Irish Marriage Equality Referendum Draws Near

[giblets]

But if homosexuals are better off having same sex relationships then a god that proclaims by divine fiat that they shouldn't have same sex relationships is probably a malevolent god.

[Elok]

In a VE system, "better off" is defined by adhering to the standard. Ultimately, this is no less arbitrary than utilitarianism. But I've had this argument with you guys before, more or less.

[C0ckney]

The problem is that he's attempting to justify an essentially virtue-ethics belief in utilitarian/consequentialist terms he doesn't really believe in himself. Catholicism doesn't believe homosexuality is wrong because of AIDS or child molesting or drag queens breaking their legs in high heels or whatever. Catholicism believes homosexuality is wrong because it has a vision of goodness as adhering to a certain mode of living, and that mode of living does not include same-sex relations. That is, gayness is bad in itself. This belief is impossible to argue; the form of virtue we should conform ourselves to is essentially mandated by divine fiat. So he tries to argue for it in terms of a non-Catholic moral standard. Which doesn't work, and reduces him to a punching bag, but he's got some sort of weird masochistic thing going on.

i think you put it very well. of course in times past "because god says so" as an argument had a lot of force; people took such things seriously when considering social questions. nowadays, even in 'religious' countries, that kind of argument raises a shrug, or fierce opposition, or perhaps worst of all from a religious point of view, mocking laughter. therefore, as you say, catholics are forced to argue their views in either a euphemistic or disingenuous way.

[Elok]

Not really, IMO. Virtue ethics predates Xianity by a considerable margin; it originated, AFAIK, among ancient Greeks and Romans as a conception of "the good life," with no divine justification whatever, just what Greeks and Romans considered admirable, such as valor in war. Christianity baptized "the good life" as conformity to the will of God, but it retained its struggling/striving nature. When the Enlightenment/modernity hit, virtue was gradually displaced by a blander consequentialist ethos, where society had less and less conception of any unequivocally Good mode of being as such so good just meant not getting in anybody else's way, or everybody just being comfortable. Also the whole notion of striving and betterment is not particularly egalitarian, and was gradually downplayed for our more placid era.

This set of attitudes began infiltrating the Church herself from a surprisingly early period; conservatives today like to fret over Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, but as early as the Jackson era (in America) religion began to be converted into a vendor of socially useful platitudes and inoffensively philanthropic endeavors. See Hawthorne's viciously satirical "The Celestial Railroad" for an example. I think BK might actually have some notion of what Christianity used to be about; this is just his usual abusive-spouse relationship with truth. Other Catholics struggle and sputter because their conception of the faith is an adulteration at war with itself.

[Elok]

I mean, what you're proposing, if I read you right, is that basically people used to be utter dumbasses who treated the phrase "God wants" as something equivalent to "Simon says." Generally when this argument is made, it's backed up by the assumption that People Back Then were like that because they knew less science, or had less stuff, or were all diseased peasants whacking the mud with sticks like in Monty Python's Holy Grail. I think the reality is more that people in the Western world thought about morality in a radically different way. And perhaps not only in the Western world; cf. Theravada Buddhism, Daoism, possibly even some aspects of Confucianism. Only recently did God stop being the name we gave to the end goal of our existence and start being, in effect, the finger-shaking judge enforcing rules for the sake of good social order. The Traffic Cop in the Sky. Of course everybody laughs at that.

[Aeson]

Utilitarianism is a type of virtue ethic. It just places those things that lead to increased utility as the virtue to strive for.

Not all virtue ethics are created equal. While "rid the world of Jews" and "provide for my family" may be arbitrary from an amoral and disinterested perspective ... or Hitler's view ... obviously one is superior to the other.

[Ben Kenobi]

Actually, you didn't. I provided the John Jay study. You provided some link by some Catholic Church dude.

\

Which accurately cited the study and the important points of the study.

And the Catholic Church paid millions and millions of dollars for their culpability in preventing more priests from being convicted.

Again, that doesn't change the fact that only 0.12 percent of the total priests n the United States were convicted in a court of law. You can argue against those numbers to your heart's content, but that doesn't change the actual facts of the matter.

