Why is it morally acceptable to eat the ground-up reproductive organs of entities who could possibly be sentient, but whose sentience you cannot determine because you cannot communicate with them? Or maybe just because your definition of sentience is not the same as theirs?

I speak, of course, of plants.

As I suggested elsewhere, ideas that are already controversial should be excluded: e.g. the death penalty, meat-eating, conscription.

Here's one that may touch the area of this blog: jury trials, and indeed the general structure of criminal jurisprudence. A society with, say, reliable "truth meters" and ubiquitous cyber-monitoring of all activity (an inevitable byproduct of the computerization of everything), would look on our system as intolerably crude and inaccurate.

Fossil fuel consumption is almost certainly going to be obsolete in a hundred years.

Fossil fuel consumption is almost certainly going to be obsolete in a hundred years.

But I do look forward to the SCA sponsored car shows.

Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp

Frater, do you really find impregnating oneself for child support unobjectionable, or believe that it is uncontroversial today? No doubt child support will become a radically different animal over the next century as vestigial notions of income inequality and family structures lose their hold, but I think that this is a widely condemned practice even today.

Sadly, I suspect that a desire for privacy may be amongst those things to die. There is very little privacy amongst many stone age tribes, suggesting that it is not biologically hard-wired into us, and it seems likely that technology will record and monitor more and more of our lives. As remaining outside the loop enacts an ever greater convenience cost on others, and as terrorists and criminals become ever more empowered (along with the rest of us), "hiding something" seems likely to be increasingly distrusted.

As an example of this, there was a recent commercial for Visa that showed everything working smoothly in a store, with a swift moving series of lines paying by visa that was suddenly ground to a halt by someone fiddling with loose change. One of the awkward points for the ad was that visa is often slower to pay with than a bank note. As proximity payment systems, already in place for a minority of transactions, become more common, it really will be much quicker to pay by card. Add rfid-like checkout of the products sold and you should be able to pay by walking out of the store with your stuff (probably with a few decades of needing to check your receipt for mistakes). When payment by cash becomes a rare and unusual thing, it'll be really annoying for the store.

There's also numerous environmental benefits that can come from monitoring where you are and what you're doing and powering systems, heating, and such smartly to efficiently deliver only the services you want. Smart cars should provide safety for their drivers, but also for others. There are countless ways in which we can improve life for others by giving up our privacy in a manner that also makes life easier for us. Even before considering security and law enforcement (privacy invasion for its own sake), my sense is that we're headed back to the stone age in terms of privacy. Rousseau might find the coming technological utopia surprisingly close to his ideal.

It is possible that unsolicited compliments will be seen as crude mind control, clumsy attempts to subvert my right to my own self-image for your personal gain.

Of course, a lot can happen in 100 years.

How "uncontroversial" does it have to be?

Various means of disciplining one's child come to mind. Spanking is illegal in a few European countries IIRC. Perhaps someday it'll also be barbaric and immoral to put them in time out, or to insist they eat the dinner they're served or else go hungry till breakfast.

I predict that some of the technologies we now consider cutting-edge will go the way of streetcars and gaslights. Don't know which ones or what will replace them, but consider all the science fiction stories from the 50s about computers becoming bigger and more centralized. They never saw the PC coming, much less the PDA.

I do think the whole idea of video games has reached a point of saturation and has nowhere to go but down. The games themselves will continue to get better, but the inherent limit on spending your time that way seems to have been reached. The whole phenomenon may turn out to have been a fad, like dance marathons or roller blading.

I would LIKE for the notion of naturalistic make-up for women to become unthinkable. I don't mind stage make-up for people assuming different roles, and I have no problem with people of all ages and sexes painting designs on their faces (or other exposed skin)for fun, but where did we get the notion that adult women (and only adult women) have to do something artificial to their faces just to look acceptable at the office or grocery store? It's warped.

Equally warped is clothing that cannot be washed in water. I say this sitting here in my dry-clean-only lawyer suit, wondering whether the solvents ever get it really clean.

Hmmm.

Prisons.

IMO the idea of putting people into prisons where they have to be fed, kept clean, guarded and tended to for every minute they are in a prison, and at enormous financial cost, is a bit silly.

Included in this is the idea that prisons are often more or less criminal universities and areas of gang recruitment and it's clear that prisons are far more trouble than they are worth.

Instead we will probably revert to the era before prisons where jails were merely used to hold prisoners until trial.

Future punishments will likely be: fines, physical punishment, permanent exile or death.

White people, limited government, and hard work.

