submitted for your approval

[tiedyedave]

A few words on a few issues. Please note that this is significantly milder (at least in tone) than my previous post. I'm not always that mad, I promise. ^_^


There's a lot of political discussion afoot right now, especially as regards gay marriage and abortion. I often see the phrase "imposing their morality", and its variants, occur in that context; it is implied that those who wish to ban gay marriages and abortions do so out of a desire to require others to follow their particular religious convictions. Being at once moderately pro-life, a strong supporter of gay marriage, and not at all of any religious persuasion (unless you mean to include philosophical Taoism in such a category, which few do), my mind pretzels a bit when I read such arguments. I think it's important to understand that the arguments against gay marriage and the arguments against abortion should not be lumped together as impositions of morality, because the character of the arguments is fundamentally different.

One of these things is not like the other. I would like to approach the distinction as a question of rights.


Legal action to disallow gay marriage takes the form of a proscription. It is an action which, in the words of its proponents, is meant to preserve the "sanctity of marriage". In my best estimation, the right in question is the right of heterosexual couples to have their concept of marriage be the exclusive definition of same. I agree fully that this is an attempt to impose morality; the right of people to form unions as they see fit falls under the heading of "personal liberty", whereas the right of your neighbors to be comfortable with the gender composition of all the couples on their street falls under the heading of "does not hold a candle to personal liberty". Furthermore, I have not yet seen a significant argument against gay marriage that is not based on religious concerns.


Legal action to partially or fully ban abortion also takes the form of a proscription. It is also a question of rights. However, it is important to understand that the rights in question in this case are very different. One of the rights in question is the mother's 'right to privacy'; I would put this more firmly under the headings of "property" and "liberty". However, the right with which it conflicts is not the 'right' of persons with religious concerns to be comfortable with what women do about pregnancies, nor their 'right' to socially engineer consequences for promiscuity. It conflicts with the potential right to life of the unborn.

This is where things get touchy; notice that I said "potential right". How do we resolve whether this potential right is or is not in fact a right, and if it is, what other rights it supersedes? We do eventually come down to morality here, and it is true that asserting a right to life of the unborn is an imposition of morality, since an unqualified right to life would supersede unqualified rights to liberty and property, and would necessitate an imposition to protect that right to life. But the moral questions involved here are very broad in scope, touched upon by every religion and most philosophical systems, and furthermore intersect questions about the source of all rights and the basis of all law.


In both cases, yes, there is an imposition of morality. However, the "morality" in the latter case is far broader in scope than in the former. Lumping the two under the same heading in the same breath either aims to raise the question of homosexual unions to a cosmic level, or trivialize fundamental questions about the nature of life and personhood. Either course seems unwise.


And no, you don't have to put disclaimers or qualifiers on all your LJ posts on these topics. I'm simply suggesting that they be disentangled a little, rather than rehashing the old those-kooky-bible-belters-are-at-it-again argument every time.

Comments

[etotheipi.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this. I also really don't like abortion (probably not quite as strongly as you though). Possibly unlike you, I think more harm than good would come of banning it, but I still think it's important that people realize the distinction that there are no nonreligious arguments against gay marriage, but there are intelligent nonreligious reasons against abortion.

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

Me, I just don't like the argument that "imposing ones morals on others" automatically disqualifies a hypothetical legal act as smallminded and religious.

Have I missed some way of explaining why things like homicide, theft, drug use, and animal abuse are illegal? Am I wrong to reject the claim that, oh, those things are actually instances of people harming other people, so we can clearly and unambiguously, as good little secular citizens, outlaw them, but sleep soundly at night knowing that we haven't imposed any values on anyone?

So far I'm pretty unpersuaded, but I am actively interested in hearing arguments to sway me the other way, because lord knows I would like to feel like there are some legal decisions that somehow rise above hard philosophical choices of valuing.

