Taking Manhattan out of the Apple?

_{vjtorley
December 3, 2010

Intelligent Design

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The Manhattan Declaration, a manifesto asserting the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and liberty of conscience, has been discussed previously on Uncommon Descent (see here and here ). Well, it’s in the news again.

I expect many readers will have heard by now that Apple has removed the Manhattan Declaration iPhone/iPad application from the iTunes Store. The Declaration – a Christian statement drafted in 2009 that supports religious liberty, traditional marriage and right to life issues – now has 479,532 supporters. The Manhattan Declaration app was accepted by Apple and rated as a 4+, meaning that it contained no objectionable material.

Last month, around Thanksgiving, the Manhattan Declaration application for iPhones and iPads was suddenly dropped, after the activist group Change.org gathered more than 7,700 signatures for a petition, after claiming that the application promoted “anti-gay” bigotry and “homophobia,” and that it attacked both “equal rights and the right of women to control their own bodies.” Under a headline entitled, “Tell the Apple iTunes Store to remove anti-gay, anti-choice iPhone application,” the petition drive concluded with the words: “Let’s send a strong message to Apple that supporting homophobia and efforts to restrict choice is bad business.”

The petition seems to have had the desired effect. Catholic News Agency contacted Apple on December 2 for the reason behind its decision to pull the Manhattan Declaration application. Spokesperson Trudy Muller said via phone that the company “removed the Manhattan Declaration app from the App Store because it violates our developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people.” Strange. Why the 4+ rating, then?

I believe in calling spade a spade, so I’ll just come right out and say it: Change.org lied to its readers and to Apple about the purpose of the Manhattan Declaration.

In their online petition to Steve Jobs, Change.org made the following deceitful claim:

The Manhattan Declaration application exists to collect signatures on a website which espouses hateful and divisive language, the very kind of language I hope the iTunes Store will not want to help disseminate…

Apple’s reputation is too important to be associated with this hate filled organization.

Oh, really? Let’s see what the Manhattan Declaration actually says about the unborn and about gay marriage.

In defense of unborn human life

The section on “Life” contains the following words:

A truly prophetic Christian witness will insistently call on those who have been entrusted with temporal power to fulfill the first responsibility of government: to protect the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, and to do so with no favoritism, partiality, or discrimination. The Bible enjoins us to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to speak for those who cannot themselves speak. And so we defend and speak for the unborn, the disabled, and the dependent.

Our concern is not confined to our own nation. Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and “ethnic cleansing,” the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS. We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and human cloning for biomedical research. And so ours is, as it must be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances. (Emphases mine – VJT.)

“The Bible enjoins us to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to speak for those who cannot themselves speak.” “Ours is … a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances.” Is this hateful language? You tell me.

I notice that Change.org speaks of “choice” in its online petition drive, oblivious to the fact that the innocent human being whose life is terminated during an abortion is denied a choice.

In defense of traditional marriage

“What about gays and lesbians?” you ask. Again, not a trace of hate. In the section on “Marriage,” the Manhattan Declaration affirms “the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life.” Obviously that includes gays and lesbians. The Declaration goes on:

We acknowledge that there are those who are disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct and relationships, just as there are those who are disposed towards other forms of immoral conduct… We stand with them, even when they falter. We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God’s intention for our lives…

And so it is out of love (not “animus”) and prudent concern for the common good (not “prejudice”), that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and to rebuild the marriage culture. (Emphases mine – VJT.)

Some readers may disagree with these sentiments; but there’s no condescension here. Notice the wording: “We, no less than they, are sinners.”

As I write this, more than 35,523 people have signed an online petition to have the Manhattan Declaration iPhone app reinstated. I would strongly urge readers to lend their support to the petition by signing it here or here.

Let’s send a strong message to Apple that giving a group of concerned citizens a platform to express their opinions, and then withdrawing that platform without warning, is bad business.

