Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

I disagree with the statements, but support the right to state them

Steven clued me into this in a few of his posts:

The controversial post that's getting quite a response: An Economic Case Against Homosexuality

One response, calling for the conservative government information and political science librarian at Purdue University to be fired: Purdue students protest librarian's blog post

Another, rebutting the oeconomic arguments as made: In response to the "Economic case against homosexuality"

I do not think a faculty member should be fired over free speech written on a personal web log, as some students are requesting. Bert Chapman is certainly allowed his beliefs, and nothing he says would constitute hate speech or incitement to hate, per se. But his arguments are, well, flawed, and the FGI rebuttal outlines this pretty well. There's a big assumption that HIV is pretty much the result of rape and 'morally aberrant' sexual practices (it's easy to condemn practices as 'morally aberrant' due to religious definition, but since morals do vary from culture to culture, I'm not sure you can blame a global crisis on such).

In my opinion, Mr Chapman is taking a belief that is primarily religious based on his interpretation of dogma and is trying to legitimise it by making it seem to make good oeconomic sense. Such an argument may win over those who don't know how to think, the type of person who may be swayed because something 'sounds good' (primarily those who would agree with him on religious grounds in the first place), but the numbers do not support it, so it is doomed to failure. At least when you argue from religious belief you rely on statements that may or may not be argued against, depending on how they are stated. (You can't, for example, logically argue with a statement that starts with 'I believe...' because that is an opinion.) When you argue oeconomics, the numbers really must support the case--and these don't.

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