Because of the huge influx of debate on homosexual unions, i have looked at all the arguments and realized that they all came down to a person's perception on what is fundamentally "right" and "wrong". How does one decide on this? Does being "right" mean that it is moral, ethical, legal, or constitutional? Is it a mixture of everything? SO here is the question:

How do (or should) people decide what is "right" and "wrong"?

Wow, what a big question. Let's eliminate a couple of choices right off the bat. Whether something is "legal" or "constitutional" is irrelevant to whether it is right or wrong. It's not clear to me what the difference might be between "moral" and "ethical," but I use both to mean "right" in this sense.

To put it into a nutshell: An action is immoral if it causes harm to a another being capable of experiencing suffering. This is not a perfect definition, but it will do for now.

Some examples: I can eat a plant, although in some sense I "harm" it, because it cannot experience suffering. In my opinion, killing a mammal is immoral, because it is capable of suffering. Please note that it is not possible to be a living human being and not cause some sort of suffering, so this is not meant to vilify the meateaters among us. In a similar way, an abotion during the very early stages of pregnancy is not immoral, and an aboriton during the very late stages of pregnancy is immoral. Alllow me to note here that immoral actions are sometimes necessary to avoid even more immoral actions. Killing a human being in self-defense may be justified and necessary, but it is not "good" by my definition, but something to be mourned.

By this definition, it can be seen that sex-same marriages cause no more harm than opposite-sex marriages, and should have equal legal status.

I certainly admit this this takes a lot of thought and judgement, and frequently I will make mistakes.

the point i was trying to make with the question was...how do all of you decide what is "right" on certain issues. Also, how should society view certain issues. I say this because gay marriage opponents are often ridiculed for using a moral or religious viewpoint. Now i am not very religious but i am moral and i think it is irresponsible to simply disregard such an argument.

Morals are more and more becoming the personal belief of each individual. I think that earlier centuries viewed morality as a function of society. Today's society views morality more as a personal decision.

Morality is determined by the golden rule for me personally. If I wouldn't like something done to myself or my family, I try to refrain from doing those things to others. So for me, it is immoral to deny equal rights to people because I would not want equal rights denied to myself.

"Homosexuality is a perversion" doesn't make sense when looked at from the golden rule. Who cares what others do? It's their business. I wouldn't want someone coming in and telling me my natural attraction to someone or something was a perversion, so calling homosexual attraction a perversion is immoral to me.

That is how morality is defined in my book.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

And while that isn't enough for everyone, it's enough for me. Luckily I live in a free country where other people's morals - if they don't make sense to me, I don't have to abide by them.

"Moral" is subjective, and it will only get more and more subjective as time goes on.

How do I decide what is right on certain issues: I try to decide which policy will cause the least suffering. In my opinion, the inability of same-sex couples to be legally married causes much more profound suffering than the suffering that would be endured by those who would object to such marriages.

I certainly have no objection to those who base their opinions on religious values. Although I am utterly without faith myself, I know it is a profound part of the human mind, and worthy of respect. Where I will object is the equation of "religious" and "moral." It would be silly to object to moral values when deciding any issue. The reason I support legally recognized same-sex marriages is because, in my opinion, it is immoral not to recognize them.

Right and wrong and moral and immoral are subjective, with a few exceptions- things that intentionally harm another sentient being, such as rape or stealing- are wrong. To me that is why, to have a free society, you have to determine which laws are neccesary only to keep one sentient being from overtly harming another. Kind of like Victoria said- though to me, all but the highest order of animals are sentient- whales, upper primates. Even dogs do not rise to the level of sentience, though intentionally cruelty to anything is always wrong as well.

So living your life by a set of "right and wrong" that goes beyond intentional harm is your choice, but forcing those sets of "right and wrong" on others outside the narrow definition is also wrong- forcing your morals, or codes of "right and wrong" on others causes intentional harm, and therein lies the ridicule that religion and the religious rightly deserve.

Also, punishment to those that intentional harm others to a slightly higher punishment than fits the crime is also okay, in order to set a standard that willfully, intentional harming others will make others, acting in the common good,set an example that a certain line can not be crossed. Such as serial killing, mass robbery (in the recent CEOs example), those deserve the most extreme retribution, in order to maintain the greatest freedom for the most poeple.

