An evening without Richard Dawkins

[Seth]

How could the OT not apply? Without the OT there is no original sin and therefore no reason for Jesus to die for the weekend to temporarily fix it. Remove the OT and the assumptions on which the NT are grounded (however nebulous they are) are also removed. Would be like Harry Potter without Voldemort, pointless.

Now YOU'RE trying to tell Christians how to worship. That's irrational. What's important, the ONLY thing that's important, is how Christians ACTUALLY WORSHIP TODAY, and they DO NOT burn people, or advocate burning people, or keep kosher, or do most of the other things called for in the OT that Atheists like to drag out of the Wayback Machine as justification for bigotry and hatred.

Their interpretation of their holy book may be irrational to you, particularly if you want to be able to use particular now-discredited and unused OT commandments and practices as a reason to disparage and demean modern-day Christians, but it's not irrational to them, and what counts is what they do NOW, not what some other people did five thousand years ago.

The majority of anti-same sex marriage campaigning and homophobia comes from religious institutions.

Religion really behaves itself doesn't it?

This falsely presumes that "religion" can or should be compelled to accept homosexuality and homosexual marriage as a normal and acceptable lifestyle against the will of those who practice that religion.

It may be that legislatively society, in an exercise of democratic determination, decides that homosexual activity shall not be a criminal offense and that persons of the same sex will be permitted to form state-sanctioned permanent intimate family bonds. Religionists will have to obey those laws, it is true.

However, nothing can, or should, force people of faith...any faith... to be otherwise accepting of practices and behaviors that they find morally repugnant.

In other words, when the laws require it, people of religion must tolerate the lawful activities of others, but they cannot be compelled to approve of, participate in, or provide support for anyone who does things that they find morally repugnant for religious reasons. That's because it's their right to hold those beliefs, and it's their right to practice their beliefs so long as they do so peaceably and do not unlawfully infringe on the lawful exercise of rights by others.

The law can force people not to unlawfully discriminate against or harm homosexuals, but it cannot force people to accept or associate with them against their will, because, at least here in the US, the Constitution guarantees the right of people to dis-associate from those who they find morally or ethically repugnant. In other words, outside of particular legal obligations of non-discrimination in the providing of goods and services in interstate commerce, and certain state anti-discrimination laws regarding commerce-related activities, individuals have a Constitutional right to discriminate in who they choose to associate, and not associate with.

You may not like the fact that religion proscribes homosexuality and homosexual marriage, but you don't get to tell people of religion how they can and cannot practice their religion absent a practice that exports harm to others in violation of the law.

In other words, you can't legislate people's opinions of others.

[vjohn82]

Who says anything about legislation?

It's simply irrational to object to one's sexuality but people have the right to. But of course we all know that it goes beyond mere objection. It's even worse to legislate against which is the current situation. There are many instances of the irrational behaviour extending into pure, out and out, discrimination.

[Seth]

Who says anything about legislation?

I did. Are you really that dense?

It's simply irrational to object to one's sexuality but people have the right to.

You may think it's irrational, but you're hardly a paragon of rationality, as I've demonstrated elsewhere.

But of course we all know that it goes beyond mere objection.

Sometimes, yes.

It's even worse to legislate against which is the current situation.

According to whom?

There are many instances of the irrational behaviour extending into pure, out and out, discrimination.

There are many instances of pure, out and out discrimination in the law and individual behavior that are perfectly rational. That's why discrimination is a civil right.

[vjohn82]

It's simply irrational to object to one's sexuality but people have the right to.

You may think it's irrational, but you're hardly a paragon of rationality, as I've demonstrated elsewhere

Ad hominem. Move on.

According to whom?

The moral Zeitgeist. Humanity is beginning to reach in the deeper recesses of objective morality and historically we see a trend which is moving away from conservatism. Why? Because greater understanding of science reveals certain truths. For example, it is clearly true that genetic differences in skin colour should not lead to irrational prejudice. That seems an objective truth which humanity can agree upon. By logical comparison, if a person's sexuality is predetermined by their genes it would be irrational to discriminate based on their sexuality. Again, this is an objective truth should the question meet whether such behaviour can harm another person.

