The fundamental right to say get outta my store
Conflicting ideas of rights, chapter 792. I have a right to equal treatment. No no, comes the reply, I have a right to treat you unequally, provided I don’t actually assault you or break into your house and eat your lunch.
Religious groups are outraged that, from next April, it will be illegal to discriminate against homosexuals or transsexuals when providing goods and services. The clash between religion and secular liberalism is stirring high passions and has even brought threats of civil disobedience…Religious groups have been emboldened by their successes in forcing British Airways to drop its ban on a worker wearing a cross, and in getting the Government to backtrack on its threat to faith schools. Andrea Williams, of the Lawyers Christian Fellowship, which has led the campaign against the gay law, said: “This is truly a clash of fundamental human rights. It would seem that, when these rights clash, the homosexual person’s rights trump the religious person’s rights.”
The religious person’s rights…to what? To deny a commercial service to a homosexual person on the grounds that the homosexual person is a homosexual person? Is that a fundamental human right? Is there a fundamental human right to enter the public sphere in order to sell a product or service for public money but still reserve the ‘right’ to reject customers on irrelevant grounds? Is that a fundamental human right? Or is it just a bit of yukkism dressed up in fundamental human rights clothes?
The Guardian thinks it’s the latter. It makes a change, to agree with the Guardian.
The Anglican Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, warned that church-based charities would be forced to close their doors if the government insisted they let in gay people. ‘It is the poor and disadvantaged who will be the losers,’ he said…That is a tendentious argument. ‘The poor and disadvantaged’ would only lose out if the churches choose to hate homosexuality more than they like good works. Their objection to the new law is not, as they like to see it, self-defence against a meddling government. It is a threat by powerful institutions to withhold their charity out of prejudice. Churches are free to preach that homosexuality is a sin and their followers are free to believe it in private. But the elected government of Britain does not share that view and has rightly sought to give gay citizens the same public rights as everyone else. Or at least it has done thus far. On this latest measure the cabinet is divided. Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly, a devout Catholic, is the minister responsible for the new law and is sympathetic to the idea of exempting churches. The Prime Minister is also thought to be amenable to religious petitioning.
No comment. Comment superfluous.
Conflicting ideas of freedom come into play too, of course.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern, a former lord chancellor during the Thatcher era, is the patron of the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship (LCF), part of a coalition of religious groups opposed to the new rules which they say will ride roughshod over their beliefs. The new rules, which ban those offering goods and services from discriminating against gays and lesbians, will force them to act against their consciences, they say. The rules aim to stop, for example, gay couples being turned away from hotels. But faith groups believe there should be an opt-out clause in situations where it goes against their religious beliefs. Lord Mackay said: “People of faith are having their freedom to live according to their beliefs taken away from them.”
Their freedom to live according to their beliefs – ‘live’ in the sense of being able to reject customers on arbitrary yuk-based grounds. That’s a rather broad definition of ‘live,’ it seems to me. Granted, if you have a very small restaurant or b-and-b, you do in some sense live with your customers – but surely that is precisely the condition you accept when you undertake such an endeavour. Surely you realize it would be unworkable to include in your advertising and on the signs the stipulation, ‘for Discerning People That I Happen to Like.’ Bobbi Sue’s Flapjack House for Nice Straight People Who Are Pat Boone Fans would make the sign bigger than the flapjack house and would also risk narrowing the customer base to the point that Bobbi Sue has to declare bankruptcy four days after she opens the bidness. Or to put it another way, tough. That’s the free market for you. If you don’t like it, just stick with being a vicar.
It’s like the KKK being opposed to race discrimination legislation because it will “ride roughshod over their beliefs”. Bad luck, KKK – your beliefs are not acceptable in civilised society, no matter how sincerely held they are.
Or like slaveowners being opposed to the Missouri Compromise because it meant their ‘freedom to live according to their beliefs’ was taken away from them north of Missouri. It’s a familiar trope – people complaining when their ‘right’ to oppress or exploit or buy and sell or whip other people is taken away from them. It’s remarkable how adept humans can be at framing what they want to do as a right or a freedom or a set of religious beliefs or all those, and how unadept they can be at thinking hard about what their ‘rights’ entail for other people (and what other people’s rights entail for them). Subjective bias, no doubt. What I want is a right, what other people want is an interference with My Right.
