, and the fact that it is sexual is as irrelevant as the fact that rape is sexual. Both are acts of coercion and violence, and THAT is why they are wrong.