"Morals are more and more becoming the personal belief of each individual. I think that earlier centuries viewed morality as a function of society. Today's society views morality more as a personal decision."
Sounds like theory of nihilistic relativity, all moralities are relative to each other and I don't have to act morally if I don't want to (don't cosider this set of morals right). If I think raping woman and then forcing her to marry me is moral, then I have my own standard of morality?
Certain moral standards are recognized as universal, or global at least, such as respect for authority, punishment for crime, etc. Most countries in the world have very similar laws defining what is legal and what is not. In the US, this laws happened to be derived from Roman Law, not Moses's Arc. So, I may say that most people in the world share beliefs on what is moral and what is not.
Moral, in my opinion, is something that promotes the welfare of the majority of the people. Sometimes morality may hurt rights of certain group of people, but is beneficial for the most of the people (criminals, insane, quarantined people). Therefore, the "golden rule" do onto others as you would like them to do onto you, though appropriate in some contexts, is incogruous here.

Regarding the homosexuals' rights to marry. Granting of this right to gays is detrimental to the heterosexual majority because 1) it allows them to adopt children, which should not be allowed for number of reasons, 2) it separates them from the rest of sexually-abnormal groups and grants them "special treatrment" by law.
I don't believe gays/lesbians are discriminated nearly as much as blacks in 50s and 60s, that is if they are discriminated at all. They enjoy most of the rights that blacks were deprived of and they possess disproportional (for their size) political influence and "special protection" from government in the form of "hate crimes" legislation and preferential treatment by judicial system. So fight for legalizing of gay marriage is only an attempt to acquire a status and to usurp the privileges of reserved for heterosexual couples.

I agree with the assertion that "right or wrong, moral or immoral" is an extremely subjective topic. To me, the most important component of morality is honesty. Whether you believe in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, or atheism, it is meaningless. Being honest in the ideology one promulgates is the most important factor in my mind.

The most moral and righteous living poeple I have ever met were homosexual atheists- while by far and above the most evil and nasty poeple I have ever met identify themselves as heterosexual and "christian". In fact, most of the wrong done in the world, true evil, is done in the name of "religion" and "right and wrong".

Well Holy crap if theres not someone in this group who knows Manure from Shinola. Which they prefer to make thier shoes shinier is obvious.
Call me Aunt Jemima! I feel raaght lucky these days, as well as should all that are bequeathed the blessing (by whom on high)? of being allowed to exist without equality, and bow my head to 'others' who know better than I , that I am not 'worthy' of the same rights as they, cause we got it better than the blacks in the 50s, 60's, whatever that means. Cheer cheer. Praise the lord and may freedom reign!

I dont know right all the time, but I do know wrong when I see it. Clear a a bell, and all the little instances below it as well.

Luckily American society agrees that infringing on the rights of others is not your right. (Although many societies in this world see nothing wrong with your example - case in point - Islam extremists) In deciding your own standards of morality, you're entitled to think that nothing is wrong with raping women, but that woman and most of society believe that taking away other's right to decide for themselves is not moral. Many societies value freedom above all else, including "morality". Anything that interferes with freedom is to be fought to the death.


The golden rule is completely appropriate in the above instances you mentioned - preventing people (criminal, insane, or sick) from doing unto others as they themselves would not be done unto - is the perfect function of society. The welfare of the majority has nothing to do with it - the welfare of each individual person is the motivation behind each of the above instances.


You could back up this claim with some facts if you'd like to make claims like this on this board. You could specify exactly HOW the heterosexual majority is "detrimented" by allowing gays to marry. And please do site reputed websites and statistics when you make those claims.


So then, you classify heterosexual marriage as "special treatment".



