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[Benevolence]

Just for completion, there is also the argument that even if something is wrong, it could be acceptable not to try "fixing" it if no solution exists that is not worse than the perceived problem.

Even if, for the sake of argument, you accept the premise that homosexuality is morally wrong (And therefore there may be an obligation to curb and/or stop it), my impression is that the majority of any attempts to "solve" or "cure" it have typically been rather terrible. To put things lightly. Though I will admit I have not really researched this much at all.

[Leafsnail]

A] Premise: Some fraction of the human population has a natural tendency to be homosexual.
B] Premise: Being homosexual is a moral wrong.
C] Conclusion: From A and B, we know that we should attempt to curb the natural tendency towards homosexuality.
D] Premise: It is difficult to attempt to curb the natural tendency towards homosexuality.
E] Conclusion: From C and D, we know that it is acceptable not to attempt to curb the natural tendency towards homosexuality.

Which obviously falls appart unless you assume an additional premise of "It is acceptable to fail to do things that are proscribed morality if they are difficult to do." which, I rather doubt that many people would be willing to accept as a formal premise in their ethical system.

It was more that D was meant to invalidate conclusion C.  So, if I rephrase my additional premise to be clearer, and add an extra one which I suppose is necessary...

A] Premise: Some fraction of the human population has a natural tendency to be homosexual.
B] Premise: Being homosexual is a moral wrong.
C] Premise: It is virtually impossible to curb the natural tendency towards homosexuality.
D] Premise: Attempting to curb the natural tendancy towards homosexuality causes harm/ is expensive.
E] Subconclusion: From A, B, C and D we know that the harm caused by attempting to curb the tendancy towards homosexuality outweighs the moral benefits of attempting to curb homosexuality.
F] Conclusion: From E, we know that it is acceptable not to attempt to curb the natural tendency towards homosexuality.


...Y'know, I'd quite like to have a go at structuring arguments more clearly like this.  It'd be nice to have everyone being clear about exactly what they're saying, and exactly what part of someone else's argument they have a problem with.  I guess you could also have premise-evidence-explanation (ie you present evidence to support a premise, and explain why it backs up your premise.  Someone can find fault with the evidence (if it's seen as unreliable) the explanation (if the evidence does not adequately support the premise) or the premise itself (if the evidence is reliable and the link to the premise is sound but is not seen as strong/ wide ranging enough to support it to a reasonable degree).

[Grek]

E does not follow in from those premises; at no point is are the costs and benefits of attempting to curb homosexuality and premitting homosexuality defined in the argument. It could well be that the costs do not outweigh the benefits. Likewise, F does not follow from E, even if you do accept E; it discounts the possibility that we should attempt prevent moral wrongs even if there the are significant costs for doing so. If you want to make this sort of argument, you'd need to assert a formalization similar to those used for utilitarianism as part of your premises, as follows:

Z] Premise: The correct moral action is the one which generates the greatest expected utility, as measured in utils.
Y] Premise: Homosexuality has an expected utility of -50 utils per incident of homosexuality.
X] Conclusion: From Z and X, it follows that we should attempt to decrease the incidence of homosexuality.
W] Premise: Method 1 for decreasing the incidence of homosexuality has a cost of -100 utils per incident of homosexuality prevented.
V] Conclusion: From W and Y, it follows that using method 1 has a net utility of -50 utils over not using method 1.
U] Conclusion: From V and Z, it follows that the correct moral action is not to use method 1 to decrease the incidence of homosexuality.

Note: Pretty much everything in this post above the line below is induction from the premises above. It does not represent my viewpoints. At all. I personally would be shocked and dismayed if someone made this argument in real life.
I personally prefer probabilistic logic, ie.

