What bothers me about people leaping into labelling someone left or right is it is, basically, off topic. Deal with the points at hand. As someone who is not easily categorized, it is only more irritating. It is not because I do not like hearing the words, as you say, it is because your rage at the left or someone else’s rage at the right has no bearing on specific issues. Rant elsewhere. These days you cannot talk to anyone without suddenly finding all their bile at the other category. Further I think this binary, lump thining serves the people in power and that is why the split is being fed, people are pressured socially and via media to perfectly fit one or the other category and if they don’t both groups will be painting them with a broad brush and seeing them as stupid or clever monsters. Suddenly a discussion of a specfic issue falls into ad hom and hate about all the bad people on the other side of the divide have done to ruin the world. I don’t think that helps. The discussion. It adds as much as someone saying I remind them of their brother and how horrible their brother is. Well, maybe their brother is right about this issue and an asshole about everything else. Maybe both you are your brother are wrong, even though it seems like one must have one of two positions on an issue. And even if I am just like your brother or just like political faction X, I think it just distracts from the discussion to take a broad swipe at faction X. We’re not European football clubs meeting in the street after a match where all we need to know is which team someone is a fan of, let’s slug it out. And, again, I think the people with power are laughing all the way to the bank when we see only two possible categories and we slug it out with each other based on those two possible categories of humans. I express some of my thoughts and I get labelled a conspiracy theorist - which is correct but an irrational label - and then suddenly I must be anti-semitic, hate women and blacks and yes, be a right wing extremist. So suddenly there is this mushroom could in the air and we are coughing our way through that not focusing on the topic. If I defend Brexit, Lefty friends think I am a fascist. If I saw that homosexuality is natural, then I am a lefty making a naturalist fallacy, when no one mentions the one made by the person they consider on their team. Fuck all these boxes. And to me I see Zero Sum wanting to create a kind of puritanial society. Everything I do will be judged in terms of societally beneficial?..If I point out that that sounds like just another political correctness system, I am not saying he is a lefty - since he is not, but also because I don’t care - I just think it’s ironic and dangerous.
I was not passing moral judgment on it, Zero Sum was. I was not saying that homosexuality is good because animals do it. As far as anthropomorphizing, it used to be considered wrong and irrational in science to consider animals like us in terms of cognitive states, desires, intentions. But that began to erode a few decades ago and now we, in science, are not considered to have some completely different internal life around these patterns.
Sure, they like us use sex for a lot of things, just like human homosexuals and bisexuals and heterosexuals use sex for a lot of things, afftection included.
There are some scientists who still think that we cannot compare human and animal behavior, but we are dealing with homosexual sex, regardless of what it means to any individual animal. Animals will pair bond for life and have homosexual sex with their partners. Animals will for all sorts of reasons have sex with the same sex. Humans will have power based sexual relations and encounters. People have sex to let off tension, to feed their egos. Humans are more complicated so I am sure that there are additional facets to the homosexual sex. But what we have is the phenomenon of same sex sex ALL OVER THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. And that includes human animals. There is absolutely no reason to conclude that it is unnatural. Further ZERO focused on his disgust at the physical act between male homosexuals. That physical act occurs in nature in other species and in humans. I am still waiting for a reason not to consider it natural when it occurs in species like us, where someone could argue that the only reason it occurs is in damaged people psychologicaly or via culture (left wing promotion of homosexualiy or demasculization of men or…) AND it occurs in animals. Homosexual sex occurs in both groups. Long term affectionate even monogamous same sex relations occur in humans and other species. As far back in time as we know of we find it in humans. To me that mans it is natural. That does not make it good. But it does make it natural.
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I argued it was natural. I did not say how society should be run. I said my feelings of revulsion say little about how a society should be run. I did not say that therefore homosexuality should be legal or considered moral. Again, I am countering Zero’s argument which was based on the naturalistic fallacy and on his revulsion. I focused on pointing out it was natural. I pointed out the problems with basing societal law on revulsion. If the only problem with homosexuality is that some people are revulsed or even most, I think that is poor reasoning. There are so many things that revulse me and it seems like other people are like me. I could have also added on that it was a naturalistic fallacy.
So let me get this straight you are arguing that activities that are not beneficial to the continutation or stability of the species are immoral? Who the hell passes that test, certainly not humans, none of them. Further it is not just that it happens in nature, it happens in nature often, part of minority norms, and in bonoboes even more than that. I can’t see that we actually need more people on this planet. Increasing population may not be a problem, but I cannot see how less births and slower increase int he population is problematic. Then if he didn’t mean natural, but really meant not beneficial, then I see no reason to even argue the point. Then the point should be homosexuality is not beneficial to society.
Of course its not the same repulsion. I was attacking his argument ad disgustium. Wanking to porn is going to disgust a lot of people also and that is much closer adn of course the religious right and feminists would consider that immoral. It’s not natural, in the sense that we cannot find it anywhere else in nature, it’s not why our dicks evolved, a ‘flashlight’ or tissues or whatever is artificial, it is not beneficial to society - though I could get creative and find reasons it might be, just as I could with homosexual sex. Sure, we should discriminate. For me revulstion alone is not enough to call things immoral. It is an incredible guide for me in determining what I want to do and what I want to avoid. I don’t think it is good ground for moral judgments. And I would raise to you and Zero the possibility that some things you both do would be repulsive to possibly even a majority of other people - even if some or most of them do it also, though their may be things they do not - and to question whether your own behavior would pass muster for being beneficial to society. I don’t know you at all. I have a better sense of Zero since I suspect I know him by other names. I might be wrong, but I think the must be beneficial to society criterion if aimed at him (and me for that matter, I am not shitting on him here) would mean he was immoral. That does not mean he is wrong, but I would want him to consider, if I as correct about this, if this criterion would be a good one to have, since it would mean he was immoral. (though actually if he is who I think he is, he doesn’t believe in morals).