I decided to start with the Best in Ethics this year, in contrast to other years, on the theory that it would get things off to a positive start in 2014. What it did, instead, was make me realize how negative Ethics Alarms was in 2013. Either there wasn’t much positive going on in ethics, or I wasn’t seeing it. My thanks to those of you who send me nominations for Ethics Heroes (and other stories); even when I don’t write about them, they are valuable. Please keep them coming. In the meantime, I pledge to try to keep the jaundice out of my eye in 2014. Things just can’t be as dire as they seemed last year.
Could they?
Here are the 2013 Ethics Alarms Awards for the Best in Ethics:
Most Important Ethical Act of the Year:
The U.S. Supreme Court declared the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional, paving the way for the universal legalization of gay marriage. Yes, it was a legal decision, but it was also based, as all such culturally important decisions are, on a societal recognition that what was once thought to be wrong and immoral was, in fact, not. This is ethics, an ongoing process of enlightenment and wisdom about what is right and wrong, and the U.S. Supreme Court did its part.
Outstanding Ethical Leadership
Pope Francis. Every Pope has such visibility that Catholic or not, religious or not, we are all affected by the positive or negative ripples he sends through the world community and the culture. Pope Francis has gone to great lengths to embody the virtues of tolerance, forgiveness, kindness, humility, charity, love and peace. So he’s not a capitalist: I’m pretty sure Jesus would have preferred Marx to Friedman, and the U.S.’s experience with capitalist preachers and clerics has been unfortunate. Like all Popes, he should stay out of politics, but when he has stayed in the realm of ethics, Pope Francis has been impressive, and a powerful force for good.
Outstanding Sportsmanship
Al Ittihad, a Saudi soccer club, gave back an unfair advantage bestowed by an overzealous ref, in the spirit of fairness and competition. I’d watch snails race before I’d sit through a soccer match, but for a professional sport, this was remarkable.
Best Apology
First Place: The Level #1 apology issued by disgraced New Yorker writer Jonah Lehrer, which you can read here. Runner Up: “The Ethicist,” Chuck Klosterman, apologizing in response to some P.C. bullying for his past insensitive use of versions of the word “retarded.” I’m not sure he should ave apologized, but it was his call, and you can’t do it much better. Honorable Mention: Ryan Braun, suspended baseball star/ steroid cheat, on his third try.
Heroes of the Year
Christian Lunsford and Tona Herndon. Tona was mugged by Christian’s father, and the 15-year old arranged to meet her on a parking lot (photo above) to apologize and give her the money his father, on the lam, had sent him to pay for a school band trip. She, in turn, let him keep the money. Story here. This was my favorite ethics incident of 2013, hands down.
Parent of the Year
Most Ethical Act By A Celebrity
Angelina Jolie. Much as the Red Sox fan in me wants to hand the distinction to Neil Diamond, for flying to Boston on his own dime and spontaneously leading the Fenway Park crowd in singing “Sweet Caroline” in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, the award in 2013 has to go to Angelina Jolie, for using her status as a sex symbol and movie star renowned for her feminine charms to publicly announce her prophylactic double mastectomy as a defense against cancer. She saved lives, and, I think wounded her career in the process.
Most Principled Politician
NONE. Sorry–can’t find a one. Sen. Rand Paul was having a good year, then he threw it all away by playing the victim when he was (correctly) slammed for plagiarism of the sort that gets students kicked out of college. Role model, Senator.