Comments

“The Taliban”? Markf, what have you been drinking? Dear friend, pour the sweet, cooling waters of Reason into that seething cauldron of yours and see if you can’t spare yourself a trip to the cardiologist. The Taliban embrace Sharia; the confectors of the Manhattan Declaration believe in separation of church and state. See the difference? No? Try again. The Manhattan Declaration is a “manifesto” against Modernism with its smug nihilism, not a political blueprint. So you can unclench those tiny fingers and stop worrying. VJ’s not going to come knocking at your door with a pitchfork, even if Obama’s popularity is tanking and the Tea Party is on the rise. And speaking of outing oneself, may we now safely infer that you are a moral relativist with regard to “homosexuality”? Funny, that’s just what people on this site have been saying about Darwinism all along. It leads to the annihilation of moral absolutes. You say the “attitude to homosexuality apparent in these comments is deeply unsettling.” First, it might soothe your troubled spirit to try to understand it. VJ’s comments pertain to homosexual acts only, not to “homosexuality” (whatever that is). I can see why you would want to conflate the two. Sort of like micro and macroevolution. Second, no signer of the Manhattan Declaration has evinced any intention to “restrict the freedom” of homosexuals. But of course VJ is exercising his First Amendment freedom of speech when he expresses the opinion that homosexual acts are immoral. Do you desire to restrict it? (We know you do.)allanius_{December 6, 2010
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they incline not towards but away from authentic fulfillment What give anyone any right whatsoever to tell someone else how they feel ?Graham_{December 6, 2010
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markf, If I might add the following to what our host has said, it is not difficult to prove that anal intercourse is immoral. Any time a person who has the capacity to act rationally chooses to act irrationally, the act is immoral. Sodomy is the kind of act that cannot be rationally chosen. Hence it is always immoral. Murder, rape, and adultery are other examples of acts that cannot be rationally chosen. That is why there are moral absolutes that prohibit all of these things. Why do people do these things anyway? It is simple to satisfy some feeling or desire they have rather than exercise the self-control that reason calls for. You seem to agree that it is wrong to harm other people; but why is it wrong? Just because you or I say so? It is wrong to harm others because we are social beings who depend upon others for our well-being. In harming others we are harming ourselves, and no rational person intentionally chooses to harm himself. Immorality is always irrational. Now sodomy is exactly the kind of thing that the homosexual activists claim they do because of innate impulses that they choose not to control. Instead they choose to celebrate these impulses and indulge them whenever possible. No further argument is needed. Sodomy is irrational and necessarily immoral.Lamont_{December 6, 2010
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Hi everyone, Thank you all for your comments. Contrary to what some readers have suggested, the objective wrongfulness of homosexuality does not depend on the mechanics of the homosexual act being performed. Thus the question of whether two people of the same sex engage in anal sex, oral sex or mutual pleasuring is irrelevant. Nor does it matter if the people in question are two women or two men. Lesbian sex is just as immoral per se as gay sex. The "yuck factor" is something that should not be ignored. Presumably God gave us our feelings of moral revulsion for a reason. However, arguments based on moral revulsion alone are not decisive. Ever since the Fall of Adam and Eve, our moral compass hasn't been working quite the way it should be. We may feel little or no revulsion towards certain kinds of homosexual sex (e.g. gays having oral sex, or lesbian sex), but that fact in itself doesn't show that these acts are morally acceptable. Our sense of right and wrong may have been blunted by our morally wayward society, that's all. The other thing we need to be careful about with the "yuck factor" is that we may feel a sense of revulsion about a certain kind of act, without being able to specify exactly what it is about the act that revolts us. When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I knew people who could not even discuss homosexual sex without feeling nauseous. (Probably that reaction is less common today.) But if I'd asked them to specify exactly what it was that revolted them, I'm not too sure they could have told me clearly. Many people might have mentioned an aversive reaction to anal sex, but I think we should be careful of assuming that's all that upset them. Another factor would have been the manner in which the relation between the two partners in homosexual sex seems at times to "ape" the relation between a husband and wife, but in a grotesque, twisted fashion, like an image in a distorted looking glass. Yet another factor would have been a strong sense that one partner was at the other's "beck and call," physically speaking - in other words, that the homosexual sex act can become an act of power play. By the way, it is very naive for anyone to think that sex is really "all about love," and only people who grew up in the 1970s could have believed such nonsense. The reality is that human depravity being what it is, once sex is robbed of its procreative dimension, sex is really all about power, not love. We may be spiritually blinded to this point when we consider heterosexual sex, but it is gradually becoming apparent nevertheless. For many people, however, this point is easier to grasp when they consider homosexual sex acts. However, moral arguments should be based on more than a yuck factor. I'd like to discuss John Finnis' argument against homosexual sex, which he puts forward in his essay, Reason, Faith and Homosexual Acts. The gist of his argument is that for a heterosexual couple, a marital sexual act - i.e. one in which the couple express their friendship and lifelong commitment by sharing and giving each other pleasure, and which culminates in "a union of the generative organs in which the wife accepts into her genital tract her husband’s genital organ and the seed he thereby gives her" - brings the couple together at all levels, biologically as well as at the level of feelings and intentions, so that they become "one flesh." A sexual act of this kind inherently signifies lifelong exclusive love, because the union of organs is the kind of