Its even dafter than that because if you run a B&B and live on the premises you are exempt. See here from the National Secular Society.
http://www.secularism.org.uk/religiousactivistsseektorepeatba.html
Oh fer cryin out loud – I missed that. That does make it all the dafter.
Agreeing with OB here. This is completely ridiculous.
Its also like
1) If I were a Quaker blacksmith before Abolition, could I refuse to make chains for a passing slave dealer with his human ‘stock’ in a string behind him?
2) How about if I were a blood bank worker in 1988 or so, when gay rights proponents insisted on their equal right to give blood despite the new AIDS scare; would it have been morally impermissible to protest when HIV-tainted blood products would be the result? How many died as a result of that – hemophiliac children, accident victims, women in childbirth getting transfusions?
Gay activity was a criminal act only a decade or two ago for most of us, and still is for much of the world. Intolerance of the fact that it is changing too slowly for some tastes, is… a touch idealistic.
The moral imperative to suck up to gay activists is only a couple of decades old. I myself find I operate out of a prejudice toward gays – the expectation that they will be more cultured and creative than I am, and that I want the approval of such people.
Seriously, just because we approve the idea that gays should be equal before the law, should that invalidate freedom of individuals to associate in business with who they choose?
Surely the test will come if someone (preferably gay) discriminates against a Christian, say (preferably one who owns a B&B and doesn’t like gays), and then we can see what ‘grounds’ said Christian objects to said discrimination. ‘OK, guv, you’ve got me bang to rights. Yeh, I did say “No pooftahs” so I guess you’re right to say “No Christians”. Sorry.’
Actually, it goes a lot deeper and is a lot more dangerous than you, or anyone else, apparently, seem to realise.
If you start giving “exemptions” for religious and “faith” grouips and systems, you are, effectively setting up two different legal systems.
In one country.
This is the obvious thin end of the wedge for barbaric and uncivilised practices like Shari’a, or female genital mutilation, because it’s “Our special religious/cultural norm”
Excuse me but …
ONE LAW FOR ALL THE PEOPLE
No exceptions.
Ever.
Are there any religions currently dormant and undersubscribed that atheists could collonise to get some of these special privileges ? I was thinking maybe Asatru faith (Norse and Germanic mythology), or possibly Afro-Carribean – Santeria, Vodoun (Voodoo), Umbanda, or Palo Mayombe ? I already like the costumes. We could then refuse to accept the Abrahamics on our conferences and picnics etc.
I suggest y’all go for Asatru faith. There’s an unfortunate presence of racist crazies among Germanic/Nordic neo-pagans, and you’d help to balance that out a bit. Besides, it needs a bit of an image boost. What with Lindisfarne and all – people only remember the bad things about the Vikings.
Vinterblot festival should be just arriving, so here’s a golden opportunity for you.
Anyway, as for ChrisPer’s slave trader: morally he would have been perfectly justified to refuse making chains. Legally he probably wouldn’t have been. The issue being that the issue of equal treatment of straight, gays, blacks, Irish, women and so forth rests on the moral idea that they should deserve equal treatment.
ChrisPer: “How about if I were a blood bank worker in 1988 or so, when gay rights proponents insisted on their equal right to give blood despite the new AIDS scare; would it have been morally impermissible to protest when HIV-tainted blood products would be the result? How many died as a result of that – hemophiliac children, accident victims, women in childbirth getting transfusions?”
I don’t think it would be morally impermissible for you as a blood bank worker to protest. It isn’t morally impermissible for the Archbishop of Rochester to protest about the current proposals. If we don’t have free debate then we don’t get closer to the truth, if I’m allowed to invoke such a pre-postmodern concept. The question about blood products could be resolved using the Millian dictum that you can do what you like as long as you don’t harm others. If there isn’t a system in place to ensure that HIV can never get into blood products then high risk groups should be asked to refrain from making donations on the grounds that their right to do what they like with their bodies – in this case, donate blood – is trumped by the harm it might do to anyone who receives it. As long as high risk groups can receive blood when they need it, they aren’t harmed by such a prohibition. On the other hand, if there’s a shortage of blood then it might be more harmful to disallow high risk donors on the grounds that risky blood is better than no blood at all. That’s one for the statisticians.
