Would homosexuality being a choice affect the morality of it

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Hmmm…well, the subject of morality is a matter of whether morality is subjective or objective. If morality is objective, what is the standard for value? I would ask if it’s conceivable that homosexuality could ever be harmful to individuals. In other words, is there some quality of homosexuality that makes homosexuals violent or destructive by nature? In the Biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah, that is precisely the case. The Bible labels homosexuality as a sin regardless, but in that instance homosexuality was among the least of their problems. From a theological perspective, homosexuality represents a dissatisfaction with God’s created order and involves a worship of creation above the Creator, hence why it is expressly forbidden. If a thing is harmful to individuals other than those involved with the thing, regardless of Biblical directives or theology, then it is objectively immoral. Unless what people do in the privacy of their bedroom is causing me harm, as long as I live in a free country what they do is none of my business.

Now, I’m kinda stuck on something. A while ago I was studying up on race and Critical Race Theory and explored many related concepts in a different thread. I’m undecided as to whether race really is just a social construct, as CRT proponents claim. What confuses me about race as a social construct is that if true, why is it CRT folks make such a big deal out of identity, namely identifying as a special, victim class? Is it REALLY only a social construct not objectively based on biology? And if it is only a social construct, are concepts such as gender and sexual orientation not also social constructs? Objectively, all you really have, biologically speaking, are two sexes: Male and Female. Orientation, therefore, has no basis in reality. It doesn’t exist apart from being an expression of preference. The argument whether preferences are a choice or not is a whole different debate. But what do you think? Are orientation and gender, like race, merely social constructs?

---

A Short Answer is All that

Is Associated With Human

Being Nature is Impacted

By Both Nature and Nurture;

Humanity IS A Spectrum;

Sadly, Folks

Try to
Reduce
Humanity
to Discrete
Separate Parts;

And The Rest of
Reality, Sadly As Well;

That's Not How Reality
Works Unless it Becomes
The Illusion and Reality too...

Yawn, Ya Just Can't Put Any of it
in Prison, Unless You Do And Lock
Yourself Out of Larger Truths Now

Sadly, Not Able

to Transform

DarK iNto LiGHT
With Relative Free Will True iN LiGHT too...

---

I don’t think morality CAN be simply a social construct. I think it HAS to objectively exist. Given life itself as a value standard, anything that negatively impacts the individual is objectively immoral. Sleeping with a partner you don’t love, for example, is an irrational rejection of self and thus immoral. Murder doesn’t merely deprive another person of life and all that goes with it—it is the irrational forfeiture of your own right to life. Thus it is immoral. Altruism is the irrational rejection of self for the sake of the undeserving benefit of others, thus it is immoral. Dying to save the person you love in order to escape a life without that person in it is rational and therefore moral. It is not a gift or a sacrifice, but rather a payment in exchange for all the value that person brought to your own life. Any time an action can be shown to be both self-serving and rational, it is objectively moral.

We can infer objective morality from nature. It is immoral to, say, disobey your parents. Your parents are responsible for your safety and well being. So when mom says “don’t jump out of a tree” and you do it anyway, you’re simply rebelling. Your broken leg will remind you your mom was right. However, if mom tells you to take the car and drive it off a cliff, obeying mom would actually be the objectively IMMORAL thing to do. Defying reason, likewise, is objectively immoral. Eating food is a good thing; eating great-tasting food for the enjoyment of it is even better. It is unreasonable, however to only eat gourmet food as a means of filling your stomach since such food is costly to make and overconsumption of it devalues the experience of eating it. If such food is unearned or undeserved, then one is guilty of Hedonism, one is irrational (driven by the animal instinct to feed and indulge in pleasure), and therefore one is immoral. Ultimately the reliance on base desires alone without reason, even if the immediate result is a benefit to one acting on those desires, results in harm to the body and the individual.

So any time you see a thrill seeker suffering needless injury, or a morbidly obese person at a buffet, or someone cheating on a spouse, you are witnessing immorality, and it’s not a simple matter of morality being a social construct.

If two same-sexed people don't harm anybody else by having sex with each other, then I don't believe homosexuality is immoral.

I don't particularly care for two guys kissing in the street----but that's my hangup.

