Christian anti-SSM jeweler threatened after making rings for lesbian couple

[Sam]

Like I keep mentioning it's you who brought tax up, not me. Your argument seems to suggest that because they give a tax break to married individuals then that means they can't be guilty of extracting finances from them in the event of divorce afterwards. This is not true, as it doesn't take into account that in order to get those costs from divorce in the first place then people need to get married first. The tax benefits are only there to ensure people get married and have kids first before extracting the money from a divorced couple afterwards. After the divorce then multiple beneficiaries benefit from the situation.

http://www.forbes.com/2006/07/25/sin...0725costs.html



Overall single people are actually better off than married couples. The government have multiple ways in which they extract money from people so you have to admit that in order to give them this tax break you are talking about then they must extract more money in the first place to afford that. Considering that married couples are worse off than unmarried single people then they must bear the brunt of it.

Your argument is that government is interested in marriage in order to extract money from the married couple. Your article links to non-government related expenses like retirement and housing costs. You cited a high cost of divorce but failed to categorize that cost so that the cost going to the government, by way of court costs, could be calculated.

So the argument that government is primarily interested in marriage as a way to extract money remains very unconvincing, since the costs associated with marriage and divorce fees are relatively small compared with the tax savings of married individuals vs. single individuals. The idea that the government might be interested in other aspects of marriage, such as increased economic growth from spending on children and housing, or increased retirement savings (thus reducing the government's spending on individuals in old age) certainly has merit but is not what you were arguing or appear to be arguing now.

[Starlight]

Thank you Sam for being a voice of reason, and clarifying my words. It's kind of scary how many pages of discussion my short post inspired. I think a lot of people here didn't understand what I was saying, so I will try to be extra-clear. (Warning... long post)

Marriage is celebrated in cultures around the world. It has deep meaning for people of all religions and all cultures. Each person and group understands it in their own ways and attaches their own meaning to it - it doesn't necessarily have the same exact meaning for everyone. But in general it tends to be a deeply meaningful celebration of love and commitment, a public celebration of one of the most intense and personal choices that any given person makes in their lifetime, and a celebration of the relationship and the person that is most deeply meaningful to them. It is, generally speaking, the most celebrated event in a person's life - the one time they will invite all their friends and family to come see them and celebrate with them. Some people also add to that religious ideas, or spiritual ideas, or political ideas, and find meaning in those too. All in all, marriage is one of the biggest events in people's lives, one of their biggest choices as a human being, and is commonly regarded by people as among the most meaningful and deeply personal things in their lives.

One thing that's really important to note, that I think a lot of people here just don't get, is that the word 'marriage' in English has been used for centuries to refer to all such unions regardless of the religion or race of the people marrying. When atheists, or Buddhists, or Sikhs marry, be they English, French, Chinese or Indian, every English-speaker still calls it a 'marriage'. When we talk about the customs of an amazonian tribe who's never heard of Christianity, we call their unions a 'marriage'. We call polygamous marriages a 'marriage'. In short, the word marriage, as used by English speakers for centuries is not specifically Christian in what it refers to. I think a lot of posters here flatly refuse to accept this basic fact, and that makes it very hard for them to even understand the views of other people about same-sex marriage. This is very central to the discussion of civil unions vs marriage, because I think if the phrase "civil unions" had historically been used to refer to all marriages, and the word 'marriage' had been specifically used to refer to only certain Christian marriages, then I think this entire debate wouldn't exist: In that case, the vast majority of gay people would have been perfectly happy with getting civil unions and very few of them would be interested in being able to have a 'marriage'. Over time, various religious people have ascribed their own values to their own conceptions of 'marriage'. The Catholic church, for example, in the middle ages, declared marriage to be a sacrament. Nonetheless they still use the word 'marriage' to refer to marriages of atheists and Hindus as well as Christians. 'Marriage' has never been regarded as something that Christians have a monopoly on. When theologians have wanted to talk about specifically Christian-marriage they typically use terms like 'Holy Matrimony' or some-such.