However, if you look to the people that want to outlaw same-sex marriage, I expect you'll find they believe it causes harm. If you look to the people who want to ban abortion, I'm extremely confident that many of them believe it's outright murder. If you look at the people who don't want to ban it, you'll also find that they believe that banning it causes terrible harm to unwillingly pregnant woman.

To say that they are "imposing morality" while someone who tells me that I can not brutally sacrifice a monkey in my anti-monkey-religion rite is not; while someone who tells me I cannot take their breakfast is not; while someone who tells me I cannot make copies of the music they recorded is not --- I'm afraid it's only a matter of observing that some values happen to be less unanimously held.

I guess my point is that I feel imposition per se is absolutely unavoidable in the creation of human societies with laws. To say that some set of impositions are along moral lines (i.e. the bad ones) and others are forced upon us as society-designers by ab initio considerations of "freedom" or "the good of society" or "merely secular pragmatics" (i.e. the good ones) seems to me an extremely shaky assumption.

[rdore.livejournal.com]

why things like homicide, theft, drug use, and animal abuse are illegal?

Woah. That's a lot of different things to lump together. Firstly, I don't like the phrase "people harming other people" because it is wishy washy, and not, in my opinion the appropriate concept. I think the real issue is when does you living your life as you see fit infringe upon the ability of someone else to do the same.

I think it's very straightforward homicide is clearly infringing on someone else's freedom. I think the case can be made for theft if you believe ownership is a real and reasonable concept, and animal abuse if you believe animals should also have rights. I would general argue that drug use, at least in an isolated sense is completely acceptable. However there are side effects that may or may not be tolerable - any resulting violence, medical costs to the public, etc.

In general I find it very hard to accept that gays being given equivalent rights impinges on those peoples ability to live their life as they choose.

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

The common thread is "if you believe X have right Y".

Giving same-sex couples the same marriage tax benefits as opposite-sex couples, and giving them the same permission and priority as opposite-sex couples as regards adoption, will, I imagine, have some measurable effect increasing the number of such marriages and adoptions. Some people believe that a child growing up and being cared for by a same-sex couple does harm to that child. To such a person it infringes upon the right of that child to not be exposed to unnatural and harmful forms of parenting.

It doesn't do much good, I think, to dismiss that belief as "religious" and to say that belief in the right to property or life or the rights of animals or children are "secular" or "natural". It doesn't do any good to say that the belief that fertilized eggs do have rights is "religious", whereas the belief that they don't is "secular" or "natural". At least not unless you can give a good definition of what counts as a "religious" belief, and why people should pretend in a Rawlsian-veil-of-ignorance sort of way that they don't have such beliefs when it comes to writing laws.

I stubbornly think the libertarian "right to do anything that doesn't infringe on the rights of others" is at best a consistency check on a system of laws, and at worst a seductive but ultimately vacuous circularity. Does murder infringe on my right to life, or my insistence on living infringe on your right to stab? Does theft infringe on my right to property, or does my hoarding of food infringe on your freedom from hunger? Does my mp3 collection infringe on the property rights of creative artists, or do their claims of ownership infringe on my right to transmit any bitstring I choose?

The first two are only obvious to the extent that we all agree we have a right to life and property, not because the "right to do whatever we want as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others" axiom has told us anything new. The last is really an open question in my mind, a hard question, and it isn't helped a jot more towards resolution when reasoning in a similarly circular way.

[rdore.livejournal.com]

Apologies to dkitchin for hijacking his post for this discussion. Also this comment has little logical structure. It is just me responding and expressing opinion in a rather disorderly way.

Some people believe that a child growing up and being cared for by a same-sex couple does harm to that child. To such a person it infringes upon the right of that child to not be exposed to unnatural and harmful forms of parenting.

Ah but now the question is, is it appropriate to ban X to prevent correlated but seprate Y from happening. That is a more subtle question and one I sure as hell don't believe I have a good answer to. (And probably tend to assume whichever anser is more convenient.) If that was the point of your original comment, I apologize for missing it.