union that is capable of giving rise to a new human life, and the child resulting from a fertile procreative act will need to be cared for by a couple who have publicly committed to staying together for life, "until death do us part." That's the ideal environment for raising a child. The exclusive nature of the marital act still remains, even if a heterosexual couple's act is one which, on that particular occasion, cannot give rise to new life, owing to the couple's infertility or age, or the time during a woman's cycle at which the act is performed. The procreative dimension of the act is still there, even if the couple have no plans to procreate. On the other hand, an act - even between two married people - in which one partner views the other in impersonal terms, i.e. purely as a pleasure object, who just happens to be the nearest object available that can satisfy one's lust, is not a truly marital act, according to Finnis. Homosexual sex is by its nature incapable of bringing two people together at all levels of their being - biological as well as psychological. No matter how it is performed, nothing about the act itself signifies life-long exclusive love, which is the most intimate kind of love there is. Thus a homosexual act is severely self-stunting, and hence immoral, whether we realize it or not. What are the background assumptions Finnis is making here? First. he's assuming that children best thrive in a household with a Mum and a Dad, who have publicly vowed to be faithful to one another "until death do us part." Even today, I think few people would argue with this point. It makes obvious sense. Second, Finnis is assuming that since a physically intimate act between two people is sometimes capable of bringing them together at all levels of their being (as in marital sex), then it would be self-stunting (and hence wrong) for two people to perform a physically intimate act when that act is inherently incapable of bringing the two parties together at all levels of their being (as in homosexual sex, for instance). I think most of us can see Finnis' point. If there is a kind of love that brings people together at all levels of their being, then there should be a special kind of act for expressing that love, and it should be the most intimate kind of act there is. Hence for two people to engage in a physically intimate act when they are incapable of giving themselves to each other at all levels of their being is to "debase the currency" of intimate acts, thereby cheapening their value. That's wrong. The same argument could be made in relation to premarital heterosexual sex, of course. "Wild thing, I think I love you, but I don't really know for sure." That's not true intimacy; that's conditional love. Finally, Finnis is assuming that marriage is a basic human good. Basic human goods are goods which are intrinsically valuable (properly desirable for their own sake), objective (in that their goodness is independent of the attitude of the subject pursuing them) and universal (good for everyone). Other examples of basic human goods proposed by Finnis include the goods of life; marriage; knowledge; appreciation of beauty; religion; and play. It seems plausible that marriage is such a good. First, it can be desired for its own sake; second, its goodness is not dependent upon our subjective attitudes, but is instead something objective, like the goodness of health; and third, marriage is a universal good, in the sense that while not everyone may desire marriage, it would nevertheless fulfill and perfect everyone as human beings if they did choose to realize this human good. Marriage may not be chosen by everyone, but it is bad for no-one. The third criterion for a basic human good is likely to be the most controversial today, when applied to marriage. In the past few decades, we have come to accept the myth that there is a "type" of human being that is homosexual, just as there is a "type" that is heterosexual. (That's really pretty ridiculous, when you consider that many homosexuals are actually bisexual.) Once we fall into this line of thinking, however, we may be blinded to Finnis' last point. We may be tempted to think that there are some types of people who are inherently unsuited to marital love, as if something in their nature precluded them from being fulfilled by it. Once we accept that premise, then it might be tempting to say that for people of this "type," homosexual sex is the best they can do, so why not leave them alone to enjoy it? But of course, there is no empirical evidence from the human sciences that homosexuals are a special type of human being, with a distinct "good of its own" or telos. That's what the "gay rights" lobby wants you to believe, but it's a myth. We can see this by looking at a genuine case where there are two types of human beings, each with a distinct "good of its own." Men and women are two genuine types of human beings, and happily, their respective goods are mutually complementary, which is what makes families possible. "The purpose of a man is to love a woman and the purpose of a woman is to love a man." (Quoting a lot of lyrics tonight, aren't I?) That doesn't mean everyone has to go and get married or even that everyone would feel happier if they did. It just means that marriage is bad for no-one. Without further ado, here is an extract from Finnis' essay, Reason, Faith and Homosexual Acts :
Human fulfillment consists in the actualizing, in the lives of persons and their communities, of those basic human goods towards which the first principles of practical reason — the very foundations of conscience — direct us. Among these basic human goods is the good of marriage. The Church often speaks of the goods of marriage: (1) loving friendship between wife and husband, and (2) procreating and educating any children who may be conceived from the spouses’ marital intercourse. They are interdependent goods: this is a friendship sealed by a commitment to exclusiveness and permanence, a commitment of a kind made appropriate by marriage’s orientation to the procreation and education of the children of the husband/father and wife/mother; and that raising of children is most appropriately undertaken as a long-term, even lifelong commitment of the spouse-parents. Being interdependent, these goods can also be properly described as two aspects of a single basic human good, the good of marriage itself. ... The more distant a kind of sex act is from the marital kind, the more seriously disordered and, in itself, immoral it is.... In Christian marriage the personality, individuality and equality of the spouses is fully respected. The marital communion is not a submerging of the two persons into one. But