So now we come to the question of: Can a gay person have all that deep meaning etc that I outlined as a 'civil union' without it being called 'marriage'? They can certainly have some of it. They can have a celebration. They can have love. They can invite their family and friends. It can be a deeply meaningful moment celebrating a deeply meaningful life choice as they pledge their commitment and love to the one person who means more to them than any other. BUT... the elephant in the room is going to be the fact that it is a 'civil union' and not a 'marriage'. EVERYONE else - Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Indians, Chinese, Amazonian tribes, gets a 'marriage' but they can't have that, they only get a 'civil union'. It's simple apartheid, or Jim Crow. It's 'separate but equal' and the subtext that everyone knows is always there in that sort of situation is that 'separate but equal' means 'separate, because inferior'. The US Constitution infamously described black people as counting as 3/5ths of a person, which shows us what sort of thinking was really behind the apartheid-like treatment of blacks in the US and their eventual 'separate, but "equal"' status. Likewise the marriages of black people were not legally recognized initially, and that was part and parcel of a denial of their full humanity.

So if a gay person is given the chance to have a civil union, but not a marriage, they can choose to go ahead and have a celebration of their love with their family and friends and try to make it as meaningful for themselves as possible. But social overtones will be present that will overshadow the entire event, that everyone present will know are there, implied by the 'separate but equal' nature of the apartheid: This is inferior to a marriage. That is because you are inferior as a person. Your love simply isn't as good as 'real' love. 'Real' love can get married. You always thought as a child you'd get married one day. But you can't. You don't deserve to. Your spouse isn't as good as other people's. If you'd chosen your spouse better you could have a real marriage. They're not as good as other people, and you're not as good as other people. I've been to events discussing gay rights and talked to a lot of gay people and that's the sort of thing they all tell me goes through their heads. That's the tone that public discrimination sets. That's the underlying theme that pervades the psyche of a lot of gay people thinking about getting civil-unioned. That's why most of them choose not to. (Rates of civil unions have dropped to pretty much zero now that same-sex marriage has been introduced here in NZ. Given a choice, 99.99% of gay people choose marriage over a civil union. Prior to that, the rate of civil unions was 1% of total unions, whereas now the rate of same-sex marriages are 2.5% of total unions, showing that the majority of gay couples abstained from getting a civil union and waited until marriages were available) A gay person choosing to have a civil union is embracing a two-edged sword: They are on the one hand having the public celebration and recognition of their love and commitment with their family and friends that they always wanted, and at one and the same time publicly admitting their inferiority, that it is not the same thing as a marriage because they are not equal.

You can see that thinking in action in this video I came across yesterday about the Irish referendum on same-sex marriage. Skip to 2:00, and the lesbian woman says:
"My sister had me as a bridesmaid for her wedding. And it was a disgrace that I couldn't offer her the same thing back. That I wouldn't ever be able to say to her come and be my bridesmaid. It was just heartbreaking. ~cries~ I just don't think it's fair. I'm the same as everybody else. And I don't have the same shot at happiness. It's upsetting. ... It's not fair. I'm the same type of person as everyone else. I do the same thing. I go out and work. I do my shopping. Everything I do the exact same as everyone else. The difference is just who I want to go home and snuggle up with at night, that's it."

That's a typical reaction in my experience. Her comments show that she feels her sense of being an authentic human being is under attack. Her words "I'm the same type of person as everyone else... I go out and work. I do my shopping..." are an attempt to reaffirm to herself and others that she is fully human. Because that's what she feels is under attack here. She feels like 3/5ths of a person. Because that's that overtones that a denial of the basic right to marriage carries, that's what the message of any 'separate but equal' apartheid system implies: You're lesser, you're not as human as everyone else, you're fundamentally inferior.

