FIRST LET ME POINT THAT WHILE I DO NOT THINK YOUR ARGUMENTS WILL PREVAIL YOU ARE THE FIRST PERSON SO FAR IN THIS THREAD THAT PRESENTED A CHALLENGING ARGUMENT FOR ME TO CONSIDER.
Thanks. But next time, please do not use caps and bold front. In internet this conveys shouting.
I will topically arrange your replies. But this is your main argument quoted here below
1. However the rightness of wrongness of eating red meat has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of homosexual behavior. Homosexuality is not good because red meat is bad and homosexuality is not bad because eating red meat is good.
1. The argument by proxy - The rightness or wrongness of any behavior has no connection what so ever with any other behavior. Homosexuality is not moral or immoral in connection to whether some other behavior is right or wrong, but even if it was related your standard would make all behaviors moral or all behaviors immoral.
I used to work in various federal court rooms around the nation and many times I read texts out of their law libraries and doing so quickly shows that legality is very very specific. For example the benefits of a behavior are different, the punishments are different, and the costs are different even between actions that are generally similar. Also if you cut my arm off in an alley somewhere that is illegal but a doctor cutting my arm of in a hospital is legal. So it is not the type of action that is determinative but all manner of specifics involved.
Now,
I completely disagree, that each morally relevant situation is so so specific that it is isolated from any other morally relevant situation. In fact, I consider morality to be just the opposite.
There are fundamental general principles in the realm of morality (just as there are in the realm of physics or the realm of economics) which can be applied in a consistent, logical, rational and empirical manner in the each and every specific case. Consider the case of civil engineering. Every bridge, skyscraper or house is different from each other...but in each and every one of them, the universal laws of solid mechanics, Newtonian mechanics and structural mechanics are applied consistently and rationally so that robust structures tuned to the needs of that specific condition and that specific material and function. So it is in the case of morality. There are certain universal moral principles that applies everywhere which connects every moral application to every other in one logically consistent net, and then there is the case of moral engineering where we apply these principles for the needs of the specific situation in that specific time and space.
Consider the simple case of moral theory flowing logically from a simple rule:-
1) An individual person (rather than the whole community) is the unit of moral concern.
2) One is immoral to willfully act in such a manner so as to cause avoidable suffering to others.
Given the above
principle one can ask the
specific ways in which avoidable suffering can be
willfully caused and penalties determined based on the
extent of harm caused and the
amount of willfulness involved. I can find no moral question that does not basically boil down to this.
Forms of avoidable suffering includes willful endangerment of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness/property of others without their consent.
That is it. Now, nowhere here do I see anything that makes
consensual self-risk taking behavior for one's own pursuit of happiness something of moral concern. It never is, in fact outlawing behaviors that individuals feel will increase their happiness, even if risky is
an infringement on personal liberty, and is in itself an immoral law. That is why punching another without their consent can land you in prison, but doing the same with their consent (as in boxing) can earn you money.
Thus I see what you fail to see. All these actions form a single coherent category. Eating red meat, drinking alcohol, boxing, mountaineering, white water rafting, homosexual sex are all, at best,
examples of individuals engaging in behavior that has some risk to his/her own life but which they believe are important for their own pursuit of happiness. There is no moral foundation based on which one can infringe on liberty to make such consensual behavior one engages in to pursue one's own happiness illegal.
2. All manner of laws against certain behaviors because they cause harm exist despite other harmful behaviors being lawful.
3. For example it is legal to drink alcohol, but illegal to use cocaine.
Correct.
Which is irrational. One should
tax addictive substances to recoup costs associated with healthcare burdens usage of such substances cause,
not ban their consensual use. That is a socialist idea inimical to liberty.
This is an argument for making drugs legal (and lots of activism going on around this), and not making alcohol illegal.
4. So every behavior should be and most are considered in a vacuum.
It is not. There are some cases where a mix of individualistic and socialistic ideas have created
rationally inconsistent systems in USA in the early 20th century. (Remember alcohol getting banned and then made legal again? Drugs are going the same way) But those days are gone. US overall has always chosen individual freedom and liberty over greater good and is doing so with increasing pace recently.
