Harm in Homosexuality?

It was stated that there is no worth in comparing them in this thread. But I agree. Other than this assertion, which is just as good as saying harmful or not depends on if it leads to procreation, please explain why. Well actually...1) What is meant by "informed consent"? That is what information must one be capable of, or actually have, in order to be said to be delivering informed consent with regard to sex? I assume this is somewhere between mere consciousness, and the ability to understand what legal responsibilities mean in a contract.1) How does lack of "informed consent" inherently create harm in a sexual act? And I want the mechanics of this.2) Why would this be true regarding sexual acts when it is not considered capable of inherently creating harm in any nonsexual act... let's say a nonsexual massage, or minors level wrestling.3) Since you are claiming this applies to "paedosexuality", does this refer to minors engaging in sexual acts with each other, themselves, or is it confined to an adult (who has the capability for informed consent) engaging in sexual acts with a minor (who does not)?4) Given the above what is the resulting definition of minor? That is what is the age at which the conditions you set out in answer #1 can be attained and so "informed consent" available?It's interesting that you write off pedophilia as inherently not including informed consent so you don't have to explanation why, then try to detail how bestiality and necrophilia straddle some line on consent. Of course you never do mention how lack of consent would inherently harm an animal or corpse.Is it not just that it offends our sensibilities?

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

The idea that incest leads to birth defects has been shown to be a myth. It raises the possibility, but not significantly, unless it occurs over several generations.Incest in animals is actually used in breeding to improve bloodlines, so it actually can have a beneficial effect. Unless humans are different than other animals there is no reason this would not be true for us. Did you hear of the cannibal court case in Germany this last year? According to the cannibal there are a lot of people waiting to eat and be eaten in death, not to mention having sex. Some apparently can't even wait to die.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Morality in sexuality comes from the idea that it is wrong to abuse a position of dominance to obtain sex - such as doctor/patient, teacher/student, boss/employee, family member/family member, adult/child.The reason other abuses aren't treated as harshly as paedophilia is because paedophilia is easier to define (with an age limit). It's interesting to note that teacher/student sex in the UK is now ILLEGAL under 18.Consentual necrophilia should be discouraged, because it promotes extreme dominance and submission (ie a corpse CAN'T say no) and is therefore damaging to the living party, not to mention the practicality of legal permissions and storing the corpses.some thoughts on necrophilia from http://www.philosophos.com/...philosophy_questions_1449.html

Nice assertion.1) Morality in sexuality can come from all sorts of sources besides abuse of position can't it? Can't you think of some problems that have nothing to do with that? And are you saying right off the bat that religious morals regarding sexuality don't exist or can be discounted?2) Having sex with someone where one has a position of "dominance" is neither inherently abusive, nor is it condemned in all situations. For those with such a concern the key is usually if a person does use their position of authority to coerce someone into activity. The fact that many are now equating potential of abuse such that it must be treated as actual abuse is a telling sign we are talking about social feelings and not concerns about objective inherent harm. Easier to define? Than any of the other categories you just mentioned? What age is clearcut as opposed to say who is a teacher of a student? There are a variety of ages of consent across the US, much less across the globe. I have asked and been ignored so far on this, but I will ask again... what is the age where a minor is able to give informed consent (or in your example will not be in a submissive position)? Explain this please. How can it damage someone? This makes sense.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Marriages being religiously between a man and a woman is only one part of it though, it is also between and blessed by god. By allowing say me to marry, you already alter the definition of marriage since it would not in any way include god (christian or other). Why allow one part to be altered but not the other? This goes along with what you mentioned before in the original post.

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That's correct. But what about the reality of these recent days? Where christians do what they like - without geting married? What about them?