it is a communion, a bringing-together of their wills in their mutual commitment; of their wills and minds in shared understanding and faith and hope; of their wills, minds and feelings in shared joys, cares, and sadness; and of their wills, minds, feelings and bodies in sexual intercourse. That intercourse, when it is truly marital, enables them to experience and actualize their mutual commitment and communion at all levels of their being: biological, emotional, rational and volitional. It is only truly marital when it has the characteristics of the two-sided good of marriage itself: friendship and openness to procreation. A sexual act is marital only when (1) it is an act of the generative kind, that is, culminates in a union of the generative organs in which the wife accepts into her genital tract her husband’s genital organ and the seed he thereby gives her; and (2) it is an act of friendship in which each is seeking to express commitment to and affection for, and the desire to benefit and give marital pleasure to, and share marital pleasure with, the other spouse as the very person to whom he or she is committed in marriage. These two conditions are also inter-linked. Only an act of the generative kind (in the sense just specified) truly unites the spouses at all levels, biologically as well as at the level of feelings and intentions. This is a real biological unity (even if, as is usually the case, the couple in fact cannot, at the time of intercourse, bring about actual generation of new life). For in reproduction a mating pair functions as a single organism. In respect of all other organic functions, from thinking to digesting, each human being is an entirely individual organism. But neither the male nor the female can reproduce; it takes their union in an act of the generative kind to bring about reproduction (if the background conditions of their bodies are in the state required for actual generation). So in an act of the generative kind, whether or not it results on a particular occasion in actual generation, there is more than merely a particular juxtaposition of members and sequence of movements. There is also, and fundamentally, a real (albeit in itself temporary) organic/biological uniting of the pair, so that then and there, in respect of the reproductive function, they constitute one organism. This is the one-flesh unity which Jesus, recalling Genesis, makes foundational to his teaching on marriage, and on sexual desires, choices, and actions in their relation, right or wrong, to marriage understood as the two persons, male and female, in one flesh. The conditions under which a sexual transaction between spouses can amount to marital intercourse are, to repeat, of two kinds. Their chosen behavior must be an act of the generative kind (taken on each occasion as a whole sequence of preparatory, consummatory and confirmatory), and their intentions and wills must also be united in service of the marital good instantiated in their exclusive and permanent commitment to each other in marriage. So a married couple’s sexual act is not truly marital if, for example, one or both of the spouses is wishing he or she were doing this with someone else, or is imagining doing so, or is willing to engage in this activity with any attractive person who could bring him or her to orgasmic release. Think of someone whose frame of mind is: I am willing to do this with some other attractive person, but the only available person at present is my spouse, so I’ll do it with him/her. Such a person is disabled by that frame of mind from making and carrying through a truly marital choice to engage in intercourse. In the technical phrase of the theologians, this person is engaging in intercourse for pleasure alone. His or her act of intercourse is depersonalized, not an act of marital friendship. The relationship of same-sex couples can never be marriage. The easiest way to see this is to ask oneself why same-sex sex acts should be restricted to couples rather than three-somes, four-somes, etc., or rather than couples or other groups whose membership rotates at agreed intervals. Nothing in the “gay ideology” can, or even seriously tries, to explain or defend the exclusiveness or permanence of same-sex partnerships or their limitation to couples... As careful large-scale studies have shown, and “anecdotal” historical testimony amply confirms, there are practically no homosexual couples, even long-term couples, to whom sexual exclusivity as a principle, and real mutual commitment to it in practice, make any sense. ...The way these [homosexual] inclinations originate in a particular person does not affect the fact that, just insofar as they incline that person towards sex acts with persons of the same sex, they incline not towards but away from authentic fulfillment.
Well, I hope that clears up a few matters. I don't expect that Finnis' argument will convert everyone reading this thread, but it should be clear that we are not dealing with subjective preferences here. Finnis is making certain assumptions about human nature which are either true or false. None of the foregoing should be construed as an attempt to denigrate homosexuals in any way, shape or form. They are children of God, with immortal souls. The key point I wished to make in this post is that an act of love between a husband and wife is capable of bringing them together as human beings at all possible levels, in a way in which same-sex acts cannot possibly do.vjtorley_{December 6, 2010
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markf -- But I certainly want you to accept homosexuality because I want there to be less people in the world making the life of gay people a misery. And I certainly want you to condemn anal sex because I want there to be less people in the world making the life of gay people a misery. See that, commonality.tribune7_{December 6, 2010
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Well somewhat pedantic point I think, Maybe, but it's a point that must be made. There is nothing in the Bible -- Old or New Testaments -- that gives allowance to a husband doing violence to his wife. Many seem to have a mistaken idea that it does so it is important to point this out. A good illustration of this is those fundamentalist Puritans passed an anti-wife beating law not long after they established a government tribune7_{December 6, 2010
