SWAT team goes crazy.
But police chief does something sensible.
Get your vaccines! Or we will ban the quack who says you shouldn't from practicing medicine. Good riddance. Only a few hundred deaths too late.
One thing that occurs over and over again in the great CRA debate is the idea that private discrimination was and is immoral and would and should be protested. I think that's certainly clear now that many of us would delight in doing this. But sort of like Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point game was supposedly attended by 100,000 people (there were a shade over 4000), and the original Woodstock had millions of people there, and so on, people like to think they would act up, speak up, and attach themselves to something meaningful. In practice there were indeed thousands of anonymous and well-known white Southerners who did stand up. Some were arrested right alongside Dr King or other anonymous black folks.
In reality though there would not be an outcry of millions of voices as there might be now to mock, shame, and defeat such an attempt at re-installing any private power to discriminate against black customers or business owners were we to park the same people who claim they would make a fuss in the atmosphere and culture of the 50s and 60s. (and as often noted, there usually isn't any private power to actually do so as it usually involves calling the police to remove people as trespassing without private security firms that say an average restaurant probably wouldn't be able to afford, making the whole idea sort of nonsensical anyway).
One reason the Nazis were able to prevail in power and control a nominally democratic country where they gathered only a plurality of voting support was that they had millions of silent dissenters whose main fear was association with any number of unpopular (even among normal non-Nazi Germans) oppositional groups. In the Jim Crow South, this too was at play, as you can see in that letter. People were not simply having to step up against hatred raised by KKK rallies and acts of terrorism. Or the official harassment and repression brought about by the instruments of the state through police and prosecutors and zoning boards. They had to stand up to their friends. Their own families. Their parents. Their spouses. Their children. And so on. Try to imagine crossing a loved one over a major political issue now, then imagine that you are on opposite sides of a protest; one holding signs and watching them hurl objects at you, degrade you, etc. I don't think most people would stand up and be counted under those conditions. Most people would stay home and maybe say how awful that was that protesters were beaten, arrested, had dogs attacking them, and rocks and bombs hurled at them or their properties and churches, as they saw these things on the news or in their daily paper in the comforts of their own homes, far removed from the scenes of the day. Or maybe they'd even say "that those niggers and nigger-lovers got what they deserved." As many must have done for decades in order for Jim Crow to last as it did.
Or worst of all they could have gone out and started moving within the faceless or nameless hordes who opposed the protesters and demonstrators themselves, as many throughout the country did to oppose busing routes, voting registration campaigns, integration and schools, and so on.
It's easy for us to stand up against any signs of systematic racism now, much less point and mock when it surfaces from the mouth and action of a private individual. When second-class citizenship for blacks and the institution of slavery is considered a forgotten blemish on the nation's history, it's not that hard to point out how pointless and immoral these things are to try to restore. What's harder to do is convince people just how hard achieving even that much really was for the people who lived through it.
Speaking of things that need standing up to... This is overdue. I think they say better late than never.
Why I don’t think the USG will default
1 hour ago
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So...which part of this was the nope part?
You'd almost have to be reading merely to be pissed off if this one garners a nope.
It would have been in the old reactions an "interesting", however that wasn't an option.
How is it the homosexuality for you is not a moral question? Is it on the level of moral significance as the blue or black shirt?
Why is this particular sexual perversion to be protected as a civil right? If homosexuallity is a civil right, are other sexual perversions also civil rights? Sexual perversions like public dogging, bestiallity, paedophilia, and rape. Should these also be civilly protected? Should we "stand up" for rapists because that's their choice? Where is the line? What is the difference? What makes the social arbitration where it is, currently, wrong?
Uhhh. Not to butt into y'all's conversation, but homosexuality is not a perversion. Whoever told you that is just flat out WRONG.
It's a matter of consent - people consent to homosexual relationships all the time. Nobody consents to be abused (be it by a family member, a date, a friend, a lover, a random person in an alley). Consent is what makes it right or wrong.
Animals are a different animal. But YES - in a court of law, a rapist (or anyone accused of rape) SHOULD have a representative to "stand up" for him. That's how it works. As should the victim. It's called advocacy.
Not Undecided,
[...]but homosexuality is not a perversion. Whoever told you that is just flat out WRONG.
What is your proof that she is wrong?
I figured this was the point of contention you were going to raise. I just wanted it in the open.
1) I don't see how homosexuality is a perversion either. To me this would be like saying that having oral sex (with your significant other), is a perversion. Or pre-marital sex is a perversion. I would like to see what element decides that it is a perversion first before deciding that somehow I need to prove that it is not (otherwise, it's not even clear what I'm arguing against). If the only proof that can be called upon is your own personal moral approbation and revulsion, then that is not a sufficient feeling for deciding universal moral and sexual perversions. Lots of people do some freaky and weird things to each other in sexual settings that you or I may find inappropriate personally. I could care less what two (or more) other people find enjoyable sexually and romantically for their private lives.