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That is a tough topic to approach the christians on who are doing this type of act. If you want to be accepting of all people and emphasize the "Love" and "Forgiveness" nature of the Creator according to the Bible, then many churches look away from this behavior in hopes of not offending anyone. But these same people then over do it ralleying around the Gay issue as a terrible sin. According to what the Bible says, this position is the wrong one to take and in my view, it's hypocritacal of the Church to even tollerate it.The Bible places fornication between the opposite sex as just as serious as fornication between same sex partners. So if you are going to really be the "Salt of the Earth" as the Bible says, then you should confront heterosexual and homosexual fornication EQUALLY from a Biblical perspective. They are both equally wrong in the Creators eyes and it's only man who has placed them in different courts. This is a function of our evolving society and it's changing moral values. But the Bible has been non-changing over the centuries that it was written and is still 100% applicable today. So those who turn a blind eye to heterosexual fornication but then rant on about homosexuality are scripturally confused at best and possibly not even Christians but merely using the Bible to support their own biggoted positon, perhaps to mask their own identitiy short comings.The issue isn't homosexual sin, it's sexual sin and when it's placed in it's proper perspective it is seen for what it is. All sexual sin is an offense to the Creator and according to the Bible, anyone who continually practices sexual sin after being revealed the truth, will not see God's kingdom. The Bible alludes to the fact that as a spiritual litmus test, if the Spirit of God is alive in a person (which basically means they are saved), then they will have great difficulty and spiritual unrest in themselves as they practice in sexual sin. If they continue on in the sin with no remorse or spiritual unrest, there is a good chance that they are not even saved in the first place, which is why homosexual unions are dangerous to the person.The Creator made no provission for same sex marriage so any form of it, no matter how loving and faithful and fullfilling, is still sexual sin according to the Bible. If someone chooses to live in this arrangement, then they are rolling the dice as to weather the Bible is then a document revealed by a being outside of our space/time dimension or it is just a fabrication of some clever scholors. If it is just a fab from man, then no problem, but if is indeed from the Creator, man they've got troubles.Finally (and I know I'm getting winded), the Bible warns against promiscuous sex because everytime a man has intercourse with a woman, the two become one in a spiritual sence. Since man was created with a limited intimate spiritual ability, the more women he has intercourse with, the thinner he is spreading himself in the abiblity to be solely captivated by that single one special mate. The same effect pertains to the woman. Since the Creator made no natural provission for same sex intercourse, one can only wonder what kind of spiritual crazyness is happening to the soles of people who enguage in this. It says in the Bible that when they do this they are given over to a debased mind which if interpreted MIGHT mean that the person's spiritual bonding ability has been corrupted or knocked way off center which makes it hard to see reality from a non-homosexual perspective or even bring themselves back to normal center. That's only my interpretation of what the Bible means by "given over to a debased mind" so if you take issue with that, it is me and not the Bible to critique.

I don't think so, not if we are talking about individual states.11 states passed the amendments by double digits. Those amendments (1) define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, (2) prevent any future recognition of civil union that could be applied to same sex couples, and (3) forbid future legislations from giving gay couples rights that are the same as the rights hetero couples already have.I don't think you fully understand the real reality of the situation. The majority of the people do not want gay couples to have the same rights as hetero couples.Remember segregation? Blacks agreed that they would be seperated from white folks given that they get the same rights, benefits, and protections. Guess what happenned.Again, we are not talking about a small group of people opposing gay rights. We really don't know how many there are, but recent election showed that their number is bigger than you think. They said the same thing during the civil rights movement, that blacks should have just accepted their place in society and the majority of the people might be sympathetic to their cause.Isn't it time we say enough is enough? Why should we compromise for something that we know, from history, won't work?

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Hate world.Revenge soon!

In respose to my statement: Holmes said: No, you imply that I have NO criteria or that my criteria is impossible to reach. I'm realy asking a very simple thing, If homosesxuality is wrong shouldn't there be something... well WRONG with it? I assume you are talking about your post regarding pedophillia and how harm is something that is socialy defined. Well, we have EVEDENCE that children who are molested become emotionaly distirbed. We also have evedence that homosexuals can be perfectly healthy emotionaly if they are allowed to live as they wish. I know in the past that Psycologists said that Homosexuality was a disease, that claim has been refuted by eveidence. Can you find evedence to support child molestation? Hmm.... Maybe every time someone comes out of the closet a billion innocent infants die somewhere in the andromida galaxy, maybe not. Maybe if we allow gays to have the same rights as straights the world will be consumed in a horrible nuclear holocaust in 20 years, maybe not.The point I am making is that you have no evedence! You have no evedence that this is a good law! You don't even have eveidence that it is an arbirary law, yet there is a great deal of evedence that this is a bad law. As for harm to God see below. Maybe God pukes every time he sees a gay couple kiss. If he does then he is homophobic and not the kind of god I would want to worship. If God is harmed in some way that is not realted to homophobia then he is less omnipotent than christians claim he is. Yes "male prostitution was heavily tied to a major competing religion at the time."Well, is it anymore? When was the last time YOU saw a Ba'al whorshiper? Is it possible to be a gay christian? Can you have gay sex and not be tempted by other demons? Do you have any EVEDENCE that gays leave the church for reasons other than the church is intolirant? Again maybe allowing gays to marry will summon the dark God C'thulu and cover the land in a second darkness. Can you point to a passage in the necronomicon where it says this? I'm glad you are amused but perhaps we could keep this conversation civil. If yamukas cased brain cancer then the law is no longer arbitrary now is it? Since outlawing homosexuality DOES cause harm the law cannot be arbitrary, It is either a bad law or there is some magic unseen harm that we don't know about that the law is preventing. If it is an arbitrary law, God should change it as it causes harm. You are quite right to point out that utilitarianisum has some serious flaws. I am not a utilitarian, but I chose to argue from a utilitarian standpoint in this thread becase it, more than other ethical theories, puts an emphasis on benefit v.s. harm. If you want to show how homosexuality is wrong based on on other ethical theories please feel free to do so. Might I suggest the doctrine of natural law? It's the one the church seems to rely the most heavyly on and has already been refuted and discusssed on this page. Or perhaps something a bit more exotic, say The wisdom of repugnance?Please note: The Bible puts forth many ethical theories and you may argue from any one of them. BUT you must argue from the perspective of the theory! Not just make an appeal to the athority of the Bible, we have a sepreate thread for that.

