From: livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Newsgroups: rec.scouting,alt.discrimination,chi.general,alt.atheism,alt.politics.homosexuality
Subject: Re: BofA and UW can now support discrimination against blacks and Jews
Date: 9 Sep 92 00:55:06 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: sgi

In article <1992Sep8.231303.10393@cs.yale.edu>, rescorla@rtnmr.chem.yale.edu (Eric Rescorla) writes:
|> In article <pjt2nhg@zola.esd.sgi.com> livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:
|> >
|> >I have no objection if someone wants to pray for me.   It's 
|> >when they want to coerce me to accept their help that I object.
|>
|> There are some who would see forcing you to see a psychiatrist
|> in order to be "cured" as getting a qualified person to help.

I know, and it's these "some people" we are talking about.


|> >When you cut through the crap, the real problem with your argument
|> >is your formulation of the Golden Rule.  Instead of "Do unto others 
|> >as you would have them do unto you" you want it to say "If you
|> >claim to be willing to accept coercion in your own life, you may
|> >coerce other people".
|>
|> I believe that that is what it implies, Mr. Livesey.

Then you are incorrect.   When you declare that you are *willing*
to accept coercion in a part of your life, you are exercising
your freedom to make that choice.   You are making a free-will
choice to surrender some of your freedom of action to someone
else.

If you then *impose* that surrender on someone else, you are not 
doing unto them as you be done to, because you are not allowing
that person to make the free-will choice to surrender part
of their freedom: you are *making* them surrender their freedom. 
You are not applying the Golden Rule.

|> 
|> >But this is a hoax, for the people who claim "If I were Gay,
|> >I would want someone to make me straight" are *not* Gay.  They
|> >are not in the situation in which they claim they would want to
|> be coerced, and never will be.
|>
|> Irrelevant. Noone will ever be in precisely the same
|> situation as anyone else. The entire point of the Golden
|> rule is to have you put yourself in the position of another.

No, it is not irrelevant, for your formulation of the Golden
Rule is just a trick to allow such people to make a one-way
bet.  You allow them to make a purely hypothetical claim about
what they would want for themselves in a situation that cannot 
occur, and then you say that the Golden Rule would let them 
impose the same choice on someone else.

Now how is this a case of "to have you put yourself in the 
position of another."?   Putting yourself is someone else's
position must involve having the same respect for that person's
right to choice that you have yourself enjoyed.   Simply to say
that your own choices - the consequences of which you have 
cleverly arranged not to suffer - may be imposed on another,
has nothing to do with putting yourself in their place.

To put yourself in the place of another has to involve asking
yourself how you would feel about a situation that *can* occur
to you, not one that cannot.   For a straight to ask himself
"How would I feel about being compelled to be straight?" is 
worthless.   Instead, he must ask himself "How would I feel 
about being compelled to act as though I were Gay" or to be 
some other thing he is not.

If you want to know how someone would feel about being compelled
to act against their own nature, you have to imagine how it
would feel to be compelled to act against your *own* nature,
not how you it would feel to be compelled to be what you already
are.

jon.
Newsgroups: rec.scouting