Except Jodi is using an example-she does NOT believe homosexuality is a sin, nor is she saying that loving someone of the same sex is a sin.
APOS –
Again, nonsense. If I hold moral system A which holds that Act X is immoral, and you hold moral system B which holds that Act X is not immoral, those beliefs occupy different spaces because they are in different systems. No reasonable person can claim an “absolute system of right and wrong,” because that is not a provable proposition. They can claim it is absolute for them, and so long as they do, they are immune from accusations of moral relativism. But it is unavailing to claim “I have the absolute system of right and wrong!” because the obvious response is “No, you don’t.” And there the discussion ends. You while you are free to construe someone’s holding Belief X as “occupying the same space” as your Belief Not-X, and further to construe that as a attack on your belief, there is no requirement that you, or anyone do so.
DENIS, I thank you for your kind words; the check’s in the mail. MR. B, I thank you for your defense but I don’t think it was necessary. 
MRVISIBLE –
Why, because you say so? Assuming I am not “calling” you and your boyfriend or your love anything, but rather am merely stating that I hold the belief that gay sex is immoral (which, again, is not a belief I actually hold, though I know good people ho do), how does that become an action? You say it is and you say it is and you say it is, but you never explain why or how.
I’m not sure what actions you’re referring to here. I find it hard to believe that the fact that people hold the belief that gay sex is immoral – without more – would drive anyone to despair, but then this is not my area. So maybe it did, I don’t know; but please explain to me how your having taken it that way places on others a burden to not hold a belief they do in fact sincerely hold.
MRV, I’m going to bold and cap this for your easy reference: I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT ANY ACTIONS! I AM TALKING ABOUT THE BELIEF THAT GAY SEX IS MORALLY WRONG, AND THAT IS ALL I AM TALKING ABOUT! EVERY TIME YOU TRANSMUTE THIS INTO A DISCUSSION OF ACTIONS, YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE, SOMETHING THAT I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT!!!
Belief, and belief alone. NOT ACTION. For the love of Pete, this isn’t that hard.
Again, and taking up where I left off in my last post: I NEVER FUCKING SAID THIS! More particular – again – the part I have bolded is something I have never said. What is it that makes you misconstrue my points? Is it intellectual dishonesty? Or just pig-headedness?
I have no quarrel with the APA or the suicide rate of any group. I also don’t see its relevance to this discussion, unless you’re arguing that Person A has some sort of obligation not to hold a belief – again, I’m not talking about how he or she might act on it, but merely holding it – because Person B might kill him/herself over it. That seems to be a tough argument to make.
I think it’s absolutely reasonable to let people know that by holding this belief and even making it known that they hold it, they are hurting people. I think this is a good idea, in fact. It seems to me that holding a moral belief that others find hurtful should not be an easy thing to do, or a thing without consequences. And I think that if people of good will who hold this belief are made aware that it is hurts the feelings and sense of self-worth of other good people, then maybe they’ll give some more thought to whether it’s really a moral or Godly belief. So heck yes, let them know that you think their belief belittles you or marginalizes you or alienates you. If they really are people of good will, they’ll have to think about that, and have to live with it.
That’s a far different thing than deciding they’re all a bunch of homophobic evil fuckwads. And, for the umpteenth time, we’re not discussing a belief I personally hold, so aside from pointing out again how fruitless it would be for you to order me to “stop freaking doing it,” you can go ahead and quit saying that since I’m not doing it in the first place.
GUM –
Sending someone to a gas chamber would be an action, would it not? I am not talking about any inexcusable action that might be justified by holding the belief; the action can legitimately be attacked, but the belief itself, without more, cannot. For the billionth time.
ASLAN –
For most Christian denominations, it is homsexual sex that is a sin, not the orientation, which is widely understood to be inherent and beyond the individual’s control and therefore no more sinful than being tall or Asian or female. Actions can be sinful; characteristics cannot be. You cannot involuntarily sin; if there was no volition involved, then there’s no sin.
I admit that it often does propagate a negative attitude towards gays, which is unfortunate to say the least. But my point is that it does not in all cases propagate a negative attitude. It is possible to feel that the act of gay sex is immoral and still feel that gay people are equal people of, as the UMC puts it, “sacred worth.”
First, it is inaccurate to say that every (or even most) Christian denominations believe that gay people will go to hell if they engage in gay sex. There are a lot of moderate denominations that believe that they are not qualified to damn any one to hell, much less decide what of a laundry list of sins will be mortal ones. Do not confuse Christianity with fundamentalist Christianity. The latter is a subset of the former, not the other way around.
