Questions for the Opponents of Gay Marriage

October 21, 2011 By 61 Comments

Former Conservative found a list of questions from the group Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry (CARM) under the title Questions for homosexuals – and those who approve of it. FC attempted to provide brief answers, and Loki at The Black Goat of the Woods attempted more in-depth answers.

Since other people are covering them, I thought it might be useful to turn things around and ask questions of people like CARM. Since I’m pedantic by nature (it’s epigenetic, mama was frightened by an encyclopedia salesman) these will be somewhat wordy. I don’t really intend these to be “gotcha” questions, just broad questions about the reasoning behind the opposition. Not all questions will apply to all opponents.

1. What is natural?

A lot of people like to say that homosexuality is unnatural. I read these statements on my computer, a device made of substances not found in nature and requiring tremendous amounts of human industry to create, maintain and power.

What are our standards for determining what is natural and what is unnatural. Is toilet training natural? Is civilization natural?

2. Is unnatural always immoral?

Consider the old saw, “If God had meant man to fly, he’d have given us wings.” Does the fact that we don’t have wings make flight immoral? Perhaps not immoral, but unwise?

If nature is good and unnatural is bad, how does this square with the common Protestant notion that nature is fallen? To quote Katherine Hepburn, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above. ”

3. Is the Bible the basis for morality?

Perhaps the most common argument I hear among Christians is about how the Bible relates to homosexuality. Is the Bible “against” homosexuality? Let’s leave aside issues of historical context and translation for the moment.

Consider this: sections like 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 are frequently cited against gay marriage. However, in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul advises his readers against getting married at all. He states, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman,” and while he accepts marriage, it is clearly as the lesser good to celibacy (or perhaps as the lesser evil to fornication.) In my experience, this section is basically ignored.

Is there a systematic means of interpretation that leads to accepting chapter 6 as holy writ but rejecting chapter 7 as irrelevant? Or is it just “common sense”?

4. Why is gender treated differently than race?

Consider the following quote:

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” (Judge Bazile, 1965)

The above comes from the Caroline County Circuit Court in Virginia, in one of the cases leading up to Loving vs. Virginia. Judge Bazile was siding with the prosecution, who were using Biblical stories like the Tower of Babel and Noah’s Flood the same way that gay marriage opponents use the story of Adam and Eve.

I’m assuming that most of my readers will disagree with this reasoning. Why?

5. Who defines marriage?

Social historians, like Stephanie Coontz and others, have noted that the institution of marriage has been undergoing major changes over the past two centuries or so. Briefly: marriage is changing from a social obligation to a personal contract within the couple. We now look askance at someone who would try to strengthen their community or family by marrying for money and political connections. Most of us believe that marriage should be for love between individuals.

So marriage is becoming more individualized. This is both subtle and profound; it leaves the outward marriage much the same but changes the very basis of marriage on the inside. My marriage may look like my grandparents marriage, but my understanding of the purpose and what my marriage means is completely different.

One of the consequences of this shift is that marriage has become more of a mutually agreed upon contract between two people than something enforced from outside. That makes it difficult to oppose people who want to marry on their own terms: who are you to tell two people that they can’t be in love?

Social transitions like this are never uncontested, but this one seems to have lots of inertia behind it. Do you feel that this shift is good, bad or indifferent? Would you support laws that attempt to reverse some of the trends, like strengthening anti-divorce laws?

Filed Under: Questions, Sexuality 61 Comments
  • FO

    Just a brief addendum to your point 1.
    “Homosexual behavior has been documented in hundreds of species of vertebrates. Is this enough to make it ‘natural’?”

    • UrsaMinor

      Exactly. Homosexual behavior qualifies as “natural” by the common definition of the word; the only reason this question is even on the table is because people are either ignorant of animal behavior, or choose to ignore or deny it.

      If I had to make a guess at what is most “natural” for humans, I’d look at historical patterns of marriage across cultures, and say that it’s probably most natural for the dominant males to have several wives, and the subordinate males to have one or none. The second most common pattern seems to be one man, one woman. As for who your sexual partners are allowed to be, regardless of your formal marital status, those practices are all over the map.

      • trj

        You’re being too literal-minded. “Natural” is one of those unspecific, malleable words that are commonly used to support the spokesperson’s own religious biases. When a religious person says something is “natural” or “in the natural order of things” they hardly ever look at actual nature but instead at their own scriptural doctrines.