It doesn't do much good, I think, to dismiss that belief as "religious" and to say that belief in the right to property or life or the rights of animals or children are "secular" or "natural".

Sure sure. I generally don't dismiss anything as rational unless someone I'm directly arguing with presents it as the sole justification. And I'm generally just as skeptical of an argument based on things being "natural" as I am of one based on reglion. (More on this below.)

I stubbornly think the libertarian "right to do anything that doesn't infringe on the rights of others" is at best a consistency check on a system of laws, and at worst a seductive but ultimately vacuous circularity. Does murder infringe on my right to life, or my insistence on living infringe on your right to stab?

Ultimately, I agree to rules and rights and such nonsense because I am of the opinion that not agreeing with them produces a worse outcome than if I do. (The use of "worse" here is intentionally a bit nebulous.)

Any "right" is at it's core a social/cultural construct. Although they can be embedded quite deeply so that they feel fundamental to most people.

Having some particular legal "right" is something I want myself or people I give a damn about to have. E.g. it is, or could potnetially be important in the future. Attempting to maintain this right for them but to deny the world at large would take considerable effort on my part, and probably undermine it in the long run. Furthermore I see little benefit to denying it of people. That is I want the sanctity of the system maintained because then I am well protected from XYZ without having to devote my life to protecting XYZ.

Ack I've gotten off topic. And haven't really answered that circularity bit. And I need to get up to office hours. *maybe* i'll comment so more later.

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

okay, I get the feeling that we're in a lot less disagreement than I originally thought. I'm still interested if you have more stuff to say though.

[rdore.livejournal.com]

I think the main thing I meant to comment on the "right to do anything that doesn't infringe on the rights of others" circularity remark. Specificly that at some completely reductivist level it's very rarely useful. More that the point of government is too mediate when different people want to pursuing things that conflict, how should that be handled. I certainly don't think you can just apply the principle in some reductivist way, although in some cases (like murder) there is close enough to unanimous agreement that it may sound like that's the arguement.

RE: disagreement. I think part of it is just that I just don't think I know any thorough and unquestionable answers to these questions, and that you may just be in that boat as well. This is actually one thing I like about our system of government: there are people who take extreme views of everytype, and as a result we end up with a compromise that rarely says "there is an answer", but instead "this sort of intersects with several answers." Sometimes the result is goofy, but often it's better than any of the extreme attitudes.

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

I don't know what you mean by "reductivist". What I'm asserting is that the principle doesn't, under any interpretation, on any level, tell you anything you didn't already know.

It seems to me that in any consistent legal system, you can take all the permissible things and say that those are the things I have the right to do, and I have the right to live in a society where nobody is permitted to act outside those bounds. So if the laws permit me to snoop on people, I have a right to record whatever I see and hear, but no right no privacy, for that would infringe on the right to record freely available information. But if the laws don't permit this, then I have a right to privacy, for the act of snooping is restricted by virtue of its butting up against the right to privacy. In either case, and in any consistent case, I have ipso facto the right to do anything that doesn't infringe on the rights of others. So if the axiom is validated by any legal system, how can it help us in designing legal systems?

[rjmccall.livejournal.com]

This guy named Hobbes suggested that laws ought to maintain the viability of society. That seems good to me, since I think society is pretty neat, especially given the alternative. I dunno, you might disagree.

[zayichik.livejournal.com]

You bring up a good point. However, laws to prevent murder, theft, cruelty to animals are federal laws. They are federal laws because and incredibly OVERWHELMING majority of society believes these laws to be right and necessary. With issues like abortion and gay marriage (and I don't mean to trivialize abortion here, Dave) when the disagreeing minority isn't so minor and is in fact dividing the nation, it would in fact be imposing one's morals on someone else if a federal law was passed one way or another. These types of things should be part of state legistlature (or other type of local government). What's right for the residents of one state is not necessarily right for residents of the other. I don't care if homophobes in Oklahoma (sorry to anyone from there, it could be another state as well) outlaw marriage for gay couples, but why should they prevent those who want to get married in Massachusetts, if MA population is ok with that? Same thing for abortion (once again, not to trivialize it or anything).

