What constitutes immorality? (Was: One reporter reacts to JKR's revelations)

[sistermagpie]

> Carol earlier:
> <snip>
> > > I'm wondering whether there are any actions that you think are
> immoral, for example, spanking, that other people might think are
> acceptable behavior. I'm not talking about crimes, just things other
> people do that disturb you and that you wouldn't want your children to
> do. {Oops, I meant wouldn't want your children to be exposed to
> because you consider them immoral.] Is spanking immoral? Smoking in a
> house full of children? Closet alcoholism? Reading porn magazines or
> visiting porn sites? Adultery? Incest between consenting adults? Is
> any noncriminal behavior justifiably called immoral, or is the word
> only used by religious conservatives to pass judgment on those they
> disapprove of?

Magpie:
I admit, this is much more what I'm used to in discussing 
the "morality" of homosexuality. And I like this kind of discussion 
anyway, where you have to figure out exactly what values you're basing 
the morality on and then see how different things stack up. For 
adultery, for instance, I can see plenty of reasons that can be hurtful 
and immoral, but I can imagine situations where I wouldn't consider it 
totally immoral. In general I tend to judge morality on the context 
rather than the act itself, though some acts are not going to be 
justified in any context.

I've actually had a lot of discussions about homosexuality in this way, 
mostly very civil, sometimes with very nice people who had real 
problems with it and were trying to honestly explain why. I admit that 
in *my* experience nobody has ever been able to come up with any real 
reason why it's immoral except for an arbitrary distinction. 

In my experience, objections to homosexuality come mostly in 3 
categories.

First, there's the argument based on the idea that it's not how things 
are "supposed" to be done, which imo is like saying it's immoral to 
play the piano because fingers could not have evolved to play the 
piano, right? Since I don't base my ideas of right and wrong on this 
kind of distinction it makes no sense to me.

Second, and this can sometimes get troubling, is where being gay itself 
doesn't really seem to have any problems so actual immoral acts (or at 
least acts I agree are/can be immoral or at least can lead to problems) 
are attached to gay people as if the two are part of the same thing. 
For instance, gay people are all promiscuous, they spread disease, they 
rape children to turn them gay, they molest children. These are all 
arguments I've heard. To me, I admit, they're real arguments in favor 
of of the morality of homosexuality, because you have to hang other 
crimes on the person to make it a problem. And of course the many 
heterosexual people who also do these things are judged differently. 

Third there are religious concerns. There's there's a gap between one 
person and another. It's only an argument for immorality if you already 
share a belief in the same god(s) as the first person, and also 
interpret the god's words the same way. 

Of course, as people on this list prove, you can belong to the same 
religion as someone else and not have the same interpretation. In 
speaking with religious people I've often found that if a person 
believes God thinks something is wrong, they can usually argue God's 
logic for you. It must be difficult to believe that God is telling you 
to take a position that seems blatantly wrong to a person.

-m