26 May 2010

You want us to fight your war?


What the fuck we fighting for?

6 comments:

Tragedy101 said...

We know people are born alcoholics and sociopaths, too. And we have laws against them. Just because you have a proclivity does not justify it as right, wrong, or just okay.

Sun Tzu said...

There isn't a law against being a sociopath or alcoholic. There's a law against killing or endangering other people. Being an alcoholic, excepting having done something harmful like that to another person, is treated as a voluntary condition.

Sun Tzu said...

Incidentally, there aren't also laws against doing homosexual acts (such as sodomy laws, which have been repealed or questioned on constitutional grounds, to say nothing of their questionable moral value).

What there are are laws which grant benefits or privileges exclusively to people who don't perform such sexual acts as oral or anal sex with people of the same gender or at least those who sign contract arrangements with people of the opposite gender in order to share in these benefits or privileges.

There's a strong argument to be made that it would be best not to extend such rights and privileges using the government which I am amenable toward, but most people are uncomfortable with the idea that people don't need further incentives to create and establish families. I see this as a very unlikely framework to be abolished at anytime in the near future (because it is overwhelmingly popular). In which case it calls into question why it need only be established over a particular set of the population and excludes a small minority of the population without an appropriate explanation beyond personal offence or revulsion. Miscegenation was attacked on these very same grounds, and is, for the most part, now regarded as something the government should not be involved in trying to prevent. Social and cultural pressures against homosexuals are not banned by removing the legal disparities that prevent their private consensual arrangements from taking place, as we can observe from the fact that interracial marriages are legal, but in most parts of the country, often rare. Private discrimination and social pressures still exist and in this case, cannot be legislated away. We cannot for example compel straight people to marry gays. It makes no sense that we should legally compel gay people to marry straights as a consequence of that line of logic.

Anonymous said...

What I have always said, and always will say (until I can think of a better way to put it), is that we are discussing human rights, not gay rights. Having pleasant sex with an adult who also wants to have sex with you is an in-alienable right. No one can pursue happiness without the possibility of sexual release lurking behind the corner.

Many things are right in one situation (such as drinking in a celebratory and social setting such as a wedding) and wrong in another (such as the moment when you panic and realize that you, and you alone, are responsible for getting the small neighbor child to the hospital twenty-five minutes away). The only real protest that I can think of to homosexuality is that they can't procreate. Luckily, many, many, many straight people love to fuck and accidentally procreate without meaning to. Lots of these accidents need homes (while many don't, seems to be the luck of the draw) and if there just happens to be a gay home which has a spot for a kid then everything has worked out just peachily, right?

Murder, rape, enslavement, all of these are sins along with having consensual, enjoyable(hopefully) sex with an adult of the same sex. I wish all crimes were this victimless.

Sun Tzu said...

Actually they can procreate. Just not with each other. They can hit up IVF or a sperm bank, and each of them could produce a biological child if they wished.

And of course they can adopt those accidental children that people don't want (and didn't want to abort). Which to me is a form of procreation. I presume there are some who look upon this rather less than pleasantly for whatever reason, but this certainly seems like the least of an evil if an adopted kid isn't aborted, wasn't wanted, and has now two parents to support them. If that's somehow unacceptable, I give up trying to understand it.

Sun Tzu said...

One other obvious point I neglected here anon. If the concern is over homosexuals because they cannot reproduce, then what happens with childless marriages or marriages between sterile people (such as many elderly couples who might remarry late in life)? Are these likewise nullified and the contractual obligations we extend to the married partners neglected? I can see an argument (maybe) for only justifying marriages in state support because of children and family formation, but we don't ask or verify that when people request marriage licenses or civil unions from the state, nor do I think popular will would compel us to start doing so (both for privacy constraints and because that's not, in my opinion anyway, why people ought to be getting married in the first place: solely to raise children), so the childless objection sort of dies in practical terms.