There are some Biblical quotes which paint homosexuality as immoral.....but it seems to me that most of the criticism of it is based on the fact that it does not induce procreation.

Then, there is also the anatomical notion that anuses are not really equipped to handle erect penises---so male homosexual sex can be harmful, especially, to the recipient of the penis.

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 29 Dec 2021, 3:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The only truly objective "morality" is Survival.  All else is derived from sentimentality.

Maybe. In a manner of speaking, yes.

But then you could just say morality is nothing more than purely animal instinct. Humans achieve survival through reason rather than instinct. Animals have no choice but to survive. Humans have the choice to survive when we could just as easily choose to die. The rational choice to die depends on values external to the human mind—a soldier fighting a war to protect his country, as an example, or someone choosing to negotiate diplomatically with someone physically threatening him. In the latter example, it might be easier to hurt or kill someone for the sake of self-defense, but one need not assume that violence is the only solution. Peace is always rationally preferred to violence. But in either case, what a man does through the rational exercise of mind defies instinct and seeks a higher achievement than himself. Sentimentality only extends as far as a man’s love of life. Beyond that is reason. Immoral people do not love life nor themselves.

Let us back up a bit, and consider some common definitions.

• Moral Absolutism: The ethical belief that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right ("good") or wrong ("evil"), regardless of the context of the act.  Thus, actions are inherently moral or immoral, regardless of the beliefs and goals of the individual, society or culture that engages in the actions.  It holds that morals are inherent in the laws of the universe, the nature of humanity, the will of God or some other fundamental source.  Moral Absolutism is the opposite of Moral Relativism.

• Moral Relativism: position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect objective and/or universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances.  It does not deny outright the truth-value or justification of moral statements (as some forms of Moral Anti-Realism do), but affirms relative forms of them.  It may be described by the common aphorism: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do".  Moral Relativism is the opposite of Moral Absolutism.

• Moral Universalism: The meta-ethical position that some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, applies universally, that is, for "all similarly situated individuals", regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other distinguishing feature.  A universal ethic is a moral system that applies universally to all of humanity, and thus transcends culture and personal whim.  The source or justification of this system is variously claimed to be human nature, a shared vulnerability to suffering, the demands of universal reason, common themes among existing moral codes, or the mandates of religion.

Now, the morality of an act or a behavior determined under any one of these three perspectives may be incompatible with the other two.  Certainly, there seems to be no way to reconcile all three perspectives into one consistent whole, so only one of these perspectives must be the only correct one.

But which is it?

Just because something is a social construct, doesn't mean it does not exist, nor that people are really affected by it. Money is a social construct, but people can really be poor, and affected by a lack of having access to money, their entire lives being affected by it even.

What is meant when we say that race is a social construct, is that what even is a race is a social construct. If you had two villages separated by a village and that was pretty much their known world, chances are to them they would see them as two different races of people. When you had a lot of feuding countries in Europe as the world, they would see the different countries or even smaller provinces as people of different races, but now you have concepts like a white or Caucasian race. And chances are that if we started seeing people of other planets as in our 'world', we would be making the distinction of Earth Humans. What we call races can be really silly as a bunch of superficial genetic markers, which might not even be as distinct in groups we call races.

And yet people can still be affect by what might even be their perceived race, such that a person might be genetically half 'white' and half 'black', but if their skin was still dark they are going to be treated as a black person. A total social construct based on something as superficial as skin colour. And especially in academia when being critical on race, you will see people affected by these perceived races by the rest of society, such that a police officer might see a person of a different race as more of a threat and so treat them a certain way or levy higher charges and harassment. Not really because of something biological of a person to say do crime, but a social construct that might see them more likely to do so, so treat them differently to begin with.

As someone who identifies as non-binary and bisexual, I do have certain views of gender and sexuality as social constructs. A lot of things I did not understand about myself the longest time, which included a lot of shame because I didn't quite feel the same ways as what should be considered normal for the boxes I was placed in. A lot of it pretty subconscious, along the lines of seeing a hot dude, and telling myself that I can't be attracted them, because that is not what is normal. And it was super liberating when I was finally able to stop that voice that other people forced into my head of how I think as to act normal. And in my own experience of being so twisted by society's expectations, I be that there are a lot of people who consider themselves straight cis, who are really not as straight cis as they think they are.