Again, please do explain how status and priveledge is usurped from heterosexuals by allowing gays to marry. Maybe not in this thread, but somewhere - if you are going to make these claims about homosexuals you better bring the data to back your claims - we on this board have been debating this in other threads for MONTHS now, and unless you have some information that they couldn't find, these claims have already been proven un-supportable. If you admit that the claims are un-supportable (with scientific evidence and statistics), you'd gain a lot of credibility with the members of this site if you admitted that these claims are your own personal opinion, belief, - and explain why you have these biases. (You'd gain a lot of credibility with yourself, too).

CR, that is subjective as well.

All morals (IOW, concepts of right and wrong) exist for some underlying reason. Certain actions become anathema because they harm society (or did at one time). Often, the reason is outdated. Example: homosexuality.

I agree 100%, this includes when a mob of 51% legalizes theft with such actions as highly progressive tax rates and other wealth redistribution systems.

I think it is wrong to simply disregard any argument. When we debate, the core thing we do is present and defend arguments, refute or defend other arguments.

Just as it is wrong to disregard an argument based on morality, it is wrong to refute arguments with rebuttals based only on opinion.

My basis for determining the rightness and wrongness of the above two points is the nature of debate itself. This is how it is done. Debate is meant to shed light, not to force one's opinions upon someone else.

I won't try to defend or refute arguments about homosexual marriage, though. This wasn't the question. Regarding how society should view certain issues, I have very little control over that view. It's a lot bigger than I, so my opinion could be stated, but it is just a statement of opinion. Nothing more.

One thing I do have some control over is how our laws are structured to modify how society views certain issues. Here's where arguments based on morality can be made.

So should marriage laws be changed to allow homosexual marriage? Yep, the moral arguments are all over the place on this issue.

I say they should be changed to allow homosexual marriage because it is immoral to discriminate against homosexuals under our system of laws. I could also say that the marriage laws should be abolished all together, as they are inherently discriminatory against unmarried people of any sexual orientation.

Meanwhile, heterosexuals could still get married in their religions as always. We just wouldn't have laws that treat them differently from anyone else. Cohabitating homosexuals would continue to cohabitate and possibly get married in their religions, if that's allowed by the religions.

Issues regarding common property and so on would then be handled as negotiated legal agreements. Disputes would be handled in the courts as they are now.

This would be treating everybody equally under the law. That happens to be a moral our nation is founded upon, and so I go along with it.

As for what I think is right and wrong, we have the golden rule: "do to others as you would have them do to you." and from my religious perspective we have Jesus' greatest commandment which is a variation on said golden rule: "Love the lord with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself."
From either of these perspectives opposition to same sex marriage is immoral. Opponents of same sex marriage would not want the government to block their marriages to the person they love, and would not want people to refer to them in the way they refer to homosexuals. They do not love their neighbors.
The J-man did not have kind words for those who had more respect for a legalistic reading of scripture than they had for their fellow man.
All of which is beside the point since we live in a country with freedom of religion: What the law should recognize is a whole different matter- only observable concrete facts should apply. On this matter I think Vicki got it entirely right: which policy will cause the least suffering.

[QUOTE]"The golden rule is completely appropriate in the above instances you mentioned - preventing people (criminal, insane, or sick) from doing unto others as they themselves would not be done unto - is the perfect function of society. The welfare of the majority has nothing to do with it - the welfare of each individual person is the motivation behind each of the above instances. " - perspective

Actually what I meant was that sometimes, for the benefit of the majority (prevention of contagion, violent acts or socially-isruptive behaviour) rights of the minority can be infringed upon (quarantined people, criminals and insane). This blatantly violates do-onto-other-as-you-would-want-them-to-do-onto-yourself doctrine, since what person would wants to be detained smewhere and ostracized from the public life, prevented rom exercising his/her rights? None. Nevertheless, this action against minority is moral, since it prevents harm towards the majority from these minorities.

Furthermore, I will try to substantiate my first claim (that gays should not be allowed to adopt children), with theoretical input from my Psychology 101 book (Psychology: an introduction. B. Lahey):

quote from pp. 422-427:
"Social learning theorist Albert Bandura (one of the most respected names in modern psychology, btw) proposed a theory of gender identity...He suggested that children learn behavior appropriate to their gender through observations of adults and older siblings and throught reinforcement and punishment of gender behaviors.
According to this theory, children inititially imitate the behaviors of both men and women, but parents and other members of their social world reward them for acting like a boy or girl and not reward them (or punish them) for acting as other sex does...Thus social learning teory suggests that gender roles are not an inherent role of our biological makeup but are learned from society."