But you are asking for a rationally consistent, logical and empirically adequate moral theory based on which secular concepts of right and wrong can be determined. I just provided you with one, which many people in the West will agree upon. Why are you falling back to messy and sub-rational ways in which laws are actually made? At least US and Western democracies follow a partially rational system, if we lived in some other country (Saudi Arabia), would you fall back on those laws to justify your moral arguments?
5. Also these behaviors are not equivalent. 4% of the population creates 60% of new aids cases and massive damages and costs in countless categories are connected with homosexual behavior. However the 95% of us that eat red meat produce less than 95% of new cholesterol problems for example. So the average damage caused by the average instance of these behaviors is far more severe for homosexuality than eating red meat.
Please provide
data to demonstrate your case that
the health-care burden of eating red meat is greater (and by how much
) than the health-care burden of homosexual behavior. Then provide a moral argument showing that an action that increases health-risks to person who voluntarily wishes to engage in it for his/her pursuit of happiness should be made immoral. I am
still waiting for that argument.
6. It is also obvious that we are adapted or created to eat red mean, but we are not adapted or created to perform homosexual acts. There are many reasons why eating red meat even if it causes damage may be justified that are not true for homosexuality.
Absurd. We are only adapted to eat fruits as far as I can see, everything else we need to
cook and cannot eat raw. We cannot be adapted for something we need
technology to use. Evolutionary adaptations has no relevance to morality whatsoever. If you are going to hew that line, present an argument for it.
7. Lastly, if you do not see how a behavior practiced by 4% of us produces 60% of new aids cases, a much lower life span for homosexuals, higher rates of adultery, higher rates of sexual assaults, much higher rates of promiscuity, and higher rates of unsafe sex then there exists no common ground by which we can resolve anything. Using your standards either nothing would be immoral or everything would be.
As far as I can see, HIV is (in US and developed world) a
minor disease, that is no longer life threatening, not virulent and both preventable and treatable. In the litany of diseases that produce health burdens on society and concern for me, it does not even enter the top 20 in my list (half of which are various types of cancer, then flu, Alzheimer, heart and auto-immune diseases etc.).
So, no, I am not even remotely concerned about the minuscule costs of HIV treatments in the general healthcare costs of US. If you want to argue otherwise (that HIV is somehow an important and growing spending category),
please show the data. Here is mine
https://bea.gov/scb/pdf/2016/3 Marc...th_care_expenditures_by_medical_condition.pdf
I do not see HIV anywhere because it is
insignificant.
How can there be adultery without marriage???
People can have sex with as many partners consensually as one wants. Falls under individual liberty for pursuit of happiness. Not even remotely a moral concern.
Last I checked sexual assault was illegal. Are you talking about assault on homosexuals (as victims) or assault by homosexuals?
Provide data and do not say that is not a relevant difference?
I have already provided my standards. They agree quite well with ethical liberalism, Buddhism and many strands of Hinduism. Repeating:-
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1) An individual person (rather than the whole community) is the unit of moral concern.
2) One is immoral to willfully act in such a manner so as to cause avoidable suffering to others.
3) Forms of avoidable suffering includes willful endangerment of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness/property of others without their consent.
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Thus:-
Provide a moral argument showing that an action that increases self health-risks to a person who voluntarily wishes to engage in it for his/her pursuit of happiness should be made immoral. I am still waiting for that argument.
No, but I understand the problem with your argument. Deprivation without consent or sufficient justification is the primary foundation of law.
No it is not. Its the
penalty when
you deprive or endanger
another's rights. Without such a justification, the laws themselves become immoral.
I do not see anything else you posted is relevant to my responses. So I am not quoting them. In summary:-
1) I have provided a single rationally consistent moral framework that is compatible with secular and many religious systems I know and have shown how right/wrong, moral/immoral can be deduced from it.
2) I have asserted that this framework is followed by many, if not most Western democracies which are based on individuals as units of morality (and not socialist collectives).
3) I have shown that there is not rational way one can oppose homosexuality in such systems by explicitly showing its kinship with a vast category of individual behaviors protected under liberty and pursuit of happiness rights.
4) I have shown how inadequate your data and arguments have been to show homosexual activities add any undue burden (health-care or otherwise) on society over and above other generic behaviors of the same category.
I will be off for an extended holiday. But will await your reply. Thank you. Merry Christmas.
Those who don't know it or deny it not will not accept it. Oh well... 
