Posted on 04/10/2002 11:55:37 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
I remember reading a novel many years ago called "The World According to Garp" by John Irving.
It was at once a hilarious and tragic story of feminism gone stark, raving mad.
For instance, in response to the rape of a young girl, whose attackers cut out her tongue so she could not identify them, a group of sympathic but misguided militant women cut out their own tongues to identify with their young heroine.
I was reminded of this once unbelievable fictional story upon reading last week of the deaf lesbian couple who deliberately bred deaf children who could share their disability.
The two women found a deaf sperm donor to increase the likelihood their first daughter, now 5, would inherit deafness. They were so pleased with the result, they used the technique again to produce a deaf son.
Sharon Duchesneau, the mother, and Candace McCullough, her lesbian lover, say deafness is "an identity not a medical affliction that needs to be fixed."
Before their son was born, the women explained that, "A hearing baby would be a blessing; a deaf baby would be a special blessing."
They believe deafness is a "cultural identity" not a handicap. They want their children to share the same experiences, including learning sign language and going to special schools for the deaf.
What can one say about such decisions?
Let me begin by suggesting that they illustrate the extremes of self-indulgent, amoral craziness to which our society and culture have plummeted in recent years.
This is what happens when you begin throwing out the old rules and making up new ones as you go along.
The horrors to come are not even imaginable if we continue on this road.
Take, for instance, those advocating marital and familial rights for homosexuals and lesbians like this couple. They tell us there is nothing wrong with such unions. They tell us they are as good or better than heterosexual marriages. They tell us it is discrimination not to recognize these facts. They tell us the only arguments against such relationships are the archaic rules and traditions of the Bible.
Let's pretend they're right for a moment. Would you like to consider the logical next stage of human evolution?
If there's nothing wrong with homosexuality – if it's just as good or better than heterosexuality – then surely there is nothing wrong with three-way marriages or four-way marriages, right? Could there be anything wrong with polygamy?
How about sex with children? I mean, why not? Isn't it just a hang-up we have against it? Where is it written that this is wrong? You may think so, but others don't. If there is no immutable law on the subject, then who is to say?
And how about marriages between species? You say there is no one pushing this cause yet? Just wait.
You think I'm kidding? You think I'm not serious? There are people who enjoy all of these abominations. If we reject one taboo, how can we not reject all of them?
Every time I make this argument, some homosexual activists say no one is yet organizing a political movement around such causes. Is that the determining issue between right and wrong?
The same groups pushing the envelope on unconventional relationships are right now promoting all kinds of self-mutilation in the name of sexual liberation – from sex-change operations to breast-removal surgery. And guess who is paying the bill for many of these procedures right now? That's right. The taxpayer.
And, let's face it, if all those things are just all right, then who is to say that Ms. Duchesneau and Ms. McCullough are wrong to breed deaf children because they want children to share their misfortune?
Nobody.
That's the problem with taking even one step down the slippery slope of moral relativism. There is no way back.
Over and over again in the Bible, we see what happens when the people "do what is right in their own eyes," forgetting the only rules that really mean anything – those given to us by God.
We can forget all that. We can disregard it. We can chalk it all up to legend, myth and superstition. But we do so at our own risk.
It's time for everyone to choose what kind of world they would like to live in. The choice is simple: The world of designer handicapped babies and anything-goes, aberrant sexual behavior? Or the world of marriage, order and accountability to God.
By the way, it is already possible to separate XX sperm from XY sperm using a blood vile spinning machine (I don't know what the name of the machine is).
You are very well schooled on the names and intracies of logical fallicies, but your resort to unfounded opinion to support your arguments. The argument you make above might be called the "That's so outrageous it could never happen" fallacy. Going back 50 years and coming forward, we could reference a string of "experts" explaining to us how out of wedlock pregnancies, the homosexual agenda in public education, animal rights, multiculturalism, a sex scandal in the White House, etc. would never become accepted as normal. The ongoing breaking of moral barriers has become normalized. People have come to accept that "morals are declining." Observation tells us that morals are, indeed, declining. It's only logical to assume that they will continue to decline - meaning that what is immoral today will become acceptable tomorrow. Another word for a decline is a slope. A really steep decline might be called slippery. The only correct thing in your nit picky list of fallacies is that we can't accurately link correlations to causality - we don't know which norms will be the next to fall. But we can guess. It doesn't take a degree in linguistics and logic, just a memory and a little common sense.