The Church itself took action against 90% of the accused, meaning 3.6% of priests, according to the Church, were guilty of sexual misconduct of some sort with minors. The fact that there were so few criminal convictions was the reason the Church had to pay so much compensation - Church officials were abetting the criminals.

"Taking action" is defined to include things like reassignment of priests to a different diocese. First you're arguing that reassignment was done to protect priests, now you're arguing it was done to punish them. Personally if a priest has been accused of sexual misconduct and is innocent, reassignment would be appropriate as it's unlikely the priest will want to continue serving there. Would you want to serve for a diocese where people are falsely accusing you of being a molester? Hardly. Priests are people too.

You are not reading the actual John Jay report.

I have read the John Jay report as well as others. The data is actually pretty stark. Statistically, although the individual cases are pretty widespread - the concentration is not. 4 dioceses have something on the order of the third of the total abuse cases in all of the US, and that is not evenly distributed by offenders. While the most likely number of offenses per offender is 1, the range goes higher, much higher. So, even though one can claim that it was widespread, the data is overwhelming concentrated on a few offenders and towards molestation of boys.

Why that is I'll lead as an exercise to the reader.

That report had absolutely no information on Boy Scout leader convictions, nor has the Boy Scouts organization had to pay millions and millions of dollars in compensation for abetting sexual predators.

Gosh. Which I argued was contained in the report? Except that I didn't argue that at all. I simply said that the conviction rate is about the same. Now why might an ex-boy scout know about such things?

The only direct comparison we have is the percentages of Catholic priests and Boy Scout leaders that were sanctioned by their organizations

Just because you lack this information doesn't mean that the information is actually not out there. Again, the conviction ratio is not much different between the two. Are boy scout leaders committed to the organization, or are they volunteers who can simply be fired? Would that have an effect on the 'disciplinary' stats?

Priests were 90 times as likely to be sexual predators.

A fact that the Jay report does not support. You can say that, that doesn't make it true, since you're assuming that:

1, both organizations have similar standards of sanctions?
2, that both organizations have similar reporting standards.

Neither are true, and there are good reasons why the Boy Scouts would have different numbers than the Catholic church. Not the least of which most of the Boy scout leaders are in effect, volunteers, not employees. But then, what would I know about the organization? I was only a member for 10 years.

We are not a court of law. We are a couple of guys looking at the data. The data we have says you are wrong.

Arguing that those whom the Catholic church relocated are guilty of molestation is circumstantial evidence, at best. The only good, solid number we have is the 0.12 percent of priests convicted of sexual abuse in the United States.

We don't know how relatively diligent the Church is at priests.

Then your comparison is flawed because you're assuming they have similar standards such that you can infer from them the comparison.

We do know that the Catholic Church has paid enormous sums of money to compensate victims for its protection of child molesters.

Given that there are plenty of actual victims (and the numbers of victims/priest is not 1:1), wouldn't Ockham's razor suggest that the Church is paying compensation to actually proven victims of molestation and not hush money?

That's not what the numbers show.

That is what the numbers show.

46% of lesbian women reported having been with a violent partner, but it isn't clear in this case who the batterer was

If it's not clear whom was the batterer, then it's impossible to conclude anything about any of these statistics.

Face it Grumbler. Your argument got crushed by the actual facts.

A child doesn't have a "right" to a mother and father, they just have a mother and father.

As I said, you believe that an adults' sexual desires are more important than the right of a child to have a mother and a father.

something has a "right" to something that it simply has by biological necessity is the height of absurdity.

Just like I suppose the right to life is an absurdity too?

Not to mention, of course, that your entire statement here is a strawman argument, for I have said nothing about sexual desires whatever.

Do you believe that people have a right to have sex with whomever they choose?

[Ben Kenobi]

You're conflating biological origin with rearing. If a child gets adopted by a new father, that doesn't mean they now have two dads does it? If a child is raised by an adopted mother and father, that doesn't mean they have four parents does it?

