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Morendil comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong
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Comments (1329)
That is perhaps a good argument in favor of conservatism in general, but it falls short of my request to point at someone who has rational reasons to oppose homosexuality, at the very least as practiced in private.
I'm not saying that anyone who opposes, say, gay marriage or gay adoption is irrational by virtue of having that position. But it seems clear that people who allow their "eww" reaction to become an excuse to "pick on the queer", as is seen for instance in cases of workplace harassment, are simply not using their heads, to put it mildly.
If you believed that
then you might oppose homosexuality, including as practiced in private.
Disclaimer: I do not hold the above view, for fairly standard Libertarian reasons, and also do not believe all the premises are true.
There's one more belief needed for that complex to make sense-- that the costs (both to homosexuals and to heterosexuals) of suppressing homosexuality are low enough to counterbalance the benefits.
I was considering adding it in, but I think the costs of the missed 'lives worth living' would likely exceed it greatly, assuming the first premise is true.
Edit: I just editted it in, and then re-removed it. Firstly, it makes the whole thing trivial, and secondly, I was only presenting a sketch of a case- really, we'd need a cost-benefit analysis. Rather, this is outlining one of the benefits.
If you're trying to convey a system of thought you don't agree with, you might as well include all the bits and pieces.
The interesting thing about that anti-homosexual argument is it considers the costs of repressing homosexuality to be so low for homosexuals that they aren't even generally conscious for the conservative.
Also, there are costs to non-homosexuals-- frex, it's rough for a heterosexual to be married to a homosexual who'd hoped (with support from their culture) that they'd get over their homosexuality.
And if a homosexual is driven to suicide, it's very hard on their family.
I'm not familiar with this word but I've seen you use it a couple of times now. Google didn't enlighten me either. Is it short for for example?
Yes. I didn't realize it was so rare.
Well, part of the idea may be that you're not repressing, you're curing: they cease to be homosexual. They're ex ante pleased to be cured, and the cost of healing/oppressing is one-time rather than life-long.
Whatever the suicide rate would be, I doubt it's high enough to make up for the loss of potential-children.
I'm sure that's part of the premise, but my point was that the low cost is simply assumed rather than examined. Also, the possibility of a failure rate isn't considered.
None of the premises are examined; they're all assumed. Clearly, as we all agree the argument is unsound at least one of them (including those implied but not delineated) must be false, and it's not particularly important which. What Morendil asked for, more or less, was a rational argument against private homosexuality.
Obviously, no unsound argument should be stable under reflection, but from the point of view of Classical Logic this seems to satisfy the requirements.
If you'd like it more formally, I'll write out all the premises in full and come up with a cost/benefit analysis / natural deduction proof - but it wouldn't help answer the request, because we're not discussing whether or not private homosexuality is bad, but whether there are any (close enough to) rational arguments for the other side.
Mostly agree, but what exactly is "the" libetarian reason for rejecting that chain of reasoning? A libertarian (and I consider myself one) would tend to reject the premises, but not the deductions you made based on the premises.
Also, as a libertarian, do you believe something like, "If rampant homosexuality/ childless/ etc. leads to a libertarian society being undermined and outbred, so be it -- that means the whole program was flawed to begin with"? What's your general position on libertarian-permitted acts that, at the large scale, would undermine the ablity of a society to remain libertarian?
(Btw, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a "hardcore" libertarian drew a lot of criticism for his position that practioners of non-family-centered lifestyles would have to be "physicallly removed" from a libertarian society for it to function.)
Usual disclaimer: the chain of reasoning you gave still wouldn't justify opposition to homosexuality, but rather, a kind of compromise like I proposed before, where you can either have/adopt children of your own, or pay a tax after a certain age.
Things like the utility homosexuals get from freely expressing themselves, and the various Public Choice problems with implementing the system. But I also think the first premise is false, and third is at least a simplification.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t adopt the nearest stable system, which could be Libertarianism without sexual freedom.
I would bite the HHH bullet and say that we'd have to do something about it. Things like SeaSteading provide non-coercive alternatives, in basically the same way that making property rights totally secure would prevent being outnumbered being a problem.
However, Minarchists are quite happy to accept taxes to defend liberty, and I know the President of the Oxford Libertarians would accept conscription, and I don't think there's that much difference. It may well be that we should adopt a consequentialist deontology: we act in such a way as to maximise rule-following. The danger here is that in breaking rules to try to enforce them, we might undermine them further.
In general, I don't think Libertarianism has much chance without a culture of individual responsibility, quite possibly family-based.
I would imagine the general form of an argument to that effect would be that taboos against homosexuality must exist for a reason and despite not fully understanding that reason we should preserve the taboos for fear of causing unintended damage to society. If you are the kind of person who believes that society should formalize its taboos as legal prohibitions then you might support laws against the private practice of homosexuality.
To be clear, I'm a staunch libertarian and so firmly oppose laws against any kind of sexual activity between consenting adults but the libertarian position on prohibitions on the activities of individuals is neutral on the question of whether any activity is in the best long term interests of the participants or on the pros or cons of indirect consequences on society as a whole. I also support the right of an employer to refuse to employ homosexuals or the proprietor of a business to refuse to serve them for example.
It is fairly common on both the left and the right to oppose practices that are considered harmful both through social taboos and through legal prohibition on private activity. The only real difference is in the types of activities that are considered harmful. I see little difference between a social conservative arguing that homosexuality should be illegal because we don't know the potential consequences for society and a left liberal arguing that GM foods should be illegal because we don't know the potential consequences for society. In both cases it arguably should be an empirical question but in practice it is driven largely by the "eww" response in the majority of people.