I am so frustrated. On my arachnids forum, someone made the usual "god hates fags" claim. When I asked her to give specific references, she said

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I would appreciate it though if from now on you leave God and the Bible out of it...remember, that's my God and my religion. I think that's part of why I got so mad, because it's so easy for someone who doesn't believe using our holy book in a bad way...well, I wasn't fond of that method.

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Arg!

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Hate world.Revenge soon!

Hey Lam - does sound frustrating.Just tell her you have unquestionable proof that all Christians are evil, but that you can't show it to her. And tell her that if she asks to see it, you'll be offended because it is your proof and your proof only, and she'll only misconstrue it.I'm sure she'll understand...

Ha! I'm already way ahead of you. Anyway, she said before that if people continue to question her belief that she will leave. I think I'm just beating a dead horse.

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Hate world.Revenge soon!

I am saying religious morals are set up to protect people and society (like all morals). They are either to protect the vulnerable (like children), maintain stability (like property laws and patriarchal rules) or, in some older religions to promote child bearing (to maintain population).Paedophilia is easy to definie because you pick an age, arbitrarily. But other things, like boos/employee are much harder, because anyone superior in a company might be considered 'boss' even if they have no other contact with the employee.Extreme dominance is pyschologically damaging because it promotes and rewards potentially abusive behaviour (like rape). Controlled dominance (like S&M) does not do this, because the submissive can exit any time they want.
The need for extreme dominance is also a sign of insecurity, and necrophilia therefore a sign of potential extreme insecurity - and it is insecurity/the desire for dominance that leads to rape and abuse.The age of a minor varies from child to child. But for practical reasons states must declare an arbitrary age.

Lam Writes: Thats why I like this kind of discussion because you can have an actual debate. You can say, "Ok, Maybe God does hate fags, but why would he do such a thing." That way you can get away from mushy debates about bible quotes "he does too say it" "does not" etc. and get to the heart of the matter.

I'm not sure if this is the time or the place for this discussion, but I'll respond here now, and if its got legs we could take it up in a new thread?What is informed consent? Yes, its a tricky one. Bonobos(sp?) seem to get by okay for much of the time, and I don't think they ever get involved in this whole informed consent business. Furthermore, can someone with severe learning difficulties be said to give informed consent, or is any sexual activity in which they engage with a partner an exploitation, a RAPE?Informed consent isn't the be all and end all then. Its just the best means that I can think of IN A CULTURE SUCH AS OURS to minimise exploitation and any resultant psychological and physical harm.There are problems in even trying to define informed consent. But if we had to say SOMETHING about it, what would it be? I'm just reaching around here. You'd think that informed consent could only be given when the "consenter" has a working knowledge of what they are about to engage in (in this case, a sexual activity). I guess that means the health implications, the possible repercussions for the relationship, and other stuff that I can't think of. I'd imagine that most adults could be said to give sufficiently informed consent if it was couched in these suitably vague terms. Of course, many children could too.I hope you didn't think that I was saying it was impossible for a minor to give informed consent. What the hell is a minor anyway? as you said at one point. In the Netherlands, I think you are good to go at 14. I think that much of the harm that can potentially result from adult/child relationships arises from the fact that such relationships are forced, in our culture at least, to be clandestine.Related to this, the other big problem is that adults have much more power in our society than children, and so any relationship between an adult and a child is one in which there is an inherent power imbalance. This increases the likelyhood and the degree of expoitation that could creep in (in the same way that other societies through history have apparently allowed a great deal of exploitation of women by men). In a society where paedophiles are reviled AND where adults have much more power than children, things look more bleak for children who are having sex with adults than in some other culture.My argument keeps coming back to exploitation here, and I'm not saying that exploitation is necessarily an evil in itself. Its just that if there is exploitation, there is an increased risk that the exploited party will be damaged.Of course, it might depend from individual to individual, but I imagine that many fourteen-year-olds, or even twelve year olds in our culture might be able to engage in sexual activity with others if there was a supportive climate for these relations in their family a social circle. But actually, in a culture sufficiently different from ours, there would be no particular need to mark puberty as a particularly significant time in an individual's sexual maturity.
I have no trouble in imagining, for instance, a culture in which a parent masterbating a child was equivalent to a hug or other display of affection (Bonobo time again). However, this kind of behaviour in our culture might cause problems for the child, when they learned it was not "normal".Does that help clarify my position?

I actually mentioned this in the post you were addressing. It is a point in the favor of gay marriage advocates. If I were pressing for it then I'd use this line of argument.However those that wish to argue against that still have a valid point stemming from the multicultural nature of marriage. Across all religions that have been active and using US law, they have all agreed that the definition of marriage is a man and a woman.Thus antigay marriage activists can honestly argue that the law was being fair to not enforce any particular religion in that it can be done before any god or no god at all, and thus (through tradition, legal and cultural) has created a set secular definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.That is actually a strong point, even if I would ask why a secular definition cannot change as new religions (or whatever) with a different definition of marriage want in on the legal process?

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)