ChrisPer: “Gay activity was a criminal act only a decade or two ago for most of us, and still is for much of the world. Intolerance of the fact that it is changing too slowly for some tastes, is… a touch idealistic.”
I agree that you can’t expect the world to change overnight, but we only have the luxury to be tolerant of that prejudice because previous activists weren’t. They ensured that there were at least some places in which homosexuals could live freely, albeit not yet equally.
ChrisPer: “The moral imperative to suck up to gay activists is only a couple of decades old.” Unfortunate choice of words, perhaps!
I realise that dirigible is not making it up.
That’s what scares me …..
“Actually, it goes a lot deeper and is a lot more dangerous than you, or anyone else, apparently, seem to realise.”
Very true, as always. As always it is G Tingey alone among mortals who realizes the true depth and danger of the whatnot – everyone else is merely standing around gazing stupidly at the sky. That is why I shall now resign my commission and hand B&W over to G Tingey who will do a MUCH MUCH better job of it than I ever have. Thank god and allah and everyone for G Tingey where would we be without him.
Thank you for the irony, Ophelia.
No, I could not do the job you are doing.
But returning to the subject actually under discussion, is anything actually going to be done about this creeping disentegration of what I thought were supposed to be a single, uniform set of rules to go by?
Any practical suggestions for stopping this sort of lunacy?
Suggestions on the back of a postcard to Ophelia, please!
That was fun. Now, ChrisPer. Your Quaker and your blood bank worker. Did you notice that I said “irrelevant grounds”? Did you notice that the whole point of the comment is to ask if mere yukkism is a good enough reason to discriminate against people? That I was careful not to say that there is never any reason to discriminate people? That the point is that one has to discriminate among reasons? That reasons are more and less good?
The thing about religious objections to homosexuality is that they are purely religious. Skeptics and secularists and atheists and liberal believers try hard to elicit genuine reasons from religious discriminators against homosexuals, without, as far as I’ve ever seen, success. A journalist asked Iqbal Sacranie on Radio 4 that time and he just mumbled about diseases and family life. Dawkins asked a minister at some evangelical megachurch in ‘The Root of all Evil?’ and the guy just said ‘It’s a sin’ – which obviously merely begs the question.
“Gay activity was a criminal act only a decade or two ago for most of us, and still is for much of the world. Intolerance of the fact that it is changing too slowly for some tastes, is… a touch idealistic.”
“Intolerance” is it. Interesting choice of words. Some zealots want to reserve the right to deny service to homosexuals on the grounds that their “religious beliefs” tell them to, and you consider criticism of that desire “intolerance”? Interesting, interesting.
Of course, I’m well aware that gay activity was a criminal act until recently, but that’s rather the issue. Once enough people made enough noise, it became clear (because people were prompted to think about it) that there wasn’t really any valid reason for that fact, at least none that anyone could think of. So impatience with people who refuse to notice that their hatreds and consequent injustices are based on nothing but longstanding prejudice is not, I would argue, “intolerance” in the same sense that irrational prejudice against homosexuality is. In other words, I have no particular desire to tolerate irrational hatred that results in injustice.
You’re welcome, GT; any time. Always a pleasure.
I wouldn’t keep giving you these unkind jabs if you didn’t keep telling me I’m unaware of something I have just finished writing a post about and that you alone are aware of it. You make yourself such a target! It’s quite impossible not to fling something at you. It makes me laugh too immoderately.
“The religious person’s rights…to what?”
Well to dignify it with its proper title, the right to free association. That’s the very same right denied in apartheid south africa or in the US under segregation or by many anti-union laws. You may not think that such rights should be granted as rights, but in that case you will take them away from everybody, not just the religious. The more exceptions are made (for example: religious people may not discriminate against gays) the more vulnerable a right is for everybody.
I think that discrimination on grounds of sexuality is a problem (even if in 2006 it is far less of a problem than in the past). That doesn’t mean that I automatically support removing the rights of bigots.
It is true that removing their rights could help end discrimination. But the reason I come down on the side of the religious in this case (really on the side of everyone to freely associate) is that they are being threatened by the force law. The consequence will be that the state imposes its will on them by force: through fines, backed by the threat of prison. The worst that can happen to gays is that they are shunned by the religious. That is bad, but not so bad, in 2006, as the state dictating with whom we may associate. (You should be able to see from this analysis that I would of course be dead set against the law discriminating on the grounds of sexuality in any circumstance I can think of, or making any legal exceptions on grounds of faith.)