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

I'm not convinced that the state/federal distinction is in any way central. Even if you say each state of the United States is allowed to make up its mind, then there is still a debate within that scope as to which way the laws should go. Someone in Oklahoma is imposing their morality on someone else in Oklahoma if gay marriage is illegal there, and, guess what, someone in Massachussetts is also imposing their morality on someone else in Massachussetts if gay marriage is legal there.

[zayichik.livejournal.com]

Yes, but you can move out of a state, or go to another state to have an abortion, or if you are a homosexual who wants to get married. It's a LOT harder to move out of a country. Also, there are couties, cities, etc. Counties can be overwhelmingly democratic or republican. Then, you can take it down to that level, if need be. Like I said before, if an OVERWHELMING majority agrees , then you are making the "imposing" a lot less imposing.

[zayichik.livejournal.com]

Oh, and you can also move out of a county, city, etc. I don't think you are imposing, if a person has another option. However, making someone move out of the country so that they can live in an area with laws they are comfortable with, that's asking a little much, isn't it?

Oh, and I don't plan to move out of this country. It's great. I'm just also arguing the meaning of "imposing", nothing more.

I definitely see your point that either side can be the "imposer" (not that such a word exists), but in this case, i'm simply saying that this president and the ppl. who elected him on moral grounds are the potentially the "imposers". I use "potentially" because it still remains to be seen what will happen to Roe vs. Wade and whether the gay marriage ban will become part of the contitution.

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

Though I may be making an argument against something that you're not arguing, sorry.

I'm still stuck on the idea that "imposing morals on the others" is something only the christian right does. Not that I don't disagree with many of their particular morals, but I would love to have a better defense of my moral decisions than claiming they're somehow the "default" morality, which I have a right to not have imposed on.

[naufiel.livejournal.com]

I'm still stuck on the idea that "imposing morals on the others" is something only the christian right does.

Read up on Israel sometime. :)

It's not the Christian Right. It is, more often than not, The Extremist Faction (TM). It just so happens that the Christian Coalition has entered this debacle because they have made it a point to.

wsykes's father, an Episcopalian minister, once told me that he was very angry with those who presumed that the CC spoke for him and Christians everywhere. It is a problem that has become more aparent the more vocal they've gotten. Moderate Christians are much more likely to turn the other cheek and keep quiet.

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

My claim is that in any debate, you can't isolate the side that is imposing its morals on the other side, in such a way that the other side is not imposing anything.

The "Non-Extremist Faction" seeks to impose their nonextremism on "The Extremist". They have no apparent higher ground morally, except their (presumably) greater numbers.

[zayichik.livejournal.com]

I definitely agree that there is not such thing as 'default morality" and that both sides can be "imposing their morals". However, I think when referring to this election, most of the time when I've heard that phrase is liberals talking about the gay marriage ban and overturning roe vs. wade becoming federal. And that is what i'm specifically referring to. When such a "large minority" of the country disagrees with these measures, and Bush doesn't care, that would be the Christians imposing their views. This of course, takes me back to the argument of state, county, township, city laws.

[naufiel.livejournal.com]

However, if you look to the people that want to outlaw same-sex marriage, I expect you'll find they believe it causes harm. If you look to the people who want to ban abortion, I'm extremely confident that many of them believe it's outright murder. If you look at the people who don't want to ban it, you'll also find that they believe that banning it causes terrible harm to unwillingly pregnant woman.

How about the willingly pregnant woman? How about the woman who wanted this child/these children so much she tried for years to concieve - only to find, in her 22nd week, that if she does not terminate the pregnancy, she'll die?

