Please Assemble

For Scott Walters.

This is the beginning of the only argument against homosexuality that I know of, Scott. It's about what used to be pretty commonly known as natural law, or simply "reason".

The exercise begins by imagining that someone has just given you a handful of nuts and bolts (as shown above) and asked you to please assemble them. What do you do? Why?

Comments

[K T Cat]

I pile all of the nuts together in a big mound and then yell that anyone that says it's not assembled into something marvelous is a bigot.

[Thomas E. Vaughan]

Heh. :^)

[K T Cat]

Tim, in all seriousness, how about this very direct example:

Take 1000 heterosexual couples and 1000 homosexual couples. Put the one group on one deserted island the size of, say, Crete and the other on another one. Let them alone for 100 years. When you come back to check, one will have a thriving society of one form or another and the other island will be deserted again.

Question: Is there a difference between the two islands? Those who want equality between sexual orientations are claiming that there is no significant difference between an island of human and an island of bleached bones.

[Donna]

>Take 1000 heterosexual >couples and 1000 >homosexual couples. Put >the one group on one >deserted island the size >of, say, Crete and the >other on another one. Let >them alone for 100 years. >When you come back to >check, one will have a >thriving society of one >form or another and the >other island will be >deserted again.

True for now, but technology marches on. We already have lab mice with female fathers. (Google "Kaguya mouse" if ye doubt.)

Heck, even with today's technology, a decent-sized sperm bank could keep a lesbian society going for 100 years.

Mind you, I don't think it's a good idea, but it's possible.

[Donna]

To make a parallel with the original example - enough soldering and anything goes !

[K T Cat]

With cloning, does it mean you should be allowed to marry yourself? After all, technology, as you say, marches on.

[K T Cat]

Actually, Donna, the logic you suggest is quite sound. However, it eliminates any limits to the definition of marriage at all. Dogs, cats, mice, toasters, whatever. As soon as you introuce sperm banks (or surrogate egg and womb donors on the other side) then you have eliminated the need for any kind of chromosomal matching at all.

I'm guess Petco will support this as you'll be able to register there when you announce that you're marrying your goldfish.

[Donna]

As I said, I don't think it's a good idea. I'm just pointing out that for a lot of people, saying that something is 'unnatural' is likely to get the response, "And your point ?"

[Tim J.]

You're right, Donna, but then this is just the beginning of the argument. I'm using the word natural in an expanded sense, the way "natural law" has been understood for many hundreds of years. It is synonymous with "reason' or "logic". So, though in our industrial/technological age, many would not particularly care what is "natural" and what isn't, most people would still like to entertain the idea that what they believe is reasonable and logical... that it makes sense.

More to come.

[Somerset wedding gal]

Is it that the whole idea that there is a singularly correct way to assemble the nuts and bolts is itself a flawed idea? Could you sometimes need a few / few less of either depending on the figurative "structure" you are creating?

[Tim J.]

"Is it that the whole idea that there is a singularly correct way to assemble the nuts and bolts is itself a flawed idea?"

Not at all. The point is, there is a way, in fact, in which they were *made* to be used, and this is obvious from their construction. Do you deny that?

I suppose one could use them for slingshot ammunition, or fishing weights, but don't pretend that is what they are really made for. Such uses amount to a waste of their real potential.

In combination, a nut and bolt form an elegant little *machine* with capabilities far beyond what they would have if viewed simply as lumps of metal. People can use them any way they like, of course, but only by a kind of willful ignorance.