Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,alt.politics.homosexuality,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Morally good necessary possible sometimes possible reproductiveness
From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Date: 21 Dec 92 18:25:32 EST
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

For reasons outlined below, I am hereby withdrawing from large-scale
participation in this debate.  I shall continue to respond to Mike
Morris, whose remarks and my response to the same occasioned its
rebirth after a year's hiatus; furthermore, should anyone else come up
with an unchararacteristically relevant comments, I reserve the right
to follow up in kind.  However, convinced that I have accomplished my
goals, I will treat the average blithering would-be repudiation in the
manner I have recently adopted for the benefit of Skippy and his
buddies.  To paraphrase a famous mediocrity, which is more than they
deserve, as for injuries, calumnies, and impertinent insults, you may
multiply and amass them as much as you want, but you will never
elevate them above my disdain.

In article <1992Dec21.182718.17763@netcom.com> 
robj@netcom.com (Rob Jellinghaus) writes:

>In article <1992Dec21.065346.18751@husc3.harvard.edu>
>zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:

>>In article <1992Dec21.074709.26608@netcom.com> 
>>robj@netcom.com (Rob Jellinghaus) writes:

RJ:
>>>This debate is not purely theoretical.  If it were, I would not be
>>>reading it and participating in it from alt.politics.homosexuality.
>>>I happen to be interested in disseminating accurate information about
>>>homosexuality to as wide an audience as possible.  This conversation
>>>with you is part of that.

MZ:
>>I have no interest in discussing your notion of theoretical purity,
>>beyond establishing whether you assent to my dismissal of popular
>>consensus, which is a necessary condition for making any meaningful
>>progress in this conversation.

RJ:
>And I have repeatedly asserted that I do not believe you will alter
>your position regardless of what happens in our discussion.  Let me
>be perfectly clear:  I believe you are as fixed in your beliefs as
>Clayton Cramer is in his.  I do not believe you will alter your
>position one iota, no matter what arguments anyone musters against
>you.  I believe you will continue to post your position essentially
>unaltered for years to come, as long as you have access to the net.

Surely your beliefs have a plausible explanation in the failure of
your confederates to convict me of error in reasoning.  Notably, they
are not substantiated by any objective evidence of my prejudice in
this, or any other matter.  Consequently, they reflect solely on your
petty character of a sore loser, rather than on any imaginary flaw of
my intellectual integrity.  Finally, you greatly overestimate my
interest in the matter at hand.  As a matter of sheer intellectual
preference, I would rather discuss the comparative merits of set
theories or political conceptions of property, than explain time after
time the self-evident moral truths of the human sexual nature, to an
audience of sincere, self-indulgent crybabies.

RJ:
>Thus, I am attempting to uncover your assumptions and arguments, in
>order to present my opposing position.  I do this hoping that our
>audience will determine for itself which of us is correct, since I
>know you will not admit defeat.

Given your evident failure to convict me of intellectual dishonesty,
if you truly know anything of the sort, it can only be due to your
awareness of the falsity of your opposition.

MZ:
>>>>In any case, if you sincerely believe that
>>>>popular consensus regards homosexual sex as morally unimpeachable, you
>>>>are utterly out of touch with social reality.

RJ:
>>>Oh, I'm under no such illusions.

MZ:
>>I am gratified to hear this.  Shall we then dismiss popular consensus
>>as irrelevant, because irrational?

RJ:
>Not at all.  Popular consensus can change over time as a result of
>ongoing dialogue and access to accurate information.  I am working
>to bring about just such a change.

So far, all you can oppose to my arguments, is your say-so, augmented
by transparent emotional propaganda.  Since none of these will affect
the moral basis of the issue, and since at this time I am not at all
interested in pursuing its political implications, I am not interested
in continuing this exchange.  However, I suggest that if you really
wish to effect a change in *moral* attitudes, you had better learn to
justify your preferences with a *moral* argument.

