Responding to "Homosexuality is wrong, the same way incest is wrong"

[Losty]

Monitoring what goes on in adults' bedrooms is going to be problematic, especially if all parties are perfectly happy with it and not complaining to anyone.

The idea of bodily autonomy is an interesting one though, for sure. I'm not up on the details, but I remember hearing people have less legal rights regarding their own body than you might expect. Probably varies in different countries of course.

Just a heads up, this thread was over 30 days old and it's generally discouraged to bring one like this "back from the dead". You can always start a new topic about it, which is preferred. You should get a red warning sign in old threads to this effect when you start to reply to one.

[Prometheus]

Okay the things Im going to say sound a little out their but read thru this please.

I just want to get this out of the way, there is no such things as right or wrong. There is no universal rules that say killing is wrong (unless your religious then in tat case its your god). Morals are ideas or sentiments decided by the majority of the population of a group. Incest is widely accepted as wrong and is therefor seen as a crime and a moral violation. Being homosexual isn't right or wrong there is simply no such thing and same with insect. 

Take killing for example, killing someone is wrong or right at all. In the stone age before humans worked in groups they realized that if they joined together and agreed to mutually not hurt each other that they would benefit. However if they killed a team member they would suffer the consequences by dying. this is commonly seen in the line "don't do to other what you wouldn't want done to you". If you kill someone you endanger your own life. Because of self preservation you don't kill others and over time this has morphed into right or wrong etc.

Im open to any ideas or suggestions, corrections etc.

~ Prometheus

[robvalue]

I totally agree. Morality is subjective. Nothing is inherently right or wrong. It doesn't mean anything. They are value judgements, and as such, need a thinking agent to make the judgement.

Some people are tremendously uncomfortable with this, so much so that they pretend it's simply not true. But putting forward an arbitrary, subjective load of rules and calling that objective morality is nothing more than a person's own subjective morality, with an implication that they won't ever develop it.

We have to at least agree on what goals we want to work towards, before we can give any meaning to "right" and "wrong".

[Meandering Atheist -J-]

Im open to any ideas or suggestions, corrections etc.

~ Prometheus

I'm curious, have you taken a good look at the Sam Harris style of morality? The common definitions of morality I find to be rather confusing, and not on much of a good footing. The Sam Harris style (hopefully I don't butcher it too much) is to anchor morality to something observable. We can say that the moral thing to do is what causes the least amount of suffering. This way we can actually look at various practices and get an idea for how well society functions with them and see how much suffering they cause for everyone involved. The softballs are already easy; obviously murder or slavery etc. cause quite a bit of suffering and are immoral.

Now this is all me talking: Lets take this to the issue of homosexuality, namely the prevalence of homosexuals in the media. Normalizing a behaviour that is actually extremely rare in society is bound to convince some heterosexuals to embrace that lifestyle. Depending on how unhappy these people are, it could actually make the over portrayal of homosexuals an immoral practice. Not as bad as the over portrayal of violence perhaps, but still immoral.

[The Grand Nudger]

There's no number of gay people or gay stories I'll ever see on tv that will "turn me gay".  I seriously doubt that this is how it works for anyone.

[robvalue]

Meandering:

Sure, Sam Harris says "let's agree morality is about maximising wellbeing". I am on board, that's what I think it should be about. And if someone thinks it's about something else, I'm going to try and explain why I think it's a bad idea.

However, from a philosophical point of view, all he's actually doing is excluding certain people from the discussion. I am fine with that, but I also like to keep in mind that if you ever want to bring other people round (those who don't agree about what morality should be about) you need to explain why your goals are better, not simply tell them they can't be part of the discussion.

Under Harris' definition, which most civilised people would agree with (after some make irrelevant extra points about god), homosexuality is in no way a danger to anyone's wellbeing and so is not a problem.

[Divinity]

Now this is all me talking: Lets take this to the issue of homosexuality, namely the prevalence of homosexuals in the media. Normalizing a behaviour that is actually extremely rare in society is bound to convince some heterosexuals to embrace that lifestyle. Depending on how unhappy these people are, it could actually make the over portrayal of homosexuals an immoral practice. Not as bad as the over portrayal of violence perhaps, but still immoral.

This might just be the stupidest fucking thing I've heard all year.

Why is it that straight people are so fucking worried about people TURNING GAY, when they're the ones who are trying to TURN PEOPLE STRAIGHT.  I mean give me a fucking break.  They're the ones trying to 'fix' what isn't broken.  You don't see "Pray Away the Straight" therapy centers, now fucking do you?