I think it is a mistake to rely too much on the law rather than cultural change to end discrimination. This is not just a philosophical nicety – I believe that race discrimination laws have done much to get us into the swamp of multiculturalism. I also do not think it impractical. Despite remaining problems there is far less bigotry today than 30 years ago. Cultural change may be slower than passing a law, but I believe that it is also more solid and enduring.
Thanks, JK, that’s an interesting comment.
But the right to free association isn’t exactly ‘the very same right denied in apartheid south africa or in the US under segregation’ – depending on how one defines it. In both it was the putative right not to associate with black people that was in operation, and that was eventually overthrown.
Wikipedia is helpful here. It says the US Supreme Court has found the Constitution to protect free association (as part of free speech protection) in two kinds of cases: intimate associations and expressive associations; but that’s not a general right of association.
“This limitation of freedom of association results from Section 1981 of Title 42 of the Civil Rights Act, as weighed against the First Amendment according to the court decision Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U.S. 160 (1976).
The holding of Runyon is that the defendant private schools were free to express and teach their views, such as white separatism, but could not discriminate on the basis of race in the provision of services to the general public.”
Which is what’s at issue. The new regulations in the UK don’t say that churches can’t preach against homosexuality, they say people can’t refuse gays service in public commercial establishments.
“That is bad, but not so bad, in 2006, as the state dictating with whom we may associate.”
But associating socially or intimately or ‘expressively’ is one thing and commercially is another. In fact people who offer food or lodging for sale don’t really ‘associate’ with their customers. Although bartenders sometimes do…Maybe they’re the ones who should have a special exemption!
Another thing…
“would it have been morally impermissible to protest when HIV-tainted blood products would be the result?”
“It isn’t morally impermissible for the Archbishop of Rochester to protest about the current proposals.”
I’m not sure ‘morally impermissible’ is the most useful term here. I think it conflates two issues. The Archbishop is free to protest the current proposals, of course, but I think his protest, and the grounds for his protest, are immoral. He’s permitted to say what he says, but that doesn’t make his saying it moral, or us obliged to refrain from calling it immoral.
(On blood bank issue, just for the record, I think the protest was immoral and had and should have had no legal standing. We don’t have equal rights to infect people. That’s bullshit.)
“But the right to free association isn’t exactly ‘the very same right denied in apartheid south africa or in the US under segregation’ – depending on how one defines it.”
To take the South Africa example: Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, Immorality Amendment Act (inter-racial adultery), Group Areas Act (mixed residential areas outlawed), Bantu Building Workers Act & other labour legislation (restricted freedom to employ), Reservation of Separate Amenities Act (mandates seperate provision of wide range of facilities), Bantu Education Act (racially mixed private schools only legalised 1986), not to mention the pass laws, etc.
I think it’s clear that the law in South Africa actively denied the right to freedom of association. It is true that whatever the case in South Africa you are right to point out that what is at stake in the proposed legislation is the right not to associate. However, in practice I think it is hard to preserve freedom of association without freedom not to associate.
“But associating socially or intimately or ‘expressively’ is one thing and commercially is another.”
You are on stronger ground here. Freedom of contract, or even more narrowly freedom to discriminate in provision of publicly advertised goods and services, is a component part of freedom of association, although one that can be distinguished. It was one of the freedoms denied the restaurant owner in South Africa who wanted to serve both blacks and whites.
One way forward in the discussion is to break down what is at stake. May a private club, such as a church (if we set aside establishment), choose its membership on any grounds it pleases? I think it should be legally free to do so, although in many cases discrimination should be condemned, perhaps loudly and publicly. (I would find it hard to get worked up over the girl guides denying membership to boys or even, in plausible circumstances, a Chinese student society denying membership to a non-chinese, although I might think it wrong or mean not to offer at least honorary membership to someone who really wanted it.)
Does the commercial aspect make a difference? How would my plan for an atheist’s dating agency to match-make amongst the godless fare?
But I think it more useful to focus on two objections I have to this legislation.
First, I think that it perpetuates identity politics in an unhelpful way. Anti-discrimination laws can help in the short term but undermine true social equality in the long term.