This is why I encourage people to think about the example of someone who sets out to deny marriage to anyone who follows the Jewish religion. What would we feel about someone who really wanted to do that? What would we feel would be appropriate public censure of that person? We all agree, I assume, that denying Jews the right to marry one another would constitute a pretty serious persecution of Jews. It would be anti-Jewish in a deep and fundamentally-hurtful way. Striking at their right to marry would be about as serious of a rights denial as it's possible to get. A society that did that to Jews would seems like it was probably only a small step short of physically enslaving them or actually loading them into gas chambers. If someone really seriously and honestly was campaigning to stop Jewish people from marrying, I think the vast majority of us would regard that as totally and completely out-of-bounds. If that person had their business boycotted by the general public, we probably wouldn't be surprised. Neither might we be particularly surprised if that person got nasty things said to them, or potentially got death threats. We might well not endorse returning evil for evil, but we probably wouldn't be surprised on hearing there was a rather strongly disapproving public reaction - given the sheer level of harm that person was advocating should be done to thousands upon thousands of others, the minor harms of public outrage toward that person pretty much pale in comparison.

In my mind there is zero meaningful difference between those who oppose same-sex marriages and those who would oppose Jewish marriages. I'm not asking you to agree that the analogy is valid, though I personally think it is. My purpose in suggesting it is to encourage you guys to think about how the people being discriminated against feel. How does the Jewish person feel upon finding out that they have been banned from marrying? The gay people feel the same way. I am sure you guys will tell me "ah, but a person who is opposing Jewish marriage wouldn't be doing it for the same reasons that I oppose gay marriage". But your reasons don't matter when it comes to assessing the hurt felt by the recipients. The gay person who cannot marry feels the same as the Jewish person who cannot marry: The hurt felt and the harm done is the same. What was in your head when you banned them from marrying does not translate to what is in their heads when they reflect on the fact that they are unable to marry.

This plays into the second fundamental mistake that I see you guys making over and over (the first being that you typically refuse to accept that in basic English 'marriage' refers to any wedding and not a specifically Christian one, as I said above): A complete lack of empathy for gay people. I see over and over again in Christian discussions of same-sex marriage, complete and utter disinterest in and ignorance about what gay people might think and feel about the situation. It strikes me as akin to a discussion of the merits of slavery where the subject of how the slaves might feel about slavery simply doesn't come up. It's like writing a 30 page dissertation analyzing 'what various bible verses say about slavery' without once ever even considering the fact that slavery might hurt anyone. It's a bizarre form of selfishness where all that apparently counts is what the Christians feel is right, or feel the bible says. People will say things like "I'm just defending the traditional view of marriage", as if it is an abstract philosophical debate that has no impacts on real people and as if any hurt that gay people might experience has absolutely no relevance to the situation. I see Christians commonly making no effort whatsoever to find out what gay people feel, and am often met with general disinterest when I explain to them what the gay people I know have told me they feel. When people do listen, I am often then told that gay people are 'wrong' to feel a certain way. Apparently a lot of Christians have their own opinions on how gay people ought to feel about the situation, and if the majority of gay people don't happen to feel that way then the Christian will tell me that those people are 'wrong'. The assumption made by the Christian is often that because they, as a Christian, are not intentionally trying to hurt gay people when they take away their ability to marry, that the gay person is wrong to feel hurt by it. This strikes me as a view that completely lacks empathy and borders on autism - it's a "whatever is in my head ought to be the same thing that's in your head, and if it's at all different then you're wrong, and I refuse to accept that anyone else could validly have a different perspective to me or anything to contribute to the discussion" type view.

I know that the vast majority of Christians don't get up in the morning and think "I hate gay people. How can I hurt them most today? I know, I'll oppose their right to marry!" But when it comes to the consequences of their actions, that might as well have been what they were thinking. What Christians don't seem to realize that their good intentions don't necessarily matter when it comes to the consequences of their actions. If you break someone's leg or kill someone, the outcome still exists regardless of why it happened. So many Christians I talk to will express the view that because they have good intentions, their view can't possibly have bad consequences. In their minds they are just trying to follow the bible, or just trying to defend tradition. The idea that this might have negative consequences is not something they're even interested in hearing about because they take for granted the idea that their good intentions somehow excludes the possibility of negative consequences. This leads them to sometimes make claims that their opposition to same sex marriage is out of 'love'. Yet any gay person anyone cares to ask will say that it feels like hate to them. Why the disconnect? Because of a lack of empathy on the part of the Christians - at no point in that 'love' was there any interest in or effort put into talking to gay people and finding our their feelings and opinions, and considering how they were being actually impacted in practice by those good intentions. This is why Christians so commonly change their position if they find they have a family member who is gay - empathy suddenly kicks in and they start actually thinking about how the gay person must feel because it is someone they know and love and actually care about the feelings of that person.


