Sex and Right, Part 4; Or, Raping Babies with Pickets

So here's the low-down. The post-objectivist anarchist who answers to the Youtube username XOmniverse recently posted a video where he calls deontology "authoritarian" and says "duty is an anti-concept." In the comments section I asked "is it safe for me to assume that you mean *positive* and not negative duties when you say "duty is an anti-concept"?

His response was "No. I mean all duties. Yes, this means I don't accept the non-aggression principle in a deontological sense."

Good evening, this is Mr. I.R. Sage responding to XOmniverse’s latest Rational Ethics video.

Rational self-interest is a refreshing way to approach personal morality. When you’re talking about doing things with yourself or with others who freely consent, rational self-interest accounts for pretty much every moral consideration that needs to be made. But it doesn’t account for every consideration that needs to be made regarding force against others, and so I think rational egoism makes an inadequate political morality.

Rational egoism’s virtue is that it doesn’t label things as just wrong. And this is also its weakness. Many things that we normally consider to be flat-out wrong – for example, raping babies with a picket – are, according to rational egoism, unadvisable at worst.

Rational egoist political morality posits rights by advising that one who wishes to live happily in society should act with regard to those who can affect one’s own reality. So it quickly acknowledges the rights of the strong and well-connected. But those who do not have the power to affect other people’s reality have no moral status unless they are given it by those who do have the power to affect reality.

Under rational egoism, raping babies with pickets is immoral only in those communities where those who can affect your reality consider it morally repugnant to rape babies with pickets. Thankfully, most people in America today do consider it morally repugnant to rape babies with pickets. But babies aren’t always given moral status. Just consider ancient Phoenician societies, where sacrificing babies was considered legitimate under some circumstances.

Under rational egoism, then, political morality is relative to cultural sentiment. If a certain class of individuals is not accorded rights by broader society, there is no way (that I know of) for rational egoism to condemn abusing those individuals.

Individual sovereignty is a funny word to use under rational egoism. Individual sovereignty makes sense only with a charitable and dogmatic presumption of the other’s rights. But under rational egoism, the only ones you have a “rational ought” to grant rights to are the ones who (a) are conducive to your own happiness, (b) can make your life miserable, or (c) already are granted rights by broader society. The rational egoist, then, can only talk about the rights of some individuals.

Egoist political morality fuzzes the difference between things that are wrong just because other people think so, and things that are wrong just because. Under Egoism, raping babies with pickets is wrong only for the same reason that burning the flag is wrong – there may be some people who, shall we say, may affect your reality in a way that is not conducive to your happiness if they see you doing it.

Of course, the wrath of others may be a burden worth bearing if the controversial act is a necessary means to greater happiness. And sometimes, the wrath of others is the very thing that brings happiness. Since egoist morality is relative to what would bring you ultimate happiness, it seems to justify some grotesque things. If what would bring you ultimate happiness is to kill yourself and as many other people as possible in the most spectacular way possible, then a 9-11-type act would be the moral thing for you to do, under rational egoism. The only reason that a rational egoist can give to persuade you otherwise (short of a death threat, that is) is to suggest that the happiness you would get from spectacularly killing yourself and others would be less valuable than the contentment of a long, peaceful, productive and moderate life.

But that sounds like a hard prediction to make. Whether the happiness got through one act is better than the happiness got through another act depends on the preferences of the subject. In short, I doubt we can know for sure that the intense pleasure of going down in flames is always less than the pleasure of a temperate life. Since this prediction can hardly be made, the rational egoist has no principled reason against mass-murder suicides.

Maybe I’ve grossly mischaracterized rational egoism a la Xomniverse. If I have, please point out where I misunderstood. But from what I see right now, rational egoism as a political morality can’t condemn raping babies with pickets. Neither can it condemn terrorism or totalitarianism.

Sex and Right, Part 3

There are two opposing and equally insufficient ways to get morality: one is egoism, the other altruism. Moral egoism is the view that what is right to do is whatever one thinks is best for oneself. The well-being of others is relevant only so long as it secures one's own well-being. I have a few things to say about this view, but you'll have to wait for my next Sex and Right post to read them. For now, let's look at moral altruism.

Moral altruism is the view that every individual has the inherrent (that is, you have it whether you want it or not), moral obligation to live for others. This isn't the negative obligation to refrain from hurting other people and damaging their property. It's the positive obligation to actively help people to live comfortably. Now, if you think you do have that obligation, I have no problem with you living completely for others. You even have my respect. But most altruists go further than living entirely for others.

To the most egalitarian altruists, the obligation to live for others is an enforceable obligation. Not only do you have to pay for the education of kids you've never seen before - if you don't, the amount of money you owe "society" gets taken away from you. And if you try to resist, you get treated as if you were the one stealing. This is the chic ideology preached from all our pulpits, from White House youtube ads to "Town Hall Meentings" and press conferences on C-SPAN to really bad t-shirts in the mall.