2) Even if I were to accede the argument that it is somehow a sexual perversion (which I don't), it is a consensual sexual perversion, unlike any of the other listed elements you are comparing it toward. Public sex, bestiality, paedophilia, and rape all directly or indirectly inflict harms on non-participating bodies which are significant enough to regulate through legal sanctions against them. Homosexual acts do not. The only offence they commit by doing so is whatever you let it offend you on. I myself don't sit around watching two men have sex or make overt sexual overtures to each other through aggressive pre-sexual activity (fondling or kissing). But I don't because of that sense of personal revulsion get to begrudge two men who want to have sex with each other and develop the same level of emotional and psychological attachments to each other as any other heterosexual couple might for that behavior and choice. It's not my life and I can make no apologies for that.
3) As a result, to me, there is no "line" and there certainly isn't a slippery slope problem here as you are implying. I can see some relationship between the notion that people who are supportive of gay marriage or homosexual civil rights may be also supportive of things like legalized prostitution or for people to have contractual obligations (like a marriage) with more than one partner at a time (or simply have more than one sexual partner). These are things which many people are uncomfortable with (many more than are uncomfortable with homosexual relationships), but as far as I am concerned, are on a similar moral standing as far as how we can regulate or legally penalize when other people do them. They are counterproductive for the most part in the way we handle them, just as the drug war has been. Social approbation, such as you apparently have, is probably sufficient to police such activity in the absence of actual harms (such as STD epidemics or non-consensual sex acts).
These things however do not have 80% public support like repealing DADT does and are very far from becoming comfortable and realized political outcomes and rights as a result (with a couple exceptions on legalised prostitution in Nevada and Rhode Island). Besides which DADT deals with something that is very, very far from the arguments you are attempting to liken to it. The "right" to serve your country in war or peace doesn't strike me as something that should even call into question who you want to have sex with when you go home to your private life. If somebody wants to fight for our cause, then what difference does it make?
There might be some related moral case to be made about marriage rights as they relate to homosexuals, but the only good one which is even marginally persuasive to me is to treat "marriage" as a religious ritual and leave it up to churches who they will marry and either get the government completely out of the marriage business or conduct only state marriage licensing as civil unions, applying the equal civil rights to our personal choices made in consensual contractual arrangements like this. And that still doesn't lead us down a path that lets rape go unpunished or child molesters go free. We do quite well enough at both of these things on our own without trying to blame gay people for them.
Quite simply, to me the "line" implies that we shouldn't have the right to tell other people who they should have sex with (as adults or consenting age partners), who they should fall in love with, who they should raise families with, etc. Those are our own private decisions only.
I see it as a very much greater injustice that we attempt to control these issues through legal force and segregated legal rights and status and see no connection at all between two men or two women who have private consensual relationships that they find enjoyable and mutually beneficially and the actions of a rapist or child molester. The fact that you do is mildly disturbing and somewhat disappointing, especially from the perspective I have taken on your personal religious views, but not actually terribly surprising.
And yes. It is on the moral equivalence to me of wearing a blue or black shirt. If you don't want to have gay sex, perhaps because you find it abhorrent for some religious/moral or personal revulsion reasons, don't have it. Just as you don't have to wear blue or black when you don't want to.
That is interesting. I specifically did not want to presume to know what your opinion was on the morality of homosexuality. I never say things right.
What is wrong with societal arbitrations that you personally disagree with? Why should you force your personal opinion as a moral right or good on society?
Your argue:
People like myself using societal pressures to force our morality on others is bad and must be intervened on by the state or federal government...
Because you have what? A higher morality? A better plan? You are smarter? What we're doing is evil?
You seem to have no problem with making new harsher laws as long as they are against people with different beliefs than your own.
What new harsh law am I proposing here?
I'm proposing GETTING RID of a law.
The rationale I'm using is that I don't know what the appropriate moral grounding is, therefore it is best to err on not doing things at all with the force of government on which to give those moral groundings force of law.
It is your moral grounding that is currently being imposed as correct. You should defend it if you think it deserves to remain in place better than you have done by mixing and matching it with things that are unrelated and uncalled for (such as paedophilia or rape). These are not persuasive arguments because they are not based on anything at all.
The issue of making harsher laws, if I have advocating doing so, is that they should only occur when issues of consent and harm are concerned. I see no harm or consent being violated within homosexual relationships. You need to convince me that there is one or the other to convince me that the current legally repressive regime should remain in place in other words.
This is more or less where I would come down on racism as well. I'm not totally comfortable having private discrimination in public settings, such as a privately owned business, being banned or restricted, but it's hard to see how that sort of discrimination could be imposed without using public resources, such as the police or courts. Which should be prevented from discriminating on the same basis precisely because the views and behaviors of minorities of the population should not be subject to governance in that fashion simply because it is very possible for the state to use its force or power for more nefarious goals other than merely satisfying our private preferences not to associate or do business with people of a particular nature.
I see no inconsistency here by presuming a moral equivalence between racial discrimination by state resources and sexual orientation being discriminated against by the same state resources.
And I make no assumption that what you are doing privately by condemning homosexuals is evil. What you are doing that is potentially evil is using state resources to condemn them by creating unequal legal provisions to satisfy that private agenda.