Second, I think the call for legislation is motivated by an anti-Enlightenment outlook that sees people in need of controls. It believes that irrationality and prejudice are too basic to the human condition to be overcome.
An Enlightenment approach would have confidence that while the struggle against superstition and bigotry through public use of reason is long and hard it is the surest path to social progress. If we simply issue the command “Don’t argue!” how do we expect anyone to escape their self-incurred immaturity? (cf Kant)
That’s enough for one comment box!
Ophelia,
Not meaning to be too pedantic, but isn’t the language of ‘morality’ and ‘immorality’ far too ideologically loaded to be particularly useful?
As in: ‘The Archbishop is free to protest the current proposals, of course, but I think his protest, and the grounds for his protest, are immoral’.
Surely, ‘irrational’ is more accurate?
Interesting discussion. I feel a need to learn more about freedom of association…
“I think it’s clear that the law in South Africa actively denied the right to freedom of association.”
But the ones you cited mix ‘intimate association’ with other kinds. That’s US law, of course, so not automatically applicable to SA, but possibly a useful way to distinguish, or as you say, break down.
“However, in practice I think it is hard to preserve freedom of association without freedom not to associate.”
Really? In practice where? (This is one reason I need to learn more.) That’s not the case in the US, as far as I know – though I’m sure libertarians would disagree.
“It was one of the freedoms denied the restaurant owner in South Africa who wanted to serve both blacks and whites.”
But of course by the same token it is a ‘freedom’ denied the restaurant owner in Alabama who wants to serve only whites. It looks as if there are a couple of possible legal principles at work: one is freedom of association and the other is equal treatment. In US civil rights law the latter has gradually and in particular cases trumped the former. (Besides, isn’t there also an argument that people who are denied service are also denied freedom of association? They don’t get to associate with the people in the restaurant or movie theatre or stadium or dance hall or hotel. Or in the front of the bus.)
The private club thing is more difficult. I found a useful page on the Supreme Court decision in the Boy Scouts case when googling earlier; want to do quick N&C on it. I’m not sure what I think about it, but I agree that it’s less clear cut. (A complication though is that private clubs often function as power centers, in which case barring particular groups can have very obvious social effects. Just think women, golf.)
“How would my plan for an atheist’s dating agency to match-make amongst the godless fare?”
Perfectly well, surely. Theists wouldn’t be interested; there’d be no need to bar them. Targeting services at particular interests is not discriminatory.
“I think that it perpetuates identity politics in an unhelpful way.”
Hmmm. I can’t see it. Why doesn’t it do the exact opposite? It promotes mixing, which over the long haul tends to break down identity politics (when people get bored with saying they’re Portuguese-Malayan-Cuban-Tongan-etc etc etc.)
“It believes that irrationality and prejudice are too basic to the human condition to be overcome.”
Hmmmmm. Is that really an anti-Enlightenment outlook? Does a pro-Enlightenment outlook have confidence? I’m not so sure. I think that’s the oversimplifed view of the Enlightenment that one usually hears from its enemies. I think a pro-E outlook sees reason and liberal mindedness as good things, but not necessarily as widely distributed.
I’m mostly not convinced, but I’m interested!
Edmund,
I didn’t introduce the word ‘morality’ myself, I don’t think, I was responding to ChrisPer’s comment on morality. But…no, I don’t think the salient point is really the irrationality. (Well, it is in a way, because if there were a rational reason for discriminating, then perhaps it wouldn’t be immoral. But that’s intermediate as opposed to the end point.) The very idea of rights is an idea of morality; it doesn’t make sense without morality. So – no, I can’t really agree. I’m claiming that the archbishop is morally wrong. He’s also irrational of course, but that would matter a great deal less if it weren’t prompting him to persecute people for no real reason.
Well, the discussion here increases my respect for each of you.
OB, regarding my suggestion that it was intolerant to demand people fall into line with the new standard on homosexuality said:
“I have no particular desire to tolerate irrational hatred that results in injustice.”
Choice, and fair enough.
What if there is mild injustice, but no hatred? I accept that gay is no reason to withhold equal rights under the law. I dispute that Christian objection to gay behaviour is based on hatred.
The basis seems to me that in the any human world view, some things are absolute wrongs. We are dealing with a mis-match between that list in the mind of the religious and the very similar, but not identical, list in the mind of OB and other enlightened present-day people.