Let's look deeper at this kind of altruism, and see what its logical consequences are.

When they say we have to work for the benefit of others, what do they mean when they say "benefit"? Well, no one can ever talk about a benefit without talking about something that increases someone's happiness. When we talk about the benefits of contemporary life, we're really talking about the level of comfort we have - the amount of free time we have, the quantity, intensity, and accessibility of leisure, the spaciousness of our homes (and whether we have homes), cleanliness, the abundance and variety of food, and the absence of unpleasantries such as physical abuse, extreme social tension, and disease. So altruism is really the view that we all have the inherent, enforceable positive obligation to make other people happy. Since this obligation is enforceable, other people are entitled to force us to make them happy.

(Now, if the purpose of my life is the other guy's happiness, then I don't see what's so wrong with just working for my own happiness. But I digress...)

We're forced to provide housing for those who cannot afford it on their own. We're forced to buy food - through food stamps - for people who cannot feed their whole family. If a man can't afford to send his kid to school, we pay for the education for him. And when his kid is done with school, we send him to college. And we're forced to do it. (And we're forced to fund the rich man's war.) We're compelled to meet such a variety of physical and mental needs, I'm surprised sex isn't one of those needs.

Who's to say sex isn't one of those needs? Very few people live their entire lives celibate. Just look at how many people around you have sex or used to regularly have sex. It's something we're wired to want. And people live much more comfortably when they have a fulfilling sexual outlet. An imam in Iran was griping about women's clothing, and said that once he soiled himself in the car when he passed a woman on the street who wasn't properly covered. That's what happens when men neglect their physical needs.

Since sex is a need just like housing and food, why not mandate the provision of sex? Men have to register for compulsory military service - why not have women register for compulsory sexual service? It'll be all for the greater good. People who don't have access to basic services like food and housing go and steal to meet their needs. Men who don't have access to the baser services are going to rape or do some other ridiculous thing to meet that need.

Think compulsory sexual service is too extreme? Well then, instead of having a draft, we can change our sex reform to merely prohibit discrimination in sexual matters. No longer should people be free to discriminate by body type, facial structure, personality, or odor. You unjustly deny people's right to a full and happy life when you deny access according to physical traits.

This all sounds absurd, and rightly so. A woman's body is her temple, and trespassing on it is sacrilege. Her body is hers and only hers. No one else is entitled to it without her permission. (My views on abortion and a few other things can be found here.)

Now, if no one is entitled to a woman's body without her permission, why are other people entitled to the fruit of a woman's labor without her permission? By what authority can an agency (the government) dictate that such and such proportion of a woman's income is due to other people? Doesn't that sound like slavery?

The altruism that leftists preach amounts to institutionalized rape. It demands that we be forced to do things to make other people happy, as if other people are entitled to our bodies. If any one word can describe this, it's RAPE.

Here's an especially American kind of sex "reform". Instead of having a cumbersome sex draft, just have an adult entertainment licensing program that requires each adult film actress who wants a license to do a film every other year to be broadcast on a public tv channel, maybe C-SPAN X. And you can legalize prostitution and regulate it with a licensing program that has a pro bono quota. And the anti-discrimination law I mentioned above is an essential part of any American "reform"...

Sex and Right, Part 2

By their own standards, the Islamist governments are quite merciful. People aren't hanged for every sexual offence. They are only hanged for very serious crimes like prostitution, incest, homosexuality, and adultery. Other kinds of extra-marital sex are punished with some kind of judicial corporal punishment, which usually consists in beating a clothed woman or semi-nude man with a rod as big as a yardstick. "In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful..."

In the first post of this series I mentioned a 3-shelf hierarchy of prohibitions which (I failed to say) just about everybody uses. At the top, in shelf A, are the things that are so wrong that they should be punishable by law. In the middle, in shelf B, are things that shouldn't be punished by law, but which people have a right to disapprove of. At the bottom, in shelf C, are those things that are so benign that individuals should be free to choose them without fear of either public or private censure. The purpose of this series is to examine the ways people put different sexual acts in different shelves.

Last week I looked at one kind of religious argument, the teleological argument. This week I'll look at something much broader - religious argument in general.

Most of us stick religion in shelf B. Government shouldn't be in the business of telling us which religious beliefs and practices are correct and which ones aren't. Religion is a matter of God, not a matter of government, and so long as we're not hurting others we should be allowed to believe and practice as we see fit.

If government shouldn't be in the business of telling us which religious beliefs are correct and which ones aren't, then it shouldn't be basing its laws on religious belief. To do so would be to pick one religious belief as more valid than another.