        If their religious convictions include monogamous marriage, then that is what is “natural”. If they lean towards polygamy, then that is what is “natural”. If they don’t like music or dancing then that is “unnatural”. The word is loaded with personal prejudice. I suppose they think it constitutes a valid argument, but the way they use it it’s basically just an excuse not to come up with any actual arguments. When they say something isn’t “natural” they might as well just say “I don’t like it” (or “God doesn’t like it”, which is the same thing).

      • Jabster

        The whole natural vs. unnatural thing is to my mind basically an irrelevance in the argument. Firstly, as already said by trj, the word natural is so flexible in its definition that to use it in the context is just meaningless. The second point, and one that I think is often forgotten about, is that our laws don’t tend to be based on what’s natural but what’s harmful to either individuals or others. If someone can give informed consent then it’s good enough for me.

        That’s the real weakness of the argument from a religious viewpoint but as for many such arguments it has to be dressed up as another argument because the real argument of as ‘the Bible says so’ quickly leads to two questions – well the Bible says a lot of things but you seem to disregard the ones the personal effect you and who gives a shit what your Bible says, we don’t live in Theocracy.

    • Tim

      Murder, cannibalism, rape, and incest are known in other species, some quite closely related to us. Are we then required to say that these behaviors are natural and thus not prohibited?

      • http://ohmatron.wordpress.com/ Custador

        They’re prohibited in (most) human societies because they’re damaging to the society as a whole. Other than that, those behaviours are completely natural in humans also. We don’t avoid them because God said not to do them, we avoid them because tribes who are averse to them have had an evolutionary advantage over to tribes who are not, and so what started as an aversion has become hard-wired into us. Being “natural” is not the yard-stick of whether or not a thing is acceptable. Being harmful to others is. In fact, it’s been shown that more men are more likely to be born gay in societies (and families) where men heavily outnumber women. It’s thought to be in response to hormonal changes in utero and gives a tribe an advantage over its neighbours because instead of infighting over females, the males are all good to go and ready to fight other tribes.

        By the way, on biblical morality: If Adam and Eve are our ultimate ancestors, who did their children breed with to create the human race? It’s just that I noticed incest on your list of natural yet prohibited behaviours.

        • JohnMWhite

          Not to mention Jesus is pretty pro-cannibalism, as long as it’s him we’re eating. In fact I’m curious what about cannibalism is inherently immoral – killing someone to eat them is obviously wrong, because if we go around hunting each other for food society would soon dissolve. Eating human remains, though, seems a reasonable course of action should other food be lacking. We do need the nutrients humans are made of.

          • TrickQuestion

            I agree. I mean, look at all the good human meat that goes to waste every day, that we essentially throw away just because of our own traditions really. If the meat is not tainted with disease or some other somesuch, i see no reason why we don’t serve it up.

            • http://ohmatron.wordpress.com/ Custador

              Particularly dead babies. Them things is just DELISH with BBQ sauce on crusty bread.

            • TrickQuestion

              pfft..why do you think we push so many women to have abortions?

      • Jabster

        Tim,

        To save you bothering to actually type posts maybe you’d like to use this resource?

        http://carm.org/cut-homosexuality

        • http://ohmatron.wordpress.com/ Custador

          Well, that was a festival of *facepalm*

        • Len

          Wow, that website is great – I’d not spent the time to browse there before.There’s so much (deliberate?) misunderstanding and burning your own straw men that the author must have studied hard to be that “good”.

      • UrsaMinor

        You’re not a particularly deep thinker, are you, Tim?

        You cannot argue that something is unnatural simply because you don’t like it (which is what your first argument amounted to). That’s just a way of projecting your own biases and presenting them as some sort of cosmic law.

        You cannot argue that something is good or allowable because simply because it is natural. It may be either or both, or neither. Few people are genuinely this naive and unsophisticated in their thinking, so I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are consciously being facetious.

        Try advancing a rational argument, backed by verifiable facts, in support of your hypothesis. You might be surprised how far you can get with that approach.

    • LRA

      The whole “natural” versus “unnatural” argument is bunk.

      The only thing that is “unnatural” is that which is supernatural… so there!