There is no reason for me to believe that the ‘enlightened’ list is absolutely correct or should over-rule my own list of absolute wrongs.
The christian list of absolute wrongs is greatly modified by the modern list; look for instance at how far we have changed our minds on divorce and the equal treatment of divorced people. Setting an example of tolerance and enlightened leadership and it will come.
Passing laws that get people’s backs up will instead generate self-righteous reactance.
The whole issue makes me think of one giant new episode of Fawlty Towers. “DON’T MENTION THE WAR!” becomes “DON’T MENTION THOMAS HAMILTON”. Right! Who’s THIS then? (Does a splendid take-off of Sappho…)
Skeptics and secularists and atheists and liberal believers try hard to elicit genuine reasons from religious discriminators against homosexuals, without, as far as I’ve ever seen, success…. Dawkins asked a minister at some evangelical megachurch in ‘The Root of all Evil?’ and the guy just said ‘It’s a sin’
I believe the minister in question was none other than Ted ‘Pastor Ted’ Haggard, OB. You may recall that he was in the news recently..
‘The very idea of rights is an idea of morality; it doesn’t make sense without morality’.
No, I disagree. I don’t believe any moral standards actually objectively exist, and nor do ‘rights’ for that matter. However, I support the concept of human rights on the purely rational grounds that:
1. Societies based on human rights are by and large much nicer places to live than those which are not.
2. I don’t want some idiot, religious or otherwise, telling me how to live my life. Consequently, I support the idea of human rights because so long as the illusion of rights exist, then mine – hopefully – won’t be violated.
Oh, was it Haggard? I thought about that but decided it wasn’t; thought it was a different megachurch that came later. Because Dawks asked that pastor the question about why gay marriage is a problem, in the church area, with people around, and I had the idea that the only time he talked to Haggard was alone in his office. Not sure though. Will have to watch it again.
“I don’t believe any moral standards actually objectively exist, and nor do ‘rights’ for that matter.”
No, neither do I. (I’ve just been reading about the way in the US the Supreme Court creates ‘rights’ via its decisions – which is quite interesting. Particular ‘rights’ that we in the US tend to think of as rights – tend to take for granted – can be dated to specific decisions. The right to procreate for instance: Skinner v Oklahoma, 1942.) But I don’t think that precludes thinking rights are ideas of morality. Neither objectively exists, but both depend on moral intuitions – moral intuitions which can be defended on rational grounds (otherwise they’re just taboos), but moral intuitions all the same. Your 1 and 2 – sure, but the idea that your 1 and 2 matter is still a moral intuition. Someone else can (and does) have a moral intuition that it doesn’t matter which societies are nicer to live in, that that’s not what societies are for, or what life is for, or what people are for.
ChrisPer,
“What if there is mild injustice, but no hatred? I accept that gay is no reason to withhold equal rights under the law. I dispute that Christian objection to gay behaviour is based on hatred. The basis seems to me that in the any human world view, some things are absolute wrongs.”
Hmm. I think that minimizes the problem a little too much (yes, it is possible to minimize too much, which is amusing). Arguably the injustice is not all that mild (depends who’s testifying, of course). Of course I get that to some conservative Christians homosexuality is an absolute wrong. But the question is why it is. Unless you’re saying that absolute wrongs are wrongs that don’t have reasons – but if that’s the case then I strongly dispute that all world views have them. Some world views really do try not to have wrongs for which they can adduce no real reason – because surely it is obvious that if you can adduce no reason you may just be flat wrong? And if you’re flat wrong you run the risk of persecuting or discriminating against people merely because you have a hostile feeling of some sort? And that that won’t do?
“We are dealing with a mis-match between that list in the mind of the religious and the very similar, but not identical, list in the mind of OB and other enlightened present-day people.”
No; again, I think that’s too minimal, not to say a whitewash. It makes it sound as if both lists are merely arbitrary. Well, they may be, but I don’t think we should assume that. If one list belongs to people who think wrongs should be hooked up to real, rational, secular reasons, and another belongs to people who think wrongs should be determined by a deity, the principles in operation in drawing up that list are fundamentally different in ways that matter. There is a massive difference between saying ‘because it causes suffering to no good purpose’ and saying ‘because God said so’ or ‘Deuteronomy 4.23’. Just saying there are two lists that don’t overlap entirely occludes that difference, or plain denies it.