You are still free to express homophobic or otherwise anti-homosexual views privately, to gather together with others who hold like minded opinions, and to publish or extol at length upon what you think is right in this instance.
As far as my moral and political views on this, I've written about it several times. I think I'm pretty clear that it would be better not to have a law at all. I have not advocated for instance a law which requires churches to marry gay people, nor have I advocated treating homosexuals, or really any other minority, with an explicit governmental preference over anyone else.
http://suntzusaid.blogspot.com/search/label/gay%20rights
I've actually opposed affirmative action too, though like with CRA, I have a lot of mixed reactions about it.
This is all also tangentially related to this discourse from not long ago.
http://suntzusaid.blogspot.com/2010/04/morally-squishy-rumination.html
Moral certainty is not likely easily attained. But I wish that fewer people assumed that their subjective feelings and emotions were at all a reliable source of it. They would probably feel a whole lot better to let more things, that don't affect them in the slightest, slide. Perhaps not though.
Two other points came to mind.
1) In the technical/dictionary sense, this is probably correct that many somewhat abnormal or rare sexual acts are "perversions". This however carries little moral weight into the conversation. Eating pork is, by consulting the majority of the planet's population, a "perversion." by this measure. It's hardly a convincing way to get people who enjoy eating pork to stop doing so.
2) I'm a little confused. If you didn't want my moral opinion on this subject, then why ask for it? If you didn't want it, then what did you want? Only the clarification of the probable political impact without the underlying moral assumptions that make that (useful, I think anyway) distinction between harmful or aggressive actions and non-harmful consensual actions? If it was your argument previously that
a) you cannot legislate people away from private discriminatory behavior (an argument I am largely in agreement with) and
b) you should not need to encourage people with government largess or requirements to do things that are self-evidently in their own self-interest (such as getting education, or in this related case, establishing last relationships with people they love and possibly getting a job serving a country's armed forces in a time of war/strife)
then why would it be your position that discarding a law which does both of these things is an untenable position that somehow imposes harsh conditions on other people? If that's what you are accusing me of wanting to do here (or elsewhere), then what exactly makes this a consistent position that is not merely the same as: "You seem to have no problem with making new harsher laws as long as they are against people with different beliefs than your own."
We are in agreement homosexuality is an activity people engage in, not an "immutable" characteristic of a certain group of people.
Earlier you made the claim that public schools are necessary, but you weren't sure what for.
Public schools don't educate well, but they do a great job at indoctrination, of which you are living proof.
Activities are regulated through laws.
We have speed limits but they are different at different places. Your logic on homosexuality, could be moved to the argument of why speed limits are different in different places and why we have them at all. Your logic is speeders are a group of people defined by an activity they engage in. Speed limits are discriminatory against speeders. Thus, we shouldn't have a speed limit in front of elementary schools.
This is of course ludicrous, and so is your comparing people grouped by activities they engage in to civil rights groups.
DADT is like a speed limit. It does not prohibit engaging in an activity, it simply limits what one does in some manner to protect not only those engaging in the activity, but others who may be exposed to the effects of those activities.
What if we said, "Activities can and sometimes should be controlled through legislation, however thoughts or "immutable" characteristics, even if possible, should not be controlled through legislation."
My contentions herein were not reached through public school (my school's sex ed course did not discuss homosexuality, etc at all). You are proceeding from a false assumption on that point. I'm curious how your own contentions were reached and how you don't suspect that they are not themselves aspects of indoctrination rather than speculation or whether you question this yourself at times, as I, as a consequence of my education, do all the time. It is necessary to speculate on the possibility that you are wrong in order to arrive at conclusions that might be right. I have indeed followed your conclusions that perhaps homosexuality or its related sex acts are wrong, but I don't see how that makes it something we need to legislate and control because it is impossible and foolish to compare voluntary acts with involuntary ones, particularly for legal purposes.
Nor did I state that public schools were necessary. I said SCHOOLING (education) was because of the massive positive externality effects. I did in fact say there was a decisive benefit for schools, just not public ones, or otherwise known as the current system of primary education.
I also did not contend here or anywhere else that homosexuality is merely an activity and therefore am not in agreement with you there. The morality of those activities is something separated from the people who engage in them (in part because heterosexual couples can consensually do most of the same things as a homosexual one, such as oral or anal sex). Some of these are people who cannot or do not wish to engage in "normal" heterosexual activity with others, some are willing to do so, and some might fake doing so in order to fit in or not draw attention. These are, in most cases, due to immutable characteristics about their person, much as skin colour or eye colour is, with a strong level of biological and fixed determinants and at best only some level of personal choice or environmental conditioning. So in that case, yes, it is appropriate to treat it as a thought or immutable characteristic that should not be controlled through legislation. If it is merely a choice to be gay, as it seems you would argue, it might be possible to say it should be regulated or controlled, except...
you still have not provided any analogy or cause to demonstrate that the activities themselves need to be controlled, regulated, or prevented. This is not anything like speeding in front of a school where there are potential harms involved that should be restricted, so it is not a good analogy. This is more like a normal person consuming alcohol or smoking a cigarette, only with far less potential for external harms. Something we may privately disapprove of but which we have very little control over whether other people will do them or not (at best, we can control where or when, such as by restricting public acts or preventing people from smoking/drinking at their workplaces by employer conduct codes). I agree completely that it might be necessary to control some activities through legislation, but this hasn't shown itself to be one of them. (I also believe most of our legal codes relating to smoking and drinking are excessive).
