Are Same Sex Sexual Relationships Morally Permissible?

Are Same Sex Sexual Relationships Mor onlyy Permissible?Homo elicituality has been for much of recorded service domain history a controversial topic, and has experience even more than so with the advent of religion. Most, if non all religious systems vehemently oppose crotchet, so farther as to condemn homosexuals to everlasting torture in the fires of hell. However, judging the immorality of a deed simply by referring to divine sources is fallacious it runs contrary to open up modern in reciteectual systems of determining what military actions ar right and what actions are wrong. In the twentieth century world, reason and well thought out and expressed arguments entirely dictate the moral standing of deeds, and any other decision for that matter. The most appropriate method of arguing for or against an honest issue in the background of its applicability to society is to test it against well-established moral/ethical theories and chit-chat how it stacks up. Thus, in th is paper I shall argue that homosexuality doesnt contradict the major ethical theories, namely Utilitarianism, Kantian ethics (deontological perspective) followed by a re yettal of some common arguments against homosexuality.Utilitarianism is a fundamentally consequentialist position, claiming that actions should be judged by their consequences, specifically the level of familiar happiness they bring virtually. Hence, in accordance with utilitarianism, one should evaluate the level of general happiness an action brings about versus the amount of agony/suffering it causes. completely actions that increase the level of general happiness are morally permissible, and actions that bring about suffering are morally not permissible. To discuss homosexuality on utilitarian grounds, we must therefore first and foremost decide on its consequentialist standing i.e. where it stands on the utilitarian meter of increasing happiness and decreasing pain vs. increasing pain and decreasing pleas ure. People who feel that that is what pleases them practice homosexuality. They do so out of personal choice and after much self-deliberation. In fact, since heterosexualism is the norm, converting to homosexuality would be akin to being a masochist, i.e. choosing to indulge in that which causes us displeasure in addition to having to face heavy opposition from relatives and society, and those types of homosexuals are beyond the scope of my paper. Hence, if you favor to accept that no individual who prefers a heterosexual lifestyle would adopt a homosexual one, then you agree that those who chose a homosexual lifestyle do so because it is what pleases them. Thus, homosexuality brings about pleasure to homosexuals, and so long as these homosexuals do not attempt to impose their homosexuality on heterosexuals (by harassing or raping them), then the heterosexual population has no right to claim that homosexuality causes them displeasure. For them to claim so, the only means by which homosexuality would convey caused them displeasure is by disgusting them i.e. it is distasteful to their senses (since obviously it is not displeasuring them directly, it can only do so then indirectly by being distasteful). such an argument would be fallacious and of the form P1) both disgusting actions are immoral. P2) Homosexuality is disgusting. C) Homosexuality is immoral.While this argument is valid, it is unsound since the first premise is false. non all disgusting actions are immoral. For example, collecting the trash is disgusting, does that make it immoral? Homosexuality does not cause any pain or displeasure. Stigmatizing homosexuality on the grounds that it is disgusting is faulty as we argued above. (Common arguments such as homosexual rapists harm children and other victims, homosexuality brings about STDs and so on are contradictory since they apply to heterosexual acts in the same agency they apply to homosexual actions.) Thus, homosexuality does not, and for that matter cannot, harm homosexuals. All it can do is bring pleasure to the people who willfully practice it (because it is what brings them pleasure). On utilitarian grounds, homosexuality increases pleasure (although for a specific part of the population) and does not cause any displeasure or pain. It satisfies the criteria for a moral act as outlined by the Utilitarian ethical system.Kantian ethics is a moral philosophy that is not a consequentialist one. It judges acts not by what their consequences are, but by how they h sure-enough(a) under certain imperatives, and maintain the rational and free nature of humans. The principle of universizablity commits us to playacting only on those maxims that do not lead to a self-contradictory maxim, and overly, when universalized do not undermine the point of the action (class slides.) To test homosexuality against the monotonous imperative we begin by formulating our maxim. Note that a common misconception is to formulate the maxim P ractice homosexuality or some form of that. This is incorrect as this paper does not seek to argue that all people should be homosexuals, but rather that people that are homosexual are justified in acting homosexually. Let us suppose our maxim is Practice whichever sexual acts that bring you pleasure. Upon consideration, we see that this maxim brings about pleasure to whoever abides by it. Next we infer this principle to a universal law and see its consequences. Assume a world where people practice whichever sexual acts please them, of course, without imposing their sexual desires on others. Such a world would be rattling similar to the world in which we live in, which is remarkably pleasant to live in as hostile to one that is a very morally tight society. Moreover, we note that such a maxim, when generalized does not lead to a contradictory world. Furthermore, as we shall