However, it has always seemed to me that this question - of whether homosexuality is innate - is a red herring. In fact, while it's an interesting scientific question, it has no bearing on whether or not homosexuals have the right to engage in their preferred lifestyle.
Suppose (as is almost certainly the case) that homosexuality is innate. Why should this give homosexuals the right to engage in their lifestyle? After all, many mental disorders are innate, but that doesn't mean that a psychopath has the right to go out and kill people. Someone who has a mental disorder that causes them to engage in immoral behavior has one of two options: either overcome the disorder, or be removed from society. This is regardless of whether the disorder is curable or not. And one can't say "God made me this way", because God made people with destructive mental disorders too.
And what if it isn't innate? Well, neither are most lifestyles people choose. We aren't born, for example, to live a certain religious lifestyle: we choose it (or are forced into it). But as long as lifestyle isn't hurting others, it does not concern them (obviously, there ARE some cases where a lifestyle might be hurting the person engaged in it in a way that is of concern to society as a whole). This is the important point. The question isn't whether one was born homosexual or chose the lifestyle: it's whether people have the right to behave the way they would like as long as it doesn't hurt others (offense doesn't count). This is why I'm an ally.
* * *
While I'm on the subject of bad arguments for causes I support, let's talk about abortion. I am pro-choice in a fuzzy way: I believe that the abortion of, say, a week-old embryo is completely blameless regardless of circumstances, partial-birth abortions are immoral unless for extreme medical reasons, and the time in between is one big gray fuzzy mess. I discuss my views in detail here.
So, obviously, I do not agree with the pro-lifers. However, I think the argument that a woman has the right to do what she wants with her body completely misses the point. It is the pro-lifers who are actually talking about what matters in this case: namely, whether the fetus is a human life. My beliefs are that it isn't (until fairly late in its development), and this is why I think abortion is OK. But if it is, then it seems to me that a woman's right to choose becomes questionable at best. It is intuitively likely that one's right to choose what to do with one's body stops at the point that that choice entails killing another human being. We could justify it on utilitarian grounds that the psychological and physical distress of carrying and giving birth to the child outweighs the value of its life (which is how I'd look at it): but even in this case the woman's right to choose is only considered relative to the what the value is of the human to be destroyed.
So, obviously, I do not agree with the pro-lifers. However, I think the argument that a woman has the right to do what she wants with her body completely misses the point. It is the pro-lifers who are actually talking about what matters in this case: namely, whether the fetus is a human life. My beliefs are that it isn't (until fairly late in its development), and this is why I think abortion is OK. But if it is, then it seems to me that a woman's right to choose becomes questionable at best. It is intuitively likely that one's right to choose what to do with one's body stops at the point that that choice entails killing another human being. We could justify it on utilitarian grounds that the psychological and physical distress of carrying and giving birth to the child outweighs the value of its life (which is how I'd look at it): but even in this case the woman's right to choose is only considered relative to the what the value is of the human to be destroyed.
Posts