Who does it harm that needs to be protected?
What does it do that is so harmful to society?
PS, in the future, it would be better if you did not make many assumptions in order to attempt to insult me with ad hominem tactics such as questioning my intellectual resources and their origins. I might take the following argument more seriously if you can control whatever hostility or anger you feel as a consequence of the topical matter at hand and refrain from making personal what should be professional or otherwise intellectual discourse.
In this case, your following argument is internally consistent, but proceeds from a false set of assumptions: namely that we agreed on something relating to the character of homosexuals and their activities (which we have not), and also that we have somehow agreed that their actions are harmful to other people other than themselves who voluntarily and privately consented to a sexual encounter or relationship, a factor which you still have not established what the basis for your contention is or would be.
If you want to maintain harsh laws like these as though they are school speed limits, I need to know why they are like school speed limits when to me they are plainly not at all similar.
As a point of order: check out the book list I've got on my profile. I read most of those while I was supposedly busy being indoctrinated by nefarious public school teachers (who I regarded as mostly apathetic or stupid). Ie, while I was still in high school or very shortly afterward.
I read all of them by choice to further my own private curiosity and intellectual grounding. None were required reading until I reached college, if at all. If you can think of a primary school anywhere that requires its students to read anything at all by Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Mill, Russell, Descartes, Montaigne, Machiavelli, Rousseau, Kant, Conrad, Jefferson, Madison, Hayek, Friedman, or for that matter Sun Tzu, I'd love to hear about it.
That's where I'd be wanting to send my kids if I ever have any.
My only proof is that I know many gay people, and I know many "perverts" (child molesters, abusers, etc.). They aren't the same kind of people. If I had a child, I'd leave it in the care of my gay friends. I would not leave it in the care of the molesters. Sexual orientation is separate from proclivity to abuse.
Primary school required reading... I would tell you, but by the way you say that it would indicate a serious lapse of paranoia on my part. So I won't tell you. Suffice to say small portions of Plato and Kant were required at my primary school. "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad was fifth grade and "The Prince" by Machiavelli was seventh. Rousseau sounds familiar, but I have no idea why. I didn't hear of Sun Tzu until college and I've never read the Art of War. As for Jefferson, I'm not really interested in the writings of a man who wrote and nullified the Constitution in his lifetime. Maybe I should be, but I'm not.
Social approbation, such as you apparently [don't] have, is probably sufficient to police such activity in the absence of actual harms.
I'm not the only person using ad hominem tactics, nor did I start it. This and similiar comments directed at me, personally, make me unhappy. I was simply stating my opinion on this without attacks "to the man," but that is really hard.
I consider you to be intelligent. I thought the statement in question form would indicate my opinion in a less hostile way. (I was wrong!) You understood my opinion and why I disagreed. I wasn't angry. I just didn't agree.
Not Undecided:
Perverse: Adulterated, twisted, disturbed, deviating from normal, un-natural, etc.
No where in the definition does the term "abuse" appear, or as a synonymn to it.
I generally think of the term perverse as an opinion on appearance. Opinions on appearance indicate perspective of the individual. Perverse is a comparison of a person's perception of something to what that person perceives as normal or natural.
The perception(s) maybe incorrect, but the opinion concerning its appearance cannot be proven incorrect. If a person looks at an object from one angle his perception of it will not be complete, this does not make that person's opinion concerning its appearance wrong. His perception is incomplete because of features not observable or understandable from that perspective.
I don't see how that constituted an attack on you personally at all (and quite frankly, I'm hard pressed to think of another human being who would think it did). If you can explain how, I will apologize for the personal insult. Other than stating that somehow you have felt insulted, it's not clear to me that I directed a personal attack at you. At all.
I considered that point an explication of the moral basis for establishing laws. If it offends you personally that you cannot, under my view, establish your personal views as legally binding on other people, then I'm not sorry at all for your condition of feeling insulted. I find your position on this entirely inconsistent and am frankly amazed at your gall that you have attempted to place the blame for establishing "harsh legal regimes" upon me in this instance and now take to claiming personal offense because of this line of argumentation that you yourself used. If you want to persist in taking personally things which are ideas and debated subjects, and thus persist in feeling unhappy, I can have no control over that. All I can say is that I prefer "insulting" the ideas, and not the people. Taking a dismissive attitude toward another person on the basis of where they (supposedly) come from is hardly a productive debating tactic in order to make their ideas go away and stop bothering you. I believe there's a movie line that goes "if my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions". I am not frightened or insulted by your private attitudes. I am frightened that you think they should become my attitudes by giving yours force of law over my own.