They become objective truths when we take other moral questions into consideration; does being a certain skin colour harm another person? If yes, we need to ponder deeper into the question. If not, irrational prejudice seems likely to be objectively false.

Does a person's sexuality cause others harm? I have seen no credible argument that it does. Ergo, it seems more probable that an objective truth exists in not discrimination based on sexuality.

Therefore if people base their prejudices towards a persons sexuality based on the historic writings of nomadic goat herders from the middle east, they are missing a chunk of their inate humanity and ability to engage rationally with other human beings.

[Seth]

It's simply irrational to object to one's sexuality but people have the right to.

You may think it's irrational, but you're hardly a paragon of rationality, as I've demonstrated elsewhere

Ad hominem. Move on.

Er, you first.

According to whom?

The moral Zeitgeist. Humanity is beginning to reach in the deeper recesses of objective morality and historically we see a trend which is moving away from conservatism. Why? Because greater understanding of science reveals certain truths. For example, it is clearly true that genetic differences in skin colour should not lead to irrational prejudice. That seems an objective truth which humanity can agree upon. By logical comparison, if a person's sexuality is predetermined by their genes it would be irrational to discriminate based on their sexuality. Again, this is an objective truth should the question meet whether such behaviour can harm another person.

The problem, of course, being that there is a distinction between "status" discrimination and "behavior" discrimination. It is irrational to discriminate based on skin color, or indeed sexual orientation. It is not necessarily or axiomatically irrational to discriminate based on skin-color-based, or sexual-orientation-based BEHAVIOR.

Which is to say that if people of a particular skin color engage in socially unacceptable behavior as a function of the color of their, or another person's skin, it's completely rational for society to regulate and proscribe such behavior. The same is true of behavior related to sexual orientation. Society has every right to regulate sexual BEHAVIOR while still acknowledging that sexual ORIENTATION may be a "status" condition that the individual has no choice over.

They become objective truths when we take other moral questions into consideration; does being a certain skin colour harm another person? If yes, we need to ponder deeper into the question. If not, irrational prejudice seems likely to be objectively false.

Does a person's sexuality cause others harm? I have seen no credible argument that it does. Ergo, it seems more probable that an objective truth exists in not discrimination based on sexuality.

Inapt comparison. In the first case you are discussing a status condition (skin color) that in and of itself produces no inherent behaviors that might differ from any other acceptable or unacceptable social behavior that society might choose to regulate. In the second case you are discussing "sexuality" which implies actual sexual behavior, not merely "sexual orientation" which is the status condition equivalent to skin color.

Therefore your argument fails on faulty premises.

The question then becomes "does a person's sexuality cause others harm?"

The obvious answer is "it can, then again perhaps not."

The corollary question becomes "what right does a society have to regulate expressions of sexuality?"

The answer to that has been, traditionally, "society has broad rights to regulate expressions of sexuality."

So, the next question becomes "is there a rational distinction to be drawn between regulating heterosexual sexuality and regulating homosexual sexuality that would grant moral suasion in regulating the latter in different ways or to a more severe extent?"

All these questions are related to the overall needs of society as a whole to maintain order and protect individual rights, so it becomes a complex analysis of sexual behavior on every side and a judgment on the part of society, as expressed through its political system, as to what acceptable sexual behavior consists of in the interests of preserving that particular society's structure and operation.

Therefore if people base their prejudices towards a persons sexuality based on the historic writings of nomadic goat herders from the middle east, they are missing a chunk of their inate humanity and ability to engage rationally with other human beings.

Not necessarily. It may be that the reason that proscriptions on certain sexual acts have endured because those proscriptions are important to the preservation of the society as a whole, and that removing those constraints on behavior has been long found to be detrimental to societal stability and endurance.