  • Matt P

    I used to oppose homosexuality as well as gay marriage. My opinions have dramatically shifted. First of all, I am not gay, so I can’t state with certitude that being gay is a choice (I never chose to be straight). Further evidence that it is not a choice is the fact that so many LGBT attempt or commit suicide rather than face the abuse and mocking of their peers.

    My opinion, now, is that separation of church and state needs to extend to marriage. Marriage used to be a personal contract recognized by the church for social and religious reasons, it is now a personal contract recognized by the government for some reason. If the government must be in the marriage business (which these days it must because it carries a host of privileges along with it like next of kin status, visitation, inheritence, etc) then all people who wish to be married must be married by a judge, magistrate, or clerk.

    You can still have a church wedding if you want to, either before or after the legal contract is entered, but the minister should not have any legal standing in the government-recognized contract. For the same reason, churches should not have to do weddings for couples that their denomination doesn’t recognize.

    • http://ohmatron.wordpress.com/ Custador

      Pretty much this.

    • http://sterenatyou.blogspot.com/ Jess

      That’s the way lot’s of European countries have it, and I like it :) We really should do it that way. American’s will evolve one day… *sigh*

  • Ty

    I feel dumber for having read that list of questions. Do these people not realize how stupid they sound?

    • Mogg

      Whatever you do, don’t have a look around the website. Your IQ will drop out through your boots.

    • Jabster

      I had fun by replacing the word homosexual with Jew or black … makes it a bit weird to read it then!

  • drax

    If the original questions are serious, and I’m not sure that they all are, they seem to be written from a perspective of “heterosexual privilege”.

    • JohnMWhite

      Agreed. In fact I’d go as far as to say they appear to be written by someone having a tantrum on an Internet forum about perceived sketchiness on the part of moderators who don’t let him abuse others as he sees fit. A lot of the questions are startlingly immature and even whiny. And some is just plain horrific in both logic and implication. For example, there’s the idea that homosexuality would never be passed on because genetic traits are handed down like quilts and anyone gay could not possible have sex with a member of the opposite sex. Then there’s gems like this:

      “If sexual orientation is a genetic predisposition and the homosexual community wants cultural and social support since, as they say, “they are born that way,” then shouldn’t they also support “homophobia” since it could be legitimately argued that homophobes are born with heterosexual-orientation and possess a natural aversion to homosexuality?”

      Homophobia is, of course, not a genetic trait but a religiously or culturally informed viewpoint giving a moral value to somebody else’s personal sexual preferences. The number of times homosexuality is equated with paedophilia in this list is pretty unseemly, and these folk seem to believe, for whatever reason, that autoerotic asphyxiation is a sexual orientation. Ugh. It is painful reading through the blinkered waffling of someone who is desperate to prove to his god that he doesn’t like the gays and desperate to prove to the rest of the world that he has a reason other than god told him so. There are also men of straw galore. For one, no one said homophobes aren’t allowed to marry or exist in society, they’re just not supposed to be allowed to impinge on the rights of anyone else.

      For the record, paedophilia is a paraphilia that seems to have a psychological root cause in most people, and of course children cannot consent to sexual activity with adults, so any comparison to consensual homosexual activity is moot. But I’m kind of surprised this list is even linked to here, it is so out there in terms of unthinking bigotry that it seems the sort of thing the site would be unlikely to take under consideration. And considering the extent of its hatefulness and ignorance, the few questions in retort don’t seem to go nearly far enough. Is there any point in asking someone who thinks gay marriage and raping children are basically the same thing if the Bible is the basis of morality?

  • Elemenope

    Hey, I used to troll CARM boards in my rambunctious youth. It’s a small Internet.

  • Framtonm

    I always thought that, having read the writings of (St.) Paul, that he was a gay man trying desperately not to show it.

  • Erik

    But you can certainly love each other without marrying, so isn’t marrying still for economic/legal reasons rather than love?

    • http://themikewrites.blogspot.com JohnMWhite

      You can have children without having sex or being married, so I guess neither of those things are really for procreation. Hooray!

      And you can have economic or legal partnerships without being married, using different kinds of contracts. Power of attorney, for example. Marriage is a contract for certain economic and legal rights and protections, but the reason people marry to exchange these rights and protections is presumably because they love one another.