Most Ethical Company
I don’t track this category, because my experience in the compliance field leads me to be cynical about what an “ethical company” is. For example, while Boeing was being honored several years ago for its employee ethics and compliance programs, the details were unfolding about its epic participation in bidding fraud and corporate espionage. I was extremely impressed with the ethics and dedication of the compliance officers at Altria when I was giving seminars for the company as “Captain Compliance,” but the company was still making and selling cigarettes at the time. Ethisphere is an organization that carefully measures the ethics of corporations by weighting various criteria, such as ethics and compliance programs, culture, corporate citizenship, reputation and more, but I can’t vouch for their results, or whether the system really means that the over 250 companies it honors each year are truly ethics, comparatively ethical, or ethical at all. Mattel is on the Ethisphere list for 2013, and women’s health advocates think its Barbie Dolls contribute to anorexia in young girls. Time Warner is on the list, and it’s flagship magazine used fat-ridicule to sell its issue about Chris Christie. Microsoft is on this list, but Microsoft saddled its dependent users with a new operating system that has caused endless grief and wasted countless hours as small companies without IT mavens around desperately try to adjust on the fly. Should Starbucks be on the “Most Ethical” list? It is, and won some ethics points from me this past year (though I didn’t write about it) by finally reversing its policy of allowing open-carry gun enthusiasts to pack heat while sipping their Grande lattes. I had called for this change back in 2010. What changed? My guess is that Starbucks realized that its core market included more coffee-drinkers were freaked out over Newtown than not, and that the decision had nothing to do with ethics at all. Indeed, had I thought about it, I might have written at the time of the policy change that this was a time for Starbucks to hold fast to its old policy, to protest the tactics of the anti-gun politicians and media trying to exploit kids and tragedy to gut the Second Amendment. And is it ethical to charge $2.50 or more for a cup of coffee?
I can tell when a company is unethical; but I can’t tell whether a company is ethical, or just hasn’t been caught yet. So this year I’m giving the Ethics Alarms Ethical distinction to General Mills, which is not on Ethisphere’s list, for its low-key, no big deal inter-racial family commercial for Cheerios. I think it was healthy for the culture. I wonder why MSNBC didn’t make fun of it?
Ethical Teacher
Batvia (Ill.) High School Teacher John Dryden, who taught his students about the Fifth Amendment and protected their rights at the same time, when his supervisors at the school apparently could not have cared less, or perhaps more likely (and more troubling), didn’t understand the Fifth Amendment themselves. . Naturally, he was disciplined for doing the right thing.
Most Ethical Radio Talk Show Host
John Bachelor. The erudite and civil host of the John Bachelor Show wins this category for the fourth straight year. IS there another ethical talk show host?
Most Ethical National Broadcast Media Figure
CNN’s Don Lemon had an all-around impressive year, showing himself to have an independent mind, and to be willing to buck the conventional wisdom of the left-leaning media and its core audience that Lemon, as a young, black, gay progressive, is expected to appeal to. His high point came following the George Zimmerman verdict, when he endorsed the sentiments of the hated (by progressives) Bill O’Reilly who had criticized toxic and self-destructive strains in American black culture. Lemon said,
“He’s got a point. In fact, he’s got more than a point. But in my estimation, he doesn’t go far enough. Because black people, if you really want to fix the problem, here’s just five things that you should think about doing. Here’s number five, and if this doesn’t apply to you, if you’re not doing this, then it doesn’t apply to you, I’m not talking to you. Here’s number five. Pull up your pants….if you’re sagging, I mean — I think it’s your self-esteem that is sagging and who you are as a person it’s sagging. Young people need to be taught respect and there are rules. Number four now is the n-word…. I understand poetic license, but consider this: I hosted a special on the n-word, suggesting that black people stop using it and that entertainers stop deluding yourselves or themselves and others that you’re somehow taking the word back. By promoting the use of that word when it’s not germane to the conversation, have you ever considered that you may be just perpetuating the stereotype the master intended acting like a nigger?…
“Now number three. Respect where you live. Start small by not dropping trash, littering in your own communities. I’ve lived in several predominantly white neighborhoods in my life, I rarely, if ever, witnessed people littering. I live in Harlem now, it’s an historically black neighborhood, every single day I see adults and children dropping their trash on the ground when a garbage can is just feet away. Just being honest here.
“Number two, finish school. You want to break the cycle of poverty? Stop telling kids they’re acting white because they go to school or they speak proper English. A high school dropout makes on average $19,000 a year, a high school graduate makes $28,000 a year, a college graduate makes $51,000 a year. Over the course of a career, a college grad will make nearly $1 million more than a high school graduate. That’s a lot of money.
