Religion and Philosophy

Comment of The Day: The Same-Sex Marriage Wars

/ Jack Marshall / 465 Comments

supreme-court-gay-marriage-demonstration

The Inquiring Mind left a plaintive and provocative comment on an earlier post regarding the gay marriage controversy, now once again above the fold, and it was apparently swallowed by my spam file. I haven’t see much of an uptick in Ethics Alarms comments lately (and tgt is on semi-hiatus), but the spam has gotten out of control: apparently this post was deleted, even though I try to check the spam comments (about 500 a day now) to make sure legitimate ones don’t get thrown out with the bath water. I apologize to IM, and am posting the recovered comment partially in compensation, and also because he expresses a sentiment that I have heard and read from others.

I’ll be back at the end; in the meantime, here is Inquiring Mind’s Comment of the Day regarding the tactics of gay marriage advocates:

“Jack, since the aftermath of Prop 8, I have always wondered – is the thuggery/coercion and thought control a “bug” associated with the push for gay marriage, or is it a “feature” that comes with the enactment of gay marriage?

“I just want to review the conduct of gay-marriage supporters: Continue reading →

Fire Deandre Poole

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments
Florida Atlantic University, where bullies and incompetents mold tomorrow's leaders!

Florida Atlantic University, where bullies and incompetents mold tomorrow’s leaders!

There are a wide variety of offenses that ought to lead to a college professor’s dismissal. Incompetence, for example. Our young minds should not be shaped by fools. A university should not tolerate discrimination and bias,  either. Every occupant of a classroom should  feel that he or she is equally welcome regardless of race, color, gender…well, you know the list. Abuse of power by a teacher shows  a lack of trustworthiness; that kind of conduct, as well as its close relative, bullying, must be strictly forbidden on campus. Then there are an assortment of character traits and professional deficits that must lead to severance from a teaching position when they are in evidence, traits like laziness, ignorance, lack of respect for core American rights, and stupidity, which, neatly enough, brings us back to incompetence.

This also brings us to the case of Dr. Deandre Poole, the Florida Atlantic University professor who ordered her class to write “Jesus” on a piece of paper and then to stomp on it. When one student, a devout Mormon, refused, and was clearly upset about it, he took steps to have the student punished for that old favorite, violation of the student Code of Conduct. Dr. Poole, through his participation in this ridiculous incident, has shown himself guilty of all the forms of unacceptable conduct listed above: Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Lawyer/Blogger Scott Greenfield

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments
No question: Justice Holmes would think Scott Greenfield is a good man.

No question: Justice Holmes would think Scott Greenfield is a good man.

Criminal defense lawyer and caustic, if trenchant, blogger Scott Greenfield stakes out a noble and correct stand on legal ethics and ethics generally in a superb post titled, “What Tastes Good To You?” Read the entire post, but his essay springs from a question that has been posed in various forums (including,  in slightly different form,the Jack Lemmon comedy “How To Murder Your Wife”), to wit:

If you could commit any crime and get away with it, what would it be? 

Greenfield’s answer, the ethically correct one, is “none” : “Just because we can get away with it isn’t a reason to do wrong.” Thus does he definitively separate himself from what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to as “the Bad Man” in his famous 1897 essay, “The Path of the Law.”  For Holmes’ “bad man” never breaks a law, but only because he abhors punishment.From this starting point, Greenfield considers a professional debate about whether the legal marketing tactic (as determined by the courts) of buying up another firm’s name as a web “key word” to lead customers to one’s competing firm is “unseemly,” which is to say, unethical, though not technically unethical under the professional rules of conduct. One of the defenders of the practice describes the division on the issue to a difference in “taste,” leading Greenfield to aim carefully and fire: Continue reading →

Jumbo of The Month: “The Bible” Producers On The Obama As Satan Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments
Elephant?

Elephant?

Responding to criticism that the character of Satan in The History Channel’s popular Bible series looks a bit like President Obama—which it does—executive producer Roma Downey said, absurdly, in support of her fellow producers who pronounced the claim as “utter nonsense”:

“Both Mark and I have nothing but respect and love our President, who is a fellow Christian. False statements such as these are just designed as a foolish distraction to try and discredit the beauty of the story of The Bible.”

The essence of a Jumbo, the occasional award given here, is a brassily dishonest statement that evokes the memory of Jimmy Durante in the musical “Jumbo,” caught in the act of trying to steal the largest elephant in the world, and asking the sheriff innocently, “Elephant? What elephant?” as the huge pachyderm looked over his shoulder. Continue reading →

“The Walking Dead” Ethics: The Toughest Leadership Dilemma Of All

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments
“Michonne, you’re gone..these are words that Rick choke upon, my Michonne…

“Michonne, you’re gone..these are words that Rick should choke upon, my Michonne…

In the absence of “Homeland,” currently waiting for Claire Danes to get back in shape after becoming a mom, AMC’s “The Walking Dead” is the best ethics show on TV. Apocalypse ethics is instructive and fascinating, because it addresses ethical problems as they were originally considered, before laws, before enforcement methods, and before organized morality. The objective is survival and continuation of the tribe and the species, without abandoning all semblance of humanity.

