humanino said:
I'm not sure if I should post this in the politics part of the forum. I found in an
excellent source of information claims that dolphins, penguins, frogs and birds engages in homosexual behavior. I was wondering what remains of the argument that homosexuality is against Nature, such as, for instance, bestiality. I guess animals should be banned, as they should face the consequences of their freedom since they have rights.
Since Cyrus forgot to post his series of questions, I'd like to have his opinion on this matter. I'd be honored if he contributed.
Just because it is natural, that is, occurs frequently in nature, does not mean it is morally good; infanticide occurs frequently in nature, yet you would hardly argue that is morally good. The same criticism applies to the other side, of course. Just because something does not occur frequently in nature does not mean that it is immoral. Monogamy and modern medicine, for instance, is not particularly natural, yet few religious conservatives would say that monogamy is immoral. Also, just because something is immoral does not mean that it cannot occur in nature. Just because murder is immoral (say), does not mean that the idea of the noble savage is reasonable. Moreover, humans are animals as well and all considerations that apply to animals by virtue of their classification will apply to humans as well.
As a final nail in the coffin to this sort of thinking is that one cannot neither descriptively or prescriptively superimpose the behavior of one organism onto other organisms. The idea of a behavior being "natural" or "unnatural" is fundamentally not relevant to moral considerations regarding that particular behavior.
humanino said:
That's really what I wanted to say, and I was seriously happy that religious arguments do not hold anymore in the face of science.
I, too, get an enormous satisfaction when various anti-scientific projects get strongly refuted by science.
However, the naturalist and moralist fallacies that are embodied in the claims that "homosexuality is natural, therefore not immoral" or "homosexuality is unnatural, therefore immoral" are not intrinsically particular religious in nature, but has been advanced by various anti-scientific worldviews, ranging from the religious right to academic left.
The core idea that I want to put out there is that the claim that "homosexuality is unnatural, therefore immoral", should
not be attacked by saying that homosexuality is natural, because that in itself does not ensure a positive moral status with the behavior due to the fact that i.) it is a form of denying the antecedent and that ii.) whether or not it occurs frequently in nature or not has no bearing on its moral status, since there are natural behaviors such as infanticide that no one considers moral and iii.) it is invalid to both descriptively and prescriptively superimpose behavior from one organism to another.
Instead, it should be attacked and refuted by pointing out that unnatural does not imply immoral and that "does not occurs frequently in nature" is not a valid standard by which to measure moral propositions. As stated earlier, excellent examples is monogamy. It does not occur frequently in nature, yet few religious conservatives would argue that monogamy is morally wrong. By this approach, the position that "homosexuality is unnatural, therefore immoral" gets
decisively refuted and if you are in a discussion with someone of the anti-homosexual lobby, it opens up venues which allows you to strike against the very idea of religious moral theories.
After this defeat attempt to fall back on
proper religious arguments (in the sense of actually being connected to religious beliefs), such as various permutations of "homosexuality is immoral because it is condemned in religious text X". From here, we can simply point out that their scripture (1) contains obviously contradictory moral propositions and (2) supports propositions, such as slavery and genocide, that are very hard for someone to defend. This is, in my opinion, an ultimate dethroning of religious texts or religious ideologies as a source or standard of morality. It could be an interesting road map to consider when debating members of the anti-homosexual lobby. It might not convince the true believers, but can give listeners who are on the fence a new perspective to consider.