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tribune7 #109 You are correct, it is not the husband, but the authorities re the chopping off of the hand of a woman. Well somewhat pedantic point I think, but still appreciated nevertheless. I don't think the justification for it that one always hears, "harsh times" makes any real sense btw. Harsh? Well life is harsh, so? Anyhow don't want to stray from the subject at hand. San Antonio Rose #106 - that's a good question, and I don't pretend to have an easy answer here. I don't. Although funnily enough, I was thinking about that exact same thing, after having posted up on this topic (the morality or otherwise of this taboo sexual act or whether as I say we should even frame it that way) to which you refer. You know the thing with human sexuality, it's so complex, diverse and so primal, that I don't think we can settle any debate or come with some pat simplistic notions of how sexuality should be, or is. And I think we tend to do that, from whichever direction we are coming. It is interesting that only humanity makes sex into a problem or problems. Animals don't. Then again only humanity makes the really big problems, not animals. Since sexuality is inextricably a part of human consciousness and its uniqueness (the two-edged sword of potential god-like wisdom and compassion and devilish barbarity that is the human mind), perhaps it's not too surprising that.zephyr_{December 6, 2010
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tribune #107 "There is an absolute moral order to the universe. Agree? If not why bother discussing anything with me? Or, maybe more to the point, why should I bother discussing anything with you?" I had a feeling this would come down to metaethics in the end. As I have said many times I don't believe in moral absolutes and there is still every point in discussing moral issues and trying to bring others round to your point of view - subjective does not mean trivial. Actually the issue of homosexuality is rather a good illustration of the subjectivity of morality. There is nothing you can do prove that anal intercourse is wrong and nothing I can do to prove that is morally acceptable. I know that. But I certainly want you to accept homosexuality because I want there to be less people in the world making the life of gay people a misery. And I expect you would like it if I rejected homosexuality. So we try to persuade each other using examples and appeals to consistency. They might work (I doubt it) but neither of us can ever provide a conclusive proof. Manable #108 "Does my brother count?" It depends. Is he a close friend? Is he in a long term stable relationship? "Are you applying this to all moral issues? Or all issues about sexuality" It applies to issues where there is no victim – no one is being forced or fooled into suffering.markf_{December 6, 2010
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zephyr, I'm sorry but I overlooked Post 95. biblical commands on cutting off the hand of your wife if she gets all uppity, There is no Biblical command to cut off the hand of one's wife much less a command for one to cut off the hand of one's wife if "she gets all uppity" If you are referring to Deut 25:11-12 the wording, as per the King James, is 11When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: 12Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her. The "thou" being referred to is not the husband, who would likely appreciate the assistance she has rendered, but the state authorities. Harsh to our ears but those were harsh times. Imagine if someone suggested that the penalty for losing a lawsuit be 40 lashes as per Deuteronomy. Which gets us to you statement that the taboo of homosexuality "has always been there." Well not always. While more often than not it has been a taboo there have been plenty of societies in which it wasn't.tribune7_{December 6, 2010
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Tribune7, I completely agree with what you've said about moral law, I do believe C. S. Lewis wrote about that and made a good case for it. Markf said:
How many of you have close friends who are gay?
Does my brother count? Even still, I don't see how this matters. Zephyr said
Hence why lesbianism doesn’t inspire the same wrath.
I think andrewjg was very right when he said it's probably the offensiveness to masculinity that makes it more wrath inducing, but also, because a lot of guys find lesbian activity attractive. Also, I disagree with you zephyr when you generalize Christians in general saying that we probably all have a deeper motive than the bible. I have plenty of reasons to try and justify it, but I don't. not because i find it repulsive, but because what I believe is the genuine reason for me believing it is wrong. As Tribune7 said, this debate is pointless if we don't accept a moral absolute. Markf said:
"If your beliefs do not prohibit you, you can just go ahead and do whatever you want. Its a free society after all.” This is entirely reasonable. It is not what is in Manhattan declaration and I suspect a lot of the other commentators here would disagree. But I whole heartedly support the message.
Are you applying this to all moral issues? Or all issues about sexuality?Manable_{December 6, 2010
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Sotto Voce Thank you for your post (#40). You ask:
Consider the following hypothetical: It is a statistical fact that members of a certain ethnic community, let’s say Inuits, are extremely likely to engage in open relationships. Would you think of this as sufficient grounds for denying Inuits the right to engage in marriage?
No. What I would say to Inuits is this: “According to the laws of this land, marriage is defined as a union between a man and a woman who publicly vow to stay together for life, and to have sexual relations only with each other, for the rest of their lives. If you want to get married on that basis, you are welcome to do so.”
So why won't you say the same thing to homosexuals?Heinrich_{December 6, 2010
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mikev6 --The act is evil. . . Presumably if I ask “why?” I’ll get the Bible response again. That would be rather pointless -- at least as far as citing chapter & verse -- since you've already said you rejected it. There is an absolute moral order to the universe. Agree? If not why bother discussing anything with me? Or, maybe more to the point, why should I bother discussing anything with you? If you don't believe in an absolute moral order then you can justify anything including theft, muder, and, of course, judging others for having opinions you don't share. The only authority is your own feelings and cultural norms that you may not have realized you've accepted. Now if you accept an absolute moral order do you accept that this absolute moral order involves a requirement to love one another? If so, do you agree that this requirement includes for us to love homosexuals? If so, why would you refuse to condemn acts that cause them guaranteed pain, suffering and early death? Why would you refuse to condemn behavior that involves public degradation, voluntary or not? mikev6 & markf “yes, you do have to spell it out”. From the University of Santa Barbara Again, why would you refuse to condemn this act much less give approval to it? Don't you care about these people?tribune7_{December 6, 2010
