brunson@usfbobo.UUCP (David Brunson) (10/28/84)
[] There hasn't been anything worth answering in the past week. This might be a good time to draw some partial conclusions. What we are seeing here is a conflict of values. My values say that sexual sins are a great evil. The values of most respondents say that intolerance of those who commit sexual sins is a great evil. Once again, it is a question of values. My values say that intolerance is, of itself, neither good nor evil. That is, it is easy to imagine situations where intolerance can be good, and to imagine other situations where intolerance can be evil. For example intolerance of racial minorities, on the basis of race, is a great evil. It is inhuman. Intolerance of profligates, on the other hand, can be a great good -- by discouraging profligacy and thus raising the quality of life for those who would otherwise have been ruined. Many detractors, however, have argued that intolerance itself is inherently evil -- always. First, a partial treatment of the "Types of Wrongness" question. Let's consider the case of the alcoholic. I choose alcoholism because it is an excellent example of Type 0 wrongness (or was it Type 1?): wrong which affects only the wrongdoer. First of all I am not a teetotaler. I know of no foundation for a theology which flatly proscribes alcoholic beverages and I find that a glass of Cabernet with dinner is a distinct pleasure not to be denied lightly. Some folks, unfortunately, seem to be all mixed up on the subject. They seem to actually worship alcohol, falsely crediting it as a source of prosperity or some such confusion. (I often find it difficult to peer into the muddled conciousness of the Unlearned. I don't really understand why people choose to be drunkards -- only that they do, and they must be awfully confused to choose death over life.) Let's further consider the case of the Skid-Row type: the person who has taken perversion of God's bounty to such an extreme that he has forfeited his home, job, friends, for liquor. Now suppose that you meet this person and he asks you for money. Well if you are compassionate you will find that tolerance morality is not sufficient to deal with the situation. You know that if you give this guy a fin he is going to turn it into a fifth of Vodka and drink himself into oblivion. You know that not giving him money won't solve his problems, but buying him a fifth will certainly add to them. That is, all other things being equal, it is probably better for the poor guy to remain sober than to send him off on a binge. So what do you do? Well, you could feed him, give him a warm place to stay, or help out someone else who is already doing this -- a mission, for example. The case of the homosexual is very similar. By denying the poor guy/lady a job you know that you aren't solving his/her problems, but at least you are offering some resistance to the prevailing notion that homosexuality is an acceptable "lifestyle", and therefore making it more unattractive to those only marginally committed to this particular brand of self-destruction. What does the Man of Compassion do in this case? Well there is no difference. If the sinner, the enemy (it is, as one contributor recently noted, good to know who you're enemies are) of righteousness, the liar against the truth, the defiler of those things that are holy and good, needs food, then feed him. If his/her car is broken down, then provide a ride to the nearest gas station. "You shall not see your enemy's donkey or his ox fallen down by the way, and turn away your eyes from them; but you shall surely help him to lift them up again" ... and so on. But you *don't* aid and abet the enemy in unrighteousness. Now back to the value clash. If most detractors were to draw up a code of morality, a sort of Secularist Ten Commandments, it would include something like "Thou shalt not be intolerant". In fact some have even said that discrimination is inherently evil. I do not agree. For the purpose of our little public policy discussion here, it does not matter why I do not agree, just that I don't. I do not subscribe to the same code of morality that most participants seem to be advocating. To me, intolerance is neither good nor evil of itself, just as book-burning is not inherently evil (Alan Driscoll has correctly noted my position on this matter). It is easy to envision a case where book-burning can be a good thing, as when I burned my Linguistics 20 text book because it treated the Myth of Evolution as though it were somehow scientific. Many other books stand out as excellent candidates for book-burning: the "works" of Allen Ginsburg, all of the French existentialist literature, pornographic periodicals, etc. It is also easy to envision a case where book-burning can be a great evil, as when the medieval church burned the Talmud, thus further alienating and persecuting the Jews. Likewise censorship can be either good or evil. The same goes for discrimination, government intervention, taxes, Civil Rights initiatives, war, nuclear power plants, and so on. On the other hand sexual sins: fornication, homosexuality, incest, adultery, bestiality, are always, under all circumstances, inherently evil. Similarly, murder, idol worship, pagan worship, theft, and so on, are always evil. Now I realize that we are in a mixed society. I realize that there are those who do not hold the same values that I do and it is unreasonable, and possibly not a good thing, for me to attempt to enforce my values (the correct values) through legislation. (An aside to believers: it is important to realize that the American system is NOT the ideal form of government but only a useful expedient until the weeds are removed.) I am only asking that God-haters have the same courtesy toward me. We are talking about *my* business affairs. It is really none of your business if I have a policy against hiring homosexuals, adulterers, co-habitators, and other sinners. And yet time and again, folks have stated that it *is* their business if I violate the supposedly universally subscribed proscription against Discrimination. I will agree that it is society's business if I murder, or steal, or otherwise engage in Type 1 wrongness (wrongness that hurts other people). I will even agree that Civil Rights legislation is a good thing (only as an expedient. Any time you get the government involved in social engineering you are really settling for second best). But I vehemently DISagree that I am a criminal for refusing jobs to sinners. The argument that allowing discrimination on the basis of "sexual preference" (the wording of HR-427) will lead to Nazi concentration camps is ridiculous. Such discrimination *is*, in fact, not prohibited. Where are the concentration camps? Once again, can anyone give me any kind of reason (even a "logical" one) why I should be treated as a criminal for refusing to associate with homosexuals? -- David Brunson, friend of the fatherless
ahearn@convex.UUCP (11/01/84)
Alcoholism is "Type 0 wrongness"? Alcoholism hurts noone but the alcoholic?
