Buretsu said:
ReiverCorrupter said:
2) I'm not sure how you know that homosexuality isn't somehow preventable... doesn't that fly directly in the face of the claim that it isn't a choice and that social conditions are irrelevant?
No, it's completely in line with that claim. If someone is gay, they are gay. There's no way to stop, i.e. prevent, them from being gay. It's like gender or race; it's an immutable facet of their being.
WOW, gender is an immutable facet of people's beings? Try telling that to transgender people. So when a person gets sexual reassignment surgery they become a different person? An interesting theory of identity, to say the least. I guess in your scenario it's not the homosexuality that you prevent, but the existence of the homosexual person. So what if someone suffers a brain injury that causes them to change their sexuality? Did they die and an entirely new person come into life to replace them?
Buretsu said:
ReiverCorrupter said:
3) My point was that something can be intrinsically neutral while having effects that make it extrinsically negative. You don't have to hate obese people to want your children not to be obese. Someone isn't a bad person just because they are obese, but obesity isn't healthy so it might be better for them if they weren't obese. Similarly, given many unfortunate societal factors, a child may indeed be happier if they weren't gay. While it is true that it would be better if we could change society rather than the individual, parents hardly have the power to do so.
That's still the fault of society, not the homosexual individual. Gays have the exact same inherent ability to he happy as straight people. There's a difference between being unhappy because others are making you such, and being unhappy because you dislike yourself.
I explicitly acknowledged that it is society and not the individual that is to blame in what you just quoted.
A person who is born into a famine so that they will be starving for the rest of their lives has the same
inherent ability to be happy as a person who isn't (i.e. it's not their fault that there's a famine). So is it bigoted to not want to bring that person into the world? Does one thereby hate starving people?
What about clinical depression? Would parents be bigoted for trying to prevent that? Surely someone with clinical depression does NOT have the exact same inherent ability to be happy as someone who doesn't (by the very nature of depression). How about the kind of mental disorders that have both positive an negative side effects? Say, for instance, something like manic-depression where the person might be more gifted in a certain respect (e.g. it gives them greater artistic ability), but they are seemingly less happy overall? I don't think it's
nearly as simple as you make it out to be.
Buretsu said:
ReiverCorrupter said:
They reject obesity for health reasons, and homosexuality because they are afraid their children will get picked-on/discriminated against.
Do the parents 1) hate fat people, 2) hate gay people, 3) hate neither, or 4) hate both? Explain your answer. Please note that the question is whether the parents are bigots, not whether they are violating the child's rights or doing something else that is morally objectionable (which they probably are).
They hate both. They're bigots, because they're rejecting a child based on naturally developed factors present in that child, factors that they feel are undesirable. But then, that's the inherent flaw with this sort of eugenics; that it can be used not only to detect and allow for the prevention of genetic illnesses and malignant traits, it could also be used for something like that.
So who defines 'illness'? Are you aware that there are many people in the blind and deaf communities that don't consider blindness and deafness to be illnesses? They have argued along the same lines as you that parents shouldn't be allowed to prevent deafness or blindness as it constitutes an act of passive genocide.
Another question, how do you define 'hatred'? Is it an emotion or a more general disposition? Certainly hatred is at least an emotive state. So are you saying that it would be physically impossible for a person both to chose an embryo without those traits and not feel hatred when confronted with gay people or fat people? That would be an interesting argument.
Or are you just using 'hate' in a broader sense? You could probably argue that bigotry doesn't require actual emotional hatred. If so, then we might just have different definitions of bigotry. I find implicit/unconscious prejudices to be a general form of prejudice, which is distinct from bigotry (bigotry being conscious, intentional prejudice accompanied by hatred). The former is less objectionable that outright hatred for other groups. But then some people might see them as the same. Of course, that would imply that someone with unconscious prejudices would be equivalent to a member of a hate group. Some people might find that result desirable.
Buretsu said:
But saying that something is bad, even for extrinsic reasoning, is malicious in itself. It's only adding a qualifier to the idea that being gay is a bad thing. Saying "I don't want my child to be gay because he might get picked on" is no different from saying "I don't want my child to be smart because he might get picked on" or "I don't want my child to be black because he might be discriminated against". Intrinsic or extrinsic, you are still attributing negative qualities. You're essentially blaming the victim.
The whole point of extrinsic qualities is that you AREN'T saying that the thing itself is bad. You're failing to distinguish between the badness of a thing and the badness of a thing's possible consequences. A thing is not identical to its consequences.
In fact, many things can be intrinsically good, but extrinsically bad in certain circumstances. Saving someone's life could be considered an intrinsically good action, but saving Hitler's life right in the middle of WWII would have some very bad consequences. At any rate, I don't see how you're blaming the victim if you openly acknowledge that it's society's fault. Now, there are plenty of other reasons for saying that what the parents are doing is morally wrong aside from appealing to bigotry, especially in the examples you just mentioned.
Buretsu said:
I'd say that it's entirely bad. While eating a piece of chocolate cake might seem like it would stave off hunger for an immediate time, the amount of sugar and fat present in the delicious treat would likely actually decrease survivability.
Lol, not if it's the only thing to eat. But you can replace it with something else if you like, such as a medicine that cures people with a certain type of illness, but would harm someone who doesn't have the illness.
Buretsu said:
ReiverCorrupter said:
Now, if you're having some sort of knee-jerk reaction to what I'm saying, allow me to assure you once again that I am not arguing that parents ought to try to prevent their children from being homosexual. In fact, I think that they would be wrong to do so. My point is merely that they would not necessarily be bigots if they do so for certain reasons.
And I'm saying that you're wrong, that no matter the reasoning that gets applied, not wanting your child to be gay is bigoted.
Ah, so bigotry is independent of the reasoning behind actions (aka motivations, intentions and mental states)? Now THAT, my friend, is an interesting conclusion. I can't say I agree with it. I think bigotry is necessarily tied to how people see other people, but maybe that's just a personal quirk.
