Gay Rights

No because you do have the (moral?) right to reasonable pursuit of happiness. Your actions would be harming my reasonable pursuit of happiness.
If to pursue happiness you feel you are entitled to use my private property, its not "reasonable".

 

If you can say that people only have the right to pursue happiness and not to happiness itself, then I don't see why the same shouldn't apply to physical health. In other words, I don't see why it also wouldn't be the case that people only have the right to pursue physical health and not to physical health itself.

Another issue is that if making someone magically depressed counts as harming their right to pursue happiness, I don't see why making them depressed in other ways wouldn't also count as the same.

Anyway, I doubt that I'll be carrying this on with you anymore. You have continuously responded to only tiny fragments of my posts, neglecting to give any response or answer to very relevant, significant, and pressing questions. I don't see how a reasonable debate can be continued like this.

 

If you get depressed over not being able to use my stuff you are the most entitled person in the world.
You have no right to my property, services, or sympathy. Your entire argument is based off the assumption that gay people have eggshell skulls. Dealing with terrible people is something everyone has to do every day, we shouldn't be pandering to gay people and lowering societies expectations for there behavior. If you are gay, you don't get special victim privileges just because shmucko tim in the middle of texas doesn't want you eating at his pizza shop.

--- Double Post Merged, May 20, 2017, Original Post Date: May 20, 2017 ---

Because physical health isn't subjective.

I could say my right to happiness is having millions of dollars, so I have a right to millions of dollars right?
You have the right to physical health because its objective and external. Your happiness ultimately comes down to you. You decide what you want in life and you decide how to get it.

 

Lol, my arguments isn't based on the assumption that gay people have eggshell skulls. I have already repeated this a number of time, but I am not and have not been saying that legalizing this specifically would in fact be harmful. For the longest time now I have simply been arguing that mental harm is relevant.

Sure, what makes someone happy or not is subjective, but we can still objectively determine whether or not someone is happy and what their subjective desires are. If physical health is the main thing that matters, humans are essentially on the same level as plants except for the fact that they can pursue happiness, but the right to pursue happiness seems to come after physical health. Is it wrong to kill a plant?

You don't have a right to a million dollars because we can't give anyone and everyone whatever they want. We have to balance things out to try to make everyone happy.

 

No we don't. It is your job to make yourself happy. You have personal responsibility in your life. I don't owe you anything, if you want happiness, its not my job to help you in any way. This is the issue I have with the mainstream left, you guys (and I know i'm generalizing here) don't think people have any individual responsibility.

 

So stealing and sexual harassment are officially fine in your book?

Regardless, for the sake of the argument, let us say that everything that negatively affects someone mentally is perfectly okay. There's still an inconsistency in the fact that you advocate against physical harm. If mentally harming someone isn't bad, then I don't see why physically harming someone would be. Furthermore, as I have already said (which you ignored, thank you) if physical harm is bad in and of itself, then killing a plant is wrong.

(Side note: I'm not arguing that we're obligated to go out and help everyone improve their lives, just that mental health is relevant in the same way as physical health.)

Firstly, I never said that people have no individual responsibility and I have no idea where you would've gotten this from. I think that people have responsibility to both themselves and others. Secondly, the only thing that I think that the argument that I've been making and the mainstream left have in common is that both consider mental harm/health, which isn't even a "leftist" stance in the first place.

 

Umm, it is the case. People aren't entitled to perfect physical health; if they don't work for it they can't have it. The same goes for happiness; I am not obligated to make you happy in any way, shape or form. You have to earn it for yourself.

You honestly can't see the difference between the physical and the mental?

Let me put it plainly: It's really easy to lie about whether someone harmed you mentally, and it's almost completely subjective. It's really easy to prove that someone harmed you physically, and it's almost completely objective.

This is true, but you are responsible for looking out for your mental health the same way you are your physical health. If something goes wrong and you get depresses or something like that it's on you to get yourself help, not me.

 

Its the difference between aggressive action and passive action. If I go out and harm you, (mentally or otherwise) its wrong. If I refuse to do something (that i'm not otherwise obligated to do) Its within my rights and out of your rights to make me provide you whatever that something is.

Then why stop at making customers entitled to the restaurants stuff? If you think this is our obligation then why not raise the taxes and give everyone a basic minimum income? Why not make restaurants provide free food to the poor?

If the governments making me serve certain types of people, my freedom is being infringed upon. Me no serving someone infringes nobodies freedom.

 

I haven't been saying that we're obligated to attempt to supply people with perfect physical or mental health, just that mental health and harm are things that we need to be concerned with.

Whether or not someone is mentally harmed is not subjective at all. It might be difficult to determine whether or not someone is in a good mental state, but it's an objective matter. If I make a claim about whether or not someone is happy or mentally healthy, this is an objective claim that is either true of false.

Are you just trying to point out a difference or are you claiming that mental harm need not be a moral concern?

Is this something that you just thought of? If so, that's perfectly fine; it's commendable to rethink things. If not, this is something that you probably should've said a long time ago. While it's contradictory with your claims that mentally harming someone isn't bad, I think that this seems like a more consistent stance.

I think, however, that there are still issues with this stance. If a doctor refuses to serve a patient and said patient dies, this is passive harm, yet I don't think that it's moral or that it should be legal.

My stance can be summarized as: A moral act is one that produces the most good. Laws should be based on morality and should thus be based on what does the most amount of good. To put it simply, a law should be legal if an only if having it in place produces more good than harm. If the contrary is true, said law shouldn't be a law.

