Beards and Gay Marriage

  • Thread starter Thread starter PRmerger
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
DrTaffy said:
You’re wrong. Sterile couples can have sex. Inside marriage, of course.
Click to expand...
Of course. As long as it is ordered towards procreation, we say 👍
So Joseph and Mary were not married according to you? 🤷
Click to expand...
Well, that was a special case, clearly.

We will certainly concede that if one person in the marriage has given birth to the Second Person of the Godhead, then sex need not be an integral part of the marriage.
 
Bahman said:
The problem is in lack of the balance and not pleasure itself hence don’t try anything that you know you are going to exaggerate it.
Click to expand...
Separating wants from needs. We are the feel good society, everyone wants to feel good. Its sort of like, what will you do for a Klondike Bar? 😃
 
DrTaffy said:
Then I would show him or her why I call that a circle.
Click to expand...
Can you please tell us how you would do that?

Why do you call it a circle?

🍿

And please do this without using jargon and simply repeating your assertion.

Thanks.
 
DrTaffy said:
Which is an entirely different argument from saying that each and every use of a penis must be procreative because that is what a penis is ‘for.’

Do I take it that you accept the falsehood of that naive version of a natural law argument?
Click to expand...
Yes.
Rape is wrong, yes. This is because of lack of informed consent, not the sex of those involved.
Click to expand...
No, that’s not why abusing children is wrong. Consent has NOTHING to do with it. Sex with children is wrong because it harms children. If it did not tend to harm children, then it would be just like other activities that we do not require children to consent to – going to the dentist, for example. To say that sex with children is wrong is to say that there are certain ends which one cannot use one’s sexual organs to achieve. The criteria for deciding what these ends are is human good – i.e. human happiness/flourishing.

(The point above is not meant to indicate that lack of consent is not a moral problem, in terms of sexual activity. But the reason that consent matters to sex is that, when we don’t want people to have sex with us and they do it anyway, this **harms **us. This is why it is not at all a serious moral offense to grab someone’s hands and make smack their own face lightly, but it is a serious moral offense to grab someone’s hands and make them touch their genitals. The human psyche is delicate when it comes to sexual feelings, and the manipulation of these feelings is intrinsically harmful.)
Which is one of the things badly wrong with the vocabulary of ‘sodomy’ - it takes a horrible horrible moral system to look at the story of Lot and Sodom and conclude that the main thing wrong with habitually gang-raping visitors to death was the same-sex aspect.
Click to expand...
Well, sure. But words outlive their histories. In my book, sodomy describes a species of interpersonal sex act that involves non-vaginal copulation. I have nothing personal against such sex acts; some of them hold great appeal to me. But I don’t think engaging in them makes me a better person or makes me happier, so I think they are wrong.
Harm to others, sure. The bar to imposing my belief that you are harming yourself is a lot higher.
Click to expand...
We’re talking about morality here, not legality. No one is capable of imposing a moral belief, except through law or force. I don’t advocate people using force or law to prevent others from engaging in sodomy.

But harm to self is certainly a moral category. It is WRONG for me to cut my wrist, even if no one else is hurt by it. Such an action impedes my own objective happiness, despite the fact that it might conform to my own false, subjective idea of what will make me feel pleasure.
But again, this is not the natural law argument that a penis is only ‘for’ some things. You wouldn’t say that using an erection as a hat hook is gravely immoral, would you? (Link possibly not safe for work, depending on how sensitive you are. It is Neil Patrick Harris wearing a bow tie and a strategically placed top hat with no obvious means of support)
Click to expand...
I don’t find him attractive, but if you had mentioned some other actors, that link would have made me seriously curious. 😊

At any rate, I don’t think using an erection as a hat hook is seriously immoral, no, but I have a very hard time understanding how it could be an expression of virtue – perhaps in the context of foreplay? At any rate, the question is: what is the purpose of such an action? Any man who has had an erection realizes that it does have some vital meaning to it – that is, that is not a mere object, like a hat or a cheeseburger. It is disturbing to hear of women smuggling objects in their vagina for this precise reason. Do you think that a vagina is suitable to be a pocket?
Fine. But if you want to impose that view on others, prove it objectively. Or accept that others can impose their views on you with the same standard of proof as you use.
Click to expand...
You seem to believe that I am somehow attempting to impose my view on others. Explain how.
 
DrTaffy said:
Gosh, almost as though they’ve read the Bible!
Click to expand...
Interesting.

Can you cite the Bible verse that states that marriage doesn’t necessarily have to involve sex?

Book, chapter and verse, please.
 
Prodigal_Son said:
No, that’s not why abusing children is wrong. Consent has NOTHING to do with it. Sex with children is wrong because it harms children. If it did not tend to harm children, then it would be just like other activities that we do not require children to consent to – going to the dentist, for example.
Click to expand...
Yep.

