Posted: Nov 09, 2011 12:56 am
Spoonfed wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:As Beatsong suggests, it is not illegal because it always does, or even can, cause harm. It's illegal because it is problematic to allow people to enter into contracts when they cannot give their informed consent: drunk people, mentally retarded people, etc.
Why can 18 year olds consent to fight in a war or be exploited in the porn industry? Why don't we protect young adults over 18 from sexual exploitation, they are after all inexperienced in life.
Because at some point we need to draw a legal line to say when someone can and cannot consent to a contract. If we have no age of consent, then no contract could ever get signed. There are real-world problems with this - do you understand?
Spoonfed wrote:Adults don't need consent from children to raise them Jewish and circumcise them, or give them junk food leading to obesity. Adults can make decisions for children.
Yes, because adults have reached that age of consent where they can make informed decisions. As they are the guardians of their children, they have to make informed decisions for them. Note that they still cannot consent to illegal things being done to their children; that is, they can't consent to their children being raped, beaten, or killed. That is child abuse.
Spoonfed wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:I think it's more likely that racism was used to justify segregation and their mistreatment, and science had nothing to do with it...Homosexuality was not considered a mental disorder because of societal prejudices - it was considered a mental disorder because that was what the scientific evidence suggested.
You are naive. 'Science', especially social science, reflects the moral consensus of the time, it is inextricably linked to politics and morality.
"Naive"? Have you even read up on this topic, studied it? Know who Hooker and Kinsey are, and why they are important in psychology? Read a fucking book and get back to me when you stop believing in childish conspiracy theories.
And extra note, psychology is not a social science - especially clinical psychology (which would be similar to calling medicine a "social science").
Spoonfed wrote:There was no reason for homosexuality to be criminalised, gays didn't hurt anyone - but society felt it necessary to persecute these individuals because their behaviour was 'immoral' and therefore scientists concluded being gay harmful.
No, scientists concluded that being gay was harmful because the vast majority of homosexuals they met were in serious mental distress. This was a time before it was acceptable to 'come out', and the average person was not aware of gay clubs, or the gay community as a whole. They thought that the ones they were meeting were representative of the overall population, and it took the work of scientists to overrule this.
Let's look at this from another angle: What, in your opinion, caused the DSM panel to remove homosexuality from the DSM? Do you think they were moved by petitions and protests? If we protested general relativity to a board of physicists, do you think they'd change their minds on that?
They were forced to change their minds due to the overwhelming evidence that was being presented which demonstrated that homosexuality was not a cause of the mental distress exhibited by the patients they had seen, and in fact the vast majority of homosexuals were leading normal, happy lives. They wouldn't have need to collect all this data and evidence if it was simply a political issue, they could have just petitioned to have it changed.
Spoonfed wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:Hooker and Kinsey discovered that the original samples were biased (i.e. they only looked at homosexuals who came asking for help from mental health professionals), and they also demonstrated that homosexuality itself was not the cause of the mental problems that these people complained of.
Does this situation not seem analogous to that of child abuse victims?
No because mental health or harm is not a primary reason for making child abuse illegal.
Yes of course, it is prohibited for the same reason that beating up your kid, or chopping their arms off, or making them work in coal mines for 20hrs a day, is illegal. Forcing someone into a contract which they cannot comprehend or understand the implications thereof is a violation of human rights.
Look at it this way: your arguments, that children should be allowed to enter into contracts, inherently support the idea that people can convince kids to sign up to work they don't want to do, or even (if you wished) you could legally sell a blind kid a dead budgie and tell him it's just sleeping. There are reasons why these laws exist.