The subject of abortion angers me to new heights when I hear it discussed in such... unfeeling? terms. The decision to abort a child is not anything a woman should take lightly, and I promise you there would be very few who actually do. I think that's what angers me. A lot of people don't understand that every woman who had an abortion realises that there is a "might have been" involved. Every woman who's had an abortion knows her life might be different. That she probably stayed up more than one night to arrive at her difficult choice. And I feel that she is not being given the respect she deserves in such discussions.

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

imperfect phrasing on my part, sorry. I should have said maybe,
"people who want abortion to remain legal may plausibly believe that banning abortion causes terrible harm to some women that are pregnant and wish to (and are unable to) terminate that pregnancy"

I'm sorry I've made you angry with my style of writing, but please don't think that just because I care immensely about the philosophical meaning of justice and rights and argumentational validity that I don't also care about respecting individual people and the effort they go through to make decisions far harder than I've ever had to make.

I was just trying to draw attention to the fact that I believe people don't simply have "religious" beliefs to annoy those that take a "secular" position. I assume (though I admit I don't know for sure) that people on both sides of the abortion issue think that by either striving to prohibit or allow certain abortions they are actually reducing the amount of real, human suffering in the world. What (and I'm earnestly asking, since I don't want to come across as some sort of emotionless politics-arging robot) did I say to make that sound unfeeling?

[naufiel.livejournal.com]

More than anything else, it was the tone of the discussion. The fact that these matters are more philosophical than not. Grant you, I would prefer that these things be philosphical for the majority of the population. But the sheer argument is covered with humanity and that is, I feel, being ignored.

It's simple to discuss human rights objectively, and in more circles than not, it is prefered. But the full weight of this issue does not enter into the mind of someone who has never gone through it (disclaimer: I have never gone through it), and that is simply not up for debate.

And fundamentally, I believe, that is what pro-life people do not see. That abortion is always a hard choice. That no woman would stroll into a planned parenthood centre and ask for a two-for-one special. That these decisions are heartbreaking.

If anti-abortion people are honestly committed to reducing the amount of real, human suffering in the world, they should fund orphanages, clean up the adoption system in this country. They should remember that life does not end at birth - that a baby is still, no matter how precious, a money sink, a mouth to feed, a child to educate, to clothe, to invest time in.

I love my niece more than I have ever imagined possible, and I expect to love my children even more. But I know just how much money it takes to raise my niece, and I know that loving her does not give me the right to tell a woman who cannot afford to provide what she would want for her child not to terminate a pregnancy. That does not give me the right to say "How dare you not choose to prevent this potential life?"

It does not give me the right to picket an abortion clinic, making the choice for those women even more painful. And it does not give me the right to threaten the lives of those women, nor their doctors.

The fundamental truth is that women who can afford it will always be able to have abortions. There are flights to Europe/Canada/wherever departing daily. But the women who cannot afford it deserve to have the right to choose just as much as the next rich girl.

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

I don't see how discussing something at a philosophical level means that I am ignoring the fact that real people have to deal with it. I'm not currently discussing real anecdotes about real people really deciding whether or not they are having real abortions.

But neither am I currently discussing the issues of the adoption system, and that doesn't mean that I am oblivious to the interaction between abortion's legality and adoption. It just means that I'm not currently thinking about it. I can't think about everything at once. There are times that I have philosophical arguments about rights and freedoms and justice and stuff, and abortion comes up as a useful example. If that makes me unfeeling and ignorant, it's awfully hard to do philosophy at all, then, because it's about real things all the time.

On the actual issue of abortion, I feel like you're not really getting inside the head of a person who is pro-life for religious reasons, who believes that, say, a one-month-old fetus is a person. Imagine believing that. I don't, but I know people, in my own family in fact, who do. If you really earnestly and completely believe that that bundle of cells is as much a single and whole human being just as much as the bundle of cells that constitutes you or I do, how do you argue that it being a hard decision is enough to justify terminating its life? It's not a potential life to everybody just because the rhetoric of the pro-choice side (and the more conciliatory elements of the pro-life side) describe it that way. Some people regard it as actual life. What can be said to them?