There are people who probably can't see themselves as anything different, from gay or trans, that they are totally cannot see themselves different. A lot of other people need those social constructs of more diverse genders and orientation to even have the words to express their experiences. Language also being a social construct, but can be super useful in being able to organise thought into constructed meaning. I really do think people exist on sliding scales of things like gender and sexuality, even a lot of the right wing use silly terms like alpha or beta males, because even if they try to say there is only male and female, they create these silly gender horoscopes.

Word.

---

Yawn, Let's Start From 'the Beginning'

Of 'The Matrix'; Pray, Do Tale,

How Human

Consciousness
Is Either Objective

Or Subjective or

Both and

Get Back to me
When You Figure
Out From 'That Resource'
Whether or Not 'Morality'

Is Objective or Subjective;

Short Answer is Again,

A Spectrum And Both;

As i've Got Other Things
To Do Other than Avoid 'Spoilers', Hehe...

OBTW, Have You Ever Heard, The Principle
of No Pain, And No Gain; Life is a Struggle;

There is Nothing Only Immoral About Pain,

And Yet Again, Relatively Speaking, Pain Can Be Described As Immoral too;

In Fact, You May Describe Anything the Way You Like; And Similarly
To 'Donald Trump Feeding Squirrels', It Doesn't Make it True That
'Donald Trump'
Really Loves

Squirrels...

Of Course
In 'Your VIEW'
'Altruism' for
'The Squirrel'

MAY BE
CONSIDERED

Immoral

As The Squirrel
Is Not Gonna
Feed Donald
Trump

Free

in
Return...

HMM...

JUST

HMMM...

Yawn, All Our
Opinions are
Relative Indeed as
Well; Including the Opinion
That Morality is Relative As Well...

PS: It Makes me Happy To Feed The
Squirrels; Just Like It Makes me Happy

To Help You With This Dilemma With
No Expect of A Thank You, From You;

Yet You See, Again as Science Shows for
Healthy Human Beings at Least; One Act of
True Altruistic Giving Without Expect of Return

Leads to Higher Levels of Happiness For Months After that...

Yet of Course, Not Unlike the Placebo Effect, Not All Humans
Benefit From The Activity of Altruism This way; So Again it IS

A Human Nature Spectrum...

It Ain't Black and
White Dude; Yet

Left Brain Restricted

Processes of Mind

Tend to Demand it is

And Just Can't Escape

An Endless Truly Illogical Way of Thinking...

Life is Full of Very Beneficial Pain That Leads to Greater Human Potential....

How You Could Suggest That Pain is Objectively Immoral is Indeed 'Black
And White Restricted Think'....

Thrill Seeking Folks

Do Indeed Risk

Injuries; That May Be
Viewed By Others as
Needless; However Yes,

They May Discover New
Ways of Doing Life that
Both Benefit Them And Other
Folks Altruistically As Well through

The Bruises That Come through a Life
Where Thorns Make new Colors of Flowers
Possible at all to Rise As Roses...

Or i Guess You Don't Get the
Metaphor of the Christian

Cross Either

or Do You...

It's Up to
You To Decide,
Indeed, What You Believe

To "Take a Red Pill or Blue" or Create Your Own Green

Pill Newer Like me; Therefore, Morality is Indeed Relative...

Of Course, You Could Try to Avoid Pain All Your Life For Objective
Morality and Never Come Close to Meeting Your Human Potential...

Some Folks Indeed are More Cautious and Conservative This Way; others are not...

From Listening to Your Life Story, Hearing All Your Struggles And Pain You Have Endured

It Doesn't Seem to

Me that You Really

Consider Pain to be
Objectively Immoral...

Or Perhaps You Still Do; That's Up to
You; See What i Mean Yet; Yes, Morality is

Both Nature and Nurture too; It's a Spectrum
Like me and You too...

In Other Words Yes,

Morality is Relative And
Influenced By Nurture and
Nature as Well too Now; Particularly,

As Some Folks Are Literally Born without
A Conscience And Typically Have more
Psychopathic Leaning ways of Viewing
And Doing the World at Small and Large...