TL;DR: 'Marriage' in English doesn't just refer to Christian marriages, and that's why Christians don't get to tell everyone else who can have a marriage and who can't, and why gay people object to having civil unions. And Christians seem very bad at having empathy toward gay people.

[Spartacus]

A worthwhile exercise!

So here we have it again:

Source: Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. Notre Dame University Press, 1997, p. 187.

By a practice I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.

© Copyright Original Source

Going by everything prior to "with the result that ...", I would argue that we're best able to understand (or visualize) what MacIntyre is saying by comparing his definition of "a practice" to a Platonic form: the "form" of a practice is the activity itself and the "goods" are intrinsic properties of that form. Goods are more or less perfectly achieved as the activity more or less perfectly adheres to the "form" of the activity.

Going by everything following "with the result that", I would say that MacIntyre is saying that a person's ability to achieve excellence through an activity, as well as her very ability to recognize and understand "goods" and purposes through an ability, is likewise contingent on the perfection of the activity relative to it's perfect form.

Thoughts?

Let's separate the phrases out a bit more comprehensively:
1. coherent and complex
2. socially established cooperative human activity
3. goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity
4. standards of excellence which are appropriate to and partially definitive of the activity
5. human powers to achieve excellence are systematically extended
6. human conceptions of the ends and goods involved are systematically extended

If we're talking about platonic forms, we're nonetheless talking about "socially established" platonic forms. That is, a society has a shared conception of what it means to be X or do Y, and to have standarads of excellence means that they have some sense of what it means to be X or do Y well. To be X or do Y well, moreover, is perceived as cultivating "human powers to achieve excellence"-- what we might call self-actualization or human flourishing.

We might also think of different standards of excellence as promoting different types of flourishing. Think of the difference between a basketball player who is trying to be statistically impressive as opposed to one whose main goal is to win a championship. They might both by trying to be the "best player of all time," and they may both help their team win a lot of games and have impressive statistics, but their differing conceptions of what excellence means may well lead to different ways of playing-- selfish vs team-oriented.

[Starlight]

If we're talking about platonic forms, we're nonetheless talking about "socially established" platonic forms. That is, a society has a shared conception of what it means to be X or do Y, and to have standards of excellence means that they have some sense of what it means to be X or do Y well. To be X or do Y well, moreover, is perceived as cultivating "human powers to achieve excellence"-- what we might call self-actualization or human flourishing.

We might also think of different standards of excellence as promoting different types of flourishing. Think of the difference between a basketball player who is trying to be statistically impressive as opposed to one whose main goal is to win a championship. They might both by trying to be the "best player of all time," and they may both help their team win a lot of games and have impressive statistics, but their differing conceptions of what excellence means may well lead to different ways of playing-- selfish vs team-oriented.

Despite generally regarding myself as being a virtue ethicist, like Alasdair MacIntyre, I nonetheless find myself in 100% opposition to him on the subject of teleology and vastly prefer empirical approaches. I am more than merely casually interested in the subject of human flourishing and optimizing society to achieve standards of excellence - I've delivered seminars on the subject about experimental evidence about what causes human flourishing. But going teleological on the subject is just going completely off the rails as far as I am concerned and straying from the realm of science into the realm of made-up-silly-ideas. Like most people (and most philosophers) I simply don't regard teleological reasoning as a legitimate form of reasoning in general (beyond any trivially true versions of it).

However, insofar as same-sex marriage relates to the question of human flourishing, it is an empirical question about what effects different types of unions and marriage structures have on societies in which they are present. So there's a very clear empirical anthropological question in play here. And this is what the American Anthropological Association officially has to say on the matter:

"The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies. (from here)

So, empirical evidence shows that societies that allow same-sex marriages can flourish. Case closed. Teleological BS is irrelevant.

