BBC.com asks users: 'Should homosexuals face execution?'

[Neil]

The African bureau has a duty to appeal to Africans.

And, let's face it, it is a legitimate debate.

[Neil]

Discounting the fact that most people (you included) would find it offensive if someone made a poll about their right to live, this legitimizes the side which argues it is ok (or desirable) to execute gay people. This is an endorsement of sorts, or at least recognition that they may have valid arguments, rather than are madmen who should be treated like rabid dogs.

Except you can't really treat them like rabid dogs.  They're a nation-state, and are thus entitled to some small level of self-determination.

One of the biggest failings of liberalism is the implicit assumption that all topics can and should be discussed, and everyone can be reasoned with - this is a great fallacy, dating back to enlightenment, if not further back.

It's amusing watching you turn your back on liberalism, given that it's the only thing keeping you from getting butchered like a hog.  It is the unrestricted realm of discussion that allowed faggotry to move from being the most heinous crime imaginable to being generally accepted.

I personally like the analogy made by Aquinas when he was discussing human laws and their conformity with the "natural law" (which he understood as the law being fair and just). It's like building a house - there is no one way of doing it, or even one way that is best. One can have a big house or a smaller house, one with many doors or just one door, or taller or smaller windows, for example. And it will still be a house. But not anything one builds can be called a house - if it has no windows and doors, and if it is too small for a human to enter, then it is not a house - and all you can do is to raze it, rather than trying to live or improve it.

'Natural law' doesn't really exist, in the sense that Aquinas wishes it did.  Law is entirely a social construction, and different social groups will always have different views of what is fair and just.

[Solmyr]

It's amusing watching you turn your back on liberalism, given that it's the only thing keeping you from getting butchered like a hog.  It is the unrestricted realm of discussion that allowed faggotry to move from being the most heinous crime imaginable to being generally accepted.

I hate to say it Marty but Neil is right on this.

Of course, while liberalism allows everyone to voice their opinion, it also allows (or should allow) mocking and marginalizing of said opinion if it is considered idiotic by enough people.

[PDH]

The idea that something which one finds offensive must be met with shrill rhetoric, talk of total boycott, and nonsensical and tortured logic is a mark of the dysfunction of communication and primacy of ideology over reason. Congratulations, Marty, you are a fundamentalist.

[Grallon]

'Natural law' doesn't really exist, in the sense that Aquinas wishes it did.  Law is entirely a social construction, and different social groups will always have different views of what is fair and just.

Amidst the constant rehash of his outdated pick up lines Neil sometimes allow glimpses of his true worth to come through. 




G.

[garbon]

I believe in the Forms. The Forms will protect us.

[katmai]

I am grateful to the BBC for providing such wonderful global entertainment.  Those who wish can follow the shrill antics of the homophobic morons supporting the proposed Ugandan law on the BBC website, and those who couldn't be bothered can follow the shrill antics of the PC morons as they try to convince the world that there are questions that shouldn't be asked in the digital world, even if the question is actually being asked in the real world. 

Bets poll since "should kiddyfuckers be allowed to escape justice if they are talented film makers?"

She told me she was 18!

[katmai]

And finally, all of this convinces me that Grallon is actually right - that the liberal "hear everyone's opinion" is truly moronic and will not protect us against hatred and persecution - it will be our destruction.

I marvel at the alacrity with which you diss me in one thread and praise my opinions in another.  Your moral flexibility is simply bewildering.




G.

He is consistent in his inconsistency.