  • http://lonewolfsden.net Lone Wolf

    They’re (truthful) answers;
    1. “What ever it is convenient for me.”
    2. “Yes unless like it in which I’ll say it’s natural no mater its origin.”
    3. “Yes except the parts I chose to deny the the existence of.”
    4. “Because it is convenient for me.”
    5. “The version of the bible that supports my views even if it does not exist.”
    There actual answers may very but this is what they actually mean.

    • http://lonewolfsden.net Lone Wolf

      “They’re”? “They’re”!? That mean “they are” dumbass I- uh- I mean you meant “their”!

  • http://ntrygg.wordpress.com random ntrygg

    That opponents of gay marriage have nothing other than their knee jerk discrimination is demonstrated by their lack of a comprehensive and clear meaning and definition of marriage.

    The arguments against gay marriage end up excluding a lot of people who can currently be married.

    The claim that marriage is a religious matter is proven wrong by the marriages of non-religious people.

    the claim that marriage is a procreation matter is proven wrong by the marriages of people who cannot or chose not to have children.

    the religious right cannot define marriage in a way that ensures that everyone who can currently be married can continue to be and still exclude gays and lesbians.

    There is no legal or moral basis to prevent a group of people from entering into marriage contracts to ensure rights and protections for their families – be it a couple or a couple with kids.

    More curious is why religious groups do not say anything against polygamy if it’s a christian flavoured cult and are only against polygamy from other religions – which are not at all ironically, more equitable than Christian based polygamy.

    • Matt P

      I didn’t make it quite clear in my earlier post, but marriage is, at least nowadays, a personal contract with legal implications. Any and all consenting adults, without regard to gender, sexual orientation, or number, should be able to enter into a legal, personal contract with each other, with the privileges and responsibilities thereof. This includes heterosexual marriage. This includes homosexual marriage. This includes polygamy. I won’t go into detail on polygamy, for there are various forms (see The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein for various workable group marriage formats), but honestly, whatever floats your boat.

      For polygamy opponents, should a male who has multiple baby-mommies or a female who has multiple baby-daddies be prosecuted for polygamy? Why not? What is different between a committed relationship where all members agree to mutual support (financial and emotional, among others) and a purely physical relationship where sperm and egg unite and the father may or may not provide financial and emotional support? Is it the sexual act or is it children? Should swingers be prosecuted?

      • http://ntrygg.wordpress.com random ntrygg

        While I think monogamy is not for everyone – there is a problem with bigamy and fraud – which is why multiple marriages were deemed criminal – often it was a man who’s job required travel, would maintain separate families in different cities. This resulted in obvious consent issues, but also caused serious problems upon the death of the man….

        But polygamy, in which all the parties are aware of the other participants – as long as it’s actual adults actually consenting – I have no concern. But in terms of even this arrangement gaining social acceptance – you get into issues of employment law – should an employer be able to hire people with only one spouse instead of one with 17 and 100+ children to be registered for employee benefits, or can employers require additional deductions for each spouse and resultant children?

        And polygamy where it’s religious or cultural and family or sect arranged rather than individuals who are making informed consent decisions…..that raises concerns of equality, slavery, and sexual abuse.

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  • Tim

    1. By “natural” we mean the proper or fullest end of a thing. The nature of a chair is to be a seat. The nature of an acorn is to become an oak tree. This is not to say that no acorns ever fail to become oak trees or that there aren’t bad chairs. The fullest end of the sexual act is procreation. See Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas and Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

    2. No. “Immorality” as a concept only applies to human behavior.

    3. No. Divine providence and reason are the basis of morality. The writers of the Bible wrote poems, allegories, and stories guided by inspiration. Divine providence is revealed in the Bible, but is not coequal with the Bible.

    4. Gender is essential to the procreative act in a way that race is not.

    5. Human beings acting with an understanding of Natural Law.

    • Nzo

      1. The nature of a chair could also be decoration, a foot-stool, or firewood. An acorn could be food, or ammunition. You don’t get to decide such a subjective thing as “the fullest end” of anything; Sexual acts can, and are, in both humans and the rest of nature, used for pleasure, currency, and power.

      2. You didn’t answer the question.

      3. Morality is subjective (you’re welcome to argue this, but you won’t win), and you can’t just assert something as silly and general as your last sentence without something to back it up. I could just as easily say Divine providence is revealed in the supermarket tabloids… how do you tell the difference?

      4. Who said anything about procreation? If two heterosexual people want to marry and never have kids, is that immoral? What if one is sterile?