[Sam]

Let's separate the phrases out a bit more comprehensively:
1. coherent and complex
2. socially established cooperative human activity
3. goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity
4. standards of excellence which are appropriate to and partially definitive of the activity
5. human powers to achieve excellence are systematically extended
6. human conceptions of the ends and goods involved are systematically extended

If we're talking about platonic forms, we're nonetheless talking about "socially established" platonic forms. That is, a society has a shared conception of what it means to be X or do Y, and to have standarads of excellence means that they have some sense of what it means to be X or do Y well. To be X or do Y well, moreover, is perceived as cultivating "human powers to achieve excellence"-- what we might call self-actualization or human flourishing.

We might also think of different standards of excellence as promoting different types of flourishing. Think of the difference between a basketball player who is trying to be statistically impressive as opposed to one whose main goal is to win a championship. They might both by trying to be the "best player of all time," and they may both help their team win a lot of games and have impressive statistics, but their differing conceptions of what excellence means may well lead to different ways of playing-- selfish vs team-oriented.

[Spartacus]

So since we're going all Plato here, let's focus on the "socially established" aspect as it's relevant to new practices or ideas and let's use Plato's Cave as an example. In the story of the Cave, the "socially established" practice would be to stare at the shadows on the wall and infer reality from them. The new practice, deemed both different and strange in the story, is to leave the socially established paradigm behind and experience things as they are. I think the moral of Plato's Cave is unequivocally favoring that experience — even if it proves to be rather socially anathema (as our dear friend Socrates discovered).

How much weight, therefore, should we place on the social establishment when it comes to excellence, perfection, and flourishing?

I don't think staring at the shadows really qualifies as a practice. You're stretching the cave metaphor a bit too far. Can we try another example?

[JimL]

http://www.theamericanconservative.c...ails-they-lose
Via Rod Dreher

The problem here is the hypocrisy of Rod Dreher. He doesn't like the fact that the lesbian couple discriminate, and don't wish to do business with people who have different beliefs than their own, but he likes the idea of discrimination when the tables are turned and the christian doesn't wish to do business with people whose beliefs differ from theirs. The fact is that the lesbian couple are being just as ignorant as a christian businessman who would refuse to serve them based on their differences. There is one difference though, the lesbians are not a public business and so are free, as is everyone, to discriminate as to where and from who they buy from. Once they do choose though, they don't get their money back for the same reason, it would be discrimination in reverse.

[Sam]

I don't think staring at the shadows really qualifies as a practice. You're stretching the cave metaphor a bit too far. Can we try another example?

I would say that it does, as Plato's point was the practice of an unexamined life: the practice, in other words, of attending to the day-to-day drubbery of life without looking any deeper than what's in front of one's nose.

But, very well: how about Hosea and Gomer? The marriage of a prophet to a prostitute was antithetical to socially established culture and practice and yet we would argue that it was, in fact, a virtuous exercise. And here we can bend away from the philosophical into the theological and probably agree that what is socially established and what we consider to be moral "goods" are often at odds.

[Paprika]

Source: Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. Notre Dame University Press, 1997, p. 187.

By a practice I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.

© Copyright Original Source

If I recall correctly MacIntyre used 'practice' for activities such as doing science and skills/professions. But marriage does not really have that systematic extension of the relevant conceptions.

[Paprika]

Yeah, when we went over it in a philosophy class I took, the prof referred to it as one of the worst sentences in all philosophy.

It's actually quite concise and precise. In terms of stacking clauses MacIntyre isn't worse than Descartes or Adam Smith, for example.

Think of such writing as a art form dying because it demands of the audience certain skills and excellences whose valuation has greatly dropped.

[Paprika]

"The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies. (from here)

So, empirical evidence shows that societies that allow same-sex marriages can flourish. Case closed. Teleological BS is irrelevant.

I'm going to go with "asserted, but not demonstrated".

