[CatoRenasci]

Actually, a friend of mine from law school who was an assistant DA prosecuted and won a similar (though not identical) blackmail case some 20 years ago or so involving a teenager demanding sex for silence about homosexuality.

I couldn't care less about the lesbians qua lesbians, and surely don't expect you to care about them. However, I find the moral obtuseness about blackmail, and interference in the lives of others who have not harmed one to be very troubling from almost any ethical point of view, whether Christian or secular. We all do things which, upon mature reflection, we might not wish we had done, or might not wish to do again. Few of us at 16 think explicity of the "Golden Rule" in our ordinary activities, and fewer still of Kant's Categorical Imperative, a more philosphically sophisticated version of the golden rule. Would you really want those who dislike your behaviours to go sniffing about until they found some aspect that might be embarrassing or illegal, then threaten you with exposure unless you did X, and then expose you? I think not.

[flyervet]

However, I find the moral obtuseness about blackmail, and interference in the lives of others who have not harmed one to be very troubling from almost any ethical point of view, whether Christian or secular.

Bump.

I wonder how the friend feels about what he did?

[DWSUWF]

Cato, we could argue the finer points of this until old Sol turns red and Superman loses his power, but you won't budge me an inch and I probably won't budge you.

We look at the same situation somewhat differently it would appear. Viva La Difference!