Anyone who has enough intelligence to even switch on a television set knows
differently. You may think a glass of Cabernet is a harmless luxury, Mr.
Brunson. Unfortunately, there are millions of people around the world
suffering from the *disease* of alcoholism for whom a simple glass of wine
is an invitation to disaster.
I know you won't listen to me about this, since you write that intolerance
is to be lauded. I challenge you, though, to find some *real* alcoholics
and see what they tell you about this crackpot idea of yours. Wander into
an open meeting of Alcoholics Annonymous, ask the people there if they think
noone but themselves has been harmed by their alcohlism, and summarize your
responses to the net. If you're not willing to do even this basic amount of
research, don't expect me to take your *opinions* seriously.
Regards,
Joe Ahearn
{allegra, ihnp4, uiucds, ctvax}!convex!ahearnbrunson@usfbobo.UUCP (David Brunson) (11/06/84)
[] >From: ahearn@convex.UUCP >Subject: Re: "Gay Rights": A conflict of values >Message-ID: <45700023@convex.UUCP> Normally I would ignore an article that is so totally off the subject but I am beginning to get tired of this sort of thing. >Alcoholism is "Type 0 wrongness"? Alcoholism hurts noone but the alcoholic? >Anyone who has enough intelligence to even switch on a television set knows >differently. You may think a glass of Cabernet is a harmless luxury, Mr. >Brunson. Unfortunately, there are millions of people around the world >suffering from the *disease* of alcoholism for whom a simple glass of wine >is an invitation to disaster. The only clue I have as to how the writer got off onto such a tangent is the phrase "enough intelligence to even switch on a television set". This MUST be the result of years of Lou Grant style indoctrination. This seems to be happening frequently in the responses. Basically the indoctrinees have me all figured out according to some diligently learned script that they carefully meditate on night after night. I am a KKK type. I am a racist (I MUST be, right? After all, I'm against hiring homos, right?). I have a permanent ugly scowl on my face. A prunish, chalk-white, Puritan- uptight countenance. I hate little children and say ugly things to them about how they are naturally evil. I go to church because I think I have to or I'll go to hell. My life is drab, my favorite colors are grey and black. Every time I meet someone I try to figure out what kind of sinner he is and then tell him he's going to hell. This gives me my only scrooge-like moments of pleasure in an otherwise tasteless existence. Years and years of this sort of training yields much of the banality we see every day in this group. The trainees see some code word or term that they have been trained to respond to. Their minds go racing off into what- ever happened next in that episode of Lou Grant or whatever and they just HAVE to *speak their mind* (it's only one mind). Next thing you know they are regurgitating something that only remotely resembles the original discussion. Most of the time I am able to reconstruct the thought processes that lead to these exercises in buzz word reinforcement. This is a tough one. I recommend that you adopt enough intelligence to turn OFF your television set and learn how to read and how to follow a discussion. I'll take a wild guess. The key words/terms are "alcoholism", "a [as in one and one only] glass of Cabernet". The enraged mind of the trainee jumps back in time to a made-for-TV-movie designed to (Ahem) *educate* the public on the "*disease* of alcoholism" (it is important to call it a *disease* so that nasty sinner-haters won't think bad thoughts about alcoholics and alcoholics won't have guilt feelings about being drunkards). The trainee learned an important (ahem) *fact*: alcoholics are alcoholics for life and must continually remind themselves of this *fact* because if they ever for one moment think that they aren't alcoholics then they might imagine it safe to have just "a [as in one and one only] glass of Cabernet" which will immediately plunge them into a nightmarish hell. A person who is an alcoholic but not a "practising alcoholic" got off onto roughly the same tangent by Email. I felt compassion for him and so explained that his understanding is deficient and told him how to correct his understanding so that he would no longer be "obsessed" (his word) with alcohol. He, like most people, prefers banality to wisdom and answered with a typically off-the-subject note: something about how alcoholics need to feel acceptance. Well they probably do, but what does that have to do with anything? And so it's the same with most net articles. Most people don't give a damn about the truth. If you know someone who used to be an alcoholic but is now completely free from it, that is, he can take or leave a glass of wine/whatever as he pleases, they don't want to hear it. They want to be reinforced in their own world view even if it means continuing in misery and all they want the Man of Compassion to do about it is utter pleasant banalities like, "It's okay to be a drunkard/homosexual/sinner", "I don't condemn you", "You can still be a productive human being". Well I refuse to go along with the plan. If you send me Email full of confusion and bad understanding then I will feel free to correct you or not as I please. If you wander into net.religion (which I happen to subscribe to) spouting nonsense about "Gay Rights" then I will challenge you. If you don't want to be corrected then don't say anything. Now can we stop this whining about nothing and get back to the subject? -- David Brunson Why look for gray areas when there's so much that's black and white?