I considered it very likely that you found homosexuality to be abhorrent for personal/religious/moral reasons, which you are still free to hold on to. I wanted to know what those were, but by and large they routinely boil down to things that are not sufficient to establish public policies as legally binding on the rest of us who don't hold those things or don't find them compelling reasons to establish codes of conduct that are binding on other people (as in the case of Jim Crow using state laws which were required to be followed by people who did not want to discriminate against blacks or whomever or face penalties for not following them).
Social opposition and voicing displeasure is thus entirely sufficient in my view to police such activities that actually cause such perceived offenses to mores without getting the police involved at all. Police and related state action should be saved for actual harms which cannot be arbitrated as easily with mutual discourse and/or contractual arrangements, such as rape or murder or fraud.
I would say you were thus fortunate to actually have to read something potentially thought-provoking. I can state definitively that this was not my experience with such schools, nor have I encountered many people who had such an experience. (and you don't specify it here, but I suspect you're talking about a private school, possibly religious, rather than a public school by referring to it as a "primary school"). In any case, making the assumption that I was "indoctrinated" by such schools, when a large portion of my intellectual pursuits were my own rather than compelled upon me by such a medium is a considerable charge. If you thought it was somehow to be taken as anything other than a direct insult to my intellect, then I'm afraid you're going to have to learn how to say things more clearly rather than assume I will know what you are talking about without translation. It is obvious to me and should be to you that we have emerged from very different cultural and intellectual traditions and some level of translation is needed else we may as well start talking in German and Chinese respectively, or some other combination of roughly incompatible languages.
For the most part your criticisms or catches have been structurally sound and useful, even if they are often disagreements. I'd like to think this means you are generally intelligent or at least reasonably informed on those topics. But I think it would be beneficial that, when you firmly disagreed as it seems clear you want to on some issues, you were more clear on why this is instead of using indirect or misdirected arguments, such as making claims of public indoctrination. It will not be obvious to me whether you find your statements amusing or conclusive evidence because for the most part, they are totally removed from any context when they are not connected to the worldviews and factual assumptions that you have about...anything (myself included).
Generally it looks to me like these disagreements are in part a difference over governing philosophy (aside from a couple of cultural matters where you are probably much more conservative, you seem thus far a little more anarcho-capitalistic and probably a little less pragmatic than I am for instance. Neither difference has to be automatically a bad thing, though they will at times result in strident political or moral disagreements) and primarily a difference over factual assertions or sets of data on which those determinations are based. For instance the previous disagreement over liberal/conservative family values and their tangential topics like abortion or educational opportunity involved what I find to be well-established and researched sociological and economic facts that you apparently were somehow capable of denying their validity, at least until it was clearer to me anyway what precisely we were arguing over. After which, I'm not sure what you thought since you stopped the thread.
Since I do not generally associate with people who have your mindset privately, it is useful for me to engage with it from time to time in order to evaluate my own pre-conceived notions against their opposing values. But as yet, I'm not convinced that you're doing it very well (and it seems you are as well). Perhaps you are not accustomed to associating with people like me either and this is providing us with greater difficulties than should be necessary.
I agree completely in the technical sense that perversion is probably an accurate description of homosexuality.
But if you look at the line of perverse things that you equated to it, most of which are forms of abuse (rape, paedophilia, bestiality), it's hard to see how the conflated definition between abuse and perversion doesn't exist in your mind and thus demanding of some response or dis-ambiguity. That argument goes the other direction, as I was attempting to point out by referencing oral sex or pre-marital sex, things which are far more common and thus not likely considered "perverse", but which used to be under the same guidelines that lead people to claim homosexuality as a perversion, in the moral sense rather than the sense of its commonality as a sexual practice.
I see no distinction between homosexual practices and romantic attachments and other consensual sexual fetishes or activities which not all people find appropriate for themselves and thus while it may constitute a perversion, it is not a form of abuse. That's where the so-called line is and that's why it's ridiculous to compare it to things which are forms of abuse as though they might become accepted practices if we tolerated homosexual practices or indeed treated them with equal legal magnanimity.
DADT, I think, was established to protect those practicing homosexuality from people who would harm them. There are a lot of people in the military, some practicing homosexuality, some vehemenently opposed to it. How do you find the ones willing to harrass, abuse, or kill practitioners? It is more efficient, then, to prevent the practitioners from disclosing.
Thus I disagree with the premise that repealing it is a good thing.
Sorry, I accepted what I percieved as your opinion of my position as my position. I accepted this percieved assertion because, to me, it seemed irrelevant.
Pre-marital sex is in my opinion just a form of extra-marital sex, and all of those forms of sex you mentioned, I do consider perversions.
It is certainly "more efficient" from the perspective of a heterosexual to prevent homosexual people from disclosing their private affairs. I linked the letter above to disclose the point that it's not at all efficient in reality. I think you have a very low opinion of military servicemen if you believe that there will be large numbers of such people willing to harass, abuse, or even kill people on the sole basis of their sexual orientation and romantic attachments if we removed this restriction. First I don't see a particularly large and irate contingent of private people willing to abuse or kill others on this basis, do you? And that is an environment which is much less strictly controlled than the military, and with many people who are indeed open about their alternative sexual habits. I suspect it will be very easy to find people willing to abuse and kill other people on that basis and bring them to justice for doing so, and possibly easy enough to find people willing to harass on that basis (as we might have some experience in seeing with the service of women in the armed forces and common forms of sexual harassment).
