Indiana's governor signs bill allowing businesses to reject gay customers

[Leonhard]

So are you suggesting we ban them [infertile couples]

Depends on whether they're essentially infertile, or accidentally infertile. The latter can marry, the former can't. In the Catholic Chuch a man without a penis can't fulfil the marriage act and so the sacrament is invalidated. Likewise a man who voluntarily denies his wife the marriage act, also invalidates the marriage act.

Cunnilingus and many other non-reproductive sexual practices are commonplace and not abnormal in any sense

Agreed, they fulfill the secondary purpose of sex.

they promote close and loving relationships essential for content, fulfilled couples and the healthy raising of emotionally healthy children.

Close and loving relationships promote emotionally healthy children, and good healthy playful sex between couples help promote close and loving relationships. I think that's what you meant to say. That's why we have marriages.

[lilpixieofterror]

We'd definitely have to market the impregnation booth like the Polaroid camera. "Press the button, wait a moment, and out comes the baby. Press again if you don't like the first one."

Yep, a society where children are treated as some sort of trinket instead of as people.

[Sea of red]

That seems more than somewhat irrelevant to the claim that homosexuality arose via natural selection, and confers a survival benefit on society, and is therefore moral and something we should actively support through legislation and social approval.

Not everything is about what's best for society or about people trying to agree to some impossible objectivity on what's moral.

[Teallaura]

I guess, in principle (for the sake of charity here) you could imagine a streamline, automated, impregnation booth... even then I don't think it'd select for gays more often than straights, or even comparably.

Anyone one else flashing back to Huxley about now?

[Tassman]

They wouldn't exactly use the word "normal" when describing it, though that might be what they do in sex ed. Its a value laden term which they tend to shy away from. What they say is that its possible to lead fulfilling life as a homosexual, and that it does not impair your ability to live such a life.

They would exactly. Both have been documented in many different cultures and historical eras. Despite the persistence of stereotypes that portray lesbian, gay and bisexual people as disturbed, several decades of research and clinical experience have led all mainstream medical and mental health organizations in this country to conclude that these orientations represent normal forms of human experience. Lesbian, gay and bisexual relationships are normal forms of human bonding".

http://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/orientation.aspx

Evolutionary morality is as much a pseudoscience as evolutionary psychology. Just so stories abound, but no data.

In short we, along with most social animals, are predisposed by evolution towards behaviour that enhances the welfare of the group.

If humans didn't reproduce, we wouldn't have sex. Therefore the end goal of sex, is reproduction.

It is an important goal but not the only goal, especially on an overcrowded planet.

Because humans are the only animals capable of abstract intellection, this allows us to assign purpose to sex, above and beyond its natural inherent purpose. For example sex can also as a secondary goal help unite a man and a woman, to make them stay together and suffer through the hardship of having a child.

True, as far as it goes.

What's wrong is seeking the secondary purpose, in denial of the primary purpose, which is basically voluntarily breaking away from your human nature.

There's NO

Marriage is built around sex. Its the solemn promise for two people to stay together, to be able to have children.

Marriage is "the solemn promise for two people to stay together". Most often to have children but not necessarily.

Depends on whether they're essentially infertile, or accidentally infertile. The latter can marry, the former can't. In the Catholic Chuch a man without a penis can't fulfil the marriage act and so the sacrament is invalidated. Likewise a man who voluntarily denies his wife the marriage act, also invalidates the marriage act.

Religion is entitled to promote whatever woo it sees fit for its adherents but the issue is the law of the land in a secular society, not religious ideology.

Agreed, they fulfill the secondary purpose of sex.

ANY

Close and loving relationships promote emotionally healthy children, and good healthy playful sex between couples help promote close and loving relationships. I think that's what you meant to say. That's why we have marriages.

This is the most common reason for marriage, but it's not the only reason. Homosexual behaviour is relatively common in nature among social species with large stable populations and ample resources. It frees a pool of individuals with more time available than those with children to raise, who can contribute to the survival and quality of life of the population.