see next, homosexuality holds under scrutiny by the principle of humanity. The principle of humanity define s a rightful or moral deed as one that does not use any other person as a mere means, but as an end in themselves. As discussed above, homosexual people choose homosexual acts because it brings them pleasure. Thus, when homosexual people indulge in homosexual activities as consenting adults, they both choose to do so. Since they both chose to indulge in this, and so long as theyre both content with this, then neither is using the other as a mere means, but as an end in themselves. To argue otherwise would be similar to arguing against other heterosexual acts. Other cases where the people do not consent to indulging in the sex are similar to cases of heterosexual people who do not consent to the sex they are having.Finally, we shall consider some common arguments against homosexuality and offer attainable response to them in the context of the Utilitarian and Kantian moral theories. To begin with we shall consider the unnaturalness argument and its derivatives. A commonplace argumen t against homosexuality is that it is a ravish of the bodys organs. Such an argument violates the categorical imperative. To show this, let us attempt to generalize it into a universal law. We begin by formulating a maxim That action which violates the principal use of an organ is immoral. After generalizing this into a universal law, we run into a contradiction, as this yields a world we cannot live in. Consider for example applying this reign to any other body organ. The mouth is primarily for eating, and thus any other action apart from eating is immoral, and hence kissing, speaking, breathing from your mouth and so on would all become immoral. Thus the argument that homosexuality is immoral because it violates the principal use of an organ is not applicable since it violates the categorical imperative. Furthermore, if the misuse of the reproductive organs is immoral because it doesnt lead to procreation, where does that place religious figures that take vows of celibacy? The nonuse of an organ is just as immoral as the misuse of one, since the immorality is base on its failure to result in reproduction. Moreover, another derivative of the unnaturalness of homosexuality argument is that homosexuality is unnatural in that it is not found in nature, i.e. animals do not practice homosexuality. First and foremost, the premise on which this argument rests is invalid, as studies have shown that there are certain animals that practice homosexuality. Moreover, basing our moral standards on the practices of animals is an fabulously fragile argument as one can easily observe that many of human practices are not practiced by animals, such as brushing our teeth, showering and so on. In addition, many proponents of homosexuality argue that labeling homosexuality as not immoral would lead to the extinction of the human race. This argument is a gross exaggeration. An argument of the formP1) Homosexuals cannot reproduce.P2) If homosexuality were deemed not immoral the n many people would become homosexual.C) The human race will eventually become extinct.Such an argument is invalid, and unsound as the second premise is faulty. If homosexuality were not to be frowned upon it does not follow that many people would become homosexuals. No heterosexual person would willfully choose to become a homosexual simply because it is not immoral to do so. This is because one chooses to indulge in homosexuality because it is a sexual preference. Moreover, while not a fundamental argument against the extinction of the human race argument, it would be thoughtful to consider whether a slump in the rate of human reproduction would not actually be beneficial to the human society given the problems of overpopulation that we suffer from now.In conclusion, homosexuality cannot be deemed immoral as it holds under scrutiny by the major ethical systems Utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. It increases the happiness of the homosexual community without causing any pain or dis pleasure to the heterosexual community. This of course is contingent upon the homosexual people not imposing their sexuality on others i.e. rape or harassment. It should be duly note that even if some homosexuals raped or harassed other individuals, be him/her a homosexual or a heterosexual, this cannot be an argument against homosexuality per se as heterosexuals also rape and harass other heterosexuals. Moreover, it satisfies the categorical imperative in addition to the principle of humanity by not using anyone as a mere means. Homosexuals should not be discriminated against, as their sexual preference is their own personal choice, and solely their business. Given our rights to freedom of choice that we so proudly advocate and vehemently defend, we should extend this right to include the freedom of sexual preference.Sherwood Andersons Winesburg, Ohio Themes and EffectsSherwood Andersons Winesburg, Ohio Themes and EffectsTitle Discuss the implications of Sherwood Andersons origin to Winesburg, Ohio The Book of the Grotesque.Sherwood Andersons stigmatize-war novel of America in microcosm, Winesburg, Ohio, was first published in 1919. Undoubtedly, the timing of the collection of linked stories all set in Andersons parableal Winesburg ( comparable Hardys Wessex) influenced the critical approbation it received. It represents a dislocated people torn and shattered by war a wasteland such as T.S. Eliot had created in his 1922 poem of that name. Like Joyces Dubliners (1914) the sequence of write ups is connected by major divisions which Anderson sees as either representative of, or a threat to, modern life. He creates a presence from an absence, a connected representative vision from a fragmented centre. Most of the themes, and their implications, on which Anderson