Corrupting the majority for the sake of the minority...

James Preece has posted a link to Patricia Wocial's TV appearance about sex education in school. Patricia is very sensible, and many of the comments very supportive.

But I think it instructive to look at those with opposed views. For example:

It's all well and good for Patricia to be saying that loving parents should teach their lovely children about lovely sex. But what about kids without parents? What about kids who have parents who are unwilling to talk about the subject, or are not exactly 'experts', to put it nicely.

This is the argument that is repeatedly used, and has some face-validity. However to design progammes for everyone based on the minority is potentially very problematic. In fact it seems to me to be a main driver of our current problems with teenage promiscuity (leading to STDs, abortions and other tragedies) and marital breakdown.

The argument goes that in a few cases something terrible happens (eg a girl gets pregnant because she didn't know that's how babies are made); therefore we must minimise that risk by teaching EVERYONE all there is to know about how babies are made.

Or some marriages really do break down irretrievably. Therefore we must avoid moralising or stigmatising, and make it as easy and acceptable as possible for people to divorce.

In both cases, the small minority argument drives a policy that exacerbates the problem - so we now have a huge number of promiscuous teenagers (as opposed to the very small numbers before all this 'enlightened' practice was introduced) and catastrophic rates of marriage and relationship breakdown.

A Sad Case

Fr Z comments on Fr Cutié - a Catholic priest who was caught in an inappropriate relationship with a divorced woman, and left the Catholic priesthood, who now attacks the Church on many issues of morality, and is setting up a chat show on Fox TV.

One sad thing is that his initial reaction (as seen in this early TV interview) was that he knew that he was wrong to break his vows, he believes in and supports celibacy and so on.

It is sad that his behaviour has now led him so far from the Church.

Popular or right?

Thinking about ethics and politics; how popular and right are two very different things, and any action may be:

• Popular and right
• Popular and wrong
• Unpopular and right
• Unpopular and wrong

But modern thinking (or the lack thereof) has a double tendency that tends to destroy these distinctions: the glorification of democracy as the only absolute value; the denigration of concepts of right or wrong as absolutes, reducing them to (in the post-modern world) social constructs of particular times, places and political groupings.

And the pollsters said to Our Lord: do not go to Jerusalem, for they will kill you there.

And Our Lord went to Jerusalem, because it was the right thing to do.

And the pollsters were right about His being killed there...

And Our Lord was right to go there.

Abortion - the UnChoice

A www site well worth visiting: Abortion is the UnChoice

covers issues of coercion, suicide etc etc related to abortion, with evidence (US-based)

H/T John Smeaton

Deadly thought experiments

At philosophyexperiments.com they have some fascinating thought experiments. One is about abortion and as you answer the questions about parallel issues of rights, you can feel yourself being drawn down a road that is not the one you might wish to travel.

Thus answering the questions honestly, I got a report that suggested that whilst I am morally opposed to abortion, I respect a woman's right to choose as I place a high value on personal autonomy.

To the site's credit, there is also a critical article suggesting reasons why the thought experiment might not be valid.

What I liked was that the site forded me to think hard about why I had answered the questions the way that I had, and why I disagreed with the final analysis.

In fact, I disagree with the final analysis for two reasons: one is that the parallel situations are not really parallel: they select some features of the moral arguments about abortion as salient and build a parallel around those, but seem to me to miss other important aspects.

The second is that the questions they ask are also limited: they ask about whether the 'other' in the example they create, has rights in relation to your body/wellbeing. What they do not ask is:

If you believe they have no rights, do you therefore believe that you have the right to kill them by (for example) saline poisoning, decapitation and crushing etc.

What I dislike about the thought experiments is that they are clearly constructed to lead in one direction, and that they may actually convince people that, for example, the position 'I believe abortion to be morally wrong, but believe women have the right to choose' is a laudable moral stance.

Thus the other question they don't ask is: 'if you approve of abortion, is it morally right to construct so-called experiments that are actually covert attempts to influence how people perceive this moral issue?'

I would be particularly concerned if the 'thought experiments' were taken for use in schools as a way to 'explore' the issues, as they are not neutral, tend in one direction, and require a level of sophistication (or Faith) to resist...

But if you are a clear thinker, able to resist the covert influence, I do recommend going and having a look, as they may well make you think more deeply; and I'll be interested in any comments.

Ex BBC senior journalist on BBC Bias

Peter Sissons is a journalist with a successful career working both for the independent television news (ITN) and the BBC.

The Daily Mail Online (not something I am given to reading, but someone twittered about it...) carries an extract from his book which really gets under the skin of BBC bias. Well worth reading, including lines such as:

In my view, ‘bias’ is too blunt a word to describe the subtleties of the pervading culture. The better word is a ‘mindset’. At the core of the BBC, in its very DNA, is a way of thinking that is firmly of the Left.

It reminds me of something incredibly revealing that the late Brian Hanrahan once said: 'Of course we don't just base our views on our opinions: we talk with friends and colleagues to get a sense of what the public are thinking.' Oddly enough, the friends and colleagues whom BBC journalists talk to in Ealing and Highgate may not be a completely representative sample of the views of the people...

The way we live now...

From the BBC WWWsite:

This week a study revealed that one in eight UK children rarely or never see their father.
So can one man have 13 children by eight different partners, have married six times and still be a good father? Well, ask Steve Ginger.
"I try to be a good dad," says the 49-year-old, who lives in a Bedfordshire village along with wife number six and three of his four stepchildren.
[snip..]
Steve's first two marriages lasted just a few weeks and yielded no children. He admits to spending a wedding night with someone other than his new bride.
The next four marriages were more productive, as were the relationships with four further women.
[snip..]
Steve has 13 children, plus one of disputed paternity who calls him dad. Their ages range from four to 27, and around half are now adults.

The BBC, ever mindful of its mission to educate and to present balanced stories, naturally accompany this with both the research on the impact on children of broken relationships, and comments from a prominent pro-traditional-family campaigner.
Oh, wait a moment...

Perhaps more surprisingly, they didn't even comment on the fact that the man had clearly had 'unprotected' sex with a series of women.