Atlas Moral Acceptability Poll

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Gay Relations: Acceptable
Having a baby outside of marriage: Acceptable
Sex outside of marriage: Acceptable
Divorce: Acceptable with the exception of divorce where's there's children in a functional relationship
Embryonic Stem Cell Research: Acceptable
Polygamy: Acceptable
Cloning humans: Unacceptable
Doctor-assisted suicide: Acceptable (and Very Good)
Suicide: Acceptable; blaming the victim of depression is disgusting.
Gambling: Unacceptable; it's okay to gamble but casinos are bad.
Abortion: Acceptable
Cloning animals: Acceptable
Fur: Acceptable
Affairs: Acceptable
Death Penalty: Acceptable
Medical Testing on Animals: Acceptable

On a personal level, I'm pretty libertarian/libertine for the most part and this doesn't really translate to my political views on cultural issues because there are social consequences to things that I see as morally neutral or acceptable. For instance, in a vacuum, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong about having an affair, that depends on the details, but a society where marriage is breaking down is a society that's probably pretty unstable/unhealthy.

As a person, I try to mind my own business tbh. There are boundaries that I won't cross for aesthetic reasons or for moral reasons but I don't think it's fair to expect other people to do this; people are very, very different from one another and that makes interpersonal relationships very complicated. Having a party-line on what is acceptable and what isn't strikes me as being bad and wrong, unless it's part of religious conformity.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Sobering numbers on out-of-wedlock births.

Also, is it just me, or is there something a bit laughable about the fact that a majority of Americans say that it's OK to have children out of wedlock, yet very few who will claim that having an affair is acceptable? I'm not saying that it's incoherent, I just think that it's telling that more of us are bothered by a betrayal of our romantic ideals about marriage than we are about the failure of marriage as a structure for sustaining stable families.

A stable, committed relationship doesn't require marriage. Indeed, the former without the latter is increasingly common. While this trend might be unfortunate in some respect, calling it "morally unacceptable" strikes me as a bit of a stretch.

I completely disagree. Marriage isn't just a word or an arbitrary contrivance; it is the legal, social, and spiritual structure on which families are built. Our personal feelings about a relationship's stability and commitment level are insufficient.

This is a very bizarre statement. Why should someone surrender their relationship to past foundations of family structure if that relationship is healthy and good? It's obvious/clear that out of wedlock birth is a disturbing trend but we can't generalize here and start arguing that it's immoral; there are plenty of people who deliberately/intentionally avoid marriage and who have fine families.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Sobering numbers on out-of-wedlock births.

Also, is it just me, or is there something a bit laughable about the fact that a majority of Americans say that it's OK to have children out of wedlock, yet very few who will claim that having an affair is acceptable? I'm not saying that it's incoherent, I just think that it's telling that more of us are bothered by a betrayal of our romantic ideals about marriage than we are about the failure of marriage as a structure for sustaining stable families.

A stable, committed relationship doesn't require marriage. Indeed, the former without the latter is increasingly common. While this trend might be unfortunate in some respect, calling it "morally unacceptable" strikes me as a bit of a stretch.

I completely disagree. Marriage isn't just a word or an arbitrary contrivance; it is the legal, social, and spiritual structure on which families are built. Our personal feelings about a relationship's stability and commitment level are insufficient.

This is a very bizarre statement. Why should someone surrender their relationship to past foundations of family structure if that relationship is healthy and good? It's obvious/clear that out of wedlock birth is a disturbing trend but we can't generalize here and start arguing that it's immoral; there are plenty of people who deliberately/intentionally avoid marriage and who have fine families.

There are people who gamble and earn fortunes, but that doesn't change my intuitions about whether gambling is immoral. Also, I don't think that marriage is exclusively about the couple's relationship in the first place. Even if it were, are any of us really better positioned to judge for ourselves whether that relationship is likely to remain stable in the absence of that family structure? It's taking a serious and unnecessary risk at the potential expense of your children and everyone else around you.

That's the inherent difficulty here: marriage means different things to different people. It's a very differentiated social structure that varies by region, by ethnicity, by age group, by sub-culture even; it's not only a social structure, it's a ritual and a rite of religious faiths. For this reason, discussing whether or not "out of wedlock" birth is moral or immoral strikes me as a useless waste of time.

It's unjust that we've allowed social breakdown to occur and the rise of out of wedlock birth is a symptom of this; if someone prefers to be married to being a single mother, the lack of marital ties ought to be lamented. Nevertheless, I don't think you can say whether or not out of wedlock births are moral or immoral in a categorical sense. This doesn't make sense.

Gambling, on the other hand is deeply immoral because it's a practice that relies upon deception to make money. There's no relationship between a casino and the gambler that goes beyond the transactional. Family life is vastly more complex. Particularities matter here and "using intuition" here is likely to make you draw the wrong conclusions because our intuitions are laden with the weight of biased personal experience and social norms that might be specious if examined closely.

edit: this discussion is illuminating because it reminds me why I'm not much of a small-c conservative, which seems to be laden with the stuff of strict rules of conduct that I can't abide by. No offense man but my intuition is that the arguments that you've made are disturbing.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Why does consent matter in terms of morality? Is it acceptable to take drugs, because you consented to it. Is it acceptable to have a sword fight to the death if both parties consented to it? Consent matters jack shyte, in laws or morality.

Is it acceptable to take drugs, because you consented to it? Yes, of course. (not an authoritarian creep)
Is it acceptable to have a sword fight to the death if both parties consented to it? No.

Consent definitely matters. Consent is what divides rape from sex. When an act cannot be said to affect others or the public interest and no power imbalances exist, consent is the difference between something that's morally disgusting and something that's morally neutral (acceptable).

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Why does consent matter in terms of morality? Is it acceptable to take drugs, because you consented to it. Is it acceptable to have a sword fight to the death if both parties consented to it? Consent matters jack shyte, in laws or morality.

Is it acceptable to take drugs, because you consented to it? Yes, of course. (not an authoritarian creep)
Is it acceptable to have a sword fight to the death if both parties consented to it? No.

Consent definitely matters. Consent is what divides rape from sex. When an act cannot be said to affect others or the public interest and no power imbalances exist, consent is the difference between something that's morally disgusting and something that's morally neutral (acceptable).

Lack of Consent is immoral, yes.

Giving Consent should not be the basis of laws however.

I do not think taking drugs, if consented to, is acceptable. Cocaine, crystal meth, heroin in my opinion anyway are not acceptable even if consented to. Drugs and accepting to take part in  a sword fight are the same, as both could very well result in the death of one of the individuals, and therefore should not be accepted, by society.

Who says that morality is always the basis of law? Doing drugs is morally neutral, not deserving of condemnation or praise (subject to context, of course). However, reducing drug use is a worthwhile goal. These two opinions are entirely compatible.

There's wide swathes of life that are neither moral nor immoral and consent + public interest is going  to be what guides the law in these cases. But I think that, without question, consent matters. Libertarians have abused this concept but that doesn't make it any less important.