[geeks] Re: [rescue] It's official, the U.S. is screwed for 4 more years

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Tue, 09 Nov 2004 @ 11:43 -0500, velociraptor said:

> I think what Francisco was pointing to were things like gay marriage
> and similar.

Yes, which is why making statments like "the election was mostly about
moral issues" isn't really correct, or at best, confusing.

Oops... I was thinking the news media should try to be clear again...

> There are certain things which are "less" relative, given a normal
> societal context, i.e. killing, stealing, etc.
>
> But other things, like, whether people should have the right to marry
> based on their gender preference being addressed as a "moral" issue,
> for the majority of people, is based on their religious preferences.

That's interesting, given that marriage is a mostly pagan ceremony.

Outside of any other objections I might have, to me "gay marriage" is
an oxymoron.  Marriage is a ceremonial union between a man an woman, a
heterosexual ritual, and an ancient one at that.

I don't like the idea of gay marriage because it redefines a tradition
with a very specific meaning, and basically dillutes it, and ruins it.

I hate how people are so hell bent on redefining everything to the point
where any meaning it once had is dilluted.

I don't believe girls should be in the Boy Scouts, men should be nuns,
women should be at VMI, or dogs should be in cat shows either.

I don't like namespace pollution in or out of a computer.

> Not trying to argue for one side of the morality fence or the other,
> just noting that a discussion of morals is pointless without a
> contextual framework--i.e. what's the situation--to my way of
> thinking.

I think a lot of the noise around moral issues comes about precisely
because people are ignoring context.

It's the same thing that happens when people history but in their own
modern context.  

Humans in most first world nations today live a life that in the ancient
world only kings and nobles could live.  Relatively speaking it is a
very safe and easy life.

When we look back 2000 years, we view almost any aspect of the common
man's life as violent, barbaric, and immoral.

So context errors, like namespace corruption, also occur outside of
computers.

See, everything on the geeks list can be on topic... :)





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