[Starlight]

If humans didn't reproduce, we wouldn't have sex. Therefore the end goal of sex, is reproduction. Because humans are the only animals capable of abstract intellection, this allows us to assign purpose to sex, above and beyond its natural inherent purpose. For example sex can also as a secondary goal help unite a man and a woman, to make them stay together and suffer through the hardship of having a child. What's wrong is seeking the secondary purpose, in denial of the primary purpose, which is basically voluntarily breaking away from your human nature.

Marriage is built around sex. Its the solemn promise for two people to stay together, to be able to have children.

Random question... The type of argument you're using here, (which uses such words and phrases as "end goal", "purpose", "natural inherent purpose", "secondary goal", "denial of the primary purpose") strikes me as very Aristotelian in nature, focusing as it does on purposes and end-goals. I've seen other Catholics also give Aristotelian-type arguments on the subjects of marriage or homosexuality. It stands out, because it's quite a unique style of reasoning that I believe became quite popular around the middle ages, although it's not generally regarded today as valid.

Anyway, what I wondering is what is the common origin of this - why do all the Catholics I talk to online go suddenly extremely Aristotelian on me as soon as the topic hits marriage? I'm genuinely curious. Is is that there's some widely-read Catholic book or website that uses Aristotelian ideas? Or is there language in the liturgy itself? Or in Catholic marriage ceremonies? Or is it simply that Catholic writers ever since Aquinas have loved Aristotelian logic and like to use it at every opportunity?

[Tassman]

Random question... The type of argument you're using here, (which uses such words and phrases as "end goal", "purpose", "natural inherent purpose", "secondary goal", "denial of the primary purpose") strikes me as very Aristotelian in nature, focusing as it does on purposes and end-goals. I've seen other Catholics also give Aristotelian-type arguments on the subjects of marriage or homosexuality. It stands out, because it's quite a unique style of reasoning that I believe became quite popular around the middle ages, although it's not generally regarded today as valid.

Anyway, what I wondering is what is the common origin of this - why do all the Catholics I talk to online go suddenly extremely Aristotelian on me as soon as the topic hits marriage? I'm genuinely curious. Is is that there's some widely-read Catholic book or website that uses Aristotelian ideas? Or is there language in the liturgy itself? Or in Catholic marriage ceremonies? Or is it simply that Catholic writers ever since Aquinas have loved Aristotelian logic and like to use it at every opportunity?

[Leonhard]

Random question... The type of argument you're using here, (which uses such words and phrases as "end goal", "purpose", "natural inherent purpose", "secondary goal", "denial of the primary purpose") strikes me as very Aristotelian in nature

You got it.

Anyway, what I wondering is what is the common origin of this ... is it simply that Catholic writers ever since Aquinas have loved Aristotelian logic and like to use it at every opportunity?

As with many historical developments of ideas, its not a simple and straightforward line. So whatever description I give here, take it as a summary devoid of any of the real nitty gritty complexity of the situation.

In general in the Church ever since the Church Fathers there was was an ongoing discussion about the matter of rational arguments in the context of the Church. Some focused more on the supernatural revelations and the God given virtue of Faith, others more on the rational approach. Eastern Orthodox to this day maintain a strong focus on the former, even though they'll ironically use rational arguments to support this. The question was whether the two were at odds with eachother, could you examine moral questions, and questions like God's existence by rational argumentation, or were the answers to these questions above the reach of man rational capacity.

The question went through various developments, but is largely considered now by the Church to have been solved by St. Aquinas who showed how one could use Aristotle's Metaphysics to come to a greater understanding of Catholic thought, and defend it intelligible to others. He wasn't the first to think like he did, and he inherited a lot of his teachers St. Albertus Magnus work, but no one put it together in a coherent system like he did before. Namely his great masterpiece Summa Contra Gentiles.

Following that the scholastic philosophers slowly began to rise in popularity, though with some ups and downs. There was a recent Renaissance called neo-scholasticism in the eighteenth Century which more or less came to dominate Catholic thought.

Spartacus will know more about it than I do.

Today you're right most philosophers don't think much about scholasticism... that is to say they basically don't write about it. Most philosophers I know are either ignorant of it, or those who've read it think highly of it but haven't written anything on it themselves.

