Posted on 09/15/2010 1:16:20 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Democrats shouldn’t crow too loudly about Christine O’Donnell’s Republican primary victory for the open Senate seat in Delaware.
Yeah, she’s nuts.
That’s all the Tea Party serves up is a bowl of mixed nuts. It’s gotten so bad that the Planters corporation is suing for product defamation.
O’Donnell is especially odd on the matter of sex. She’s on record saying condoms don’t prevent AIDS, that AIDS victims shouldn’t be called “victims,” and that masturbation is bad, bad, bad.
Yes, O’Donnell’s upset will make it more likely for the Democrats to win the Senate seat there, and thus hang on to majority control of that chamber. But don’t count her out, since hard-core conservatives are going to show up in huge numbers on November 2, no matter what.
Even if, as expected, she loses the campaign, O’Donnell represents the rise of the far right in America. She was correct when she said, in her victory speech, that she’s riding a wave.
It’s a wave with a dangerous undertow, and it could take our democracy away with it.
Her victory on Tuesday was another triumph for Sarah Palin, who’s proving to be quite the queenmaker.
Palin’s endorsements have paid off dramatically, and with every new one, it seems more and more possible that she could actually win the Republican nomination. Already, she has the highest favorability ratings among the leading candidates, and her unfavorables were comparable to Romney’s. It is Palin, more than any other Republican figure in the country, who senses the moment and is seizing it.
Some Democrats think that’s great, on the assumption that, as the Republican nominee, she’d have no chance of beating Obama.
But be careful what you wish for. She’d start with about 40 percent of the voters who can’t stand Obama. And she wouldn’t have far to go to make it a race. If the economy continues to stall, who knows?
I’m pretty sure having sex with your wife in public would also get you in serious trouble. In any case, since when has the law been the ultimate arbiter of what is morally right or wrong?
“I’m pretty sure having sex with your wife in public would also get you in serious trouble. In any case, since when has the law been the ultimate arbiter of what is morally right or wrong?”
The law isn’t the ultimate arbiter. There are 2 common schools of thought on how to judge morality. The first requires reference to a universal standard of morality, traditionally the Bible in Western civilization. By that standard, masturbation can be judged immoral simply by virtue of it being a symptom of lust. The other method is to appeal to a public consensus of the society.
Now, we could take a poll and see if the majority of people think masturbation is immoral, but I doubt that would be very telling, since it’s a subject people might not answer honestly and openly about. Or, we can just look at the law, which already is a sort of measure of the public consensus as to what behavior is considered unacceptable in a society.
By any applicable measure of morality I can think of (besides the Thelemic/Satanist “do whatever you feel like”), masturbation comes up short. If you have some other standard you’d like to appeal to, by all means make your case.
The general secular morality standard would be ‘do no harm’. By this standard, if an activity is dangerous to others or harms others, then it should be illegal. Masturbating in public is pretty threatening around others, but not in private. As to why taking a dump in public is treated as a less serious offence, that is probably a combination of the influence of traditional judeo-christian morality and the fact that, unlike masturbating in public, defecating in public is merely disgusting, rather than an indication that someone is a dangerous sexual pervert who is a hairs breadth away from progressing on to committing a serious sexual assault or rape...
“The general secular morality standard would be ‘do no harm’.”
I’d take issue with this reasoning. This is not the general secular morality standard, it’s nothing more than Alistair Crowley’s “Do What Thou Wilt” philosophy restated. Most people don’t agree that this is the only standard, because we don’t accept that things which cause harm to one’s self are morally acceptable.
I’m not sure secularists would say that masturbation is harmful. If you don’t believe it is a sin that will damn you for all eternity, there is no harm caused as far as you are concerned...
“I’m not sure secularists would say that masturbation is harmful. If you don’t believe it is a sin that will damn you for all eternity, there is no harm caused as far as you are concerned...”
I’m sure you are right for a lot of secularists, but at the same time that doesn’t mean masturbation does no harm to a person. Indulging in masturbation can result in some psychological and sexual issues that are not beneficial, especially if it’s done in concert with pornography.
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