As you can probably see, examples of this punishment/reinforcement are galore in the everyday environment. Taking a hypothetical child adopted by same-sex family, he will imitate behavior of his parents, and if tey happen to be of te same gender as he, he will more than likely to adopt atypical sex-typed behavior.

Another quote from psychologist Daryl Bem's (1996) of Cornell University study:
"About half of adult gay males report atypical sex-typed behavior as children, compared to less than 15% of adult heterosexual males. The difference for gay women is in the same direction, but not as strong.
When boys with atypical sex-typed behavior were followed into adulthood in half dozen studies reviewed by Bem, about two-trhirds identified themselves as gay as adults, compared with 5% of adlut males who had shown typical sex-typed behavior as children.
Bem believes that engaging in atypicaol sex-typed behavior creates an opportunity for two kinds of lerning experiences that lead to homosexuality. First, there is substantial evidence that people rarely develop sexual or romantic feeling for the person they spend most time with during childhood...Familiarity breeds friendship, not attraction. Bem believes that homosexuals who preferred to play with children of other sex when they were children became too familiar with the other sex to develop sexual attraction to them.
Second, Bem believes that children who engage in atypical sex-typed behaviorfind children of their own sex to be upsetting. Effeminate boys and masculine girls often dislike cgildren of their own sex who engage in typical sex-typed behavior and find them emotionally arousing - frightening, threatening, disgusting. When gwnder-atypical children reach te period of sexual awakening in puberty, however, Bem believes that the emotional arousal creatd by persons of the same sex enhances sexual attraction. Recall that tew cognitive theory of emotion in te prvious chapter states that any kind of emotional arousal can be misinterpreted as romantic and sexual attraction. Thus, Bem believes that we are most likely to be sexually attracted to the class of people that we find unfamiliar and emotionally arousing (persons of the same sex for the persons who had shown atypical sex-typed behavior as children)."

TO summarize: child growing up in the environment where gender roles are switched is likely to imitate the bahavior of his gay parents (typical learning process) and develop atypical sex-typed behavior. This then increases his chances of becoming a homosexual in the adulthood greatly. Besides this, these children are more than likely to be mocked, jeered and ostracized by their peers if they have gay parents.
I didn't mean to start this debate about homosex's in morality topic, but since I did: What distinguished homosexual from zoophiliacs, pedophiles, voyeurs, sadist and masochists? Why don't we allow then consentual gerantophile mariage as well (senior citizen and young partner), mutually-agreed pedophile amrriage (both sides agree) and likes? How can we "discriminate" against them and campaign for homosexuals?
In my opinion, homosexuality is a mental disorder (sexually atypical behavior) and similarly to how rights of schizophreniacs and people with bipolar-affective disorder are limited for the good of society, homosexuals' right should be restrained in several key ares, such as fostering children.And it's by no means a religous agrument either, it's a prvention of the "disease" from spreading and harming the nation as a whole. Just because gays have powerful "civil rights" unions like GLAAD to be back them up and favoring of the liberal judges and media, it doesn't diminish their abnormality and does not change the basic nature of homosexuality - it was and still is a diseased group of society.

p.s.: I didn't really look for info on the Net about this, but if anyone can refer me to websites about psyhology and homosexuality, I would greatly appreceite, .

To address the topic of debate - I generally arive at my sense of "right" and "wrong" from my religious beliefs. Really, I'm a very spiritual person and most of what I do goes back to some religious/spiritual reason (even the mistakes play into the part of my religion where I recognize I am human and therefore not perfect and thus seek forgiveness). When formulating opinions on debatable issues, I usually look to one of two things - one, would favoring/not favoring this opinion set a precedent for lawmakers to become too involved with my life (ie trying to dictate morality, nosing into my bedroom affairs, etc) or two, would favoring/not favoring this opinion be needlessly harmful even to the extent of simply unnecessarily judging someone.