Historically scholasticism lost favor with Descartes and Kant who wrote various arguments, and philosophies, meant to show that the baroque scholastic metaphysics of their time was wrong, entirely. I don't think their arguments are any good, and by the looks of it they fell into various philosophical problems that they couldn't solve from then on. Descartes with the notion even of making sense of why A follows B, and suddenly C, something which isn't the same problem in scholastic metaphysics.

Modern philosophy has more or less given up on trying to make coherent sense of objective morality. Which makes sense given that what Descartes and Kant did, was to argue that philosophers need to get rid of final causes. With that out of the way though, all hope has to be abandoned of explaining anything... qualities, goodness, intention, and even basic causality.

Read The Last Superstition by Ed Feser, or some of his articles online, he's pretty good at explaining this.

[Leonhard]

Because the teachings of the Catholic Church cannot be properly understood without the basic philosophical underpinnings of Thomas Aquinas’ major theses and Aquinas was strongly influenced by Aristotelian philosophy.

I wouldn't say that. I think the Church's positions could be articulated as mysteries, and be defended de fide, without much loss or problem. I do think however, that its teachings can be defended rationally as well, God's existence, the wrongness of homosexuality being another, that abortion is murder, etc...

I can defend God's oneness rationally.

But God being a trinity of persons: The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. That's a revealed mystery. We'd never have figured that out on our own.

[Leonhard]

They would exactly use the word “normal when describing it” as you would have known if you’d read the link.

Very well, this is certainly surprising, though then again it is a public website. Just goes to show that even the APA has become thoroughly political now.

Wonder how long it'll be before belief in God becomes a mental illness.

"Evolutionary morality” is not my argument ... “Given that we have evolved as social animals,

Yeah sure, now come with an argument that doesn't invoke a just so story and talks about reality instead.

It is an important goal but not the only goal, especially on an overcrowded planet.

Would sex have existed without reproduction?

There's NO "voluntarily breaking away from your human nature".

They're not trying to have babies. I don't know of any gays who think the sex they have could even in principle bring a child into being.

Your so-called “secondary purpose” is not being “sought”.

Neither the primary, nor any secondary purpose is being sought by the sex. Except maybe for gay couples who've adopted, and so to be a unitive family of sorts, sex could keep them together and make them more stable than not. Of course nobody thinks about the child's right to a father and mother.

Homosexuality is not a choice; it is as natural to those who are thus orientated as heterosexuality is to you and me.

Very few gay people are exclusively homosexual. Most of them exhibit various levels of heterosexuality. Its become a very controversial thing within the LGBT community. So much so that they've actively started talking about bi-erasure, and complain about those who identify as bi who are pressured to present as gay for political reasons.

For those who are exclusively homosexual, then yes, its not voluntarily for them to have desires. I don't consider disordered desires morally wrong. A person can't help have them, if he has them. That would not legitimize their sex, anymore than an alcoholic legitimized in his self-abuse because he craves alcohol.

Marriage is "the solemn promise for two people to stay together".

That's the redefinition of marriage that us Christians are talking about all the time. The LGBT have won that one. Through the media, through sensitivity training, through patient and dedicated lobbying, they've effectively changed the moral outlook of the majority of an entire country. Marriage no longer means, staying together to have kids and providing a nurturing environment for them.

Marriage today means fancy wedding and big dress, honey moon, and legal benefits, two rings and a photo album, and we stay together until one of us gets tired of the other and decides its time to do something else.

Religion is entitled to promote whatever woo it sees fit for its adherents but the issue is the law of the land in a secular society, not religious ideology.

A religious person may advocate for his opinions, even if they're motivated by his religion, in a public forum and work to make the society more in line with his thinking if he so wishes.

Not for you as a Catholic they don’t. As a member of the largest Christian denomination in the world you should know that ANY form of non-reproductive sex, including cunnilingus, birth-control and even masturbation, is deemed sinful by the Church.

Masturbation is grave sin, and is in fact the single most distorted kind of sexual sin possible. Homosexuality is less disordered than masturbation. Rape is less distorted than homosexuality as a sexual sin, but its a far greater sin than masturbation because its also a sin against justice and human dignity.

