Metal Reviews

Do elaborate. At least point out where my logic fails. Afterwards, perhaps you could tell me by what right you can judge the rightfulness (or wrongfulness) of an act of love between two consenting adults?


@Frigid: I'm not really talking about "victimless crime", as I don't consider homosexuality a crime.



You're not taught how to fuck. Danish/Swedish classrooms are not some freakin' Monty Python sketch. The teachers are not detailing how to thrust in the correct manner for maximum enjoyment or something like that. You're told how to avoid STDs and how avoid knocking up a girl/getting pregnant at the age of 16. And it is obligatory curriculum of the school system.

Really.. I was under the impression that Australians were generally pretty lax. But I guess there's a bit of a selection bias in the Australians I've talked to as it is pretty much limited young tourists backpacking around Europe and the like.

How about a kiss, boy!?

Ah, classic scene

Haha, I love it.

Condoms EisenFaust, all you need to know.

in sex ed i was told that penises are like noses and come in all different shapes and sizes. it took me a while to figure out how to have sex the right way.

Y'know what they say about guys with big noses...

Big tissues.

Well, you didn't say an act of love, but even so...this example is WAY overused, but it still works: just because girls in Africa consent to female circumcision doesn't mean that it's moral. Nor is prostitution moral because both parties are consenting, etc...

the girls in Africa aren't usually adults i don't think. also i don't see anything wrong with prostitute, the bad stuff like pimps seems to arise from it being illegal.

One of my personal favourites as well, haha… (referring to the sketch, not the condoms)

I know how it works. Even though I'm generally opposed to paternalism I still think actions like these are just fine. Some people are smart enough to take precautions and some aren't. Those who aren't should be given some help lest the world be flooded with their diseases and premature offspring. One should be able to make informed choices rather than stupid mistakes. Besides from this I think it is a good thing to aid the 'demystification' of sex. There is really no reason for it to be a tabooed thing that people should feel bad about.

Well, the nature of the discussion was about marriage (implicitly love), so I just sort of assumed it. I still think the above statement is valid even without the 'love' word.

As noodles points out female circumcision is mostly performed on smaller girls. If an adult woman woke up one morning and thought "Well, today I think I'll go and have my genitalia horribly mutilated" I have no objections. It's her own choice. The problem is when sick stuff like that is forced upon others. Especially minors.

Your post really hits the point of my claim. You denounce prostitution immoral as a truism, yet I do not think prostitution is immoral. Your moral code is obviously different from mine, but who is right? I choose one code and you chose another which is fine. But we really shouldn't try to force it upon others who might have an entirely different conception of morals. Morals tend to be pretty arbitrarily defined depending on who's speaking. A social construct formed by ones background and reflection which debilitates it as a valid argument. One could just as well argue that it is immoral to judge one kind of love inferior to another. To get to the point in question: Two persons of the same sex want to get married. Why should You, I or anyone else try to make the 'morally correct decision' for them? And what right do we have to do so? Please don't say divine right…

On both of your examples: Do what you like and think is right, but don't force it upon others. If misused, morals are just a widely accepted form of bigotry.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jko ... UrAEoPXFWw

Norway just allowed gay adoption. i'm for it, although i can't see many people being happy if it happened in Portugal.

my question is, if gay adoption is allowed, should straight couples have any priority or not??

No. Being a heterosexual couple/gay couple/single should not decide the priority. Priority should (in an ideal world) be always a FIFO.

But reality shows that some countries (China is a good example) don't allow gay couples to adopt childs, so heterosexual couples have more chances to adopt and do it fast that gay couples.

See, it's this "everybody's right, nobody's right" view that I struggle with, mainly because every legit philosopher in the history of mankind has said that truth is universal (rather than relative to each person)(...and yes, I have studied some philosophy). On one hand, I don't want to say that I know the absolutely correct answer, but I also can't say "Okay, you say this, I say that, everybody's right."

Also, would you go to a prostitute? ...........

The only sensible answer is, of course: it depends.

heatseeker: what is your problem with prostitution anyway? Hell, if a good friend of mine one day said 'I want to be a hooker' I wouldn't talk her out of it. I'd ask her what she'd be doing for STD and pregnancy prevention though and other safety measures.

As for moral relativism vs. universalism, both are extremes with their own problems. What makes you think that there are moral truths anyway? By definition moral truths would be non-physical truths, and arguments for non-physical truths tend to skate on thin ice. Balance and common sense between the two are essential. There is a time to draw the line, and that line should be drawn at consent without duress. For convenience, the legal definition of consent is enough. I'm not going to go for the whole 'oppression in the system' bullshit.

That's not exactly true. Replacing moral truth with comming sense is useless, because it's the same thing. Just the way we think female circumcision is barbaric, the Dalai Lama think that we are barbaric and have no respect for life. In the end, every culture must figure it out themselves. If governments interrupt and try to destroy such traditions, the search for peoples cultural roots will only become stronger. If you want a real solution to the problem, I'd say removing the 300+% taxes that we in the west raise on products from third-world countries is a good start. At least this will give them the oppurtunity to develop themselves. The question is, do we want them to?

What led you to that conclusion anyway? Some common sense is utter bullshit. Common sense is intuitive but it involves some reason. I am advocating balance based on common sense and intuition. Countries are made up of people and dividing it at the borders is arbitrary. This is a tribalistic rather than cosmopolitan approach. That, and economic development is far from moral development.

If you have studied some philosophy you should definitely study some more before making so absolute statements as "every legit philosopher...". The implications of that statement are that you don't consider Sartre, Hume, Nietzsche, Spinoza among others, as well as a big part of the general existentialist 'movement' legit philosophers . Universalism implies that in order for a statement to be true in the absolute sense it has to be true in all possible contexts. Regarding the subject at hand the alleged 'truth' has already been disproven by this very discussion and the fact that we are having it...

Anyway I wasn't talking about truth as much as I was talking about the validity of morals. I'm not advocating absolute relativism in my post, just moral pluralism (with a hint ethical subjectivism). I don't really think that "everyone is right" (obviously I think that I am more right than most other people). What I am saying is that since it is not clear who is right (that is a matter of perspective) you should not be so fast to judge other people and their motives and actions through your own conception of morals. Especially not when this value judgment (that's what it is, you know) is actually reflected in legislative practice that restricts other people's rights and possibilities to live their life by another moral norm than yours. Why do you even care who marries who? Why should people submit to your judgment? Is it an absolute truth that two people shouldn't be able to make a legally binding agreement to bugger each other for the rest of their lives?

On the subject of prostitution: I probably wouldn't go to a prostitute. That is however because I'm not sexually frustrated enough to want to go to bed with a woman who have already had 5 intercourses that day. I have a girlfriend and generally prefer a little more intimacy than just the physical act. Not a moral standpoint, just a matter of my personal preferences regarding sex. Hypothetically, if I ever wanted to seek out one, I would make sure to avoid the slave-like sort that is just profitmachines for pimps because anything else would violate my own personal 'decency' (in need of a better word). The aforementioned consent is the keyword here. But I don't have a moral problem with sexual relations between two consenting adults just because money is involved.

Some common sense is utter bullshit in your eyes, and some morals are too. Intuition is based upon what you've learned in your early years as well, and this happens to be a cultural thing too.

Economic development is not very far from modal development. Morals develop when people stop thinking about how hungry they are all the time. For example: ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, the industrial revolution and everything in between. When people don't worry about food and water, they are going to worry about education and that's when they will desert from old superstitious traditions.

Even, a little less advanced, JS Mill or William James wouldn't consider truth universal. Truth is commonly what a person makes for themselves.