In other words, traditions may exist for more than arbitrary reasons, and they may be the product of evolution and empirical learning over long time periods. Which means it may therefore be unwise, biologically and evolutionarily, to ignore or reject traditions that help provide stability and order for society.

Jewish dietary laws are a clear example of a religious tradition that endured for many thousands of years that has a clear and unequivocal benefit to preserving society by avoiding food-borne illness. That we understand the actual vectors and mechanisms involved does not necessarily invalidate the tradition. That we now have methods of testing food and systems to ensure the safety of food that make such traditions largely unnecessary may, however, invalidate the societal need for that tradition. But, given the recent Colorado-based Listeria outbreak that killed more than two dozen people (so far), it may be that Jewish dietary (kosher) laws are not quite as useless as one might think. Had ANY of the people involved in handling contaminated cantaloupe followed the cleanliness dictates of Judaism, from the grower to the consumer, and simply PROPERLY WASHED AND DISINFECTED THE OUTER RIND before cutting open the fruit, those who consumed it would not have gotten ill and died.

Washing your fruits and vegetables and disinfecting the rinds/peels is something that the FDA and other food-health agencies have been touting for decades. The risks are well known. But people IGNORED this safety procedure because the memes the FDA attempted to establish were not strong.

The memes of Judaism, however, are VERY strong, and have been so for more than 5000 years. This proves the utility of such memes, and such societal proscriptions on risky behavior...like male homosexual sex in the 1980s, which devastated the gay community and which socially-proscribed behavior (at the time) still haunts all of us today. The same can be said for heterosexual sexual promiscuity, particularly in places like Africa, where AIDS is becoming an endemic disease.

In Uganda, however, the "ABC" (Abstinence, monogamy, condoms) program promoted by the government, with the abstinence and monogamy parts being promoted and supported by the Catholic church in Uganda, which is to say societal proscriptions on unsafe sexual behaviors, has substantially reduced Uganda's high HIV/AIDS rates to about 6 percent by 2007.

This is an example of societal proscription of sexual behavior instituted as a method of protecting the stability and order of society.

So, given the fact that promiscuous homosexual sexual behavior in the 1980s lead to an epidemic of HIV/AIDS in the gay community, it is not in the least bit irrational that proscriptions on homosexual sexual activity were part of the societal controls on sexual behavior.

It may be that nowadays, with our greater understanding of HIV/AIDS and the sterling example of safe sex provided by the homosexual community, which adopted safe sex early and effectively, the societal concern over homosexual activity and public health may be overblown and it's time for change in societal mores.

And that's exactly what's happening, but such things take time and are slow to filter down through society.

So, is it really "irrational" for people to object to homosexual activities? Perhaps it is, but then again there may be other, more subtle threats to society and its stability posed by homosexual acts than just HIV/AIDS. That is evidently what religionists believe, which might explain their antipathy towards the homosexual social agenda of forcible acceptance of homosexual activity in society.

Please note that I specify "homosexual activity" and not "sexual orientation," which I agree is a status condition that makes discrimination based on that status alone irrational and unacceptable.

As for social acceptance of homosexual activity, I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not stating ANY personal opinion on the subject, I am merely exploring the subject without rendering any judgment for the purposes of argument, and in fact have no personal antipathy or concern about private, personal sexual behavior of any sort, so long as it's consensual and doesn't pose a public health hazard or public nuisance.

[vjohn82]

By making the behaviour aspect of sexual orientation the talking point it's simply, if you pardon the pun, a back door way of discriminating against sexual orientation.

And all you have done with Jewish law on food preparation is render the Torah a bronze age "how to" manual. There are clearly objective statements that can be made about food safety for the preservation of societies but the only negative effect is illness or death for ignoring such rites. But books like the Torah go beyond "health and safety" don't they? It's never been a case that the penalties were restricted to the earthly domain; mostly these rites were for the benefit of appeasing the big man in the sky.

