"Man dies not live by bread alone."
I see this issue as one that cannot be resolved except spiritually:
Amused says, " The difference in your examples, is adult consent vs non-consenting bodies, and children who cannot consent.
What two consenting adults do with each other is none of your business. People who have problems with homosexuality don't seem to realize the problem lies with THEM, not the homosexuals. The real question is, why the fsck do you, or should you care?"
He said he was also a militant atheist before he realized that the fundies were going nowhere.
But how is a dead body something of which we would require consent if we are an atheist? It isn't any different than an inflatable, no? The body is just a material object, no? Probably as long as the relatives don't find out, what's the problem, right?
And when do children become adults. Some are adult way before the age and some never grow up. What to do with our hard and fast rules? And what right really, do we have to tell children what to do. Often a child's innocent wisdom is greater than an adult's programming.
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I care about taxes say some, above the right to marry. I know where my interests lie and what is important to me. Free me from the nanny state that wants to control me and tell me what is right as if I were a child. There is no truth, only what I make. I am the arbiter of all judgment. As long as what I do doesn't interfere with your right.
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I see two forces at work behind this issue. I want what is best for me and I want what is best for us all. On these two points the parties do divide. Naturally both attitudes are just selfishness. I want what is my judgment of what is right is a limited form of intelligent self interest and I want what is best for all is wanting what is best for me in perhaps a larger sphere or longer time frame, ie that American Indian thing about cause no harm seven generations out.
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What is best for humanity? Some say it it is what is best for me. Do we believe that from a child. When does one become an adult. What is best for humanity is a matter of opinion some would say yet we clearly acknowledge that the opinion of adults are superior and vital to the perspective of a child. Who are you? At what level of maturity is your understanding about what is best for man. Who knows what being a man means or is. Who has reached his full potential, who has full consciousness and the complete understanding of man? Ah, but I want what I want or I want what is best for you.
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We are all on a spectrum as to where our judgment is more mature than the other and all on a spectrum as to how much our faith in out belief is more important than or should take president in some way over the judgment of others.
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The religious right and the libertarian represent one dimension of this spectrum. But is there not another. Is it not a fact that we can feel intuitively that children don't have the experience to have the judgment of adults in some generalized way? And has not mankind from its beginnings, for good and ill, listened to those it thought wise. What is this thing called wisdom.
I think it is the love of others that flows from a 'real' love of self combined with experience and knowledge. I would call it a spiritual state or dimension. Knowledge and judgment that flow out of real self love is the true and highest selfishness and the hidden dimension that flows within humanity. It is our human nature made manifest from behind the dark clouds of ego. It is to be had by becoming less not more.
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Love and wisdom make the best parents and love and wisdom the best leaders.
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The reason necrophilia is wrong is that it is offensive to the spirit of self love. The love of the wise is tender and intended as bi-directional. (Even though it almost never is as we see in the Crucifixion)
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No real man who loves himself and his mate does not only not deny that to another passively as in 'Why should you care" but hopes for it actively, because the love of love is more love.
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From a great Sufi sage:
'Oh how the words love harmony and beauty have fascinated the human heart. But besides these things you may ask what there is. Besides these things there is nothing.'