I pretty sure it was Haggard. In any case, Haggard of course has condemned homosexuality as a sin many times – I’m sure he still believes homosexuality is a sin and that he himself is therefore very sinful.
Apparently he’s now gone into ‘rehab’ to turn him into a heterosexual, too.
The inalienable right to discriminate between Good and Evil goes to the very heart of the religious impulse. Small wonder the Godless Left are laying seige to it. This is quite simply the Fascist Left unmasked.
Ah but we fundamentalist secularists and atheists are every bit as keen to discriminate between good and bad – only not without reasons. So perhaps your first sentence should read ‘The inalienable right to discriminate arbitrarily between Good and Evil goes to the very heart of the religious impulse.’ Better?
‘the idea that your 1 and 2 matter is still a moral intuition’.
That idea is not a moral intuition, but rather a logical decision based on the kind of life I like to lead. I suppose you could call it an amoral intuition perhaps!
neo con dubyite? OMG. LOL. Just sad.
“but rather a logical decision based on the kind of life I like to lead.”
Hmm. I nearly said okay, if you mean it just applies to you. But then I looked back at what you said, which is that that’s why you support human rights. But why human rights? Why not just Edmund Standing rights? Or rights that apply to X group of people that includes Edmund Standing? Why not just enough for safety and no more? Why extend them to humans in general? It’s a moral intuition, I tell you.
OB: “Ah but we fundamentalist secularists and atheists are every bit as keen to discriminate between good and bad – only not without reasons.”
Nice, I approve. Would that progressives in general had better reasons for their disapproval.
Christian disapproval of gay practice is not without reasons – its just without reasons that others find persuasive. For instance, you disown the reason of pleasing God on the grounds that He does not exist.
‘Why not just enough for safety and no more?’
No, I am consistent. I do effectively support just enough for me. Hate me if you will, but you won’t find me at any ‘drop the debt’ rallies, or signing petitions about Darfur, or donating money to African AIDS projects. There is no moral intuition here, as *worldwide* human rights abuses do not really concern me. I don’t feel any sense of ‘solidarity’ with all humans or something like that, and I certainly don’t feel any moral responsibility towards people I will never meet. That might sound nasty, but at least I’m honest. I’m an atheist, but not a humanist. And on human rights, I’m pragmatic, not morally inclined.
ChrisPer:
Christian disapproval of gay practice is not without reasons – its just without reasons that others find persuasive. For instance, you disown the reason of pleasing God on the grounds that He does not exist.
So we’d have
Christian anti-gay: “Homosexuality is wrong, because God said so (Leviticus, etc.)”
Humanist: “Homosexuality is morally neutral and should not be condemned, because (reference to some ultimate moral principle such as personal liberty, etc.)”
How to solve this? I would argue the humanist has nevertheless the upper hand, even if both ground themselves, in the end, on ultimates (God’s command or some version of same rights to a personal life for everyone). I’d challenge the anti-gay Christian on consistency: there are lots of more or less obscure Old-Testamentic commandments which are happily rejected. Such as those dealing with the proper keeping of slaves (which are actually quite decent, regarding the time), the stoning of adulterers (not so nice), and so on. Why do they always keep the bits which deal with icky male-on-male action?
Ah – okay, Edmund, you’re consistent then!
Anyway you had more of a point than I noticed at first, because I said something stupid. ‘The Archbishop is free to protest the current proposals, of course, but I think his protest, and the grounds for his protest, are immoral.’ I shouldn’t have bundled the protest and the grounds for it together like that.
“Christian disapproval of gay practice is not without reasons – its just without reasons that others find persuasive. For instance, you disown the reason of pleasing God on the grounds that He does not exist.”
Or to put it another way it’s without secular reasons, which means it is without reasons that others can on principle if not in practice share (or find persuasive). That’s why secularists (including many religious ones) hold that religious reasons should not play a part in public decision-making and legislation. The legal status of homosexuality should be debated and decided on grounds that everyone can at least in principle share; that excludes any version of ‘god says so.’
“It makes me laugh too immoderately.”
Well, that’s good nwes, anyway.
I’m glad you get some fun out of it ….