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Abstracts of essays; news; announcements; short takes.
About Me
- Yawning Bread Sampler
- This blog carries summary abstracts of Yawning Bread essays, with space for comments.
Here too are other tidbits that are too short for the main Yawning Bread site.
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Blog Archive
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2007
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July
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- Ian McKellen supports Indignation
- My kissing project, part 2
- Homosexuality and the moral imperative
- A more complex history of 'Malay'
- Entertainment news: Ian McKellen
- Racial Harmony day
- $2,500 to rent a 3-room flat?
- Hong Kong court finds public sodomy law discrimina...
- This month, the Christian rightwing finds 3 more v...
- Invisible histories of our city
- Unintended consequences
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July
(11)
Posts
5 comments:
Indeed, I love how they throw the word "moral" about as if it adds weight to their argument, without ever defining what it means.
Do they not realise that morality is ever-evolving? That slavery, apartheid, denial of women's rights to vote, inter-racial marriages were once all considered "moral" by the "moral majority"? That before and during the civil rights struggle for African-Americans took place, the majority were most certainly NOT in favour of equal rights for them? That it took a vocal minority to rally for changes which to us now seems the "norm"? How do they fail to see that what's happening here is exactly the same scenario?
And how does repealing the act open the floodgates and promote the "homosexual agenda". Did racism end once apartheid was lifted? Has gay-friendly countries like Canada experienced drops in birthrates?
It's really really frustrating and upsetting to see the irrational hate these bigots can spew on fellow human beings, especially so when they are seemingly educated, informed people.
Hi Yawning Bread, this is probably somewhat pedantic, but i'm not sure you can even say that heterosexuality is a statistical norm. What do you mean by a statistical norm?
Suppose that every baby born has a 0.1 probability of being homosexual. Then, if you take a large number of babies, say 10000, the probability of NOT having a person who is homosexual is extremely low (0.9^10000). Therefore, from a statistical point of view, any society that is of reasonable size must have a proportion of homosexuals. From this point of view, it is a statistical norm for any society to have a mixture of heterosexuals and homosexuals. It is not statistically normal for a society to have only heterosexuals.
Anon, 28 July 06:07 -
Technically I think you're right. Thaks for clarifying.
Actually,YB,statistical refers to the 80% of the population(under observation) that falls under the 80% portion of the normal or Bell curvein stats.
You were right initially.
Your point about the Golden Rule,
"Don't do to others what you would not have others do to you."
is very insightful. It shows clearly enough that in arguing the "anti-gay" moral position, it has first to be flouted, thus undermining the generality of the moral position.
What is worse is that, the position becomes untenable without further sacrificing self-consistency. No amount of argument against nature for free-will could save it. It is good that you highlighted this as many people are caught up in trying to argue it either way, not seeing that it is just a red-herring.
In fact, as you seem well-aware, if it is a matter of free-will, it makes the holders of the position hypocrites, who would celebrate their free-will by quashing all other people's on the authority of only the scriptures.
They should be reminded that in the same book it says:
"Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." Matthew 7:5
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