The biblical argument against homosexual behaviour has never been about health and safety though and this is, I suspect, the biggest flaw in your summation. Why? Because it's male centric. If we implant the idea that homosexual behaviour is wrong on society level, due to the public health risk, this tends to bolster the argument against same sex marriage and same sex relationships.

The argument on health grounds fails spectacularly when you introduce homosexual females into the equation; how many contract HIV each year? Suddenly, the health argument is not really that strong. Any time I have used this point there is a retreat to the religious argument against same sex marriage/relationships which is, as it always has been, based on irrationality.

Quite frankly, private sexual behaviour between consensual adults is none of the business of any state, government or any other person for that matter.

[JimC]

This is a general reminder to participants in this thread to avoid making the argument personal

[Poto]

Yaaawn. There is nothing to point out here.

[Seth]

By making the behaviour aspect of sexual orientation the talking point it's simply, if you pardon the pun, a back door way of discriminating against sexual orientation.

Only to the ignorant zealot. I was quite specific in stating that status discrimination is irrational and should be unlawful.

And all you have done with Jewish law on food preparation is render the Torah a bronze age "how to" manual.

That's exactly what it, and the Bible, are..."How to Succeed in Civilization Without Really Trying" manuals written by the government functionaries of the day in an attempt to protect and preserve social order. What did you think they were?

There are clearly objective statements that can be made about food safety for the preservation of societies but the only negative effect is illness or death for ignoring such rites. But books like the Torah go beyond "health and safety" don't they? It's never been a case that the penalties were restricted to the earthly domain; mostly these rites were for the benefit of appeasing the big man in the sky.

That's how the memes are effectively enforced. My cantaloupe example is a precise example of why religion is used (and is useful) to produce stable societies. If those who failed to heed the FDAs advice had been more afraid of eternal damnation offered by Judaic law than in ignoring the advice of government flacks and had obeyed the deeply-inculcated mandates of their religious beliefs, they would be alive today, wouldn't they? QED.

The biblical argument against homosexual behaviour has never been about health and safety though

And you know this how, exactly?

and this is, I suspect, the biggest flaw in your summation. Why? Because it's male centric. If we implant the idea that homosexual behaviour is wrong on society level, due to the public health risk, this tends to bolster the argument against same sex marriage and same sex relationships.

"Male centric?" (sic) Last I checked, the Bible condemned ALL forms of homosexuality, including lesbianism. Plus, there may be other aspects of stable social systems than just public health involved in the memes you are referring to, such as preservation of the nuclear family structure, which has proven to be the most effective model for stable society ever discovered.

The argument on health grounds fails spectacularly when you introduce homosexual females into the equation; how many contract HIV each year? Suddenly, the health argument is not really that strong. Any time I have used this point there is a retreat to the religious argument against same sex marriage/relationships which is, as it always has been, based on irrationality.

It may be that a general proscription on homosexual behavior has other benefits than merely disease, or that proscribing homosexual behavior generally reduces the social unrest caused by "unequal" application of the law to only males. Disease transmission is only one possible factor in social stability and was used only as the most obvious example.

Quite frankly, private sexual behaviour between consensual adults is none of the business of any state, government or any other person for that matter.

It becomes the business of society (and therefore government) when the behavior, and its effects on society move outside the strictly private sphere. That's something that society gets to render judgment on. It's not necessarily the sole purview of the individual to decide what does and does not adversely affect society.

[vjohn82]

Everything you put, I already knew was your viewpoint. And you're still defending the male focused argument of homosexuality being bad for society on health grounds.

So, with that in mind, answer the question I posed; how many lesbians are included in your health based argument? Answering it by saying it still only applies to males does not explain the irrational prejudice and discrimination towards female couples does it?

Before you harp on about stable family structures, you need to provide some evidence that homosexual families are worse, or not as comparable, to the "nuclear family".

[Jonesboy]

This is a light-hearted diversion for the God-hating adherents to this site (to whom I occasionally fling hunks of bleeding flesh, so that I can watch them come flapping from afar to feast on it).