[The Grand Nudger]

You would, if Mother Church and all of her pretty dresses and gold stitched slippers, and unmistakably homoerotic gods, apostles, and saints would just come out of the closet along with their clergy. Catholics, particularly, would be pushing each other over to get to the gayifying centers, if that's what the church decreed. Divorcing their spouses and foreswearing carnal relations altogether in order to be closer to christ (and ofc, confessing their dirty, sinful heterosexual sexcapades every sunday). Sending their children to homo-school.....funding the gay agenda, and voting for the queerist candidate.

At least, they tell us that's how they've decided what to believe.....who to be....how to act....and we wouldn't want to call them bold faced liars...because that would be impolite, regardless of it's accuracy.

[paulpablo]

These days I tend to disagree with a lot what you could describe as left wing liberal ideas.

But I just can't see a single solitary reason why homosexuality would be considered wrong, from any angle whatsoever.

Now as for incest, it is different.   Ideally parents are supposed to give motiveless constant care to the people they give birth to, I think this would be disrupted by sexual behaviour. So that's one angle. I don't have brothers or sisters so it's very difficult for me to talk about brothers and sisters, my philosophy on this is on a similar level though. Your close family, I think ideally, is good for motiveless altruistic support.

I think the values that an ideal family has of motiveless altruistic support isn't carried on in sexual relationships, people tend to pick sexual partners for very selfish reasons.  I can't imagine anyone saying "Well my sexual partner isn't funny, has no money, they're quite stupid and I find them repulsive to look at but I love them anyway." 

With homosexuals there's nothing I could say about the way they do things that I couldn't say about straight people.  I've heard people say homosexuality is different because HIV is spread more through homosexual sex.  My argument to that would be that it's not exclusive to homosexuals, and if you're going to make that argument then you should be arguing that straight sex is wrong also and people should only be allowed to breed via insemination and the only kind of sexual activity allowed should be lesbian sex.
The fact that homosexual sex doesn't lead to children is not something I see as wrong either, that's just not having children.
As for if homosexuals should be allowed to adopt children or have children via artificial insemination I think that's a separate debate and not a topic that I have a very informed opinion on.

As I said I see myself as a very anti liberal person but when it comes to homosexuality I just don't see the issue, the thought of male on male sex disgusts me but it doesn't make it wrong.

[Meandering Atheist -J-]

There's no number of gay people or gay stories I'll ever see on tv that will "turn me gay".  I seriously doubt that this is how it works for anyone.

Have you ever wanted to drink a beer that tastes like piss? You didn't watch the advertisements and think "wow! If I drink that cheap beer then lots of hot girls will show up!" You were conditioned by advertisements to have a positive association with that product. The same thing can happen with just about any behaviour. The term to look for is 'operant conditioning'

Meandering:

Sure, Sam Harris says "let's agree morality is about maximising wellbeing". I am on board, that's what I think it should be about. And if someone thinks it's about something else, I'm going to try and explain why I think it's a bad idea.

However, from a philosophical point of view, all he's actually doing is excluding certain people from the discussion. I am fine with that, but I also like to keep in mind that if you ever want to bring other people round (those who don't agree about what morality should be about) you need to explain why your goals are better, not simply tell them they can't be part of the discussion.

Under Harris' definition, which most civilised people would agree with (after some make irrelevant extra points about god), homosexuality is in no way a danger to anyone's wellbeing and so is not a problem.

Could you go into more depth on who he actually excludes and why? I'm genuinely interested.

Now this is all me talking: Lets take this to the issue of homosexuality, namely the prevalence of homosexuals in the media. Normalizing a behaviour that is actually extremely rare in society is bound to convince some heterosexuals to embrace that lifestyle. Depending on how unhappy these people are, it could actually make the over portrayal of homosexuals an immoral practice. Not as bad as the over portrayal of violence perhaps, but still immoral.

This might just be the stupidest fucking thing I've heard all year.

Why is it that straight people are so fucking worried about people TURNING GAY, when they're the ones who are trying to TURN PEOPLE STRAIGHT.  I mean give me a fucking break.  They're the ones trying to 'fix' what isn't broken.  You don't see "Pray Away the Straight" therapy centers, now fucking do you?

Now, now. Surely you've heard stupider things this year. Please don't get the false impression that I actually want to prevent people from being who they want to be. My only (minor) concern is in social engineering, and pushing politically correct notions of acceptance too far.