Distinctions are drawn between homosexuals and the acts they can perform in part because such acts are not strictly limited to homosexuals (even if again, you perhaps find them perverse yourself, they are, in general, common enough that the technical definition of "perversion" does not any longer apply to these actions as they are not "abnormal" or "deviant" if they are commonly practiced by large, in many cases, majority percentages of the population). And in large measure because many of the actions of homosexuals, removed from the context of man-man or woman-woman relationship are entirely normal treatment between loving couples (displays of affection, gifts, vacations, attendance at social functions, mutual ownership of property, and so on). It would seem absurd and ridiculous to suggest that people should not "discriminate" in order to decide who they want to share these private joys and affections with and that they should therefore only have (consensual) relationships with others for whom you or I have expressed our personal approval.
How is it the business of ours how other people express their sexual and romantic appetites privately when no one participating is doing so against their will and consent? Are these perversions like oral or pre-marital sex acts then also things that you would prefer have governing authority to seek to prevent in the same manner? Where is that line for you?
I'll give you another example of this sort of supposed protective preventions.
http://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/students-american-flag-t-shirts-are-protected-speech
The school system sent a number of students home because they wore American flags in some fashion on Cinco de Mayo and it was deemed/assumed that this was in some way inflammatory or would/could cause violence. Does that seem like an appropriate measure? Or would it be more appropriate to penalize students who reacted violently and especially physically to otherwise inoffensive and non-aggressive gestures like wearing the colours of their home country?
"Not Undecided:
Perverse: Adulterated, twisted, disturbed, deviating from normal, un-natural, etc.
No where in the definition does the term "abuse" appear, or as a synonymn to it.
I generally think of the term perverse as an opinion on appearance. Opinions on appearance indicate perspective of the individual. Perverse is a comparison of a person's perception of something to what that person perceives as normal or natural.
The perception(s) maybe incorrect, but the opinion concerning its appearance cannot be proven incorrect. If a person looks at an object from one angle his perception of it will not be complete, this does not make that person's opinion concerning its appearance wrong. His perception is incomplete because of features not observable or understandable from that perspective."
Uh, okay. If you want to argue semantics or vocabulary, we could do that. I was just using the term as I thought you might have thought of it - I'll let you decide. Opinions on appearance are like assholes - I cannot prove your opinion incorrect, per se, but I can ridicule it because if you really think that homosexuality is a perversion....that's hilarious. The word abuse or a synonym for it may not appear in that definition, but what is abuse if not "Adulterated, twisted, disturbed, deviating from normal, un-natural, etc."?????
Also, "Pre-marital sex is in my opinion just a form of extra-marital sex, and all of those forms of sex you mentioned, I do consider perversions."
Now I don't want to ridicule you as much as pity you. And your kids, if you have any. That kind of attitude, while perhaps "ideal" for keeping chaste....isn't going to help anyone's SANCTIONED sex life, either. Heaping loads of guilt onto people for participating in perfectly natural sexual activity will only make them feel bad about the sex they're "allowed" to have later on. Yucky.
The problem would be a serious problem if the percent of public opinion is the same as that in the military. One out of five people is a significant group of people even one out of fifty can be a problem. Being a large minority only makes it more possible. Retribution, for personal attacks on their beliefs by the majority (people who don't engage in the activity, but accept it as okay for others), in the form of attack on a group that not even all the people opposed to DADT think the activity engaged in is acceptable. And many will probably experience some degree of discomfort in such knowledge. This discomfort readily conforms to non-opposition or even assistance in abuses. It makes them feel "tribal," like they belong to a group that is similiar in some "special way." The general premises of bullying and the allowance of it.
If there are 1 out of 5 people who are so virulently opposed to homosexuals that they want to beat or abuse them or even kill them, where the hell are they?
I think it far more likely that the tribal elements of feeling like part of the group will do the following
1) keep homosexuality repressed and private in most cases, at worst shared within the most trusted parts of the unit's structure.
2) keep people from beating and abusing their squadmates in an environment steeped in tribalism as a professionally trained military force is, which at best means that most units will come down harder on people who attack and beat their comrades simply because they are made personally uncomfortable by knowledge of that person.
These have been the experiences of professional militaries around the world that permit homosexuals to serve alongside others freely and without systematic bias and discrimination. In some cases with far more violent and aggressive sentiments being expressed before hand than even you are suggesting are the case here, much less how the actual military, its established commands, or the general public sentiment suggests are the case here (go see how the UK's decision looked when they did it for example). In two years we will be wondering what the fuss was over.
One other point, for the most part DADT is already deemed ineffective and ignored for combat units. If there has been a rash of attacks against disclosed and open gays and lesbians deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq (which there are some such people who exist, according to both the military and basic common sense), we're not hearing about it. Maybe the military is keeping a tight lid on that, as it can often do with things that it doesn't want the general public to hear of.
But I would suppose that a Congressman or Senator opposed to the change would have brought it up by now. They don't seem nearly as concerned about the welfare of gay servicemen as you are if that's the case.