MZ:
>>To reiterate some of my assumptions, I take it that rational discourse,
>>in particular rational moral discourse, is both possible and desirable,
>>and so take human freedom of choice and rationality as its logical
>>prerequisites.  I take it that absolute moral principles bind all
>>rational agents in accordance with their fundamental nature, and
>>regardless of their particular goals or circumstances.  I take it that
>>rationality, sexuality, and mortality belong to the fundamental nature
>>of human beings, and accordingly are possessed of a moral dimension.
>>The rest is commentary.

RJ:
>Your definitions of "absolute moral principles", "fundamental nature",
>and "rational agents" are at issue here.  I assert you have chosen
>definitions for these terms that you can use to support your philo-
>sophical argument against homosexuality.  I do not believe that your
>definitions are acceptable.

Not a rebuttal.

MZ:
>>Regarding your distinction of victimhood, I maintain that it begs the
>>question. ....

RJ:
>And I maintain otherwise.  Your parable seems to have no bearing on my
>question.  Where are the victims of homosexuality?  Who is harmed by
>mutually consensual homosexual behavior?  Is it your claim that
>fundamentalists are harmed because such behavior is against their
>religion?  Your example of a Christian thief robbing a rich man to
>help the rich man get into heaven has no obvious relevance to the
>question I asked.  Can you elucidate?

My point was made to demonstrate that the determination of victimhood
presupposes a moral judgment of the situation.  Your moral distinction
between theft and homosexual intercourse, based on an _a priori_
asumption of the victimlessness of the latter, begs the question of
moral value.  What you "maintain" does not a rebuttal make.

MZ:
>>On my own view, borne out by my argument that homosexual sex is a grave
>>transgression against the moral nature of man, all participants therein
>>are victims of their akrastic inability to control their passions.

RJ:
>This you have repeatedly stated, and I do not doubt you will continue
>to so state as long as you have net access.  Once again, I assert that
>your definition of "moral nature of man" is specifically chosen to
>exclude homosexuality, and that other definitions are both possible,
>philosophically consistent, and more socially worthwhile.
>
>Unfortunately I am not a philosopher, and do not have the time to
>expend doing research to battle you on your own philosophical turf.
>I'm spending at least an hour a day on these conversations as is,
>and you by your own admission have spent years carefully crafting
>these anti-gay arguments.  I will simply note that unless all the
>philosophers in the world agree with every point you have made,
>there are clearly lots of differing philosophical positions, and
>there are many grounds on which to choose between them.  

Correction: I have spent years learning philosophy; compared to real
work, these arguments are rather elementary, and take hardly any
effort.  Your gainsaying of them, far from demonstrating that my
premisses were "specifically chosen to exclude homosexuality", or that
"other definitions are both possible, philosophically consistent, and
more socially worthwhile", merely emphasize the fact that you are
frivolously projecting your emotional displeasure with my conclusions,
to the point that you would reject my views, without bothering to find
any error therein, simply on the conjecture that some unspecified
philosopher might disagree with them.  A better demonstration of your
bad faith could hardly be imagined.

MZ:
>>>>Of course, everything depends on your definition of
>>>>well-being.  I note in passing that the one homosexual I knew best,
>>>>loathed his not altogether freely chosen lifestyle so much, that he
>>>>drank himself to death.

RJ:
>>>You are utterly out of touch with social reality if you think this had
>>>nothing to do with the amount of bigotry directed against those with
>>>his "lifestyle".

MZ:
>>You are utterly full of shit, if you think you can tell me something
>>about the pitiful situation of my best friend, without bothering to
>>inquire about his circumstances.

RJ:
>What were his circumstances?  And no, I do not believe that I am
>necessarily full of shit.  You describe him as hating his "lifestyle".
>Why did he hate it?  As I and many others have pointed out repeatedly,
>there is nothing about being homosexual that _a priori_ implies an
>unhappy life.  In my experience, the most common contributing causes
>of suicide among gays is despair at feeling inferior and stigmatized.
>Statistics on teen suicide support this claim.  I do not know how much
>of your friend's sad condition was due to causes such as this, but I
>do not doubt these issues played a part.  Am I wrong?