For A Psychopathic Leaning Person to the
Extreme, The Only Pleasure They May Get
Out of Life is the Adrenaline Rush of Inflicting

Pain On Others; And additionally, Folks Who Are

Low ON the Ability to Feel Oxytocin And Serotonin

Tend to Get Addicted to the Noradrenaline And

Dopamine That Fear, Anger, And Hate, Overall Do Bring;

Facebook Understands

Those Kinda Leaning

Folks And the

Algorithms Fed

That Dark Part of

Humanity to Make Money

Off of Fear, Anger, And Hate Addicts...

Again, As Scar From the Lion King Movie
Relates, "Life's Not Fair" From the Bottom of the
Bowl of Soul SCaRCiTY; Like A Suggestion Altruism

Is Immoral;

How You come

to That Conclusion

Defies Logic to Me;

Yet of Course, Relatively

Speaking me and You See
And Feel and Sense the World
Obviously Much Differently Yet

Are Both Civil Enough to Agree to Disagree...

i Credit Your Christian Believing Ways in General
For that potential...

Score one

For Your

Version of
Christianity
in Relative Ways
of Morality, This way too...

You Are Likely the First Person
i've Ever Heard Suggest Anywhere that

Altruism is Immoral; Even on This Website...

Although People Here Have Willingly Admitted
Their Autistic Difficulties in Experiencing Empathy

As They Are Honest About it And That's to Their Credit;

Yet It Is EXTREMELY Unlikely, You Are Correct, Yet You Believe
You Are And That Indeed is Your Relative Morality and Opinion too...

NO MATTER

HOW TRULY

MINORITY IT IS
IN TRUTH OF BEING HUMAN.

Personally, i Think You Are Being
Honest About Your Opinions, i
Give You Credit For That too...

What Really Gets Under my 'Claws'
Is When Someone Like Donald Trump

Intentionally Lies to Manipulate Others
For Selfish Gain, No Matter How Much He
Harms Folks too Ignorant to See What He

is doing to them...

It Amazes me How
Folks Still Don't See
Through this though

Scientific Theories About
How Restricted Left Brain
Think is Blind this Way to

Despicable Leaders and Used
Car Sales Persons Selling Lemons to 'Minions'
And the Such as That do make it Easier to Understand why...

Chances Are it all Started "That Matrix" When Their Big Daddies
Told Their Little Boys To Repress Smiling And Crying; Therefore,

Repressing The More Holistic Right Brain Processes of Social
Empathic Artistic Emotional Real Intelligences; It Sort of Sadly
Fits All Together this way Logically too; As It's Also True Science
Shows When Folks Injure their Right Hemisphere, The Left Hemisphere

Will Process
The World
in Very Delusional
Ways Like Insisting
Their Paralyzed Arm

Can't Possibly Belong to
Them; Therefore, Their Relative
Morality that 'Donald J Trump' is God Sent For them...

Like A Savior That is Really A Paralyzed Arm They
Can't Understand

Is Theirs...

Hmm.. Stuff in

Life that Makes

Ya Go Hmm.. Just Hmm...

It's Not An Opaque Window
to me so i consider myself
Very Fortunate; Particularly, Where i Live
And was Raised in Church and the Such as that of Ignorance...

---

According to recent history, apparently the answer is.. Yes.

It seems that growing societal acceptance of homosexuality is hinged on the fact that people are accepting it as innate vs. being a choice. When it was thought, or assumed, to be a choice.. apparently making that choice was considered immoral by many - hence homophobia and gay bashing etc etc etc that people felt justified in doing.

Whether I agree with whether it SHOULD be that way or not is irrelevant. Objective reality says that's the way it's been.

I remember watching an old public service announcement that I stumbled upon on YouTube. The video was called "Boys Beware!" and it was from the 1960's (1961 to be exact). I like to watch old PSA videos sometimes to learn about cultural context. Anyway, the video referred to homosexuality as contagious. Of course, most of us now understand that you cannot catch being gay.

However, it's a rhetoric that I still hear today, often in the form of a slippery-slope fallacy. Sometimes people have an end of the world type scenario in their heads, where they view homosexuals as heterosexuals that have lost their way and / or they are trying to secretly wipe out the human race. I've heard some utterly wild conspiracies.