A] Premise(.98): The sky is not cloudy.
B] Premise(.5): If the sky is not cloudy, it will fail to rain within the next 12 hours.
C] Conclusion(.49): From A and B, it follows that it will fail to rain within the next 12 hours.
D] Conclusion(.49): From A and ~B, it follows that it will not fail to rain within the next 12 hours.
E] Conclusion(1): From C and D, it follows that we have no reason to believe that it will rain within the next 12 hours over believing that it will not rain within the next 12 hours.

to the premise-evidence-explanation system described, as it is even more precise, even when reasoning about uncertain conditions. Another good practice is to make the text of a premise that is likely to be controversial a link to the evidence you're using to support it, or even to use citation markers like so:

A] Premise(.99999999): I am not a gorilla. [1][2][3]

where [1] links to a picture of me, [2] links to a description of what a gorilla looks like and [3] links to an accredited biologist's sworn testimony that I am most definately not a gorilla.

[Korbac]

Grek, what conclusions do you wish us to draw about you not likely to be a gorilla? 

[Angle]

How often do people actually use logic like that? I've never seen it used, but it seems liker it would be of such utility...

[ggamer]

Hell if we want to point out thing that should make progressive cringe, I think we'll loose a lot of time if we try to convince ultra religious southern "conservative" to cringe with us.

And this is why I cannot win an argument on these forums. No matter what I say, it will always be "Oh, GGamer is a conservative and southern, so I am going to apply these stereotypes to him and say he said these things."

That being said, I am going to get as far away from this thread as possible.

[Leafsnail]

And this is why I cannot win an argument on these forums. No matter what I say, it will always be "Oh, GGamer is a conservative and southern, so I am going to apply these stereotypes to him and say he said these things."

...So were you making fun of conservatives or not?

First, I was making fun of conservatives on this post.

And I can't find any instances where someone misattributed something to your joking conservative persona.

[Bauglir]

Hell if we want to point out thing that should make progressive cringe, I think we'll loose a lot of time if we try to convince ultra religious southern "conservative" to cringe with us.

And this is why I cannot win an argument on these forums. No matter what I say, it will always be "Oh, GGamer is a conservative and southern, so I am going to apply these stereotypes to him and say he said these things."

That being said, I am going to get as far away from this thread as possible.

I apologize if this happens, because it shouldn't. Still, maybe it's my own bias blinding me to privilege, but I don't think I saw people do that in this thread so much. That said, there were instances of jackass behavior like generalizing the American South as a blindly (key word there, by the way) conservative, religious area where nobody thinks. And there was some jumping on religion as if the very concept were antagonistic to rational thought, although that wasn't as common (possibly because there's another thread for it). Those're positions I don't think I endorse, if that's any consolation to you, although I do get the feeling that a lot of it after you started posting was reactionary.

That doesn't make it right, but it's a lot easier to understand why somebody might go, "Those damn fundie southerners" when somebody is posting things like your first post here, which explicitly drew connections between being conservative, southern, and religious and being the bigoted jackass you were pretending to be. You aren't helping your case by being a douche (even in jest) and, in the process, insisting that you act that way because of the principles you want to defend. You shouldn't have to help your case, yes, but you should probably stray away from actively hurting it.

We can have a reasonable discussion, and I (at least; I can't speak for other posters) promise not to attack your belief in religion or anything as part of arguing against you. I may argue that your religious beliefs are irrelevant, or that they're not sufficient for denying rights to others, or that the beliefs you claim to have (such as in the truth of the Word of God as set forth in the Bible) disagree with the positions you're putting forth, and so on, but I'm not going to try and convince you that God doesn't exist, or that you ought not follow the precepts of Christianity in your own life, or otherwise insist that the fundamental tenets of your life are worthless. But first I need to know what it is you actually believe. I honestly can't tell, here, and possibly some of the fault for that lies with me. But a clear statement could really help, and hey, maybe we actually do believe the same things and all the disagreements I have were with the trolling.

EDIT: That is, if you're still reading this. I'm pretty sure there's a thread about this specific argument that we might want to necro, instead of continuing to derail Vector's, too. But anyway.

[Vector]

How often do people actually use logic like that? I've never seen it used, but it seems liker it would be of such utility...

... Almost constantly, or so I believe.  Me, anyway, though I tend to do the simple wetware version rather than the explicit numbers version.  I hear this is somewhat unusual, however.  Might just be my temperament.

Look up cost-benefit analysis and game theory =)

[Phmcw]

And this is why I cannot win an argument on these forums. No matter what I say, it will always be "Oh, GGamer is a conservative and southern, so I am going to apply these stereotypes to him and say he said these things."