Be that as it may, if it were possible to determine if an unborn child was going to be a homosexual and that there was a way to correct this, the uproar from homosexuals would be deafening (no pun intended).
Some slopes are slippery. Just a brief study of control systems would prove that.
Given the right environment a perturbation can produce divergence.
To say it can never happen is in its self a logical fallacy.
That's clear as mud. Wanna give us a number?
Thanks for saying what I am too PO'd to say coherently.
That's a tough one. If we didn't have existing age-of-consent laws already, where would we start? I suggest the following chain of reasoning --
First, it can't go below biological, sexual maturity. Until secondary sex characteristics and sexual impulses arrive on their own, it's a clear assault on nature to get that young person involved sexually, even if the acts are "consensual". In a small tribe, the definition of "old enough" could be individualized -- "My daughter bleeds with the moon, she is ready to marry!". In a large society, an arbitrary rule is pragmatically necessary, therefore, an age should be chosen, by which virtually all physically normal children have gone through puberty. The limit is necessarly set on the high side of the bell curve. Granted, many individuals mature earlier than that, but the law does have provision for individual exceptions in some states -- with (hopefully wise) parental consent, one can marry at a lower age than is usually permitted. (I think, in Calif, it's 18 on your own, and drops to 16 with parental permission.)
Secondly, childbearing - the usual consquence of sex - requires that one assume adult responsibilities, economic and otherwise. For a variety of reasons (among them, the centuries of accumulated wisdom of raising children), various societies set limits on at what age one can leave school, take full-time job, rent or buy one's own home, etc. These adult responsibilities are, of course, normally necessary to provide for a family -- so, if they must be delayed to a certain age, so should family formation -- and therefore, sex. The age that is chosen, is the point at which nearly everyone can be fairly held accountable for adult responsibilities, altough here again, the law provides for some exceptions -- minors can apply to be emancipated, and at the other end of the scale, some people NEVER grow up.
Finally, there are some sexual activities that are not good for us, no matter how old we are. But to prevent adults from engaging in them would require an unacceptable degree of repression in society. Nevertheless, it's desireable to shield children and adolescents from... dare I say it... RECRUITMENT. Once again, the legal age of adulthood is a good cutoff, since a man who can earn his own living and rent his own apartment cannot be prevented from acting out consensual perversion, and by that age is probably pretty sure that he really wants it.
Personally, I suspect that when all the debating was done, we'd end up enacting age-of-consent laws pretty similar to what we've got now.
I believe the characterization of a 'slippery slope' moral argument can be either valid or invalid, depending upon the particulars.
Our rationalizing friend imagines that syllogisms have more substance than reality itself; he is wrong.
Remember, dimensio, analysis of terms yields tautologies, at best.
All actual truths about the empirical world around us are rooted in observation, not analysis.
I think I know a slippery slope when I see one, so spare me your argumentum ad misericordium.
The truth may make you unhappy, but it's better to be unhappy than ignorant.
I would guess that my aversion to over-dependence on strictly logical considerations as to the merit of an argument is rooted in my early aversion to 'ideological' arguments for the merits of socialism.
I firmly believe that theses about the observable world are best confirmed or refuted by facts about that world, not by analysis of the terms. Over-reliance on analysis leads one to the error of reductionism, the most dangerous of all logical fallacies.
Your 'Candidean' assessment of the foundation of the rights to property, the exclusivity of marriage relations, etc. is based, it seems to me, on the belief that humankind will always do the rational and prudent thing.
I think the 20th Century is an adequate rebuttal of that view.
Abandon your calculations! Affirm your life, and the heritage of your ancestors.
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