Let's take idolatry as an example. If government started enforcing Biblical rules against worshipping idols, we would all think of that as too radical, for a couple reasons. For one thing, every Catholic church and Hindu temple would be burnt to the ground and all their priests would be stoned to death. For another, government would have picked one religious belief (that no physical thing should be an object of religious devotion) over another religious belief (that physical things may be used as objects of religious devotion if they are understood as only symbols of God), and in so doing would have made a "law regarding the establishment of religion".

Now what would happen if U.S. laws about sex were based on religious belief? I really don't know. Clinton and Lewinsky might have been executed for adultery. But if the law against adultery were based on the Bible, Clinton might have been congratulated and offered Lewinsky's hand in marriage. The bottom line is that more than a million different people have more than a million different ideas about what God says about this sexual act and that sexual act. If government were to pick the "sex between a married man and unmarried woman is not adultery since the Bible defines adultery only as sex between a married woman and a man who isn't her husband" view, then it would be establishing that religious view as more valid than the "any sex between a married man or woman and a woman or man not married to him or her is adultery" view.

If government shouldn't be assigning religious belief, then it shouldn't be citing religious belief, either. Blasphemy and idolatry fit into shelf B and not A; so should illicit sex, if the reason to condemn it is God's will. If you want to put a sexual act in shelf A and not B or C, then you have to find a better reason than "it's an abomination before God."

Before you spout off that I want rape legalized, let me assure you that I do believe some sexual acts should be punishable under the law. There are standards we already use to find which religious acts should go into shelf A and which religious acts should go into shelf B. We could use similar standards for sex. Jefferson hints at these standards when he says: "it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

Sex and Right, Part 1

I was a sophomore in college when I first heard the opinion that anal sex between a married man and woman is an abomination. Mind you, I was raised a fundamental Baptist. And I was a fundamentalist among fundamentalists. I was well versed in all the rules against sexual deviancy -- no porn, no pre-marital sex, no adultery, no raping, no entertainment of lascivious thoughts, no guys and girls sitting alone in a car, no looking at a woman below the neck, etc. Three things that were never preached against, though, were (1) masturbation, (2) contraception, and (3) anal sex between a married man and woman.

There seems to have been a three-shelf hierarchy of rules and prohibitions:

A. At the top were those things that should be preached against, condemned, and prohibited or regulated by law, like homicide, abortion, drug and alcohol abuse, psychoactive drugs in general, homosexuality, lewd behavior, etc.;

B. Next were those things that should be preached against and condemned, but not banned by law, like unBiblical religions (including those based on versions of the Bible that aren't faithful translations of the Textus Receptus), sending your kids to a public school, or lying naked around the house; and at the bottom,

C. Those things that should be left entirely up to the parents, like how many times a kid should be spanked for using foul language, whether the kids should be homeschooled or sent to a Christian school, whether it's appropriate to see musicals, whether there should be a TV in the home, whether the girls should be allowed to wear pajama pants around the house or whether they should wear ankle-length night gowns, and whether the parents may dance alone together behind closed doors.

In other words, as a fundamentalist, I had the liberal notion that some parts of my life are other people's business and other parts are "between me and God". I wasn't the only one who had this idea. After one particular man's wife had their eighth or ninth live birth (live birth, that is!) the pastor of the church congratulated them from the pulpit and plainly said that how many kids that couple wants is entirely their own business. (It is rumored that the man wanted twelve children, and from what I hear his wife has reached his goal.)

Of course, different people have different ideas of what things should go into which shelf. And they have different ways to go about placing things into the different shelves. This is why I'm writing this series -- to examine how people place different things into different shelves.

One way some people do it is teleology. They look at what an act tends to bring, and infer that it is meant to bring that, that it's designed for that function, and that performing that act in a way that goes against that purpose is an abuse of the act. What does sex bring about? Babies! And so, an essential purpose of sex is to make babies, and "any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin." According to the Catholic Church, married people are perfectly entitled to enjoy sex, so long as they're making babies while they're at it.

Since anal sex goes against the procreational purpose of sex (a woman can't get pregnant from it), it is a sexual perversion, and -- according to the Catholic Church -- belongs either in shelf A or B. Other sexual acts which go against the procreational purpose are masturbation and sex with contraception. Yes, according to the Catholic Church, using a condom, pill, or shot is sexually immoral, even if you're married.

The only passage of the Bible that comes anywhere close to mentioning the procreational purpose rule is the story of Onan. But God struck Onan dead, not because he released somewhere other than a woman's vagina, but because he rejected his God-given duty to beget children with his dead brother's widow.

The lesson to take home for now is this: if we want to use theological and scriptural reasons to place something in shelf A or B and not C, then we have to at least understand that there are different kinds of theological and scriptural reasons, and that more than one of them are wrong.