pop morality

[Jenny A]

Drich, you're right about pederasty. In Plato's Symposium, some of the participants rationalized the practice of older men taking young lovers by claiming that the youths benefited from the relationship. I predict that we will start to see attempts by some perverts to soon do the same. After all, aren't they helping the vulnerable boys to embrace their budding sexuality?  They did it "for the children!"

That is disingenuous.  Rightly, or wrongly, Plato was not suggesting sleeping with children, certainly not as children were defined at the time.  He was advocating September/May homosexual relationships.  Not sure how much I like that either given the difference in power, but pedophilia it was not. The age difference would not have shocked anyone had the participants been an older man and a younger women. There are however societies that did engage in male sex with little boys.  Mostly these involved a young slave (getting back to the unBiblical notion that slavery is wrong).

Perverts (or "preverts" as my husband's family says) are simply the class of people whose sexuality we don't like at the moment.  That would include at some time or another: gays, people with fetishes, pedophiles, those into bestiality, people engaging in anal sex, people engaging in oral sex, people who have sex with the lights on, those into BSDM of any sort, sex involving equipment of any kind, doggy style sex, incest, and so on.  

It's pretty easy to sort these by those that are definitionally nonconsensual or necessarily harmful to one party or the other.   All of them can be nonconsensual and therefore harmful to one party as can ordinary vanilla sex within a marriage.  The real question is whether we ask further than does this sex offend our personal sensibilities (not a sign of moral turpitude) and ask the more serious question, does it hurt a nonconsenting person. 

And yes our definition of non-consenting has expanded to include those too young to consent, and those too much in the control of another to consent.   I'd say that's a step in the right direction.  We have noticed that gay sex is not harmful.  We have also noticed that forced sex within marriages is as are forced marriages,  and sex between people of greatly differing power such as patient doctor sex, and teachers student sex.

If you really want to make the slippery slope argument, why not consider where we might go with Biblical morality if we accept a  little of it?  If we accept the ten commandments must we also:  punish rape victims, aborting the fetuses of adulators, and prohibit the jews from marrying non jews?  Or maybe we should bring back stonings? Multiple wives?  Slavery? Killing people for accidentally touching sacred objects to stop them from falling?

[Neo-Scholastic]

...our definition of non-consenting has expanded to include those too young to consent, and those too much in the control of another to consent.  

The importance of consent is with one with which I agree. Yet why should sexual interactions between adults and children be treated any differently than interaction in other areas. For example, adults can compel children to eat things, take medicine, take music lessons, etc. without their consent because the adults believe it is good for the children. Now of course most people in today's Western culture know that adult-child sexual relationships are generally traumatic and psychologically crippling for children.

All I am saying is that evil people are very good and rationalizing very harmful things especially with respect to primal desires like greed and lust. But if perversity becomes part of the culture then people become blind to the harms it causes. It is conceivable that at some point pederasty could be the new "civil right". Afterall, some people say you cannot legislate morality and complain about other people pushing their morals onto them.

[Brakeman]

...our definition of non-consenting has expanded to include those too young to consent, and those too much in the control of another to consent.  

The importance of consent is with one with which I agree. ..

Except when it applies to your god's directed rape of captured virgin girls of other tribes, right?

[TheRocketSurgeon]

...our definition of non-consenting has expanded to include those too young to consent, and those too much in the control of another to consent.  

The importance of consent is with one with which I agree. Yet why should sexual interactions between adults and children be treated any differently than interaction in other areas. For example, adults can compel children to eat things, take medicine, take music lessons, etc. without their consent because the adults believe it is good for the children. Now of course most people in today's Western culture know that adult-child sexual relationships are generally traumatic and psychologically crippling for children.

All I am saying is that evil people are very good and rationalizing very harmful things especially with respect to primal desires like greed and lust. But if perversity becomes part of the culture then people become blind to the harms it causes. It is conceivable that at some point pederasty could be the new "civil right". Afterall, some people say you cannot legislate morality and complain about other people pushing their morals onto them.

I've been (and remain) very ill, these past few days, so I missed a chance to respond to Drich and to participate in this ongoing conversation, but I feel I need to chime in on this.

We keep hearing the question, loosely phrased, "If it's okay to have sex in __this__ formerly-forbidden way, then why is it still forbiddable to do __this___?" (particularly, the first blank is homosexuality and the second blank is pedophilia).

As Jenny has already pointed out, the simple answer is that we know that children are unable, psychologically and in terms of emotional development, of consenting to sex with people who are adults, and since we as a society have (sometime since the Bible was written, apparently) decided that sex without consent is called rape, then pedophilia is banned on that basis. I cannot see a circumstance in which sex with prepubescent, that is to say non-sexual, children would ever be considered moral or acceptable, regardless of the desires or justifications of the people who wish to engage in such acts. 