focuses are revealed in the introductory story to the collection, The Book of the Grotesque which was the original title of the collection. The fact that Anderson wanted to place such emphasis on t he grotesque is of primary vastness when attempting to locate the authors themes and their implications.For Anderson, like the writer in the first story, salvation from immersion into the grotesque comes not merely from the experience of hours of vision but also from the ability to incorporate them within life in order to re-vitalise it. Strikingly, theme and method interweave to create the consciousness of the visionary or surreal within the science of the espoused impossibility of completion. Anderson was determined that the real and the imagined should last out separate forces but also that both should maintain importance. Again, like the writer in his drool, he is constantly reminded of the intrusion upon each world by the other and the implications of thisThe distinction that he is making is not between truth and lie, or between fictionalisation and nonfiction, but between separate spheres of reality. Fancy for Anderson suggests imaginative and compassionate understandi ng of the beauty within the most grotesque of human actions.1The writer in the tale might survive becoming a grotesque but he also fails to complete his writing and the immense implication of this is that even when the grotesque is avoided, it appears infallible that the intrusions of reality cause humanitys plans to fail just as they are continuously altered by social, historical and political events. In a coun strain so recently ravaged by war and about to undergo radical social upheaval, the implications of this are clear. Anderson chooses to make this implicit connection by citing the example of a man whose plans to have a carpenter alter his cognise irrevocably change his lifeThe writer, an old man with a snowy mustache, had some difficulty in getting into bed. The windows of the house in which he lived were high and he wanted to look at the trees when he awoke in the morning. A carpenter came to fix the bed so that it would be on a level with the window. (p. 1).The full imp ortance of this opening statement, with its beautifully simple syntax, does not polish the reader until much later in the story, perhaps not even until the completion of the reading of the stories as a whole. With the benefit of hindsight, the reader sees that Andersons theme is manifest from the first the old man, physically impeded, desires to see further, to see the trees when he awoke in the morning, yet, what the subliminal reading invokes is that the desire to see beyond what we realise is not always present in our intentions indeed, we may not even be aware of them. The awakening comes not with the morning but with the recognition of the interiorisation of longings influencing the human directive but being constantly obscured. Thus, though the carpenter does indeed come to fix the bed he does a lot more besides, in which the old man plays no directive part for a time the two men talked of the raising of the bed and then they talked of other things (p. 1). The other things, a re what initiate the directive of the tale, as, Anderson seems to imply, they do with life, serendipity playing more of a role than we realize in our livesSherwood Anderson was and still is a man of his times. His life and his rush are a pictorial history of the unique mood of the modern America which produced them and made them possible.2.We are told that the carpenter had been a soldier in the civic War (p. 1) and this immediately gifts the narrative with a textual historicity which deepens its resonance (the Civil War is also referred to in another of the tales, Godliness Part 1). Many of Andersons readers, after all, were within living memory of the war that split the American nation and again, its profound recognition of the nature of war, so fresh in the minds of those of the post World War era, to inflict pain beyond the immediate is recognized as significantThe carpenter had once been a prisoner in Andersonville prison and had lost a brother. The brother had died of starv ation, and whenever the carpenter got upon that subject he cried. (p. 1)Again, the simplicity inestimably aids the poignancy of the telling Anderson has no need to dwell upon the melancholy, it is self-evident. Moreover, the idea that the intermediate man, which the carpenter represents, has personal experience of the pain of loss in a past which continues to intrude upon the present he cannot escape. Although Anderson states clearly that the weeping old man with the cigar in his mouth was ludicrous (p. 2), avoiding the faux sentimentality of other contemporary writers, nevertheless, the writers plans are widely changed by him and the carpenter alters the bed his own way (p. 2). The implication is not just that our plans are changed by present and future events but also that the past is never merely a memory but a constantly present inhabitant of life, a reality beyond our reach to restrict or deny, and stamped upon much of our contemporary fiction3. Anderson has already laid the f oundation of the interchanging but ostensibly rigid boundaries of the actual and the imagined which are to cause perpetual interplay within the stories and in some sense all the characters and events are connected with himselfSherwood Anderson is to be grouped among the most subjective of writers. He has created heroes with many different names but each of them is the same man a projection in one direction or another of Anderson himself.4.Anderson begins now to build on these implications by obscuring lifes most basic and imposing boundary, death, by means of the old mans imaginative sensibility. The carpenter has been instrumental in this, since he has brought into the narrative a death that is real, remembered and