You're arguing that because the child gets adopted that the child has two moms. This is false. The child has one mother. Who is it? Mom number 1 or mom number 2?

[Ben Kenobi]

The problem is that he's attempting to justify an essentially virtue-ethics belief in utilitarian/consequentialist terms he doesn't really believe in himself. Catholicism doesn't believe homosexuality is wrong because of AIDS or child molesting or drag queens breaking their legs in high heels or whatever. Catholicism believes homosexuality is wrong because it has a vision of goodness as adhering to a certain mode of living, and that mode of living does not include same-sex relations. That is, gayness is bad in itself. This belief is impossible to argue; the form of virtue we should conform ourselves to is essentially mandated by divine fiat. So he tries to argue for it in terms of a non-Catholic moral standard. Which doesn't work, and reduces him to a punching bag, but he's got some sort of weird masochistic thing going on.

Yes, and no at the same time. Catholicism argues two things - one, that God has laid out a plan for living that we will benefit if we live by his rules, and two, that there consequences for straying from this path. Consequences that can and do show up in social science. I've already provided some of the evidence which has been dismissed by the utilitarians. You are quite right - that we see sodomy as objectively wrong - in its substance. But you are wrong as to the why?

We have two different visions of society here - one that argues for the primacy of sexual desire and fulfillment, which argues from a utilitarian standpoint - that this fulfillment is the primary ordering of life and that to order away from this fulfillment, is ultimately harmful to a person's wellbeing and functioning in society. Even if there are bad consequences thereof - they are outweighed by the harmful consequences of not getting the sex you want when you want.

Then you have the Christian argument that sodomy is sinful, that it is contrary to the plan that God has for sex - that sex is designed for a man and a woman in marriage and that there are negative consequences, both in this life and the next for straying. The Christian argument isn't just, "X is bad because God believes it to be bad", but rather, "God has a plan for us, and since he designed us - we have an operating system instructions. Not following those instructions means that we don't work as well as we ought - which is a restatement of the fall and the consequences of the fall.

[Ben Kenobi]

But if homosexuals are better off having same sex relationships then a god that proclaims by divine fiat that they shouldn't have same sex relationships is probably a malevolent god.

You've ordered, "sexual fulfillment" at the top of your utilitarian Good. There are problems with this view.

[Ben Kenobi]

catholics are forced to argue their views in either a euphemistic or disingenuous way.

Interesting. So when a Catholic argues that abuse is more prevalent in gay partnerships that's considered to be dishonest? Why?

[Ben Kenobi]

This set of attitudes began infiltrating the Church herself from a surprisingly early period; conservatives today like to fret over Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, but as early as the Jackson era (in America) religion began to be converted into a vendor of socially useful platitudes and inoffensively philanthropic endeavors. See Hawthorne's viciously satirical "The Celestial Railroad" for an example. I think BK might actually have some notion of what Christianity used to be about; this is just his usual abusive-spouse relationship with truth. Other Catholics struggle and sputter because their conception of the faith is an adulteration at war with itself.

I would like a statement from you as to what you believe that Christianity 'used to be about'. Only then can I assess the validity of your statement.

[Aeson]

You've ordered, "sexual fulfillment" at the top of your utilitarian Good. There are problems with this view.

No he hasn't. He's simply ordered "being with the person you love who loves you" over "not being with the person you love who loves you because someone says God said it's bad"

[Ben Kenobi]

No he hasn't. He's simply ordered "being with the person you love who loves you" over "not being with the person you love who loves you because someone says God said it's bad"

The Church doesn't bar him from 'being with the person you love who also loves you", it teaches that he cannot engage in sodomy with another man.

The Church actually doesn't bar him from spending time with that person.

[giblets]

You're arguing that because the child gets adopted that the child has two moms. This is false. The child has one mother. Who is it? Mom number 1 or mom number 2?

No, the child has two mothers. The child is being raised by two adults who are both female. If the child was being raised by a male adult and a female adult then the child would have a mother and a father. If the child was being raised by two male adults then the child would have two fathers. This is pretty straightforward. I'm talking about who is raising the kid, of course, not their biological origin.