Maybe it will also be a rest from the tedium of responding (yet again) to the various lame and exploded ‘arguments’ of the drug lobby, for making their selfish habit even more legal than it already is. If just one of them ever paid any attention, or engaged seriously, it would make it seem worthwhile. But they never do. It’s all mechanical, destructive rhetoric they’ve got off the telly, or learned in PSHE classes.

Now, serious engagement was exactly what we got in the uplifting surroundings of Sir Christopher Wren’s Sheldonian Theatre (named after Archbishop Gilbert Sheldon, since you ask, and one of the great buildings of Europe, superb inside and outside but perhaps most astonishing of all up in the mighty roof-beams that make it possible) in Oxford on Tuesday night. The Sheldonian is one of a group of buildings which in largely embody English history, as well as expressing the Royal grandeur of the restored Stuarts. They look pretty startling now, but set amid the small and muddy town that was Oxford at the end of the 17th century, they must have seemed almost impossibly majestic.

Next to it is Bodley’s Great Library, and beyond that Radcliffe Square dominated by The College of All Souls, a monument to the dead of the Hundred Years’ War, and the soaring church of St Mary the Virgin, scene of Thomas Cranmer’s great trial and renunciation of the Pope. Next to the Sheldonian is the Clarendon Building, once the headquarters of the University Press, and built thanks to the profits of the ‘History of the Great Rebellion’, the first great account of the English Civil War, written by Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. Sheldon, a courageous Anglican who had to be ejected bodily from All Souls, by the Cromwellians, was a close ally of Clarendon, so it is fitting that buildings named after both of them stand next to each other. Three hundred yards away is the spot where Cranmer, (and before him Latimer and Ridley) were burned to death for their Protestant beliefs.
But I digress.
The American philosopher William Lane Craig had offered to debate Richard Dawkins’s book ‘The God Delusion’ with its author, in his home town (and mine) . Dawkins is around, because he has his own event in another Oxford location on Friday. But despite being in the midst of promoting a new book, Dawkins refused to come. He came up with a series of silly excuses, none of which holds water. And an empty chair was provided for him at the Sheldonian on Tuesday evening, in case he changed his mind and – yes – to mock him for his absence. Details of this controversy are all over the web, and I was impressed by the behaviour of another Oxford atheist, Daniel Came, who said Dawkins should have turned up, and had the guts to be there himself . I might say that I thought his contribution was serious, thoughtful and properly modest about the limits of what we can know. The bumptiousness and raillery of Dawkins and some other anti-God preachers was entirely absent from his discourse, and it was all the better for it.

I have to confess here that I don’t find Craig’s debating style or manner very attractive. It is too smooth and American for me – and his best moment (again, for me) came when he dropped his salesman’s manner and said, in effect, that he was sorry if he seemed too certain, and that his fundamental claims were modest ones – that the Theist position was scientifically tenable.


The most moving – and most enjoyable – contribution of the evening came from the marvellous Dr Stephen Priest, simultaneously diffident and extremely powerful. I won’t try to summarise it because I’m sure I’d fail. I hope it will eventually make it on to the web. It reminded me of why I had once wanted to study philosophy, a desire which faded rapidly when I was exposed to English Linguistic Philosophy and various other strands of that discipline which made me wonder if I had wandered into a convention of crossword-compilers, when what I wanted was to seek the origins of the universe.

Many of you will know that in his failure to face William Lane Craig, Professor Dawkins was not alone. Several other members of Britain’s Atheist Premier League found themselves unable or unwilling (or both) to take him on.

The important thing about this is that what Craig does is simple. He uses philosophical logic, and a considerable knowledge of physics, to expose the shallowness of Dawkins’s arguments. I would imagine that an equally serious Atheist philosopher would be able to give him a run for his money, but Dawkins isn’t that. He would have been embarrassingly out of his depth.

For what Craig achieves is this. He simply retakes an important piece of ground that Christianity lost through laziness and cowardice, rather than because it lacked the weapons to defend it.