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Zephyr at 95:
yeah we do get to the uh core issue here. It really is, I have no choice but to spell it out here, anal sex.
This whole thread is really strange and I suspect that my parents would not approve of me commenting here, but I do have a question. If the moral objection to male homosexuality is the taboo against anal sex, does the objection go away if a gay male couple abstained from anal sex and only engaged in oral sex?San Antonio Rose_{December 6, 2010
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andrewjg you want to talk about lesbians do you? haha. Well for one no anal sex. In fact we could at least consider that the primary reason, I don't think that would be too controversial. There are surely other reasons though. In fact I can think of other reasons, but this goes into deeper discussions of sexuality and female sexuality itself, and the way men regard female sexuality. This is a whole other thing.. I did once read an Oriental Taoist explanation for why male homosexual sex was considered taboo and lesbianism not, I don't know if it's worth bringing up here (it's kinda esoteric), but yeah I think there are probably a number of reasons.zephyr_{December 6, 2010
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my apologies to andrewjg for my heated response above, it was not called for. I shouldn't have lumped you in with others. Sorry.zephyr_{December 6, 2010
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andrewjg: "If it is so universal perhaps there is a reason for it." Duh. I kinda got into that reason very briefly in my extensive post above. The rest I will leave to your imagination. Like I wrote above, what I write is not going to be appreciated nor understood much by everybody here. And your post #99 is entirely contradictory btw. markf I never said wrong or right. To me that doesn't enter into it at all. It's not about absolutes, unfortunately it is to most people who think in black and white ways. I'm trying to be as scientific as possible here about it, yet people can't help but bring moral judgments into it *from both sides* - it's wrong or right. So-called morality doesn't comes into it at all, for me. I no more see it as immoral than I see it as moral. By framing it as a moral argument, it's morally right, you then encourage those of a homophobic bent to react - no it's morally wrong. Then again, you are reacting off of them. If one just drops the whole moral argument (it is neither moral nor immoral), one can delve deeper into the real issues everybody avoids in our frankly juvenile culture. The whole argument re male homosexuality in our culture is thus very superficial, immature, emotional and refuses to get down to the fundamentals, because everything else in our culture is likewise superficial and a ridiculous circus (look at politics!) and lacking seriousness. The point I made in my post above is that homosexuals because of this breaking of a deeply held taboo, then get scapegoated for society's ills, humnity predisposed as it is to scapegoating and prejudice. This scapegoating and bigotry ends up going way beyond and above the breaking of this primal taboo (which is what of course bigotry is all about). Look at the contents of many of the posts above spurned by the mere mention of male homosexuality - incest, pedophilia, bestiality! etc. Naturally the points I make are easily missed. They would be.zephyr_{December 6, 2010
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andrewjg #98 Thanks for a calm and reasonable comment. "If nature follows its intended outcome there would not be homosexual activity." This argument is more Christian than you may appreciate. As a non-theist I don't believe there is such a thing as an intended outcome for nature and therefore homosexuality is not something "gone wrong". It is clearly a by-product of the reproductive process but that is rather different. "If your beliefs do not prohibit you, you can just go ahead and do whatever you want. Its a free society after all." This is entirely reasonable. It is not what is in Manhattan declaration and I suspect a lot of the other commentators here would disagree. But I whole heartedly support the message.markf_{December 6, 2010
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Zephyr@96 Sorry should have added. That actually I suppose there is a lot in your comment I agree with. I mean I do believe the prejudices against anal sex are not confined to the Bible. They are deep and universal as you put them. The question is why are they so strong and so universal? I have also wondered about the difference in reaction to lesbian and gay sex. What is it intrinsically about them that makes the reaction different.andrewjg_{December 6, 2010
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Zephyr@96 Not only is it an ancient taboo, it is a near-universal one. If it is so universal perhaps there is a reason for it.andrewjg_{December 6, 2010
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markf@97 Not sure the yuck factor applies. You can have a yuck factor for a number of reasons. Children have the yuck factor and they are quite right to have it because it is yucky. Psychologically speaking the sex drive has actually got to be strong in order to overcome our natural disgust for it. So children - hopefully not being sexual - have a natural and correct disgust for it.andrewjg_{December 6, 2010
