Re: Same Sex Marriage
Reply #144 –
At the one hour point he seems to forget the rampant conservatism that took told. America didn't go "on party." It went in the opposite direction. The 1960's and 70's were the reaction and backlash to this. It might be right that the sexual revolution can be tied to the world wars, but he misses a very conservative decade in the US. As far as LGBT goes, it came from police harassment of LGBT people, particularly the Stone Wall Inn. John Haldane also misses that homosexuality also exists in nature. Philosophers sit high in their ivory towers writing their papers on nature and whatnot but don't look outside the window to see what's really happening in nature. On what's "natural", as species pair-bonds for long periods of time if not for life, it seems unnatural to try to force humans to live alone and celibate. Before proclaiming what's natural and unnatural, first observe nature and what appears natural in the species. For humans, the natural behavior for most would be to find an opposite sex partner, but for a few percent it's to find a same-sex partner (based studies that go as far to show some brain structures in homosexual men are more similar to women than to heterosexual men. WW II didn't cause that..) The nice thing about being a philosopher must be the ability to say what you think, but not having to present empirical data to back it up.
I think he's also missing the positive factors. The divorce rate has been coming down for some time, his own graphs are starting to show a mild decrease in out of wedlock birth. There's other data showing the showing a decline in abortions in the US, at least. The family is trying to make comeback. Just leave LGBT people alone and let them get married. It won't cause the positive trends to reverse. Of course, there are negative statistics to cite but why must we always dwell on the negative and claim civilization is going to collapse just because the LGBT ask for something?