“And number one, and probably the most important, just because you can have a baby, it doesn’t mean you should. Especially without planning for one or getting married first. More than 72 percent of children in the African-American community are born out of wedlock. That means absent fathers. And the studies show that lack of a male role model is an express train right to prison and the cycle continues. So, please, black folks, as I said if this doesn’t apply to you, I’m not talking to you. Pay attention to and think about what has been presented in recent history as acceptable behavior. Pay close attention to the hip-hop and rap culture that many of you embrace. A culture that glorifies everything I just mentioned, thug and reprehensible behavior, a culture that is making a lot of people rich, just not you. And it’s not going to…”
The Kipling Award
(Given to the individual who most exemplifies the values of Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “If ”)
Former President George W. Bush. Bush 43 continued his practice of refusing to get drawn into criticizing his successor, even though President Obama has used him as an excuse, scapegoat and all-purpose villain at every turn. In 2013, Bush made some casual media appearances to talk about life, his time in office and even his new affection for painting, never sounding bitter or defensive, always being dignified and above the fray…in short, Presidential.
Ethics TV Series of the Year
“Orange is the New Black” on NetFlix wins this year. Its first season dealt intelligently with issues of culture, loyalty, forgiveness, the Golden Rule, and survival ethics. (I could discern no ethics in sight on “House of Cards,” Alicia on the “The Good Wife” has gone over to the Dark Side, and “Homeland’s last season was a mess. As for “Breaking Bad,” I just can’t call a series about the illegal drug biz “ethical.” “The Walking Dead,” on AMC, shambles into the runner-up position, more on the basis of its “How Not To Lead” lessons than anything else.
The Clarence Darrow Award
(presented to outstanding conduct on behalf of the weak and powerless)
The Foundation for Individual Rights In Education (The FIRE) The rights organization dedicated to protecting the rights of free thought and expression for the students on America’s political correctness-infected campuses did some of its best work in 2013, when it was sorely needed.
Ethics Website of the Year (Specialty)
TaxProf Blog. Pepperdine Law School professor Paul Caron’s excellent blog about tax law and tax practice has found many ethics issues this past year, but really distinguished itself by making sure that the Obama I.R.S. scandal continued to be covered online even as the mainstream media seemed to be obediently following the Administration’s fervent wish that it would be ignored into blissful oblivion. Caron obviously doesn’t think that the I.R.S.’s obstruction of conservative advocacy groups in the run-up to the 2012 election was a conservative fantasy, but he also is concerned with some more bipartisan I.R.S. abuses, and he has highlighted the as yet unresolved developments every day since the story first broke.
Ethics Blogger
Ann Althouse. The University of Wisconsin law professor’s blog is diverse, ranging from photos of her dogs to political commentary, but she had many outstanding posts on ethics topics in 2013, so many that I developed the habit of not checking her blog before writing on a topic, for fear that she might have already covered it so definitively that I would be discouraged from writing my own post. Fortunately, we don’t always agree. Runner-Up: Mark Draughn, of Windypundit, a Chicago-centric blog that covers many ethics issues of the day in a literate, fair, balanced and perceptive fashion. (I inadvertently omitted Mark when this was first posted. My error.)
Ethics Alarms Story Source of the Year
A hat tip to Jonathan Turley’s blog, Res Ipsa Loquitur,which routinely turns up intriguing ethics stories, and provides deft commentary as well. Now, if Professor Turley would only be more discerning about the partisan hacks he allows to take over his blog on weekends…
The Forgotten Hero Award
Willie Reed (1937-2013) As an African-American teenager in 1955, Reed risked his life by testifying in a Mississippi court against the white men who had tortured and murdered Emmet Till, another black teenager, for the Jim Crow “crime” of allegedly whistling at a white woman. The men were acquitted by a racist jury, as Reed knew they almost certainly would be.
Ethics Alarms Comment of the Year
Fattymoon. As always, there were many candidates that would have made worthy winners of this annual award, but Fattymoon’s reflections on the post, Ethics Dunce: Photographer Jill Greenberg, were excellent and brief enough to reprint in full here:
“This reminds me of the time I made a critical decision, on the spot, while covering the aftermath of a killing F5 tornado at Tanner, Alabama the night of April 3, 1974.
“Walter McGlocklin was walking away from me, carrying one of his two surviving daughters. He was cradling this little girl, her upper body and tear streaked face peeking just above her father’s right shoulder. The look of utter horror on her face! The lighting was perfect, an eerie cross hatch of flashlights and spotlights – I KNEW I had the picture of the year. I raised my Minolta 35 mm and focused in. And that’s when it happened. Something inside me said, Do NOT violate this little girl’s privacy. Do NOT allow this little girl’s unbearable pain to act as fodder to sell newspapers across the country. I slowly lowered my camera. It’s a decision, one of only a very few, of which I will forever be proud of.”