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markf@93 I can't say I have friends who are homosexual. But I have worked with many and had pretty good work relationship, and a few I meet regularly outside work but on a superficial level. There are many views to this debate. Ultimately it does depend on your starting point. As a Christian I obviously have mine, but I do believe an argument can be made without reference to scripture. And one that is not obscure or academic. Some points:- 1. Nature is not perfect. Things go wrong all the time. 2. It is clear from a superficial anatomy lesson that homosexual intercourse is not intended and clearly disordered. 3. If nature follows its intended outcome there would not be homosexual activity. Things do go wrong. What then? Does that make these people bad? I don't think so. Now it seems likely that sexual orientation is actually RELATIVELY fluid. It appears to be a function of nature and nurture. But it is also clear that people don't choose their orientation. What then if you are homosexual? It depends on what you believe. If you are a Christian you have two options. You can try and reorient yourself. It seems that about 30% of people who tried it, who were Christian and were motivated to do so, were able to. This is about the same percentage as an alcoholic trying to recover. The other option is to abstain. Maybe I am naive, but I think it is only our over sexualised society which makes this sound so difficult. The over sexualised society we live in is a problem for homosexual and hetrosexuals alike, it makes us think of the opposite or in this case the same sex primarily in sexual terms. I have some experience in abstinence. I can say that really it is about not putting yourself in vulnerable positions. If your beliefs do not prohibit you, you can just go ahead and do whatever you want. Its a free society after all. I think the general repulsion male heterosexuals have to the homosexual sex is because it appears to violate all that is masculine. I am not even convinced we should be trying to reorient this revulsion. It may be there for good reason. Certainly government money should not be spent trying to do so. We can love and respect the person without affirming everything about them. But that is an aside. The question of "What is marriage?" is a different thing. If the state is going to recognise marriage it can only endorse one conception of it. All views cannot be accommodated. The "What is marriage?" discussion is a long one. So I end here.andrewjg_{December 6, 2010
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zephyr Congratulations on your honesty and clarity. In the end it comes down to the "yuck" factor. Note that many children have a similar reaction to conventional sex when they first hear about it. Yuck doesn't mean wrong.markf_{December 6, 2010
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Just to add this: the taboo against anal sex has also been there among heterosexual couples, and still is, albeit far less so than among male homosexuals. That is it is more tolerated or ignored at least. The reason is surely that anal sex is universally associated with male homosexuality, much less so with heterosexuals. Given that humanity has a long dark history of all kinds of prejudice, hatred and bigotry (still very much with us of course), it is easy to understand how the taboo against anal sex latched itself or bloomed into prejudice against gay men. That is they became an easy target, the easiest target given humanity's predisposition to scapegoating and hatred. And so they have become scapegoats for much of society's ill and frustrations, going way beyond and above their mere breaking of a taboo in sex.zephyr_{December 6, 2010
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re post #92 yeah we do get to the uh core issue here. It really is, I have no choice but to spell it out here, anal sex. Hence why lesbianism doesn't inspire the same wrath. Now there has always been a widespread taboo and condemnation of this sexual act throughout many cultures, throughout history. It is a very ancient taboo that predates the Bible, this is why it was adopted by the Biblical authors, not the other way around. For all we know (although one can only speculate) it is a taboo as ancient as humanity. It was a taboo not only among the ancient Semitic people, but throughout much of the Meditteranean, North Africa and the ancient kingdoms in the region. Not only is it an ancient taboo, it is a near-universal one. That is the taboo against anal sex and its association among male homosexuals is found among many of the Native Indian tribes of the Americas, the African Bantu (where among some of the tribes the punishment was death) and other pre-Christian and pre-Islamic African tribal groups in West and East Africa, numerous Asiatic tribes, Siberian tribes included. Also the taboo is there in the ancient Oriental cultures, among Australian aborigines and so many others around the world. So it is an ancient and near-universal taboo. In some cultures it was far more tolerated than others, obviously enough. Yet the taboo has always been there. The bible thus reflects a common chord in human concerns and beliefs here, it did not appear ex nihilo. The reasons for the taboo are several. One it is simply outside the norm, that is homosexual relations are outside the norm. It does not help a tribe struggling to survive, needing and wanting healthy babes to continue the line. There is no procreation with homosexuality, thus it was frowned upon in the same way that sterility was. Another reason, more to the point, is the act itself. I do not want to get into graphic details here and I'm not going to (as QuiteID put it so well, I will leave it to some of the Christian heterosexuals here who seem incredibly obsessed over the minutiae of gay male sex) yet the act is uh off-putting (I couldn't think of any other adjective so that will have to do), even to those of us who do not get all frothy at the mouth over what gay adult men do in the privacy of their own homes. Hence the prejudice, so obviously deep-seated against male homosexuals, comes across as almost primal, base - no matter how one tries to dress it up behind sanctimonious and pious language. In fact despite the Biblical justifications from many (including those posting here) I do think that their prejudice is not truly derived from Biblical concerns or injunctions, but a deep-seated ancient or primitive one. How to put it better? An aboriginal fear, that is a natively human, or near-native taboo of the human race. Christians just dress up this ancient taboo in the language of the Bible, to justify and rationalise a taboo to themselves that is deeply embedded within the human psyche and adding various skewed academic studies and so-called scientific expertise to the mix does nothing to change that. In other words, those deeply prejudiced against male homosexuals (denials to the contrary) deceive themselves as to their true motives, as is always the case with prejudice. To know the reasons for one's prejudice (against whichever group of people) is to be free of it. One cannot know why one is prejudiced, without ceasing to be prejudiced! Hence the explanations put forward by those here justifying their antagonisms to male homosexuality are bizarre, contradictory, circular and illogical. They are not the real deeper motives. Biblical injunctions cannot explain the depth and degree of the knee-jerk intemperate hostility from many of the posters on this thread alone. After all nobody takes seriously biblical commands