I'll accept that.
In the future, I will attempt to be more honest concerning my moral convictions, it is and should be relevant. Yes, I do question them, often; but I have them, even some that I have serious doubts about. They compose a part of who I am and how I reason or fail to reason.
Not Undecided:
You cannot prove my perspective incorrect per se, but you might try to understand why I might consider homosexuals, rapists, paedophiles, and those who engage in sex with animals to be very similiar.
Then go ahead, ridicule all you want.
"Are these perversions like oral or pre-marital sex acts then also things that you would prefer have governing authority to seek to prevent in the same manner? Where is that line for you?" - if you answered that question, it would be possible to determine what in fact your own personal basis and perspective was. What concerns me most is where the line is. I for example assume that you took the original line to mean that if homosexuality was okay, then all those other things were as well, otherwise you wouldn't have listed them together. And thus asked whether or how they weren't.
If you are indeed satisfied that I have explained what my own distinction is, I'm still quite curious what you would prefer to use.
Would you
a) not have any sexual conduct laws, even in the event of harms (presumably on the basis that such harms would be taken care of in some other means than the judicial system, say vigilantism, private discrimination and public/social ostracizing)?
b) have more such laws governing the conduct of others? If so, what laws do you suppose are lacking or to have been dismembered, and how would they be found constitutional (since most sodomy laws were overturned by constitutional grounds, as well as their impractical natures for enforcement and punishment).
c) think some laws are appropriate and others not, and again, if so, what's the dividing line
d) how would you enforce any of these proposed currently lacking laws? and e) how would you acquire both constitutional and public sanction for passing them and making them active and enforceable?
At present I can think of several such laws that people have proposed that aren't presently being used, or if they are, are being used in ways I would think horribly unjust. Consider sexting or the private distribution by teens of nude images of themselves to other teens both being treated as child pornography and sexual abuse, equal legally to paedophilia committed by adults upon young children and teens, or similarly, the treatment accorded late teens for having sexual intercourse of any kind (or of particular kinds), again treated as though it were a legal equal to a rape and a sexual violation, and with equally damaging legal consequences. Consider the hatred and disdain for sexual offenders, people who molest children for example which I think we often rightly possess, and then extend that to people who must be labeled as though they were child molesters. These seem like entirely different devices if they need legal sanctions at all, and yet they are treated as equals.
Point being, from my perspective, I'm having a hard time seeing how the mindset which equates homosexual acts and homosexual persons with paedophiles and rapists could somehow parse cases like these out in a legal and/or moral system, if at all.
I should have qualified, "I'll accept that." with the DADT question.
What is the appropriate "age of consent" to become sexually active?
You obviously differentiate age similar sex from age dis-similar sex, but on what grounds?
Your position would appear to prohibit this distinction merely on ability to consent. Since consent is the difference between the abusive forms of sex and homosexuality which is consensual, either these young teens are capable of consent, or they are not.
b) I have no problem with more laws on sexual activities, provided property rights are respected and constitutional rights are enforced as to private property and rented property use and/or investigation of use.
My question and its related aspects were in reply to your most recent commentary, not your most recent commentary directed at me specifically. I've moved on from DADT as a topic since it's clear you don't seem to know why people in positions of power and decision making authority think it must be kept in place anymore than I do if we're in relative acceptance running down the one substantive point you directly raised there.
I've explained my position on harms and consent I think well enough that you understand it now, which is good enough for me. I don't actually care if you "accept" it or not over whatever it is you use yourself since you haven't bothered to try to knock it down as wrong. If you still think you have a basis of superior morals, you are welcome to it. I've little interest in converting other people to my own moral theories except so far as is necessary that I might live in relative peace with them where they have very different ideas. Fortunately, we have a reasonably free country on these points. It's not even necessary for most people to tolerate my views so long as I am still free to express them.
You're still not answering my questions by the way. Almost any of them. In the entire thread here. At the very least, I'd like to know why they are being ignored (you can't answer them, you don't care, you're misrepresenting your own positions for argumentative purposes, you've never thought about it, etc).
To answer your questions...
I accept that we need to use a legal number for consent, but I think it makes these questions look much too simple when they appear to be morally complex. I'm very confident that pre-teen, prepubescent children could not consent to overt sexual acts (perhaps interest in "sex" such as hand-holding or kissing or hugging are fine, but I don't think that particular question needs to be broached. If you do for some reason, let me know).
I'm reasonably confident that most teenage children, particularly most younger teens, are not actually consenting to sexual conduct with fully aged adults. But I think there's a tremendous grey area when teens have mutual sexual interest in each other that they act upon which looks very much like the consensual sexual habits of adults with the caveat that we're talking about "children" when it is two teenage people. To the extent that it follows the same established patterns of consent and harm avoidance (ie, rapes), I have no issue with teenagers being sexually active at all. It's not clear that all such teen sexual interactions follow this form. In fact, I'd say that a significant percentage probably don't (though whether these should constitute a legal rape charge is a slightly different question). Which does indeed make a strong case for people to counsel caution and perhaps even abstinence for a time (though I'd at least suggest that they also make teens appropriately aware of things like birth control and condoms in addition to this, on the safer "real-world" assumption that they may or may not make better decisions relating to having sex in the first place, and on the almost certain assumption that they will have sex, at some point in their lives, for purposes other than procreation, perhaps with a spouse or future spouse).