Ethics Alarms Commenter of the Year
texagg04. Last years Commenter of the Year, Ampersand, returned the favor by kicking me off his blog for daring to talk frankly to the knee-jerk left-wingers who cluster there when they kept coming up with ethically-inert rationalization why George Zimmerman should have been convicted of racially-motivated murder despite the lack of credible evidence of either racial animus or murder in the trial or out of it. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wrestle with bias to decide whether he earned a repeat, because texagg04 took the prize square and fair. Tex, as he is affectionately called, led the field with over 2000 comments (tgt, who was enshrined in the Ethics Alarms Commenter Hall of Fame in 2012 and was thus ineligible for the award, came in second 1338, and that was achieved even with his mysterious disappearance from this site in July) of consistent high quality, typically from the right as opposed to tgt’s and Ampersand’s leftward tilt.
Most Encouraging Ethical Trend of the Year
Bar associations and courts actually punishing unethical prosecutors. There is still a long way to go, but the unacceptable ethical misconduct in the prosecutorial ranks had been getting more notice and publicity, and state authorities seem to be noticing.
Next up: The Worst in Ethics, 2013.
Part I
Part II
Part III
Buckle your seatbelts.
Ethics Alarms 
Point of order, the pope got it wrong in his condemnation of capitalism as immoral.
He got it really wrong.
Also, just to be pendantic, DOMA wasn’t struck down, just a part of it.
I thought I sufficiently implied point 1, and point 2, though true, will have minimal long-term impact.
Taken purely on philosophy and that Marx WROTE about and ENVISIONED a happy share-all society, yes, Christ may have preferred him (based on writings). In practice however, I don’t see it. Christ wanted individuals to want to give to others, he didn’t compel it at the point of a sword.
Well, that’s why I didn’t say “Lenin” instead of Marx. There’s little evidence that Marx would have liked Marxism in practice either.
Fair point. On the flip side, Friedman WROTE about people working as hard as they can to better their lives and seek good opportunities; he didn’t write that individuals should seek every opportunity to advance themselves at the cost of other humans. I think Christ would thoroughly agree to that a well.
As both capitalist and Catholic, I have to agree with him to some extent. Capitalism isn’t always the best system to fit Catholic morality, emphasizing as it does getting ahead and profiting often at the expense of other businesses or consumers. I still think it’s likely the best system we’ll see as humans. I try to take criticisms (whether from the Pope or elsewhere) as a good basis for reflection to try to act more morally and ethically within a system that isn’t always either.
Capitalism is entirely amoral, in that it has no moral leaning – it is the person who assigns a morality to it by their actions.
And it is, without any doubt, a net good, as it is the reason there are well-funded charities (including the Catholic Church).
Dammit, didn’t make the list. But hey! Maybe I’ll make that next one…
Actually, Mark, you were runner-up, and I should have noted that. And I will.
And I did.
I’m a little hurt I wasn’t in the mix anywhere…
Does my commenting from, effectively, two different names hurt me?
No. Don’t be hurt. You are loved. Lots of good input, and I only have a couple of slots in the Awards.
Looks like i’m gonna have to bump some folks off this year… 🙂
Whoa. I was just kidding… Um…thank you very much. I’m honored.
I knew you were kidding, but you sent me back to my notes. I really had you in the draft, and lost it in my rush to post the damn thing.
Shouldn’t there be an award for “most beat up liberal commenter?”
That would have been Dan.
I dunno, I think Dan winning that one would lead for me to call the entire system rigged…
Jack retired that category in honor of the ink spilled in the great TGT-Pilling wars of the past. Those two went to town on each other.
Definitely one of the best things I’ve read all day.
Also, regarding the bar…
CA gave the law license to the illegal immigrant…
Obama’s administration objected to it. Very interesting.
I will believe their objection to be sincere when the guy is refused the ability to appear before any federal court.
I suspect that, should he make the attempt, this administration will have little to say about it.