I don’t think that’s hard to understand at all, or should be. Preach it, brother.
I’m kind of surprised to find that your understanding of Christianity is so simplistic and inaccurate, given your user name.
If she said that. But she didn’t.
And I think I’m done here, and in the other thread unless I can see some really compelling reason to come back. At this point, people either get the point I’m making – and see how limited it really is – or they don’t. I don’t know if the fact that people keep trying to change the discussion from what I have said is thing I haven’t is a good sign (they can’t really argue with my point, so they try to change it to something they can argue with) or a bad sign (they just don’t get it). In either case, I’m just repeating myself, and much as I love the sound of my own voice, it’s getting tiresome. Even for me.
I’m not sure which one of us is more obtuse.
The above paragraph has been my point all along. Stating a belief is an action. Actions can hurt people. Decent people don’t hurt people if they can help it. Period.
Think whatever you want. When you say things, you’re responsible for the consequences of what you say.
Stating a belief is not an action; it’s merely stating a belief. Even if you insist on construing it as an action, the key phrase there is “if they can help it.” You appear to put on people who hold this belief the absolute duty to refrain from ever so much as saying they hold it, just because it makes you feel bad. I don’t see that as a demand you can reasonably make. You can try to show them why IYO they should not hold the belief, but you cannot simply demand that they “stop freaking doing it.” And if you’re smart, you won’t even want them to just stop saying that they hold it, and therefore grant to them immunity from the consequences of having it publicly known that they do in fact hold it. Shine the bright light of day on the belief. Challenge it, and expect them to defend it. I hope you see that just asking them to shut up about it is too easy – not to mention that it’s a request you cannot reasonably make, and they won’t do it anyway. Even if you insist that every such person is your enemy, surely you would want to know who your enemies are. So let them say it, and make them own it.
And people are only responsible for the consequences of what they say when the results can reasonably be considered consequences in the first place. A reasonable consequence of hearing that someone considers your actions to be immoral would be to be nettled or hurt. Attempting to kill youself over it would not be a reasonable consequence, because the asserted cause is not sufficient to produce the claimed effect. If you tell me that IYO I talk too much, and I slit my wrists over it, that hardly your fault. So if you want to talk about the creation of an atmosphere of distrust or hatred, fine; you’ll get no argument from me. But you cannot get there from the belief alone, without more, so once again you’ll be talking about something other than what I’m talking about.
Query: how is making a statement not an action?
Jodi, I completely and totally give up trying to figure out what the hell you’re trying to say.
You might consider the possibilty that you make no sense whatsoever.
See? Lilairen gets it!
As a sideline bystander, a straight fellow who mostly feels that it’s a goddamn (quite possibly literally) shame how vicious and stupid people are at one another whie feeling righteous about being so, I offer the personal observation that this reader finds your analogy a bit flawed.
Having grabbed hold of literal nettles before, I definitely agree that, while painful, it’s really no cause to seek a personal final solution to the truth of suffering.
If I had the personal misfortune to, say, be pushed naked into a bed of nettles, and live in the routine dread that I would be repeatedly pushed into beds of nettles, day after day for years and I felt utterly alone and helpless to stop the daily bed-of-nettle-pushings…well, my threshold for suffering has only been seriously tested near to the suicidal-ideation point once, and that passed precisely because I had the love and support of several very good friends. But I think the hypothetical daily nettle-bed-pushing, over a long enough timeframe, would seriously push me in that direction again.
If you can dig the analogy, if my personal empathy metrics are working correctly, routine nettle-bed-pushings are horribly common amongst gay youth especially. I think it’s perfectly understandable that some get a little tetchy about people even merely saying, when pressed, that while them getting pushed into nettles is certainly immoral, that the inspiration for them getting pushed is also equally immoral.
If that legacy of suffering, and the reactions to it, shape those targetted by it into assholes, that’s an honest shame, but not a terribly surprising or baffling one. That the assholes are, based on the handful of gay folks I know off the boards and the text of the bulk of those on-board, a minority is a testament to the power of basic humanity to undo suffering.
How about the beliefs of Nazi Germany, where gays were send to the gas chambers because people believed gay love was sinful.
posted by Jodi
Can’t you see that the belief ** leads** to the action? [for the billionth time]
Well, since I’m not a nitwit who believes that “can lead” = “must lead,” no, I don’t. Any other trivial questions we can clarify for you?
MrVis: Of course I understand. I spent a fair fraction of my life learning an intimate awareness of verbal and emotional abuse from the wrong side.