      5. Your definition of ‘natural law’ is steeped in your own religion, and therefore not useful to anyone outside your religion. In other words, your bigoted definition isn’t the original quintessential ‘natural law’, but the religiously flavored Aquinasian/bigoted-christian-fundamentalist version.

      • Jabster

        “An acorn could be food, or ammunition.”

        … but by Tim’s logic squirrels eating acorns isn’t natural as it can’t possible be described as the the “fullest end of a thing.” Of course I do love the way “proper” has been shoved in there just so you can pretty much define what you want as natural or unnatural … who gets to define ‘proper’?

        • UrsaMinor

          I would argue that the fullest end of an acorn is be converted to squirrel and deer biomass, because that’s how 999 out of 1000 of them end up. And mammalian biomass is arguably more complex than that of a mere oak tree.

          Everyone knows that the fullest end of a chair is to be a doorstop, or possibly the final resting place of that stack of last month’s newspapers and unanswered correspondence.

          • Noelle

            And I would argue that the fullest end of an acorn is to annoy the hell out of me. They are all over my yard. The squirrels prefer the squirrel-proof birdfeeder. The deer prefer commiting suicide in the highway. And all the while the stupid oak trees spit down their stupid acorns for me to rake up. And they are so hard to rake up, little rolly things. To spite me, the ones I miss will shove obnoxious roots in the ground to set up baby oak trees for me to yank out in the spring.

            • Nzo

              You may just be more prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse than you realize!

            • Elemenope

              I’ve personally always preferred Nietzsche’s inversion of this sort of teleological thinking that Tim offered and we are all making some good fun of. To Nietzsche, an object was only its identity to the extent that an action was associated with the object to make it so. A chair is a chair only when someone is sitting in it; when it’s being used as something else, it *is* something else (e.g. a doorstop, a newspaper receptacle, a table, etc.).

              Put another way…

              Jubal Early: Where’s your sister?
              Dr. Simon Tam: I don’t know. Who do you work for?
              Jubal Early: This is her room.
              Dr. Simon Tam: Yes.
              Jubal Early: It’s empty.
              Dr. Simon Tam: I know.
              Jubal Early: So is it still a room when it’s empty? Does the room, the thing, have purpose? Or do we – what’s the word?
              Dr. Simon Tam: I really can’t help you.
              Jubal Early: The plan’s to take your sister; get the reward, which is substantial – “imbue”, that’s the word.
              Dr. Simon Tam: So you’re a bounty hunter.
              Jubal Early: No, that ain’t it at all.
              Dr. Simon Tam: Then what are you?
              Jubal Early: I’m a bounty hunter.

            • Jabster

              … and this is the reason why we’re happy to spend several billion on the LHC and not so much on a couple of blokes sitting around a table thinking about stuff.

            • CoffeeJedi

              my favorite part of that exchange:

              Simon: Are you Alliance?
              Jubal Early: Am I a lion?
              Simon: What?
              Jubal Early: I don’t think of myself as a lion. You might as well though, I have a mighty roar.
              Simon: I said “Alliance.”
              Jubal Early: Oh, I thought…
              Simon: No, I was…
              Jubal Early: That’s weird.

              Conversational mishaps like that happen all the time in real life. Interesting to see it on screen like that, especially between adversaries.

    • http://themikewrites.blogspot.com JohnMWhite

      I am curious about number 2 – why is it that immorality only applies to human behaviour? I presume your answer would be along the lines of humans have souls, but that is an entirely subjective viewpoint informed by the religion you happened to find yourself in. For a secular or non-partisan view of morality, humans are likely not the only creature capable of making moral choices. Chimps and orangutans have a complex social structure where altruism is generally encouraged, but some may still act selfishly. Dolphins and elephants have been observed committing what appears to be murder, driven by rage or jealousy, not an instinctive drive like hunger. These animals are all considered to be self aware to some extent.

    • LRA

      1. By “natural” we mean the proper or fullest end of a thing. The nature of a chair is to be a seat. The nature of an acorn is to become an oak tree. This is not to say that no acorns ever fail to become oak trees or that there aren’t bad chairs. The fullest end of the sexual act is procreation. See Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas and Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

      UMMM, no. You are assuming teleology. Teleology is not something that one should assume if one knows philosophy as one should.

