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It is regrettable that you apparently choose to disengage from intelligent discussion and debate. Your comments indicate that you lean toward a libertarian philosophy. However, from what seems to be overly emotional comments based on your personal experience and lack of fully reasoned support in your positions, you ostensibly have not put enough research and critical thought into this philosophy to be able to defend it rationally.

I summarized your positions from a previous post and then offered unemotional counters to your points. The fact that you offered no corrections to any errors I might have made indicates that you must have accepted my characterizations. However, you have, with exception of your comments on the “Sacred Band,” refused to factually and logically, directly address the counter arguments I put forward. Instead you rather emotionally challenge what you perceive as my unauthorized usurpation of moral authority with characterizations ending in ”Again, I reject the collectivist notion that anyones life choices, or situations are subject to your review on the grounds of Morality.“

Unless you characterize the “rule of law” as a “collectivist notion,” then everyone’s “life choices” are subject to review on the grounds of morality. All laws are based upon morality and all “life choices” which involve and sort of actions are subject to potential legal sanction.

mo·ral·i·ty n. pl. mo·ral·i·ties
1. The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct.
2. A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct: religious morality; Christian morality.
3. Virtuous conduct.
4. A rule or lesson in moral conduct.
“ Morality is a complex of concepts and beliefs by which an individual sets a standard of right and wrong for his or her actions. Oftentimes, these concepts and beliefs are created by a culture or group to develop a regulation of individual behaviors.”

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

There is public morality consisting of actions governed by law and, to some limited degree, tradition. Beyond public morality, there is private morality which is governed by an individual’s personal standards of right and wrong. While I am enough of a libertarian, myself, to agree that one individual’s private morality should not be used to inhibit or sanction another individual’s private behavior, the debate in this forum is, and has been, in the final analysis, about public morality (laws and public traditions).

Specifically, the debate in this forum ultimately centers around what should be the public standard of “right and wrong” (laws and public traditions/actions) concerning homosexual behavior. For behavior that is private with impacts that neither affect nor harm anyone other than the participants, you could (but have not fully done so, as yet) make a reasoned, libertarian argument that there should be no “public standard.” However, for this argument to be valid, you would have to address the public impacts and harms that this behavior obviously has (something you have refused to do).

Reference: Your comments that, in your experience, homosexual behavior results from molestation or abuse. Unless you are advocating that homosexual behavior is a psychosis resulting from this molestation or abuse and should be treated rather than regulated by public morality (laws and public traditions/actions), this observation has no bearing on the debate.

Reference: Your comment that “…it is their [homosexual practitioners] issue, not yours. Not mine.” This is a libertarian argument for which you have provided no support whatsoever. Perhaps you would care to come up with some logic that validly supports how it is “their issue,” and not mine, concerning public lawsuits against the Boy Scouts, public demands that society change the definition of marriage, public demands that my tax money support research for HIV/AIDS, ludicrously lewd, public celebrations at a family oriented place like Disney World in front of families with small children and assertions that if any one is be offended they are “homophobes” and “hate mongers,” etc., parades through public streets in states of dress (or lack thereof) and actions that are indecent in anyone’s definition, support for an organization such as NAMBLA which is dedicated to pedophilia, etc.

Reference: Your characterization of the “July 20th plot to kill Hitler” as “moral” murder. It is not “murder” for a policeman to kill (when other means will not suffice) a felon to prevent that felon from “murdering” another innocent individual. This plot to kill Hitler could be debated along these same lines. However, I believe your point was intended to be that you perceive morality as relative and not absolute. This point seems to me to be extraneous to the discussion about what should be the “public morality” (laws and public traditions/actions) concerning homosexual behavior. Perhaps you would be willing to provide some logic to create a position for which your posit concerning moral relativity could be valid support.

Reference: Your comments that the efforts of the “Sacred Band” were not without consequence in that Phillip recognized these efforts as noteworthy. While your observation may be true, it is not related to my point concerning this group. According to my reading, Thebes received no materially better treatment than any other Greek city-state that Phillip conquered. As a result of this fact, my assertion that this group’s homosexuality (regardless of its purported impact on their fighting spirit) provided no net benefit to Thebes stands unchallenged, i.e., they lost and Phillip conquered Thebes… Thebes faired no better under Phillip than Athens, etc… therefore, the “Sacred Band’s” homosexuality provided no benefits to Thebes in this situation. Perhaps my research is incomplete. Can you offer a factual or logical counter to these assertions?

As a final note, because you and I have never met, it is difficult to understand how “I” could “bore you.” Without wishing to appear contentious, let me suggest that, perhaps, it is facts, logic and vigorous debate that run counter to your personal prejudices and incompletely examined life philosophy to which you refer as “boring.”

I am glad that you have so much time on your hands. My daughter and I are headed for the aquarium. Enjoy.

You state:
It is regrettable that you apparently choose to disengage from intelligent discussion and debate.

You overestimate yourself. Because you have longer wind than I has no bearing on the correctness of your position, and you can footnote from now to Friday, I will not be convinced.