And I’ve spent a fair fraction of my life afterwards dealing with people who said that words aren’t actually real things, that the hurtful actions taken by those people couldn’t possibly have hurt, couldn’t possibly have done any harm, without my assent to them. So of course I was complicit in my own crippling, and those who chose to give me an atmosphere of derision, isolation, and contempt to grow up in are the innocents.
Hm. I’m sounding like Siege lite-and-bitter here.
News for you: the whole point of a morality is for it to give universal propositions that do not only apply to particular priveleged agents, but rather ALL agents.
Then you just aren’t talking about morality, but merely amoral matters of taste.
An assertion that something is wrong is something more than an assertion that “I don’t like it and I personally wouldn’t do it.” All you points about how it is hard to debate morality when you have two different systems is well taken, but quite irrelevant: the fact remains that moral assertions, however difficult or even impossible it may be to “prove” them MEAN something that places them in direct conflict with any and all other expressed moral opinions. One can’t drop a bombshell like “it’s immoral” and then back off crying foul when someone else objects to the imposition.
Hm. I should do a vanity search more often. I had no idea my name was being bandied about.
FWIW, I haven’t really participated in this thread for a couple of reasons.
[ul][li]It started off aimed at lissener, and I can’t have a reasonable debate with him for two reasons - one, he’s a fucking hysteric, and two, he has me on his “ignore” list. Or at least so he says. [/li][li]I can’t argue this thing with MrVisible. He has the other thread going about his nephew’s problems since coming out of the closet, and he is too upset to be able to debate dispassionately. He has been raging at Jodi for the last three pages, and I think she agrees with him. What chance of a reasonable debate would we have, especially in the Pit? [/li][li]And third -[/li][quote]
How about the beliefs of Nazi Germany, where gays were send to the gas chambers because people believed gay love was sinful.
[/quote]
We already passed point Godwin. [/ul]
Regards,
Shodan
You know, I love being in the Pit.
Shodan, fuck you. Just fuck you all to hell and back.
Fuck you sideways, fuck you backwards, fuck you flying, fuck you rolling, fuck you on a John Deere tractor. Fuck you with a John Deere tractor.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you.
Pompous, smug, evil little shit.
So I guess it is now a little clearer why I thought I couldn’t argue this thing “in good faith” with my friend MrVisible.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m sure it does lead to the same result for many people. However, I draw the line at saying beliefs = actions. Honest people of good will can hold whatever beliefs they like, based on religion, or not, but doing so does not equate to hurting other people.
Yeah. Once you’ve dismissed any arguments I may make before hearing them, you’ve certainly demonstrated your ability to argue in good faith.
You execrably stuck-up, willfully malignant cancer on the human race’s ass.
And, for once and for all, stating a belief is an action. Actions affect the world around you. Take responsibilty for the consequences of your actions.
stating a belief, especially when it’s a belief such as “you are doing something I disapprove of”, IMHO, falls far better into the rhelm of ‘action’ than ‘non action’, because of the implication of disapproval.
Consider:
“I believe in God” implies nothing about the speaker’s **attitude/ opinions ** of the other participant (tho it can include a disapproval if the tone of voice is such).
“I believe that politicians are morally corrupt” - if the person the speaker is speaking to is, in fact, a politician, than the mere words “I believe…morally corrupt” includes a condemnation of the other person.
“I believe homosexuality is a sin” is also telling the homosexual nearby that they, themselves are a sinner, according to the speaker, that the speaker is acting as judge/jury wrt the other person.
I think it’s a quibble of enormous proportions to attempt to conclude that by ‘just saying their opinion’ doesn’t include any action when the opinion itself includes an ‘action’ of disapproval.
I’m not sure where that leaves folks who firmly believe that homosexuality itself is a sin, yet desire to treat all humanity in a respectful manner unless that person also espouses the belief that all judgements are for God to make, that pronouncements of ‘you’re a sinner’ are in fact actions of disapproval, that all humans are sinners and to specifically comment on the nature of the sin to the sinner is a judgement, which should be relegated to God, and so, refrains from comment and any other action.
mho, of course.
Fine. Then take responsibility for imputing false consequences to some actions, and we’ll be good to go.
I was accused by another of making a “cheapshot” against you. You just demonstrated my refutation of that, quite ably, and I thank you.
Why don’t you call me out specifically, and by name?
Or are you too interested in being William F. Buckley Jr. when you grow up?
regards to your wit and debating ability (no sarcasm intended),
Denis