An evening without Richard Dawkins

[Seth]

Paedophilia? Doesn't count in the argument. Why? Because we have already established the point that sexual relations should be consensual and between adults. Laws govern the age of consent but the harm is obvious for an older person taking advantage of a younger one.

The comparison between paedophilia as a sexual behaviour and homosexual behaviour is not valid because the latter is consensual and the former is clearly not.

You entirely miss the point, which has nothing to do with either pedophilia or homosexuality and everything to do with distinguishing between a persons innate genetic characteristics and that person's actions.

It is irrational to discriminate against a person based on their innate genetic characteristics because it is not their fault, or their choice to be imbued with those characteristics and they can do nothing to change them. It is not axiomatically or necessarily irrational to discriminate against a person based on their ACTIONS, which may be driven by or the result of their innate genetic characteristics and urges. This is because human beings, being sentient, rational creatures with volitional will, are capable of suppressing genetically-based urges when the physical expression of those urges might harm themselves or others. Therefore, it is fully within the purview of societies of human beings to regulate physical expressions of genetic urges, along with all other forms of physical behavior, in the interests of societal stability and protection of others.

Whether any particular societal regulation is reasonable and appropriate is an entirely different matter, and is both highly circumstance-specific and not amenable to pat answers or snap judgments, as I have illustrated.

I don't find myself agreeing. People do what they do because they do it. Whatever the thoughts and models of our conscious experience, the body is ultimately a caused mechanism, for which the real causes of behaviors are too complex to be known or used to explain and predict. Among them is not the un-caused cause of the agent self. True justice is holding people responsible for what they do, not because they could have decided differently, but because we must. Blame, justification, retribution, and condemnation are just power trips.

Why "must" we? And how do we hold people responsible for what they do without enforcement and deterrent mechanisms like the law and the courts?