Suicide: An Ethical Delimna

[bennyboy]

You're using the term 'victim' here pretty broadly, as in if someone makes another person feel bad, that person is now a victim. By that same logic, a gay person should deny their sexuality if there family isn't accepting of gay people, because it may hurt their family's feelings and make them victims. That gay person knew their family was against homosexuality, and decided to come out of the closet anyways. Fucking selfish....

This is the joy of working with ethics: it's almost all grey area.

In the case of homosexuality, there's a more complex balance of goods and bads involved. For example, if one decides not to come out, it may save the family's feelings, but might leave other homosexuals isolated, still leading to a net harm; one can imagine that a young gay person isolated in this way could even be a suicide risk. If one goes so far as to marry, then the wife will almost certainly suffer as well. So this is not a purely selfish issue: be myself, or save others. It also involves the GOOD that an openly homosexual might do in the world and in his/her society, as well as alternative bads that could be prevented by honesty.

In the case of suicide, things are usually clearer: it really is a conflict between the desire of the self to end suffering and the pain that it will cause many others. It's hard to imagine a scenario where someone's suicide will lead to any good.