I don’t disagree with you, which makes me think that they shouldn’t have objected in the first place. Why not just stay quiet? Such a silly small item — and it will make them look foolish down the road.
Well, that rather answers the question…
After all, they have a record to maintain…
They had to. He won’t be able to practice in Federal courts.
I’ll believe that when I see it.
I’m so proud.
Don Lemon is part of a long-running and noble strain of thinking in the African-American world stressing self-improvement.
Saying it on CNN is different from saying it at community meetings and speeches. He said it in front of a partly white audience. What are the ethics of speech that benefits one group but feeds toxic complacency in another? There are white people, people he knew would be listening, who believe we’re in a post-racial society and blacks have only themselves to blame for continued problems. Meanwhile otherwise identical resumes get three times fewer interview invitations when they have names like Jamaal and Moesha instead of Richard and Roberta.
Should he have paired it with a parallel call to action for white people? A similarly concrete one, and one that addressed real problems that are still widespread?
Best of all, should he have addressed it to poor people in general? I could take you to white areas in Appalachia with trashed front yards and rivers, educational failure, and avoidable single-parent families. Not to mention dependence on public assistance.
No. Black culture is a mess, beginning with the illegitimate child birth rate, the single parent household rate, and the crime rate. MLK spoke of self-criticism, which is essential. There’s nothing to be gained by making a race-relevant cultural critique race neutral.
Studies show odd-ball names do poorly on resumes too, not just funky black names. Name bias is more complex than that.
Nothing to be gained?
One gain is to avoid making bigots content.
One gain is to honor the principle of treating people equally.
Another is accuracy. If “black culture” really were a single thing, then most of its problems would be those of hopeless poverty(*). Note that Mr. Lemon was more careful in his phrasing. He didn’t claim the phenomena were part of the “black culture”, he said in effect “If this applies to you”.
Self-critique is essential. It’s essential for everyone. Whites should do more of it, and I mean real thought, not academics blathering about “privilege”. Self-critique in front of others is a different thing ethically. Imagine talking to strangers about your family’s internal problems. Remember how damaging public self-criticism sessions are in places that practice them. The ethical conflict here is that Mr. Lemon, by putting the thought out on his show, reached many more people than he could have at black churches and neighborhood meetings.
(*) In the 19th century a visitor to Iceland said the Icelanders were lazy. Today they’re some of the hardest-working people in the world. Same race, same culture really, but from the mid-20th century onward they were not trapped in destitution.
One gain is to avoid making bigots content.
The bigoted live on confirmation bias—anything will make them content. That’s a poor justification for anything.
“One gain is to honor the principle of treating people equally.”
There’s too much wrong with this statement to begin to catch it all. let’s begin by saying that the African-American community is not “equal” either in self-inflicted handicaps nor those imposed from the outside. Both have to be addressed, and ignoring one does not help cure the other.
White culture is decaying, but it is still far far healthier than African_American culture. This is a classic rationalization—“yeah, well, you’re not so great either!” So what? Give young blacks a fighting chance with stable families, good role models and no criminals in the family, and we’ll see what happens.
“Imagine talking to strangers about your family’s internal problems”
I’m trying to imagine those “strangers” also being constantly balmed for my family’s troubles, asked to pay for them and being made to feel guilty about them.
There’s no ethical conflict. Lemon did the image of the black community great good by letting whites know that all prominent blacks weren’t race-baiting (this occurred in the wake of the Zimmerman trial) and accusing all whites of being racists. It was embarrassing? Aren’t the crime, unemployment, high school graduation and fatherless family realities more embarrassing? Shouldn’t they be?
I question your framing of “black culture” and “white culture”. Both have multiple cultures, and the toxic subcultures in each have all the key features in common.
Self-critique could include asking why people think “funky black names” instead of treating them as being just as American as Polish first names, Irish first names, and all the others we treat as normal.
What are your thoughts on the difference between doing self-critique internally versus doing it on CNN?
“Give young blacks a fighting chance” — we know what happens, and it’s good. Remember the businessman who told an entire classroom in a majority-black high school that he’d put everyone through college who graduated from high school? They all did.
It is hope that is key to success, not “culture”.