And getting vaccinations.

And sometimes, even with individuals actually giving their consent, the activity can still be wrong.

To wit: adulterous relationships. Consenting adults? Certainly. Good and moral? Not so much.
 
Bahman said:
Don’t we love or like to be love for pleasures? Life without pleasure is tasteless and meaningless since there is no tendency toward doing anything and those in this state of mind are extremely depress.
Click to expand...
Um, how exactly does pleasure add *meaning *to life?

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die?
 
A behavior is an act toward fulfilling a need. The sex behavior is an act aimed toward pleasure for greater good, so called love. Homosexuality is of course a behavior shared with animal and insect which means it has to do with instinct, meaning that it is natural.
 
Why is it in yours or anothers best interest to participate in a sexual act. Is it not ultimately self serving?
 
Bahman said:
Homosexuality is of course a behavior shared with animal and insect which means it has to do with instinct, meaning that it is natural.
Click to expand...
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen an animal show or two that shows animals killing their young, too. And I have heard of, tragically, human beings doing this as well.

I wouldn’t conclude, “Therefore it is natural. And therefore humans ought to do this, too!”
 
Why does the sexual universal have to be committed to Catholicism-Bible? Foul ball, that wasn’t in the OP. You’ll need to explain this to those who do not follow this paradigm.

Using Catholicism to explain and defend your position is one thing, insisting everyone is subject to it is unfair and another argument.
 
Bahman said:
You have never been depressed, have you?
Click to expand...
I’ve been bereaved. Does that count?

Pleasure seeking does not help. It’s a detour, a symptom of a need that is not being met - usually a psychological or social one. We humans, we do it all the time. In the elderly, dementia often works its way out like this. An elderly person with dementia may end up pacing around their room, or throwing cups into the sink, or even walk around naked in a nursing facility, all because he needs to use the lavatory, and doesn’t realise it.

We young people, we’re not much different are we? We need meaning in our lives. When my Dad died four years ago, a big part of what meant anything to me in the world died, too. He was my friend, my counselor, my advisor - my Dad. Best layman in the world I know of. There was one night I remember… that I don’t want to remember. But I did try pleasure to alleviate the pain (some rounds of Team Fortress 2, if you must know). Didn’t work. In short, I needed something to give meaning back to my life.

Pleasure would only have delayed the inevitable need to search for meaning.

And sex serves two purposes. Doesn’t take a genius to recognise one of them is reproduction. But we’re pretty good at denying things in this culture.
 
Oh. I thought this was going to be about the wives gay men marry (i.e, beards, as they call them).

Ah, well.

If I may, I do think it is at least mildly immoral to shave one’s beard - perhaps because mine is so magnificent when fully grown (not that my real-life beard is as magnificent as Ol’ Rasputin’s). 😛 But I think there is an issue of parity. It is one thing to drill a hole through your earlobe. It is another to drill a hole through your brain. So, I would say, it’s one thing to shave oneself. It is another to sterilise oneself.

When you shave, you clip off hairs that serve little to no function, and which form no functional part of your body’s systems. The follicles might be a different story. But certainly no doctor would deny that a healthy reproductive system is part of a healthy body. And part of health in a body is to use the body properly.

So, given the biological components involved - oxytocin, sperm, egg, and the rest - it would not be irrational to say the most healthy use of a male orgasm is in the vagina of his long-term female partner (or what we’d call a wife in the old days). And vice versa. To do otherwise would be to abuse the components involved - the sperm and egg chiefly, the oxytocin secondarily - and thus the body.

It would also serve to threaten the survival of the species, as that is our sole way of reproducing. And that, for a naturalist, should be a grave issue. Unless, of course, it does not matter whether humanity survives or not.
 
PRmerger said:
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen an animal show or two that shows animals killing their young, too. And I have heard of, tragically, human beings doing this as well.

I wouldn’t conclude, “Therefore it is natural. And therefore humans ought to do this, too!”
Click to expand...
You are exaggerating. Are we going to discuss about a normal behavior? Are we going to compare homosexuality with homicide? And why does an adult human kill his/her kid? And should we punish him/her if this happen?
 
Bahman said:
You are exaggerating.
Click to expand...
It is simply another example that follows your paradigm which is: this behavior is found in the animal kingdom, therefore it is natural.

Is that not what you are proposing?
 
Bahman said:
Are we going to compare homosexuality with homicide?
Click to expand...
Well, only in the sense that they are analogs.

Take this example:

Christmas tree : ornament :: earlobe : earring.

If one doesn’t have the ability to understand analogies, he might exclaim, “Are we going to compare a magnificent Christmas tree with a fleshy piece of cartilage?”
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top