Conversion therapy is based on the idea that being gay is a trait that can be changed. Typically trying to assign blame to the parents (e.g. the mother was too overbearing / the mother was too distant / the father was absent and so on). I was actually surprised when I joined this forum since I noticed that a great deal of the same theories used by conversion therapists had a lot of overlap with old theories about autism. In cases where patients reported having a healthy loving relationship with both parents, the response from the therapists was typically 'Oh, you must be so traumatised from your parents that you're in denial!'

I call them therapists, but that's inaccurate. Conversion therapy, simply, is a form of cruelty and gaslighting. I think that a big part of the reason 'Born this way' became such a famous slogan, when referring to the community, is that it wanted to combat the idea that being gay is something that could be altered.

So, the question becomes, what if it were a choice? That would actually change a lot. It would mean that those who are against it that have been pedalling cures would suddenly have some credit. This could mean the return of certain practices in mainstream use (granted, they still go on in some places, unfortunately). I suspect that talk therapy would be favoured over aversion therapy (an example of aversion therapy would be to provide an electric shock or tell patients to commit physical self-harm whenever they have a gay thought or behave in a way that is deemed unacceptable by the therapist).

The end of the world scenario that I sometimes hear people describe is that being gay is a choice and if people see that it is an option, everyone will want to be gay and not have sex with the opposite sex. Then whoops, we accidentally killed the population off by not reproducing. However, there are some flaws with this. First, it implies that everyone would absolutely jump at the chance of being gay and no one would choose to be straight. Also, what about bisexuality? Would no one choose this?

Further, most gay people in a child-bearing age range are not infertile. There are treatments available such as IVF, RIVF or even just doing it the traditional way. Besides, if it were a choice, then you could just choose to be into the opposite sex when it's convenient. It'd make attempting the traditional route more enjoyable. Now, if everyone did just decide to be gay (if this were possible) then we'd likely see an increased pressure on assisted fertility treatments. This would have downsides. However, again, if it were a choice, people could just choose to be into the opposite sex and in this hypothetical world I'd bet you'd see marketing campaigns such as 'Take pressure off the medical industry, choose straight today for a bit to have a child, thank you' (it'd probably be catchier than that). Maybe they'd even throw in donuts or free ice cream to convince people. Ha, commercialised heterosexuality. Now there's an odd hypothetical concept. Although, perhaps commercialised bisexuality would be more accurate.

Maybe we'd have a breeding season like sheep. Rams often mate with each other outside of breeding season whilst Ewes establish emotional connections with other Ewes. We're not actually sure why Rams do this. The Ewes form connections with each other so they can help raise their children with the help of other mothers offering support, but we don't really know why Rams like having sex with each other so much outside of mating season. One theory is that it's a form of practicing for Ewes or as a form of releasing pent up sexual energy, but we don't really know. Homosexuality and bisexuality occurs pretty consistently throughout the animal kingdom. A lot of animals have unique mating structures though, so it's possible that there are different reasons for it to occur. However, the discussion of why homosexuality exists could be an entirely different thread in itself.

Of course, the vast majority of gay people are fertile…..probably the same percentage as that of heterosexual people.

That was really well written, L_D.

Thanks for the insight.

If I drink poison, I will die. Therefore, it is immoral to drink poison.

In other words, moral standards are inferred from objective reality assuming life to be the standard. Action, consequence. Reward, punishment.

But people drink poison all the time. Is not alcohol poison?

Even if you are not including alcohol as a poison because it won't necessarily kill you, the second statement is a bit of a logical fallacy, that because one moral standard is not killing you could likely be proven as objective, then you could say that all morals are objective. Morality can be super subjective, where depending on your culture you could have morals actually oppose each other, and a lot of people can do some messed up stuff by arguing that it is moral, especially when religions get involved.

A lot of people thought that the crusades were moral, the church telling those who took part that god would forgive them for all their sins, so they were free to commit atrocities. Rather than focusing on what is objectively moral, we really should look at what rights people should have and reduce the most harm to. What people often consider moral is whether you put you elbows on a table, or follow some arbitrary ideas of how they should act from old book like not mixing fabrics for clothes.