You are wrong.  There is nothing that you have demonstrated, which
would exclude the possibility that homosexuality is an affective
disorder correlated with any number of less specific forms of misery,
including, but not limited to, despair at one's inability to resist a
morally depraved sexual urge, and indeed responsible for the higher
rates of suicide among homosexuals.  The issue boils down to whether
one chooses to blame the society, or seek an explanation for anomic
misery within the individual.  My preference for the latter reflects
my choice to regard the individual as possessed of sufficient dignity
and freedom of will to be responsible for his own actions.

You are also wrong in this particular case.  My friend reluctantly and
opportunistically chose a homosexual lifestyle, after he was no longer
capable of attracting women who would keep him.  To the extent of my
ability, I withheld judgment, as I had withheld it earlier, on the
subject of his being a gigolo and a pimp.  In retrospect, I deeply
regret having done so, -- he would have been far better off, had he
been confronted with embarrassment and humiliation, rather than the
indulgent coddling he received from his entourage, which did nothing
to alleviate his perpetual self-loathing, or retard his pathological
self-destructiveness.

RJ:
>Pardon my candor, but if this man really was your best friend, and if
>you shared your opinions with him as you have with us on the net, I
>can believe you might have convinced him that his basic sexual
>inclination was fundamentally at odds with basic human nature, and
>that behaving according to his basic instincts would be a morally
>wrong thing to do.  This is after all what you have been saying here.
>If you did so convince him, then I _definitely_ believe this played a
>part in his despair.

I can only wish I had done so.  As for "basic instincts", I see
nothing sacrosanct about them.  If you knew the first thing about my
basic instincts, I suspect that you would be deeply grateful to me for
suppressing them.

RJ:
>>>One cannot necessarily show premisses to be in error, since they are
>>>initial assumptions.  If you would simply and plainly state your
>>>premises, we might be able to discuss things more easily.

MZ:
>>See above.

RJ:
>I do not consider your above presentation to be sufficiently plain.
>You have simply referred to "fundamental nature", "absolute moral
>standards", and suchlike, as though mentioning a term defined it.
>I reiterate:  your definitions for those terms have been chosen to
>support your argument, and other definitions are both possible and
>preferable.

Since you have offered no alternative definitions, I remain content
with my own.

RJ:
>>>the debate will never make
>>>any progress towards changing your mind.

MZ:
>>Can you entertain the thought that this impasse may be due to the fact
>>that my opponents have a hard time accepting that I am right?

RJ:
>I certainly can.  I do not believe that is the case, any more than
>I believe Clayton Cramer is right simply because his opponents have
>failed to get him to admit he is wrong.

As I suggested earlier, at least the former belief may be plausibly
attributed to your desperate emotional clinging to an ill-thought,
self-justifying licence.  I have no interest in Cramer's campaigns; if
you fail to discern the difference between his interminable rantings,
and my own approach, it only confirms my claim of your inability to
distinguish the warrant of reason from the claim of emotion.

MZ:
>>You will never convict me of bigotry, since should you ever
>>prove that my beliefs are irrational, I would immediately abandon them.
>>Surely a commitment to revise irrational beliefs is a necessary
>>condition of rationality, just as irrationality is a necessary condition
>>of bigotry.

RJ:
>Such a commitment is necessary but not sufficient.  I believe that you
>hold irrational beliefs which you claim are rational, and no amount of
>argument will persuade you to admit otherwise.  In this case, your
>commitment to change should you be proven wrong is irrelevant, since
>you will never admit to being wrong.

You are in no position to speak of rationality, being that you have
steadfastly abstained from any rational criticism.  Your protestation
merely convicts you of self-serving bigotry.  Should you change your
tune and decide to make sense, I will answer your arguments; otherwise
help yourself to the last word in this dispute.

>-- 
>Rob Jellinghaus    |  "Next time you see a lie being spread or a bad 
>robj@netcom.com    |   decision being made out of sheer ignorance,
>robj@xanadu.com    |   pause, and think of hypertext."
>uunet!netcom!robj  |       -- K. Eric Drexler, _Engines of Creation_

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."

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