privacy

A Despicable “Outing” In Minneapolis

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Once again we visit the always despicable practice of punitive “outing,” when gay activists, gay advocates, or the generally self-righteous decide that some individual deserves to have private matters, that he or she has an absolute right to keep private, made public. This particular instance is especially notable, because it involved an especially odious brand of unethical investigation, followed by a series of arrogant rationalizations by the offending party that would make a good, if easy, pop quiz in an ethics exam.

Lavender Magazine, a biweekly for Minneapolis’s gay and lesbian community, reported that an outspokenly anti-gay local pastor attended meetings of Faith in Action, the local affiliate of Courage, an international program of the Catholic Church that offers support for people who want to remain chaste despite same-sex attraction.
As a result of the report, the pastor was placed on leave by his church, which is looking into the matter. Continue reading →

The Center for Science in the Public Interest=Self-Righteous Bullies of the Month

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

We will begin with a proposition: “Toys do not make children fat.”  Certainly eating too much makes children fat.  Eating exclusively high-caloric foods makes children fat. Failing to exercise and sitting around playing video games all day can make children fat. Over-indulgent or unassertive parents, who allow their children to develop and continue bad eating and exercise habits, can help children get fat. But toys will not make children fat. Even if the kids eat the toys, they won’t get fat.

Nonetheless, the Center for Science in the Public Interest is threatening to sue MacDonald’s if it doesn’t stop putting little toys in its “Happy Meals.” The “You’re Going To Eat Tofu and Like It!” consumer group has sent a letter to the fast-food company, long a convenient villain for those who want to control our basic right to eat what we want to, giving them due notice that either they take those “Shrek” promotional toys out of the “Happy Meals,” or  it’s “see you in court.” Continue reading →

Ethics Test for the Anti-Palin Crowd

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

If you have a friend or colleague who can’t stand Sarah Palin—and who doesn’t?—the Joe McGinniss story gives you an infallible was to gauge their ability to be fair and objective, as well as their ability to apply the Golden Rule. Palin and her family are victims of a bad neighbor and an unscrupulous, venal and predatory author. The fact that one doesn’t like certain  victims of wrongdoing because of their political beliefs, their accents, or their talent for uttering simplistic sound-bites calculated to drive Democrats crazy shouldn’t obliterate one’s ability to determine right from wrong. Continue reading →

Drug War Ethics: THIS Is Excessive Force…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Radley Balko, a senior editor at Reason Magazine, has been following the law enforcement tactic of paramilitary raids on American homes, some of which go horrible wrong, and many of which raise questions of propriety and proportion. One of the worst of these, a February raid on a family’s home in Missouri that featured the invading authorities shooting the family dog in front of a young child, is immortalized on this frightening video. The father was charged with marijuana possession and child endangerment, presumably because he used drugs in the presence of his.

Balko, who, like everyone at Reason, is a libertarian, uses the incident to press his opposition to the illegal status of recreational drugs. “This is the blunt-end result of all the war imagery and militaristic rhetoric politicians have been spewing for the last 30 years,” he writes… Continue reading →

Silliest Animal Ethics Argument Not Made by PETA

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Read it here, on the Discovery website: an article by Jennifer Viegas, illustrated by a photograph of Galapagos tortoises engaged in sex: “Do Nature Films Deny Animals Their Privacy?”

This better not be a late April Fool’s hoax.

I will retract the accusation that the article is silly if it turns out that Jennifer is, in fact, a Galapagos tortoise herself.

License Plate Ethics: Is a Hateful Message Unethical If Nobody Understands It?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Virginia’s Department of Motor Vehicles, following analysis worthy of the cracking of the ENIGMA code during World War II, concluded that a vanity plate reading “14CV88” was “racially offensive” and had to be pulled from the road. Prof. Eugene Volokh raises the issue of whether this violates the First Amendment (he suspects it does), but the more interesting question, at least for me, is whether there is anything unethical about displaying a message like this.

Oh! I forgot to explain to you why you too should be horribly offended at the “message!”  Continue reading →

Tea Party Vengeance

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

What possible justification can there be for setting out to get someone fired for expressing a private opinion, however crude or confrontational? Vengeance isn’t a justification. Intimidation isn’t a justification. Neither is “because I can.” Causing someone to lose his or her job as retribution for legal conduct with no connection to that job is meanness for the sake of meanness, bullying, and a bright-line violation of the Golden Rule.

This is what the head of a prominent Tea Party organization did to Lance Baxter. Continue reading →

The Westboro Baptist Church and Free Speech: When Cruel and Unfair Can Still Be Right

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The United States, as currently constituted, is a utilitarian nation. We embrace the inherent virtue of certain “natural” rights, and tolerate the frequent harm that some citizens commit while exercising the rights that all of us cherish. I think that is the correct philosophy, but it requires us to grit our teeth and re-read the Bill of Rights when the formula produces a nauseating result that is nonetheless right in our democratic culture. It was right to let the Nazis march in Skokie. It was right to let the Klan hold their non-violent, white supremacy demonstrations. And it was right for the court to make Albert Snyder pay the court costs when he lost his lawsuit against a hate group that disrupted his son’s funeral. No, it wasn’t fair, or kind, or empathetic. It was only right. Continue reading →

Art Ethics: We Are Not Bowls of Fruit

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

During his legendary questioning by Clarence Darrow in the Scopes trial, Williams Jennings Bryan famously answered one of Darrow’s queries by saying, “I don’t think about things I don’t think about.” (Darrow’s rejoinder: “Do you think about the things you do think about?”)  One of the ethical issues I hadn’t thought about was whether an artist drawing a subject in public without his or her consent is being unethical. Thanks to a post by an inquiring artist on an art blog who heard the faint ringing of an ethics alarm in his head, I’m thinking about it now, and it is trickier than you might think.

Once the artist starts rolling, he has a lot of ethics questions: Continue reading →

Philly’s “Webcamgate”: No Ethics Controversy, Just Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Ethics Alarms has not discussed the Lower Merion School District’s “Webcamgate” scandal, in part because its facts are still somewhat in doubt, and because I found it difficult to believe that what had been reported was true. High school student Blake Robbins sued the District after officials reprimanded for him for conduct inside his Pennsylvania Valley home. Apparently he was caught on the webcam of the Apple MacBook that the district supplies to its 2,300 high school students. Following an investigation by the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office and the FBI, it was confirmed that the cameras were programmed to be turned on remotely by school officials, but, say those officials, only to track down stolen computers, not to spy on students, their friends and their parents. Continue reading →