      2. No. “Immorality” as a concept only applies to human behavior.

      UMMMM, no. Immorality pretends to be a concept that only applies to human behavior, especially by people who assume (wrongly) that moral attributes are only possible by humans.

      3. No. Divine providence and reason are the basis of morality. The writers of the Bible wrote poems, allegories, and stories guided by inspiration. Divine providence is revealed in the Bible, but is not coequal with the Bible.

      UMMMM, no. Clearly you’ve never studied ethics well enough to understand that morality is an EMOTIONAL and RATIONAL decision. You’ve clearly never heard of the “moral sense” a la Hume.

      4. Gender is essential to the procreative act in a way that race is not.

      UMMMM, no. Gender is not biology. You’ve clearly never read any works by third wave feminist philosophers.

      5. Human beings acting with an understanding of Natural Law.

      UMMMM, no. Natural law is an old fashioned idea that came about 250+ years ago. Most modern philosophers agree that Natural Law is silly.

      PHILOSOPHY FAIL!!!!

    • http://ntrygg.wordpress.com random ntrygg

      @ Tim

      “Divine providence and reason are the basis of morality”

      Since there is no basis for or consensus on “divine providence” that leaves reason alone as the basis for morality

  • http://www.liberalcapitalist.com Peter Jackson

    Another question: There have now been tens of thousands of gay marriages performed in half a dozen states over the last decade. Can anyone point to any harm this has caused the institution of marriage, or even a single heterosexual marriage?

    • Jabster

      My god man are you mad … think of the children.

      I’ll pray for you.

      • kholdom0790

        You may have misread this one Jabster…

        • Jabster

          erm … you may have mis-read my sarcasm there kholdom. Woe is me …

          • UrsaMinor

            I just assume that anything you write is to be read as biting sarcasm unless tagged otherwise. So far, it seems to be a good strategy.

            • Jabster

              LIke a knife to the heart … how dare you sir!

            • UrsaMinor

              Hasn’t anyone ever warned you to beware of my backhand? It’s as wicked as I am.

            • Jabster

              I’ve heard many things about your backhand and I’m not sure I want you to rub me up the wrong way or even the right way.

      • Bexa

        Jabster is being funny…and I LOLed…

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  • Jabster

    This one made me laugh from the CARM website …

    “Why is it that the Muslims continue to repeat the same old stuff that has already been answered so many times? Are they not interested in the truth? Or, are they just interested in repeating the same old errors?”

    http://carm.org/cut-islam

  • Transformed

    Once humanity loses its fear of death, many of these quandaries will become mute. Homosexuality is an excellent example of a “moral” fallacy (if you will) in these terms.

    My thought has always been, if there can found no inherent criminal act; then no law need be proposed in its favor or denial.

    A great concept I’ve picked up since reading Sam Harris is though we, as humanity, in our “moral behavior” may not have many universal truths concerning the positive, we can be assured that we are well versed in the negative. For instance, though our preferences in brand of cereal in the morning may differ; we are all sure that nobody is eating rocks.

    My point being (religious) people jump the gun by asserting their positive position without ever having any evidence that the negative is truly negative. And by extension, their positive being truly positive.

    **I hope my 2 cents was worth anything after the above discourse…

    • UrsaMinor

      For instance, though our preferences in brand of cereal in the morning may differ; we are all sure that nobody is eating rocks.

      Oh?

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5kE0MY4nYs

      Back in the Seventies, we kept them as pets, too.

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  • http://ntrygg.wordpress.com random ntrygg

    @ Tim

    This is elegant “By “natural” we mean the proper or fullest end of a thing. ” but not meaningful.

    It is not necessary for all things to fulfill their proper or fullest, in fact, we need things to not do this, otherwise, all things are homogenous – it’s only with variation that we can even know the fullest potential.

    But variation also allows other fuller potentials to be realized – so to be all we can be, we all in fact, need to be different, so that across the globe, all possible human conditions are experienced.

    The trick now is trying to ensure that most people’s experiences are positive – and that means giving up things we’ve outgrown like discrimination and gender roles.

    We need to look to the future, not the past – otherwise, we are artificially limiting ourselves.

    In fact, if anyone really believes that their god made humans perfect and complete – yet are not living naked in the woods as hunter/gatherers – who are living a clothed life reliant on technology and infrastructure that is not at all natural or the way their god intended.

    So why not come into the current century completely and look to building a better and inclusive by diverse humanist future.

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