When it comes to things like taxes and minimum wage, I really do not know what the idea situation is and I'm not going to pretend to. When it comes to restaurants providing to the poor, I really don't think that this seems like a good idea. Not only would restaurant owners be obligated to do more work and spend more money, thus being unhappy and less likely to own restaurants in the first place, but they'd also act as enablers to poor people, giving them free food and allowing them to get by without trying to improve their situations. Freedom is very important in many ways and should be legally protected because people are happier and better off when they are free. If freedom was taken away, people would be worse off, so the pros of legally protecting many freedoms outweigh the cons. If, however, protecting a freedom causes more harm than good, this freedom shouldn't be protected.

 

When did I say mentally harming someone is de facto not bad?

Your stance is a good way to guide behavior, but not a good way to guide government. Wouldn't banning Nazi speech produce more good than bad? It probably would, but because governments are run by people, you can't trust the governments with that much power over you. If we ban nazi speech, we make governments the arbiters of acceptable speech. If we make the government the arbiter of acceptability when it comes to applying religion in my own life, they have to much power over me.

Doctors have an obligation to help that person.

If the government forces you at gunpoint to give up your deeply held religious beliefs, restaurant owners will be more unhappy and less likely to own restaurants in the first place.

This is a dangerous idea like I said earlier, because you can't trust the government with these massive decisions. The government should only be able to prohibit and/or regulate something if that thing is going to actively infringe on peoples rights.

 

+1
I disagree with Nazis completely (it sucks that someone has to make it clear that they disagree with Nazis before making a statement), but we can't ban their speech because what's next? What would the litmus test be on hate speech? Hate speech is free speech whether you like it or not.

Banning speech is a spiral down into totalitarianism. Ironically, Nazis, I believe, did the same thing in Germany. They punished those who disagreed with them. How did they do this? They convinced the German population that they are right and anyone not supporting the movement was a criminal. If we do the same to Nazis, we would only be doing the same, just in a different way. Nazis were very reactionary. Wouldn't it be just as bad if radicals were to do that?

 

My apologies, as I don't think that you actually did say that. You did say that we need not be legally concerned with mental harm though, which definitely contradicts with you saying that we need to be legally concerned with active mental harm and just not passive mental harm.

No, banning Nazi speech wouldn't produce more good than harm, largely because of what you're here. The argument that you're making on this part (the part of free speech) isn't at all in disagreement with me. In deciding what causes more good than harm and vice versa, we have to consider all ways that harm can come about. Banning free speech would create an oppressive and dangerous society with a government that can easily cause abuse.

When it comes to religion, however, things are a bit different. The government has to control how people apply and follow their religious beliefs to some extent because the terrorism of religious extremists would be permitted otherwise. This is active harm, of course, but we can't allow people to cause whatever passive harm that they want to on the basis on their religion either. Members of the religion known as Christian Science are anti-medicine and have thus run into trouble by not taking their children to the hospital, causing them to die. The parents here aren't actively harming their kids, they're just passively not doing something that would save their lives, yet I still think that it should be illegal.

Agreed, but just because more good is produced by them doing so.

We can't allow people to just do whatever because of their deeply held religious beliefs.

People's rights are dependent on what produces the most good.

 

Parents have an obligation. So do doctors & nurses etc.

I should be able to practice my religion literally however I want as long as I'm not actively going and harming anyone.

 

Parents and doctors have an obligation to help their kids and patients respectively because not doing so would result in more harm. If you can admit that it shouldn't be legal for doctors and parents to just let their patients/kids die, you are admitting that passive harm is legally relevant.

 

passive harm shouldn't be legally relevant without obligation. I'm have no obligation to serve you.

 

You have no obgliation to serve me, but people have an obligation to promote the greatest amount of good.

 

Ah we see your true utilitarianism reveal itself
I don't think we have an obligation to promote the greatest amount of good, we have an obligation to minimize the amount of pain, because if a government operates trying to promote the greatest amount of good it will inevitably become totalitarian. If the government forces some religious people to allow gay people into there shops, were taking away the religious peoples freedoms, the gay peoples freedoms aren't being infringed upon by letting the religious people keep there stores private, because there are still stores that they can go to.

 

Only having an obligation to minimize pain would, if we're being consisted, lead to the elimination of life. No life = no pain. If life were eliminated, pain would be eliminated too. Eliminating life also eliminates good though, which is why it shouldn't be done.

I do not support a totalitarian system of government and I suspect that many other utilitarians would feel the same way, as having this type of government would almost definitely cause more harm than good. Anyone who is truly considering what produces the most good must not only consider the good and harm that comes from what citizens are allowed to do, but also that which comes from what the government is allowed to do. Hypothetically, perhaps a totalitarian system would be perfect, as all of the right laws could be enforced, but realistically, a system like this would just open up a platform for insane abuse. It's difficult to determine what the government should decide, but I don't think that they should have the power that a totalitarian system would give.

 

Your right about this part.

I don't think giving the government the go ahead to do anything it thinks promotes the most good is a good idea. People can be trusted to promote the most good, the government should just make sure people have the ability to promote what they think is good.

 

Another debate turned back to governmental powers, let's take a look!

The Liberal Government Side

The idea behind having a stronger government is to create systems which enforce against bad behavior and rewards good behavior. Liberal ideas increase as trust in the checks on government power increase. Wanting a more powerful government is placing trust that the government won't skip over the checks created and then the government will create systems so you'll live in a better society.

The Conservative Government Side

Conservative ideas come from a mistrust of checks on the government. People pushing for conservative laws are afraid not of the current government's power, but that its system may not be secure enough to avoid a shift of power. Having a weaker government by keeping the government's hand out of everything possible isn't just about avoiding a possible power shift, but is also about allowing current systems to manage themselves. Often, messing with a system either doesn't help or harms it, so conservative ideas push for a natural flow in the hope the problem will continue to fix itself.