holmes responds to me:
quote:
That is a rather bold statement. Our gov't and society has allowed some degree of nonconsent all along, and seems increasingly interested in overriding consent in the future. Good modern examples are drug laws, and anti-smoking ordinances.
Oh, I agree entirely, but those are unproductive aberrations; they shouldn't be there. If we did away with drug laws, for instance, we'd be left with individual consent.
I suppose maybe there are some things about moral relativism I don't understand. I always thought of it as the alternative to strict social control, nothing more or less. Thus, on the question of marriage for instance, once morality is dispensed with marriage or marriage-like contracts can be freely entered into by anyone and with anyone. But the state can still impose limits where it can show a compelling interest, such as might be the case where power-of-attorney rights afforded to a next-of-kin are concerned. We touched on this briefly in another thread not long ago.
But no marriage can ever be entered into by a non-consenting party, nor by a party incapable of giving intelligent, or "informed", consent. Whether age-of-consent laws are ideal or not (and I think we agree they're not) some method must be available to determine whether or not a person is adequately cognizant of the potential consequences of entering into any sort of contract, and certainly into a marital contract. No moral relativist argument I've ever heard would ignore that fact.
The point of this is
not to drag out the insult discussion from the Haggard thread. It is only to settle the point of difference over it between me and you. I maintain that the man-marries-dog nonsense is not valid in any light. Until anarchy becomes a wildly popular political (or
apolitical) movement there is no danger that the need for consent in marriage will be abandoned no matter how far from biblical christian morality our legal systems and contracts might go. Therefore, the man-marries-dog argument is absurdist and can't possibly be introduced for any intellectual purpose.
Imagine that this whole discussion had been about the right to have sex rather than the right to marry. Let's say that sodomy laws are still in effect, and someone defends them by saying that once we start letting people have sex with anyone they want, what's to stop them from raping someone? I don't remember anyone making that argument before Lawrence v. Texas but that's probably only because it's so absurd. Rape violates the right to consent of one of the parties to the action, and that's precisely what makes it such a vile crime.
So if a moral relativist position on sodomy laws could not logically extend to legalization of rape, how could a moral relativist position on marriage logically extend to marriage between humans and animals?
quote:
Relativism does not avoid or reject all socio-legal concepts.
My point exactly.
quote:
Consent is not an absolute.
Can you elaborate on that a little? In spite of what you we're saying before, I'm not quite sure I follow you.
W.W.E.D.?
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