He doesn’t (in my view) achieve total victory over the unbelievers. He simply says : ‘In this logic, which you cannot deny, and in this science, which you cannot deny either, it is clear that there is plenty of room for the possibility that God exists and made the universe’. No scientifically literate person, who is informed and can argue logically, can in truth say that he is wrong.

The trouble is that so many ‘official’ Christians have more or less conceded this ground, not being very firm believers themselves, and lacking Craig’s training in logic and science.

He is the antidote to the lazy belief that in some way ‘science’ is incompatible with ‘religion’, and to the idea that all believers are unlettered morons who think the earth is 5,000 years old and that there were dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark.

This is, I’m afraid, all too often the tone of the anti-God people who come here to post. It’s settled, you’re stupid, why not give up?

It’s not settled. We’re not stupid. We won’t give up.

(NB: A note to Mr ‘Crosland’. I won’t respond to any queries he posts here - and I have a small bet with myself as to what form they will take this time - until he replies to my ‘childishly simple’ private letter to him, which he has had since August).

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/ ... l#comments

An erudite article by Christopher's retarded brother

Dunno. I never read it. Was it any good. Reply now or slip in your diarrhoea.

[Seth]

Everything you put, I already knew was your viewpoint. And you're still defending the male focused argument of homosexuality being bad for society on health grounds.

I'm not defending it, I'm pointing it out.

So, with that in mind, answer the question I posed; how many lesbians are included in your health based argument? Answering it by saying it still only applies to males does not explain the irrational prejudice and discrimination towards female couples does it?

As I said, there may be other aspects of social order other than public health that are supported by bans on female homosexual activity.

Before you harp on about stable family structures, you need to provide some evidence that homosexual families are worse, or not as comparable, to the "nuclear family".

No, I don't. I merely need to point out that over long periods, societies create bodies of social regulation, and that the long-term point of religion as a method of social regulation is that the memes are strong and the reasons they exist may be related to long-term social benefits or to preventing long-term social harms.

The example of Judaic dietary laws may be extended to other social behaviors as well, such as regulating homosexuality or suppressing tribalism or prohibiting child molestation.

I am not making any specific claims about the benefits or potential harms of homosexuality other than the demonstrated instance of HIV/AIDS in the homosexual community in the 1980s, and how ancient proscriptions on homosexuality, had they been followed religiously, might have prevented that outbreak of disease. I do not posit anything about the benefits or harms of female homosexuality in this argument.

The whole point of the argument is to point out that your statement, "By logical comparison, if a person's sexuality is predetermined by their genes it would be irrational to discriminate based on their sexuality" is false logic, and that there may be very good, if subtle, reasons to discriminate against behavior that is gene-driven. Another example might be pedophilia. If pedophilia is gene-based, according to your argument, it would be irrational to discriminate against pedophiles based on their genetic structure. But of course the problem with pedophilia is not that a person is sexually attracted to children, but that they ACT OUT those attractions and cause physical and mental harm to children. The same argument applies to homosexuality or any other "status" condition. It's not the status or condition that can be rationally regulated by society, it's the actual behavior associated with that status condition that's reasonably subject to social control.

The error in your argument, which I've been at great pains to point out, is that you conflate a status condition (genetic homosexuality) with actions associated with that status condition (homosexual activity). Your argument can be corrected by amending it to say, "By logical comparison, if a person's sexuality is predetermined by their genes it would be irrational to discriminate based on their sexuality sexual orientation alone." This, I agree, is a rational and true statement.

But I have no problem with discriminating against certain CONDUCT, even if it's associated with a status condition. For example, I feel fully vindicated in discriminating against those who act out on pedophilic tendencies, regardless of the cause of the attraction to children.

Likewise, society, as a whole, may choose to discriminate against other actions by individuals, regardless of the genesis of the motivation or urge, and may have rational reasons for doing so that are not immediately apparent to those who have their own agendas firmly in mind.

[vjohn82]

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.

[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.

[hiyymer]

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.