Well, sure all cultures have sub-cultures, and all individuals don’t belong to the culture of their group(s), or are influenced by them. And socio-economic cultures overlap and desparate the larger culture. Mitt Romney and I came out of different sub-cultures, Theo Huxtable’s culture is closer to mine and Mitt’s than it is to Ice-T’s. Stipulated. None of that renders consideration of the influence of dominant cultures invalid, or its power less important. And the presence or absence of hope, self-esteem, self-reliance, traditions, social networks, role models, established routes to success are part of culture. I’m an enterprising sort–I could have been born into an environment where it would have been clear me that running a crack ring was my best shot at success. Luckily, I was born into a cultural environment in which that not only would never have occurred to me, it would have been ingrained in my soul that to do so was wrong.
Internal and external self-critiques are both indispensable to group self-awareness and reform; indeed, so is external criticism from credible out-group sources. Russians say that Ronald Reagan’s public condemnation of the Soviet Union as a evil was one of the tipping points in communism’s collapse, and that makes perfect sense to me. There can be great power in telling someone they are doing wrong.
Jack, thoughtful as always.
I understand clearly the difference between “White culture is decaying, but it is still far far healthier than African_American culture” and “White culture is superior to African-American culture”, but do you find any discomfort in how close they are?
No. I also have no compunction declaring some cultures objectively superior to others. The Anglo-American culture has proven generally beneficial to its members, and that means that it gets a critical number of things right. Muslim culture has kept millions of people in the dark ages for centuries. Is it an inferior culture? Yes. Was 1950’s American culture inferior to 2010 U.S, culture? Yes. For reasons that are far from the fault of African Americans, black culture in this culture has taken some toxic and crippling turns.
I know my opinion doesn’t really matter, but I agree with about 50% of these. National Broadcast Media, Forgotten Hero, Ethics Bloggers, Sportsmanship, Kipling, Hero and Parent awards especially. I like the idea of ethics heroes. More more.
Hey, I’ll take 50%. With luck, Beth will like the other 50%.
Only 2000?
I’ll have to step up my game… my participation has waned these past two months with the Baby Boy occupying a lot of my time, I think Ablative will be a front runner in 2014.
But either way: awesome and Thanks! It’s a pleasure participating!
As Sarge983 put it to me the other day: Don’t you have other things to do?
Congratulations, Tex. You deserve Jack’s honor. I hope you’ll keep on with your commenting as you have done, and not just because I usually agree with you. I honestly do not miss tgt. I am grateful for Jack, and for you, and for ablativmeatshld, wyogranny, FinlayOshea and the stvplln formerly known as SMP…and Julian, Beth, and Charles, plus a few relative newcomers including a couple who reside, as best as I can tell, across the pond in that other incredible shrinking English-speaking empire…and why don’t we see more comments from Sarge983? Is that your wife?
I guess I’ll just lurk more, and strive to comment less troll-ishly, in 2014. Or just try to stay healthy enough to keep reading. Or strive to win Jack’s Bigot of the Year. Or vote straight Libertarian. Or tend a new herb garden. Or learn more Spanish. Or something.
I miss tgt. At his best, which was frequent, he’s even handed and properly calls out weak arguments and inconsistencies. He also played devil’s advocate well. I know he drove some gentle souls away, and that’s too bad, but so do I. and for better or worse I’ve encouraged hand-to-hand combat here. He was good at it. I hope he returns.
That was very nice to hear. I appreciate your comments as well. Thanks.
Ha! Not my wife… although I’d submit he’s only one or two steps abstracted in terms of closeness. He’s my best friend. We were adjacent platoon leaders in the airborne unit of which we were part. We developed a mutual respect and ultimately friendship.
I’ve definitely benefitted from his calm and almost razor like ability to discern and explain issues down to their essential components. Whereas I have the looks, in our duo, he has the brains (although not by much).
I wish he’d post more often here but he always feels like other people have already “said it”. He doesn’t realize that other people may have already said it but he may add a different angle or different method of explanation.
Zoebrain! I forgot to include Zoe among the commenters I am so grateful for. [shaking my head, ashamed of myself] Seriously, we regular followers of Jack’s blog should pay close(r) attention to what Zoe says; her contributions should get pre-season favor as possible 2014 COY material.