I suspect one critical difference is that most adult figures are deemed far more likely to be abusing a position of power, authority, or age-deference to command sexual activity out of a person rather than to gain actual consent and mutual interest. Most teenage children's interactions with adult figures will be of a set resembling one of the following: teacher/professor, pastor/priest, adult family members, coach, boss. Note those are all, in some form or another, authority figures. I assume there are still plenty of ways for adults to interact with teens outside of these settings, but I'm not sure that these would be common, not viewed as somewhat creepy and pathetic (by at least some peers), and, importantly, likely to develop substantive relationship bonds such that sexual acts would follow without the access that these roles of authority are likely to possess. The issue is less about age-disparities and more about the prospect of a trusted mentor abusing their position for sexual pleasures without proper consideration for their role and the trust involved in it. One supposes that we would frown upon, say, a doctor having sex with their patients in a similar vein or a lawyer having sex with their clients, etc. The main reason to avoid this problem is that human beings can respond to authority without actual consent, particularly when impressionable or younger. While they will tend to respond to their peers in a very different way, often with mutual accord.
In summary, a teenager should be expected to be a little immature at times and perhaps do something silly or "perverse" like give their (presumably teenage) boyfriend oral sex (and then find out it's not as fun as they thought, or something). And we should be a little, forgiving is I think the word to use here of such things. By contrast I'm pretty sure we should expect adults to be mature and thus be able to make somewhat more responsible decisions in relation to others. The really tricky parts are the legal definition of adulthood doesn't quite coincide with a "mature" outlook. An average 19 or 21 year old is often very different from that same person as a 23 year old or a 25 year old in maturity or outlook and certainly in terms of personal experiences and the growth therein, but all 4 ages would be usually considered legal adulthood, which to me is quite silly. Some 16 or 17 year olds might be more mature and sensible than college students, and maybe some 40 year olds won't be as mature as either group. At some point we need to decide that on some particular points, they need to be accountable, and the only answer we came up with is that we use an arbitrary number to say when that is. Otherwise we'd have to evaluate almost every case and its particulars. Which is probably my preference, but which is apparently really frustrating for lawyers and judges. And probably parents.
What laws would that be? (there was the explicit followup to that). If you think there ought to be more laws governing sexual conduct of other people, what are they?
Original question:
So...which part of this was the nope part?
I put nope and no comment because I fear attacks on my personally held beliefs from people that hold differing personal beliefs.
I did not intend to insinuate a position necessarily more well reasoned or morally superior or more capable of being practiced only express why I couldn't very well say "indeed" or "meh". I am interested in your ideas and your expression of them and how I might better express my own ideas.
I missed the "prefer to" in that question. I have no preference of laws to be made.
If there is a hell and if homosexuals go there ("or if they don't go there") then that will satisfy me as far as punishment.
Fair enough.
For most of these things, I am content with privacy and people making frowny faces or otherwise providing evidence of displeasure at others who do these things, if they are in fact displeased, that creates a form of social arbitration as people who are thus offended that they are offended can then express their own displeasure and annoyances, and so on.
I'm big on contracts as indications of consent, so marriage contracts and the rights included in them and benefits explicitly available are kind of like service in the military as far as I'm concerned. I'm not sure entirely what your position extends to doing with the legal rights of people who couple off within homosexual or even alternative relationships of any kind (the rare poly-amorous types for example who would likely violate the terms of a stock marriage arrangement by having non-exclusive but mutually accepted sex. Even if they don't or can't or shouldn't be able to sign multiple marriage contracts to sanction it), but I gather it's sufficient to let people burn in hell instead of suffering here. Which is a progressive enough start I suppose.
Incidentally, I can think of a couple laws relating to sex that I'd want either interpreted differently or imposed.
I'm pretty sure that it's possible even with the context of a sexually active (or even sanctioned by marriage) relationship for one party to be raped or sexually assaulted. Simply being married or committed to an exclusive (or even a non-exclusive) sexual relationship doesn't grant free sexual rights to each other. Such objections may or may not be common, but they do exist and ought to be respected. They often go unreported because, naturally, a person probably does not want their spouse charged with rape and sexual assault. We may need to create some other category or charge here as a consequence or otherwise treat this as some sort of domestic abuse/violence incident but with penalties imposed not so much by the state but reasonable penalties selected by the victims of such incidents (marriage or sexual counseling for instance). In much the same way that we use private methods to compensate marriages damaged by incidents of adultery, a stronger social notion that sexual rights are not necessarily automatic within marriage contracts would be helpful.
I also see no reason why a prostitute, an escort, or any other sex worker could not be raped or sexually assaulted and demand restitution or justice for the attack. Social mores tend to lean against this already with the (somewhat less common, but still prevalent) assumptions that women who are raped were in some way asking to be raped.
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