Well, let me help you.
Love is a positive emotion, which should be expressed in actions. There are, of course several kinds and types of love, depending on the people (or other entites) involved. The love one feels toward a spouse is not the same one feels toward his children or his pets. Or the feeling that a pet feels toward his master. You can also look it up here:
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/love
Love could be based on purely physical attraction, or mutual respect, and many different reasons. Nevertheless, these are all types of love. To say “that which comes from God” is but an attempt to avoid the issue.
All of this is pretty much meaningless drivel. Love as “positive emotion” could mean anything to anybody and expressing these so called positive emotions in actions could also lead to despicable consequences. Nazis in Germany felt “positive emotions” towards their imperial dreams of conquest and Aryan purity, they could even have been said to “love” their ideals and carried these out through their actions.
Now if you wish to bear the logical consequences of your belief that love is merely a “positive” emotion and as such is beyond critique and inevitably leads to “good,” then be my guest and also support the claim that Gestapo concentration camps were actually good because those in charge “loved” to do their work and mutually agreed it was a desirable end. As you say, “Nothing is intrinsically evil if it is mutually agreed upon.”
Intrinsically evil, eh? Ungodly circumstances? How peculiar. Nothing is intrinsically evil if it is mutually agreed upon.
As pointed out, this is just a ridiculous claim. Individuals can “mutually” agree to do all kinds of evil. The significant and insignificant agents in carrying out Nazi war crimes “mutually” agreed to do horrific deeds and many even felt “positive emotions” while carrying them out.
Any time you base an ethical system on human emotion you open it to justifying all manner of distortions because human emotions are subject to all kinds of neurotic and psychotic interference.
Love, even in a secular sense, must be tied to “end” results. Do actions (and emotions) result in long term tangible and even intangible good – where that “good” is defined as what rational, well-functioning human beings would will for themselves and others in their care. This is all very much subject to discussion and debate.
And yes, one issue that remains open is whether sexual practices and certain human “emotions” are actually “good” or evil in terms of their resulting consequences.
A paterfamilias may be creating great long term harm to many in his care by the “positive emotions” he may feel while engaging in irresponsible actions. In fact, he may even feel “negative emotions” such as guilt, feeling heavily emotionally burdened, or “bored” with the status quo, etc. But, in fact, being responsible to his family remains the “good” and “loving” thing that he should do, even when he doesn’t “feel” it to be. Your “positive emotion” definition for love is simply inadequate.
A community of individuals which made individual decisions based upon your criteria of “how I feel” will end up in discord and wrangle before long unless there is a level of maturity, commitment and responsibility built into the “characters” of those individuals so they act for the “good” of all rather than just what makes each of them “feel good.”
This is all just
secular thinking, by the way.
A note about “gender orientation.”
There are several “angles” to the issue that need to be considered. Several environmental considerations need to be tabled in this debate.
Leopard frogs are undergoing major changes and are threatened environmentally. On a National Geographic program called “Strange Days on Planet Earth” on PBS, a chemical called atrazine is known to cause leopard frog testosterone to change into estrogen. What is happening is that male frogs are being found with eggs forming in their testes. Atrazine is used as a pesticide on cornfields in the US. This reflects another study being done in Australia where fish gender biology is changing
so that eggs are being found in male fish. These fish are found
downstream from a drug manufacturing company and the changes are linked to estrogen levels in the river.
Another study, from the National Geographic program noted above, showed that comparing semen quality of males living in large US cities and the rural midwest indicate that mixtures of farm chemicals being used are causing a drastic reduction in semen quality in the rural community.
This study shows a definite link between chemicals and reproductive functioning, but the source of contamination did not show a strong link between the occupation of farming and semen quality. The decline was found in all males in the rural areas studied, whether they were engaged in farming or not was irrelevant. The source was actually not the obvious one through proximity to herbicide application but actually through the drinking water found in every home. The chemicals are leeching into the drinking water at levels which affected male sexual functioning in the general population.
My point here is by being “tolerant” of what was once considered “abnormal” behaviour perhaps we are missing something vital and potentially devastating to human continuity. Perhaps there is a major change happening in human sexual biology because of environmental pollutants, but we, as a species, are completely oblivious because we believe it is a virtue to be high-minded and tolerant to the gender orientation of others. This apparent “moral high road” might actually be a blind spot to seeing real issues.