The general idea that you can approach flourishing through a primarily 'empirical' approach is completely misguided because such an endeavour requires pre-existing conceptions of the goods and excellences involved in order to form a suitable metric for the 'empirical' approach. And precisely to establish that this set contains the relevant goods and excellences teleological reasoning is required to choose one set over competing ones.

[Spartacus]

I would say that it does, as Plato's point was the practice of an unexamined life: the practice, in other words, of attending to the day-to-day drubbery of life without looking any deeper than what's in front of one's nose.

But, very well: how about Hosea and Gomer? The marriage of a prophet to a prostitute was antithetical to socially established culture and practice and yet we would argue that it was, in fact, a virtuous exercise. And here we can bend away from the philosophical into the theological and probably agree that what is socially established and what we consider to be moral "goods" are often at odds.

You're still using "practice" colloquially rather than trying to understand and apply MacIntyre's definition. Pap is closer to the mark, iirc.

[Darth Ovious]

Your argument is that government is interested in marriage in order to extract money from the married couple. Your article links to non-government related expenses like retirement and housing costs. You cited a high cost of divorce but failed to categorize that cost so that the cost going to the government, by way of court costs, could be calculated.

And your argument was that this didn't happen because of a tax break which was only shown through a small sample size from one study. This is a tax break that not all married couples get and some couples get a tax penalty instead for being married.

http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/...-will-cost-you

When talking about marriage and money, most experts talk about the tax advantages of getting married. However, these tax advantages are often only available to married partners with large disparities in income.

So the argument that government is primarily interested in marriage as a way to extract money remains very unconvincing, since the costs associated with marriage and divorce fees are relatively small compared with the tax savings of married individuals vs. single individuals. The idea that the government might be interested in other aspects of marriage, such as increased economic growth from spending on children and housing, or increased retirement savings (thus reducing the government's spending on individuals in old age) certainly has merit but is not what you were arguing or appear to be arguing now.

Once again, it's you that brought up tax, I did not bring tax up. I am still confused why you brought this up. Talking about tax does not prove that the government is not interested in marriage for monetary reasons.

[Paprika]

You're still using "practice" colloquially rather than trying to understand and apply MacIntyre's definition. Pap is closer to the mark, iirc.

I'm really not sure why there's a need to bring in Platonic ideas to interpret MacIntyre's definition.

He defines 'practice' as a type of activity. What type of activity? An activity whose internal goods and standards of excellences have a special relation to itself (as described by the rest of the definition) with the result that certain other things (human powers and conceptions) are improved.

[Starlight]

The general idea that you can approach flourishing through a primarily 'empirical' approach is completely misguided because such an endeavour requires pre-existing conceptions of the goods and excellences involved in order to form a suitable metric for the 'empirical' approach.

That process can itself be empirical. You can survey numerous people in 150 countries to see what 'goods' they value and how much. You can analyze the texts of different cultural traditions, and find common teachings about fundamental human virtues.

The entire modern field of Positive Psychology is fundamentally about empirically determining what leads people to be satisfied, fulfilled, and happy. Of course, no two humans value exactly the same 'goods' in exactly the same amounts. Brazilians, for example, commonly think experiencing positive emotions regularly is extreme desirable, while Chinese people say that they value that much less. But overall, the findings have been that there is nothing deeply surprising about what people tend to think of "goods" as being. When people think of themselves as wanting a happy, meaningful, and satisfied life for themselves and their families, they tend to have a very good idea of what sorts of values and goods that entails maximizing and their ideas are pretty similar to each other overall.

And precisely to establish that this set contains the relevant goods and excellences teleological reasoning is required to choose one set over competing ones.

Why should their be one 'correct' set of goods? Isn't every individual inherently going to have their own slightly different set of values? Are the Chinese or Brazilians valuing the experience of positive emotions in the 'correct' amount, and are you going to adjudicate that from some sort of first-principles teleological BS?

In my observation, teleological reasoning tends to be pretty arbitrary. Your implied claim that teleology can be used to adjudicate competing value-claims (as if they are something that could even be adjudicated) has me suspecting that I would find your teleological claim itself to be utterly arbitrary.