On the other hand, Hebephilia, which is adult sexual attraction to teenagers, is a slightly different proposition. If science discovers that we are wrong about this factor, then I can see the laws changing to suit a different figure than the ones we have artificially drawn (somewhere between 14 and 18, depending on the nation and/or the state in question), but as things currently stand, I cannot see a basis for the "but if people want to, then isn't anything permissible" argument I see being made here. It's apples and oranges, when you're talking about the behavior between two consenting adults and behavior of one major and one minor person, the latter of whom cannot meet the standards I set out above.

This is a question of harm. There is no harm in "perversion", as people choose to call a great many acts. You will recall, no doubt, that all/any anal or oral sex (even between a husband and wife) was technically called sodomy, regardless of which gender(s) performed the acts, under the statutes which until 2004 prohibited it. The idea was that sex was for reproduction only, and anything else was perversion. Thankfully, we are moving away from that "every sperm is sacred" (Python joke) approach to sexual behavior, and we're not letting those who want to label things perverse determine what two consenting adults may do to one another. Conflating that question with acts against children is, I believe, willfully dishonest.

So, while I keep hearing Christians on these types of forums saying things like, "It is conceivable that at some point pederasty could be the new civil right", I simply see no realistic basis for such an argument. It's simply an assertion that's thrown out there, without bothering to address the question of harm and/or the data about why  there's such a thing as the Age of Consent.

In the words of Dr. Drew Pinsky, "There’s a reason we have laws in place protecting young people. Their brain development isn’t such that they can render consent for something like sex. And for a judge to say that a 14-year-old to consent to this  … It is outlandish in a way that I cannot describe. There’s no such thing as someone being older than her chronological age who can magically have a brain of a 21-year-old. She may have behaved in a way that was inappropriate, but guess what? That’s a sign of mental illness. Those are the people we need to protect the most."

[Exian]

Which is it, Drich? Are we just following the current "pop morality" by accepting homosexuality, or are we challenging the morality of past generations by accepting it?

[Drich]

It is possible Drich has no empathy. I couldn't possibly comment.

Some people don't, and to try and understand how they experience the world is very hard for me. Empathy is my motivating force in almost everything I do, so the idea of not having it is so alien that I can barely get my head around it. It's not someone's fault either, unless they have made a conscious decision to fight against it so hard that they have "deprogrammed" themselves.

I could understand people who lack it trying to seek some other motivations or explanations. Religion, as usual, is there to offer simple answers to difficult questions, not caring about whether they are true or not.

If I had absolutely no empathy, how is it then I know just what to say to get under the skin of the self righteous so easily?

I have empathy, but it is a tool I control and use to meet whatever logical end I am trying to achieve. it is not a free range emotion that can be used to keep me in check with pop culture. (like how you questioning my ability to empathize and holding the term sociopath over my head is supposed to get me to back off.)

If not being control by my 'empathy' (which you think you can obviously manipulate/big picture Goverment can also manipulate) makes me a sociopath in this group then so be it. I'm not some emotionally lead monkey who will be force to change his mode because someone changes the tempo of the music.

[Whateverist]

I have empathy, but it is a tool I control and use to meet whatever logical end I am trying to achieve.

So then you're a psychopathic apologist? I thought so.

[GrandizerII]

It is possible Drich has no empathy. I couldn't possibly comment.

Some people don't, and to try and understand how they experience the world is very hard for me. Empathy is my motivating force in almost everything I do, so the idea of not having it is so alien that I can barely get my head around it. It's not someone's fault either, unless they have made a conscious decision to fight against it so hard that they have "deprogrammed" themselves.

I could understand people who lack it trying to seek some other motivations or explanations. Religion, as usual, is there to offer simple answers to difficult questions, not caring about whether they are true or not.

If I had absolutely no empathy, how is it then I know just what to say to get under the skin of the self righteous so easily?

I have empathy, but it is a tool I control and use to meet whatever logical end I am trying to achieve. it is not a free range emotion that can be used to keep me in check with pop culture. (like how you questioning my ability to empathize and holding the term sociopath over my head is supposed to get me to back off.)

If not being control by my 'empathy' (which you think you can obviously manipulate/big picture Goverment can also manipulate) makes me a sociopath in this group then so be it. I'm not some emotionally lead monkey who will be force to change his mode because someone changes the tempo of the music.

So cognitive empathy you have. More importantly, how good is your affective empathy?

[Brakeman]

It is possible Drich has no empathy. I couldn't possibly comment.
..

If I had absolutely no empathy, how is it then I know just what to say to get under the skin of ..

I have empathy, but it is a tool I control and use to ..

If not being control by my 'empathy' ..

I don't think Drich really understands what Empathy is..  or has a clue..

[robvalue]

No, it doesn't sound like he knows what it is. If he thinks it can be taught, he really doesn't know.