Birth-control is unnatural, and a grave sin for the same reason.

Cunnilingus in the context of two married persons, having sex, where it can be done to get ready for the conjugal act, or simple for the man to stimulate his wife afterwards is fine, as long as the conjugal act has been completed. And yes, this is within the lines of traditional Catholic thought (St. Alphonsus de Ligouri [Doctor of Church, Most Useful Doctor, Most Zealous Doctor] wrote on the moral issues about male and female sex in the context of marriage in the seventeenth century), it was taught by St. John Paul II recently in his Theology of the Body, and he's likely to soon be crowned Doctor of the Church as well (only roughly thirty saints have been given that honor).

Homosexual behaviour is relatively common in nature among social species with large stable populations and ample resources. It frees a pool of individuals with more time available than those with children to raise, who can contribute to the survival and quality of life of the population.

I'm sorry Tassman, but there's no scientific evidence for any kind of kin selection, homosexuality even less. What you're giving here, is pseudoscience. Evolutionary psychology pop sci garbage.

[Leonhard]

Or are you a "cafeteria Catholic”?

You have no idea what you're talking about.

I'm a young Immaculate Heart devoted, scapular, cross and miraculous medal wearing, rosary saying, weekly confessing, Sacred Eucharist adoring, 1962 Extraordinary Form Latin Mass attending, Romanesque preferring, Byzantine sympathetic, Church Father reading, Te Deum Laudamus and Marian Antiphon singing, Gregorian chanting, medieval philosophy and theology imbibing, encyclical reading, scholastic unreconstructed ossified manualistic traditional Catholic.

[Paprika]

Random question... The type of argument you're using here, (which uses such words and phrases as "end goal", "purpose", "natural inherent purpose", "secondary goal", "denial of the primary purpose") strikes me as very Aristotelian in nature, focusing as it does on purposes and end-goals. I've seen other Catholics also give Aristotelian-type arguments on the subjects of marriage or homosexuality. It stands out, because it's quite a unique style of reasoning that I believe became quite popular around the middle ages, although it's not generally regarded today as valid.

In short teleology (and types of virtue ethics that have sprung from it) had been pretty central to Christian thought and thus Western thought, but the Protestants have generally embraced deontology (due to Kant and followers) while those who deny a Creator (which is necessary for telos or grounded moral rules) have mostly embrace utilitarianism or emotivism.

Teleology and virtue ethics has however recently been reviving in Christian circles; I myself use a teleological approach though I'm hardly a Catholic.

[RumTumTugger]

I wouldn't say that. I think the Church's positions could be articulated as mysteries, and be defended de fide, without much loss or problem. I do think however, that its teachings can be defended rationally as well, God's existence, the wrongness of homosexuality being another, that abortion is murder, etc...

I can defend God's oneness rationally.

But God being a trinity of persons: The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. That's a revealed mystery. We'd never have figured that out on our own.

Didn't one of the church fathers say something alongs the lines as I may not understand the trinity but will accept it because that is how God revealed himself? I'm thinking Augustine or Aquinas. been looking for the exact quote and haven't found it. it is something I saw years ago in a book.

[Epoetker]

You have no idea what you're talking about.

I'm a young Immaculate Heart devoted, scapular, cross and miraculous medal wearing, rosary saying, weekly confessing, Sacred Eucharist adoring, 1962 Extraordinary Form Latin Mass attending, Romanesque preferring, Byzantine sympathetic, Church Father reading, Te Deum Laudamus and Marian Antiphon singing, Gregorian chanting, medieval philosophy and theology imbibing, encyclical reading, scholastic unreconstructed ossified manualistic traditional Catholic.

Now all we need to do is make you a righteous man and a good citizen.

[Starlight]

My understanding is that Aristotelian logic became widely popular in the middle ages, and Aquinas and others of his time sought to show that the Church's doctrines defensible in the face of the secular logic of their day. Wouldn't the same tradition applied today to be to use modern logic to explain and defend your position?

Explaining your view in Aristotelian terms is nearly 1000 years out of date now, and I find myself entirely unable to take it seriously.