In re-reading this, I’m still not sure which of these “Ethics Awards” were for real. Particularly when It starts off with the Supreme Court for degrading the most basic societal contract of mankind to the level of a bestial liaison and then to the concept that the Pope (and Jesus!) are quasi-adherents of a faithless and materialistic dogma. If that represents the most laudable, I’d just as soon include Miley Cyrus’s “twerk dances” and Nancy Pelosi saying… anything.
sMP, I’m well-aware that you have this one, inexplicable, unfixable blind spot in your otherwise impeccable ethics vision. What can I say? You are wildly, cruelly, obviously, screamingly, embarrassingly,hilariously, tragically, disturbingly,stubbornly, hopelessly wrong about homosexuality, gays and gay rights in every conceivable way. I have a dear friend, a smart woman in every way, who believes in astrology too. She doesn’t denigrate huge numbers of decent, innocent, good human beings based on an ancient book, archaic ignorance, and refusal to accept new information.
Astrology? I’d hardly compare the Bible and its ageless wisdom to checkout line soothsayers! One little line of that wisdom states, “There’s nothing new under the sun”. Perversion, like prostitution, debauchery and criminality in general have always been with us. They’re a scourge that can never quite be conquered. But to give up the fight by legitimizing them is to promote evil tyrannies over ourselves and future generations. An even casual look at our society today and its status within our living memories ought to make that point quite clearly.
I wasn’t comparing astrology to the Bible, if you trace my comment. I was comparing one inexplicable belief in the 21st Century on the part of someone I respect to another, the other being your belief that gays are some sort of hell spawn that need to be shunned, punished and cleansed. I don’t care, really, WHERE that belief comes from in your case. It’s still an anomaly for someone who is intelligent, sensitive and rational.
Sorry, Jack. I misinterpreted your comment… which I found amazing!
But no, I don’t believe that deviants are necessarily “hellspawn”. Individually, I regard them as mentally ill. Those who actually act on their twisted desires are severely ill. All need help in their inability to interact with others in the natural order of things. They are a threat (again, on the individual level) as they promote disease, are more inclined to crime and drug use as a direct result of their “problem” and are also inclined to pedophilia.
What makes them particularly dangerous today is that they have become an organized political force that is pressing an agenda on this country (through propaganda and political alliances) that includes the suppression of traditional moral values and the legal access to children. Before, they were pitiable. Now, they’re an intolerable menace that must be stopped.
But you do consider then to be “deviants”. Glad you became the arbiter of such matters…
Everyone but the Phelps clan disagrees… This is supported by the fact that no one has ever been “cured” of being gay/
Twisted desires… Like a man who has sex in a position other than missionary, for reasons besides procreation? Is miscegenation between the races also deviant and twisted?
As deemed by you. The fact that being gay isn’t a choice but biological means nothing.
Far less so than heterosexual behavior
I fucking dare you to cite a single stat that supports this idiotic claim. Not to mention, when you criminalize and ostracize behavior, you naturally drive it under ground and force it to mingle with seedy elements – of course that behavior will become mixed with that. Are you fucking retarded?
Actually no. They aren’t. But whatever… You have read that WBC literature, and golly it sounded good to you, huh?
Get fucked, bigot.
1. Yes- “deviants” is the term.
2. Wrong. People can and do renounce a perverted lifestyle. It’s difficult for anyone whose fallen so low as to be an active deviant, but it is possible and certainly has happened. This is the very reason why organized deviants fight so hard against such help being made available. They have to keep their numbers up.
3. That’s a wild and diversionary set of accusations, intended to foster the common “deviance=racial” lie. Deviance is psuedo-sexual activity between people of the same sex or between and adult and a child. Of course, you know this.
4. It’s a choice brought on by mental illness. There is no “gay gene”. The entire concept is nothing more than science fiction, excluding any factual basis of genetic science.
5. Anal “insertion” is so filthy a process that it’s little wonder that the average lifespan of an active homosexual is roughly 15 years less than that of a normal, healthy human.
6. Now you resort to profane denunciation, having run out of any semblance of substance.
7. Where one form of perversion exists, all potentially exist. Don’t try the old dodge of trying to separate homosexuality from child depredation. All all perversions of human sexuality and are interlinked. It’s not “bigotry” to point this out.