Are you kidding me? The reason I'm applying these stereotypes is because of your posts. "Racism is no big deal these days, black people use it as an excuse" "lewd gays just should move to California to marry",... then you pretend it was a "joke", and you don't explain how your belief are different of those expressed first. And now you're posing as the victim ?

[alway]

Bayesian Network is the official name for that sort of reasoning. It is essentially applying Bayesian Reasoning to cause-effect relationships. It's quite popular for AI of all varieties due to the ability to represent cause-effect chains, both learn and have pre-programmed static 'known' relations, will work even with partial information, all while being more transparent in its inner workings than competing methods.

@phmcw: That discussion ended last night; it's best to just leave it lie.

[Criptfeind]

If by ridiculous you mean "why are we still arguing with him?", I can understand.

Tooo…. A certain point. Yes that is part of what I meant.

Topical economic nonsense. If the guys is rich, or enough rich guys have an agenda, they could use it as Racist propaganda.
I'd rather not have to burn movies theaters, please keep the law that way.

If it is racist propaganda, then it is bad. And not this issue. At all.


Vector: You want to stop? That’s fine. But, if you bring it up again, I will not ignore it. Simply not going to happen.

Hm... is it?  I'd assume incapacitate rape would be a variant of rape, not a separate charge, but I guess it's possible.

Hum. I must have made myself unclear. And I think I understand. I am sorry. What I mean is that it is put under that category, with the other categories being forcible rape and drug rape. I have no idea on any legal distinctions.

acerbic

That's going to be the word of the day.

[Aqizzar]

Spoiler: Logical deconstruction of permissions. (click to show/hide)

If we take a look at an invalid argument in favour of permitting homosexuality:

F] Premise: Some fraction of the human population has a natural tendency to be homosexual.
G] Conclusion: It is wrong to try to change people who are homosexual into being heterosexual.

then your disagreement would be valid. Or, at least it would, if I were making this argument, instead of disagreeing with the validity of premise B in the first argument. My line of argument is roughly as follows:

X] Premise: Homosexuality is NOT a moral wrong.
Y] Premise: It acceptable to forbid an action if and only if it is a moral wrong to do so.
Z] Conclusion: From X and Y, we know that it is NOT acceptable to forbid homosexuality.

which, as you can see, contains no claims about if it is natural or not to be homosexual. That fact is irrelevant to the question of if it is acceptable to be homosexual or not.

I know I'm going to regret this, but do know that I'm only asking this for the sake of logical rigor.  Premise X - Homosexuality is not a moral wrong.  What is the logical underpinning of that?

It's easy enough to find an unsound basis to dismiss any particular argument which takes Homosexuality as morally wrong in its underpinnings, but I've rarely heard it expressed the other way around.  I know the obvious rebuttal is that it falls to the accuser of immorality to explain it, but I don't think it's entirely safe to count morality as something that's given until proven otherwise.  Call it assumption of amorality until proven one way or the other.  If the first thing that comes to mind is that homosexual people were born that way and can't be called immoral for it, well, not only does that bring up Virex's point that it's the same argument that can't be used to justify rape or what have you, but just proving something is not immoral doesn't really say that it's inherently moral either.

[Criptfeind]

Of course, why do all actions have to be morally correct. It seems to me that most actions, on the minor scale, are amoral.

So, if being homosexual was morally right, one could assume that you would go to purgatory at lest for being heterosexual. In a religious sense.

[Vector]

Vector: You want to stop? That’s fine. But, if you bring it up again, I will not ignore it. Simply not going to happen.

Fine.  You know what?  We can argue through it once here, too.  Make your argument.

Premise X - Homosexuality is not a moral wrong.  What is the logical underpinning of that?

Who does it hurt?  What damage does it do to the environment?  What possibilities does it remove from the earth?

Those are, at the very least, the underpinnings of my sense of morality.  Homosexuality does not meet any of my criteria for a moral wrong.  Therefore it is not immoral.

There's no problem with questioning, by the way.  Questioning is great.