Born This Way

So one subject that keeps getting discussed in the gay marriage debate is whether or not homosexuality is innate. Gay advocates argue that if it is (and the evidence seems to be that it is), then homosexuals are being discriminated against for something they did not choose.
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.

More Ally Stuff: Uganda

Uganda is considering legislation that would make homosexuality illegal, give life sentences to those who engage in homosexuality, and the death penalty to those who do it multiple times or have AIDS:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Uganda_introduces_anti-homosexual_legislation
http://wthrockmorton.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/anti-homosexuality-bill-2009.pdf

Sad

Alright, no high-minded philosophy for this post. Maybe later, on this subject, but not right now. It is 1:22 AM, and it seems pretty much certain that marriage rights for all people were rejected in Maine. :(

CONTROVERSY TIME: Abortion

Alright, so obviously, I am writing a blog post when I promised I wouldn't. So the deal is now: no Free Will Part 2 until someone makes a comment that get's discussion going.

There was a poll on FB that went like this:
When does a human's life actually begin? When should someone be considered a human being and enjoy the rights, freedoms and privileges as other humans?
- At the moment of conception
- At the moment the pregnancy is detected
- At the end of the 1st trimester
- Once brain activity has been detected
- At the end of the 2nd trimester
- Once survival outside the womb is viable
- Within one month of expected delivery date
- After the entire body is outside vaginal canal
- After the cord is severed and baby survives
So I was thinking of responding, but I realized my views were much too nuanced.
The question isn't when life begins, but when it is that that life assumes worth. Quite obviously a fetus is alive, as is bacteria. And we don't worry about killing bacteria.
Even with this distinction, I don't think a clear line can be easily drawn. The most I feel I can say with certainty is this:
At the moment of conception, the life has no particular worth;
Near birth, the life does have worth
In between the distinctions are very fuzzy.

Let's throw out one argument off the bat: the argument from potential. Often one will hear the argument "what if the child that's being aborted would've grown up to be Beethoven? Or Einstein?" Well, what if it had grown up to be Hitler or Stalin? Or for all we know it could've ended up being a miscarriage, or a stillbirth, in which case it wouldn't have grown up to be anything at all.
More fundamentally, this argument could easily be used to prove that it's wrong not to have sex when the woman has eggs ready to be fertilized. After all, if the eggs were fertilized, who knows what great things those children could accomplish? Ergo, by the reasoning used earlier, it is a disservice to humanity to not have sex. Reductio ad absurdum.
(If one brings in "God's will", it actually gets even more complicated, since then you have to bring in all the theological issues involving omniscience, omnipotence, and sovereignty.)

Therefore we can only reason in regards to what the embryo/fetus IS, not what it might be. And here is where the worth of it's life get's fuzzy. Because as I said before, we have no problem killing bacteria, which perform many lifelike functions that an embryo does not. And unless we're vegetarian, we're even willing to kill animals that have more sentient behavior than a newborn baby. Obviously the argument hinges on the fact that the embryo is "human", whereas the other things are not. Yet, this is not terribly different from one race of people saying it's OK to kill people of other races, but not members of their own race. Just as the color of one's skin is less important than their qualities of personality, so too whether one belong to the species of Homo Sapien is less important than their human-like qualities in determining whether their life has value (for the benefit of the doubt, I am making the assumption here that the value of life depends on humanness in some form--not necessarily a sound assumption [although I think it's necessary, more on that in another post]). For instance, if by some freak coincidence on genetics, if a chimpanzee was born with the mental abilities of an adult human, we would almost certainly say it deserved human rights, and also that it almost certainly had a soul. But then, how far do we have to go before we say it ceases to have these things? If it has the abilities of a teenager? A child? A toddler? A newborn? In fact, chimps do have abilities beyond those of a young toddler. Why, then, does the toddler have human rights, and a soul, and the chimp does not, even though their abilities are just as "human"? And why should we be concerned with the life of an embryo, but not a bacterium?

(This was written of the cuff, late at night, so I sort of rambled.)

Past, Present, and Future

Another random idea and off-the-cuff post...
There seems to be divide in human thought between past, present, and future. By past, present, and future, I mean not only their meaning in time but also ideas associated with each of them. For instance

Past: experience, ideals, tradition, security

Present: sensation, pragmatism, pleasure

Future: imagination, ideals, innovation, revolution

(Present is probably the category with the most diversity: pragmatism and pleasure, for instance, might very well be opposed to eachother)

Here's how I would categorize some philosophies, mind-sets, and types of people according to the past/present/future distinction:

Past: conservatism, fundamentalism, respect for elders/ancestors, Confucionism, literalism, "conservative" intellectuals, reactionaries, Guardians

Present: some elements of conservatism, libertarianism, hedonism, empiricism, Zen, artists, hippies, thrill seekers, "down-to-earth", "do what needs to be done", Artisans

Future: liberalism, "the children are our future", Western Thought in general, some elements of Randian philosophy, inventors, artists, philosophers, radicals, Idealists, Rationals

(it should be obvious that, just because two things are in the same category, doesn't mean they are compatible: "down to earth" people and hippies probably would not get along very well, for instance. They are however both focused on the present.)