Political and cultural commentary based on a world view shaped by the works of Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Averroes, Maimonides, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Sartre and Bertrand Russell "What is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., and if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life, if it does not make you more conscientious."-Wittgenstein
Friday, August 30, 2019
Gay Science: Public or Private?
It doesn’t really matter if being gay is a genetic trait (biology is destiny) or a lifestyle freely chosen as human beings have to be regarded as free agents with the right to live their lives as they wish as long as they don’t harm others: this is covered by the UN’s Universal Declaration on Human Rights (universal in the sense that everyone violates it). This is an impotent article because the scientific information will be misused and defenders of human rights have to to know how to defend the science and confound those who pervert it. This is why the following quote is disturbing: “I deeply disagree about publishing this,” said Steven Reilly, a geneticist and postdoctoral researcher who is on the steering committee of the institute’s L.G.B.T.Q. affinity group, Out@Broad. “It seems like something that could easily be misconstrued,” he said, adding, “In a world without any discrimination, understanding human behavior is a noble goal, but we don’t live in that world.” Not only is understanding human behavior a noble goal it is necessary in order to construct a rational social order that supports the human rights enunciated in the Universal Declaration. We have seen the damage done by suppressing scientific information (the smoking issue, climate change, racism, etc.). The world without discrimination will never come about through the suppression of science but only through its propagation and the enlightening effects it can produce when people are properly educated and correctly understand the nature of the world in which they live. What needs to be suppressed are those in authority who use their power to disseminate ignorance and anti-scientific views: in 2020 the people of the US will have an opportunity to do so.
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