Homosexuality is Morally Equivalent to Heterosexuality

Thanks for taking up the debate, TheBrightestNeon. A few preliminary comments; I deferred my first post on this debate primarily because, as mentioned above, it depends upon a positive (that is ‘posit-ing') argument from the ‘Con' side. There are multiple arguments that can be made against the moral equivalency of heterosexuality and homosexuality (though they each are quite related), and it would be rather impossible for me to deal with all of them in detail in the space of 8000 characters. It would also be a rather significant waste of time, as I expect my opponent would prefer to select only one argument to discuss, leaving the rest of my counter-arguments irrelevant. Clarification as to what I mean by ‘moral ground' should have been provided in the first post, but I did not have the foresight to do it. I will provide one here. By ‘moral ground,' I do not mean ‘capacity for making a moral claim.' A psychopath (that is, a person devoid of empathy, and thus largely incapable of interacting in a legitimate, moral fashion with other human beings) may claim that mass genocide is morally permissible. That constitutes, in a broad sense of the word, a ‘moral claim;' it is a claim about what is morally permissible. But no rational, well-informed individual with the full swath of moral ‘knowledge' (I use that term generally; it would be far too tangential and space-consuming to hammer out a precise definition) would agree that mass genocide is morally permissible. If anything is fundamental to our modern morality, it is that genocide is heinous and evil. Now, morality is not merely composed of the atomic inclinations of our species, but rather involves claims that can be analyzed, and are composite. Genocide is wrong because we have values that we hold in tandem: that human life, all else being equal, is worth preserving, and of great value, and that one human being, all else being equal, does not have the right to decide for another person that it is time for their life to end. There are many crevices in the composition of the condemnation of genocide for debate and discussion, and these debates will involve reasoned argumentation. To conclude this introductory section, for a moral claim to have a moral ground, it must withstand the same analysis and reasoned argumentation that every other moral claim we participate in also withstands. I may, here, be doing a great disservice to your (assumed, devil's advocate) position. By referring to the Bible (particularly with the phrase ‘book of god'), your argument so far rests upon a reference to authority. A significant thread of Christians argue that morality is directly created by the will of God, such that the reasoned argumentation mentioned above as so crucial to our understanding of morality is not necessary. The voice of God alone is sufficient justification for the legitimacy of a moral claim. Therefore, according to this flavor of Christianity, the voice of God (synonymous, for our purposes, with ‘the Bible') is a proper moral ground for moral claims. And here, we reach an unfortunate point. The proper (Socratic) way forward is to analyze the assumptions implicit in your argument, until we get to a point of commonground, where our assumptions are shared, where we can then analyze that foundation, working our way back up to the top (where we currently are). Eight thousand characters in two more rounds is nowhere near enough space for that. But, let's do what we can. P1)If the Bible is the Word of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God (hereafter abbreviated to ‘OOO God'), then it is reasonable to expect that every moral injunction contained within will be morally good. P2)If the Bible is the Word of an OOO God, and if the Bible is the main foundation for objective morality, then it is reasonable to expect that the moral injunctions contained within the Bible will be thorough in proclaiming that objective morality as completely as is possible. Each of the above fail. For P1, a simple glance-through of the Bible reveals a large number of either direct moral injunctions, or situations from which a moral injunction can easily be derived, that are morally repulsive: Genesis 6:7, where God decides to destroy all humanity and all animals (except for a handful from each category) because he was not being obeyed. Even if it is allowed to the Jew/Christian that it was morally permissible for God to kill the humans for this, how can the drowning deaths of all the animals across the planet be considered permissible? Genesis 19, where God obliterates the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (for homosexuality, if you ask most Christians, though Ezekiel, interestingly, makes no mention of homosexuality when listing the sins of Sodom in Ez 16:48-50). Even if it is allowed to the Jew/Christian that it is morally permissible for God to kill the adult residents of these cities for sin, how can the deaths of infants and toddlers, who must certainly be innocent of whatever crime is imputed to the rest of the city, be considered permissible? Genesis 22, where a man willing to murder his son for God is considered the champion of faith and virtue. A man willing to murder his son, for any reason, is not virtuous. And this is just half of one book out of sixty-six. Leviticus and Deuteronomy expand this list a hundred-fold. It is difficult to see how P1 can possibly stand in light of the heinous injunctions contained within the Bible. For P2, the Bible is notably silent on slavery, perhaps the most significant moral failing of western civilization over the last four hundred years. An OOO God would have foreseen the issues of slavery (and they extend today, in a different form, in the back streets and quiet rooms of the world over), and would have made a full condemnation of slavery in his book, if it was meant to be a complete presentation of morality to humanity. All it takes is for either P1 or P2 to fall to negate the claim that the Bible is the Word of God (if that God is OOO). And, if that claim is negated, then the Bible does not constitute a (legitimate) moral ground for condemning homosexuality.