imagined his memory is the conduit for this renewing of time and of feeling. The irony is that the author is haunted by death, yet It did not alarm him (p.2 ). Death is inverted as a presence which revitalises the old man as a special thing and not easily explained (p .2). Moreover, something inside him was altogether young (p.2) and extraordinarily that something is a woman, young. Anderson writes of this as like a pregnancy but what he gives birth to is an idea of the grotesques of his previous life and relationships. Significantly, the writer switches subtly to address the reader more directly here, emphasising the idea thatIt is absurd, you see, to try to tell what was inside the old writer as he lay on his high bed and listened to the fluttering of his heart. The thing to get at is what the writer, or the young thing within the writer, was thinking about. (p. 2)The ambivalent sexuality of the image is one of many which disturbed careful readers of the time, back in 1919 the book was talked about only in whispers5.. Yet, its implications for authorship are important since an author is perpetually giving birth and the idea of being both mother and father of his creations informs not just the sexual imagery of this story but also of others in t he sequence, such as Hands where the protagonist is accused of molestation Anderson sensed a mystery in human sexuality that defies an easy reduction6. This represents a significant challenge to contemporary social attitudes towards sexuality, as women were accorded status principally allied to that of their male partners and sexual preferences were predisposed indisputably towards the heterosexual. As is typical of Anderson, he refuses to adopt or adhere to the rigidity of a society so recently destroyed and about to undergo a momentous period in its history from which it would not emerged unscathed or unchanged. By anticipating and pre-empting these changes, Anderson places his writing ahead of its time both in style and socio-political context.The old man in the tale now proceeds to invite into his consciousness the images of past passions, a theme he also alludes to in another of the stories, Mother. The reader is told that the old man has known people in a peculiar intimate w ay different from the way in which you and I know people (p. 3) and subsequently that the writer had a dream that was not a dream (p. 3) this dream is the key to the subliminal implications of the tale as it is the precursor of the writing which does and does not take placeYou see the interest in all this lies in the figures that went before the eyes of the writer. They were all grotesques. All of the men and women the writer had ever known had become grotesques. (p. 3).The introduction of the grotesques, not all horrible, is a pivotal moment in the tale, just as all the grotesques lives will be turned by such a moment in time, and the old man/writers perception of this is, like the reactions of the grotesques, crucial in their lives. In many ways, it is less significant that the book is not published than that it has been seen by the author, who is gripped by one central thought that is very strange and has always remained with him, facilitating, we are encouraged to believe, the writing of his own bookThe old man had listed hundreds of the truths in his book. I will not try to tell you of all of them. There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful. (p. 4)Hence, the imagined and the real feed one another but remain separate, for truths are not the same as facts and it was the truths that made the people grotesques (p. 5). Moreover, Anderson lays bare, here, the principal informatives of his sequenceThe old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood. (p. 5)Anderson concludes his tale by making brief reference to the carpenter, one of what are called the very common people (p. 5) yet contradicting this description by making him extraordinary as the closest thing to what is understandable and lovable of all the grotesques in the writers book. (p. 5)Certainly, Sherwood Andersons Winesburg, Ohio set in the critical decade which followed the world war7 can be seen as a groundbreaking novel, both in structure and content and the failure of Andersons heterosexual relationships has often been cited as the reason for the grotesque nature of several(prenominal) of Winesburgs inhabitants8. The stories confront issues that were to inform American writing and the socio-political post-war infrastructure as well as the realization of currentist and post-Modernist fiction. A writer ahead of his time, Anderson is clearly shaped by the era in which he lived and was thus representative of the past, present and future as is the sequence of stories in his seminal novel of the troubled lives of the small-town individuals9.Sources1Adams, Timothy Dow, cogent Lies in Mod ern American Autobiography, (Chapel Hill, NC University of North Carolina Press, 1990), p. 44.2Hatcher, Harlan, Creating the Modern American Novel, (New York Hatcher, Farrar Rinehart, 1935), P. 155.3 Hatcher, Harlan, Creating the Modern American Novel, (New York Hatcher, Farrar Rinehart, 1935), P. 157.4Loggins, Vernon, I Hear America Literature in the United States since 1900, (New York Biblo and Tannen, 1967), p. 151.5Loggins, Vernon, I Hear America Literature in the United States since 1900, (New York Biblo and Tannen, 1967), p. 157.6 Ellis, James, Sherwood Andersons Fear of Sexuality Horses, Men, and Homosexuality, Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 30, 1993 (Michigan Gale Group).7 Van Doren, Carl, The American Novel, 1789-1939, (New York Macmillan, 1940), p. 334.8 Whalan, Mark, Dreams of Manhood Narrative, Gender, and History in Winesburg, Ohio, Studies in American Fiction, Vol 30, 2002 (Boston Northeastern University).9 Thomas, F. 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