[naufiel.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you (general, not you specifically) can begin by asking them whether the mother is also a life? Does she get the considerations of a sentient being, or is she no more than an incubator?

And then maybe we can adress what kind of life that bundle of cells would have with a mother who didn't want it. Or a father who wasn't there. Or in the adoption system?

Shouldn't the first policy of those people who believe that that bundle of cells is life, and that life is sacred, be to make sure it would have a home, a good and proper home to grow up in? How about holding all life sacrosanct, not just that bundle of cells? How about the life of its siblings, who will now not attend college because their parents had another child and can't afford that?

My sister has adopted the "life does not end at birth" saying, and that is really what I feel is missing from this discussion. Sure, you can tell me that that little clump of cells is life. I, as a very religious Jew, do not believe that, but there are people of other faiths (or no faiths) who do.

But tell me why those people don't hold the lives of the doctors who perform abortions in equal regard? Tell me why those people are willing to kill the woman just to make a point?

You want less abortions? Fine. Raise the education level of the women in this country. Provide access to birth control and help them make informed decisions about their bodies. Provide a stable economy that would allow those women to support their children. Then come debate the issue of the miniscule number of abortions being performed.

[tiedyedave]

How about the willingly pregnant woman? How about the woman who wanted this child/these children so much she tried for years to concieve - only to find, in her 22nd week, that if she does not terminate the pregnancy, she'll die?

Well, this is pretty simple. Working from the discussion of rights above, the mother's well-understood right to life is in question now as well, not just her rights to liberty and property. The mother 'wins'; abortion is acceptable here. Please understand: I have never been in favor of catgorically banning the medical procedure of abortion. There are cases, such as this, where it is the right thing to do. I simply ask that an abortion be considered a medical procedure which affects two people - the mother and the unborn - who both have rights.

[zayichik.livejournal.com]

In theory, I agree with naufiel. However, I'm very ambivalent about partial birth abortions. I wonder if there are in reality maladies which will prevent you from carring it a while longer than then deliver via a cesarian? Nowadays, even a child born at 7-8 months has a rather nice predicted outcome.

I also oppose a categorical ban on partial birth abortion, but I wonder whether they can be avoided altogether.

[naufiel.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, they can't.

There are complications that arise in the second and third trimesters that cannot be expected, and until you hit 24 weeks, no child can survive outside the body. To stand a good chance, You would have to get up to 34-36 weeks. At that point, I don't know how many doctors would be willing to peform a PBA.

Of course, I don't know what happens in the rarest of rare cases, such as the mother being a hemophiliac or something the like.

[naufiel.livejournal.com]

My point partly stemms from religious belief as well, so I'm not the most objective person on this (or many other a) question.

Judaism teaches that the life of the mother always outweighs the life of the unborn. The mother already has a life - in those times more often than not a family, a husband, and possibly other children who would suffer greatly should she die, suffer a great physical or mental illness, etc, etc.

Grant you, at the time the Talmud was debated and the Hallachah discussed very few economic factors entered into the question. However, if the family would be unable to sustain the child, I would argue that it presents a kind of suffering that deserves to be considered.

As a scientist, I cannot point you to the exact moment when life begins - the highest of presumptions. This case, just like many others, is one of the reasons I have been able to marry my faith to my life's work.

[rdore.livejournal.com]

Sadly, the possibility that a polticial concept could have nuances to it one way or the other has become very un-trendy lately.

But in any case, I agree with you on the abortion thing in so far as I have an opinion. Clearly a newborn child is a human being due all the appropriate rights, and clearly an unfertilized egg cell is not something for which we need afford any legal protection. But somewhere in between that has to change over, and it's not clear how that should occur. And it makes me nervous of people on both sides who claim to have that very clearly and simply sorted out.

(There's also the practical issue that making it illegal may cause more dangerous than appropriate behavior.)

[rjmccall.livejournal.com]

Ah, the implications of an image.