Yesterday’s episode built to an ethical dilemma of major consequence; naturally, some reviewers thought this was boring. Rick, the former sheriff leading the (mostly) good guys through the zombie-filled wilderness that was once the United States, is trying to protect the group’s refuge, an abandoned prison, from the imminent attack of a larger, better-armed commune run by a deranged psycho who calls himself “the Governor.” A former member of Rick’s group who now consorts (cough!) with the Governor (and who has been rightly condemned as an idiot for doing so, since she either knows or should know that he has the basic instincts of Vlad the Impaler), attempts a mediation to avoid bloodshed, and Rick and the Governor meet to parley. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Joan Rivers

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Bear with me, now.

Fight for "Springtime for Hitler," Joan!

Fight for “Springtime for Hitler,” Joan!

Joan Rivers, who took the baton from Phyllis Diller after Diller had proven that women could be funny stand-up comics, and then proved in her own act that women could be funny, gross, and tasteless stand-up comics, is refusing to apologize for her 7, 678, 423rd tasteless joke, uttered on Monday’s episode of E!’s “Fashion Police” regarding the Julien Macdonald that dress model Heidi Klum wore at Elton John’s AIDS Foundation Academy Awards party:

“The last time a German looked this hot was when they were pushing Jews into the ovens,” is how Rivers described the German-born supermodel.

Sure enough, the joke, and Rivers, who is Jewish, are being condemned by Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors as being insensitive.The Anti-Defamation League’s director, Abraham H. Foxman, called the joke “vulgar and offensive to Jews and Holocaust survivors.” Rivers is standing her ground. The 70-something comic told The Hollywood Reporter, “My husband lost the majority of his family at Auschwitz, and I can assure you that I have always made it a point to remind people of the Holocaust through humor.”

In the wake of Seth MacFarlane’s various controversies at the Oscars (yes, I thought the John Wilkes Booth joke was funny, especially with the planned comeback, “Too soon?”) and the Onion getting too outrageous in its misconceived tweet using a 9-year-old girl as the prop for a joke about something else entirely,  this is as good a time as ever to seek a consensus on where some ethical lines should be drawn regarding jokes and satire. Continue reading →

Tales From The “Ick!” Files: If Luke Married Leia…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Luke and Leia

Emily Yoffe, who is not Ethics Alarms’ favorite advice columnist, gets one right at Slate—a weird one, but then, that’s the only kind of question she usually chooses to answer. If I had to bet, I’d place my money on this question being a fake. Emily acknowledges that possibility, but couldn’t pass this one up, and neither can I.

A loving husband who already knew that both he and his wife (it was virtually love at first sight when they met in college) were raised by lesbian parent couples who conceived via sperm donors found out that they both have the same donor to thank for their conception. Now he thinks “sister” every time he sees his spouse, and ask 1) what should he do? and 2) should he tell his wife that he has learned that they are half-siblings? Yoffe tells this poor guy to stop feeling guilty, and that he hasn’t done anything wrong. She also advises him to get some counseling, and to suck it up and tell sis about their dilemma….but not to reveal the secret to their kids, Anteater Boy and Tilly the Boneless. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Aaron Williams–Pastafarian, Jerk

/ Jack Marshall / 66 Comments

flying-spaghetti-monster

Aaron Williams  practices Pastafarianism (The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) , which is not a religion, but a joke, a parody of religion created to mock the advocates of “intelligent design.” It’s a good joke, but like any joke, it becomes an annoyance when it stops being funny.When it has stopped being funny and it is inflicted on an audience without good reason or its consent, it is irresponsible conduct. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Any South Carolinian Who Votes For Disgraced Ex-Governor Mark Sanford

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments
You'll never know if this movie is still playing in the Mark Sanford Head Multiplex...

You’ll never know if this movie is still playing in the Mark Sanford Head Multiplex…

When Mark Sanford was last entrusted with high elected office in South Carolina, he…

  • Carried on a clandestine adulterous affair with a South American “soul mate” when he was supposed to be serving as the governor of the state,
  • Went AWOL from the state and his duties, telling aides that he was “hiking” in South America when he was really doing something very different in Argentina,
  • Used official funds to pay for his personal affair,
  • Lied about it,
  • Humiliated his wife and family while embarrassing South Carolina and his party, and
  • Was censored by the state legislature.

Now, displaying a level of gall only politicians and Hollywood actors can achieve, Sanford is back seeking office in South Carolina, running for the open seat in its 1st Congressional District. His strategy appears to be that old stand-by of the habitual miscreant, evoking the virtue of forgiveness and redemption, as well as suggesting that God wouldn’t rule out voting for him. In his first TV ad, Sanford says that he has learned about a “God of second chances.” Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Professor, the Plot, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 110 Comments
Prisoner's Dilemma

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

Professor Peter Frölich teaches “Intermediate Programming,” “Computer Science Fundamentals,” and “Introduction to Programming for Scientists and Engineers” at Johns Hopkins University. He uses a grading system in which the top score in any exam defines an A, and all other scores are graded down from that point (I like that system, by the way).

His students in all three courses hatched an ambitious conspiracy to ensure A’s for everyone.  They all agreed to refuse to enter the exam rooms, so the top score, and only score, anyone could get would be zero. Since the grading curve would have to start with that, they reasoned, everyone would have to get the top grade. The students stringently enforced their plot, apparently, and nobody broke ranks. Continue reading →