on cutting off the hand of your wife if she gets all uppity, the stoning of adulterers and the casting out into the wilderness of rebellious sons to die of thirst and starvation. Likewise nobody takes seriously esoteric biblical commandments on the exact nature of animal sacrifices. Yet the taboo/injunction against male homosexuality remains deeply entrenched, and is still taken very seriously. This is a big clue that the motive here goes deeper than anything the bible says, after all we have junked plenty of other commandments. On this topic, the routine violations by religious and non-religious alike of the major commandments (ie the ten commandments) inspires less condemnation and fervour from those so hostile to male homosexuality. In other words, to repeat myself, it is a near primal taboo that is not acknowledged or recognised as such, since the taboo is filtered and distorted through a Christian perspective. There is much more to say here, but I have already written so much. Just to put it as well as I can, the taboo in part obviously relates to factors of cleanliness. Not only this of course. I am not being judgmental nor moralistic here, just as dispassionate as is possible (I hope). Not that what I write will make any difference to those who already think they know why God hates male homosexuality, not that God hates fags at all, just the sexuality that defines a large part of who they are. Hey the bible tells them so, that's all they need to know.zephyr_{December 6, 2010
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tribune7 "Muramasa, do I really have to spell out why anal sex is just something that shouldn’t be done?" Just in case Muramasa does not respond I should be interested to know. It seems to be that what two consenting people do in the privacy of their own bedroom is none of my business.markf_{December 5, 2010
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What strikes me is how theoretical are all these criticisms of homosexuality. They are based on obscure academic papers, readings of the Bible, or abstruse abstract arguments. How many of you have close friends who are gay? How many of you have even talked to a gay couple in a long standing relationship? Homosexuals are a cross section of society including many that are in long term loving mutually supportive relationships (as well as those that are not). I know several such couples. For a public example, consider Benjamin Britten and his partner Peter Pears - a devoted couple who made brilliant contributions to music in the 20th century with little fuss over their personal relationship. Do you seriously consider such couples as engaging in an evil activity? It may well be that homosexuals tend to be more promiscous than heterosexuals and that children brought up by gay couples on average do less well than those brought up by heterosexual parents. It would be quite reasonable to take this into account as a risk factor when considering suitability for adoption - just as adoption agencies consider it a risk if the parents are a different race from the child. It is nothing to do with the immorality of homosexuality itself. What is clear is that the pressure of moral disapproval (backed up the law until quite recently) has denied many gay people the possibility of a mutually loving relationship, and that some have been driven to depression or even suicide as a result. It is the reaction to this that has led to the sometimes over strident assertion of gay rights and gay lifestyle by some sections of that community. But this is utterly irrelevant to the morality of homosexuality in general. I believe some of you, such as vj, to be intelligent and kind people. All you need is to be a bit less theoretical and bit more human.markf_{December 5, 2010
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tribune7:
The act is evil.
OK - sounds like we're getting to the root of the issue. Presumably if I ask "why?" I'll get the Bible response again. Mankind has invented an entire cornucopia of creative techniques in this area - is there a list that says "evil" versus "not evil" for each one? How does one decide? After all, they can't all be mentioned in the Bible. And my take on your last question is "yes, you do have to spell it out". Your fundamental objection to treating homosexuals the same way you would like to be treated is based primarily on this act.mikev6_{December 5, 2010
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Muramasa, mikev6, Quite ID -- am I reading you right in saying that it’s not that homosexuals are incapable of love, but that (male) homosexuals are incapable of expressing love in homosexual acts? Almost. It's that homosexual acts cannot be an expression of love. Homosexuals can express love and feel love anytime even during the acts, I am claiming. The homosexual is no different than you or me. He has a soul and is loved by God and is made in the image of God. The act is evil. Muramasa -- What if heterosexuals express their love in the same way? It wouldn't be an expression of love. Muramasa, do I really have to spell out why anal sex is just something that shouldn't be done?tribune7_{December 5, 2010
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Indeed, tribune7, please clarify further what you mean. Your original statement was: "The more complex answer is that the purpose of our existence is to love which is a real, and spiritual, thing and that using another human being, or allowing oneself to be used, as an object for sexual orgasm is a violation of the principle of our existence. I submit that with regard to male homosexuality that is never anything but the case." Is "love" the principle of our existence to which you are referring. Is it the only one or are there many? You state that I have misinterpreted your meaning. Do you agree that male homosexuals (and again, why do you make the specific distinction about males in your post?) are capable of love? If so, is your issue with the way in which that love may be expressed. What if heterosexuals express their love in the same way?Muramasa_{December 5, 2010
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tribune7:
What I said in the second answer is using another human being, or allowing oneself to be used, as an object for sexual orgasm is a violation of the principle of our existence. and that with regard to male homosexuality that is never anything but the case. Now you seem to read into that that homosexuals “are incapable of love”.
I took it the same way as Muramasa. Since you don't specify what the "principle of our existence" is precisely, the reader is left to speculate.mikev6_{December 5, 2010
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