One that apparently hasn't been mentioned is assigning "personhood" to robots. The idea of treating robots as people entitled to rights strikes (normal) people today as ludicrous. However, when AI advances to the point where robots are capable of independent, creative thought and expression, ethicists will advocate treating them as people entitled to "human" rights. And why not? Since "enlightened" people don't believe human beings have a "soul," and reject the existence of a divine creator, what will be the argument for denying "personhood" to beings having all the essential characteristics of a human being (other than, you know, bigotry)?

There are obvious imbalances and "unfairness" in various voting structures that I have no particular objection to, but I imagine I couldn't actually defend against a coordinated argument from opponents. For example:

A. The prohibition on children under 18 voting. Is it any wonder that schools are underfunded when those who most benefit are denied the franchise?

B. Indonesia and India having the same voting power as Mongolia and Greece in the United Nations.

C. District gerrymandering. What we think of as "gamesmanship," as it becomes perfected by computers, will likely become seen as unseemly.

D. The United States Senate.

E. Congressional Districts are varying populations based upon the prohibition of crossing state lines to draw districts.

If we take Professor Cook's post above and substitute Professor Somin's cheeseburgers for alcohol.............

Painting and perfume were big back in an era when hygiene and health were hard to come by. If we place more emphasis on cleanliness and staying healthy, doesn't it make sense that we would want to show off the result rather than covering it up?

This changes if the enhancement is undetectable on close viewing, which current make-up is not.

But any real high-tech advancement like that will probably be for the elite and not the masses. We're still trying to figure out how to afford health care at current technology levels, before we even talk about cosmetic procedures that don't yet exist. Are we talking about elites-only changes here, or will things have to penetrate all of society to qualify? Ordinary make-up and perfume are available at all social levels now.

Keeping the in line with the idea of "widely accepted ideas" that will be considered immoral in the future... I'm going to have to go with the entire concept of "commerce".

In the far flung future where technology has removed any shortage of what we would now consider to be commercial goods, there will be no need to "sell" goods. If you want a widget, you tell your synthesizer to generate one from the stored pattern. It gets synthesized immediately using dirt and fusion for raw materials and power.

In a world with no material need, the concept of withholding any sort of material goods from another person until you receive some other good in exchange... it would be considered unnecessarily cruel and barbaric. It doesn't cost you anything to produce it, what right do you have to hang on to it? I can certainly imagine a world where such a practice as "selling" would be seen as immoral.

I think that our social condemnation of incest will eventually be seen as unconscionable. Even now, many people argue that the only thing necessary for sexual relations is consent. The rigidity of their logic will eventually demand that incest be accepted.

The same thing will happen with underage sexual relations as well.

Spending the bulk of your time at work posting inane blog comments?

Some of our sexual norms will be seen as appalling, no doubt. They're always changing, after all. But which ones? There may well be a move toward a new form of puritanism. There's no reason sexual norms must always move in the direction of greater libertinism. (And they haven't; at some points the 19th century it would have been regarded as completely unexceptional for a married man to openly have a mistress and bring her to parties, but today he is expected to hide it.)

I predict that some of the technologies we now consider cutting-edge will go the way of streetcars and gaslights. Don't know which ones or what will replace them, but consider all the science fiction stories from the 50s about computers becoming bigger and more centralized. They never saw the PC coming, much less the PDA.

And yet they computers they predicted tend to be much less powerful, and do a lot less stuff, than the ones we have today. Who predicted the computer as a way of playing music? The major exceptions are humanlike natural language processing and AI, which are staples of science fiction but still have a long way to go.

Neckties.

The necktie will definitely go. The business suit has been slowly falling out of fashion as a form of business dress over the past fifty years. First the vest disappeared, and over the past fifty years the number of industries in which the suit is standard has been steadily decreasing. The vest is completely dead. More and more workplaces have been moving towards business casual as a standard form of business dress. Casual Fridays are the norm even in the (few) industries in which people still wear suits on a daily basis. Wearing a matching blazer and pants without a tie has also become more common for men; note also that women in suits typically do not wear ties at all.

The jacket may of course return as standard a form of business dress, especially if restrictions on energy use cause people to turn the heat down in winter. But there's no reason for the necktie to stay around.

When it comes to the question of "animal rights", sentience alone is either not morally considerable, or merits only the most minimal consideration. Dr Richard Hanley proposed an idea which I find attractive, that the real threshold question is whether an animal has future-oriented mental states. If an animal has no hopes, dreams, ambitions, or fears about the future, then no real harm is done by killing it. Its sentience alone might justify not inflicting pain upon it, because that is a something it can feel in the present as it happens, but a painless death takes nothing away from it about which it was truly concerned.

Behavioural evidence of animals possessing such mental states is scarce, and limited to a very few species such as dogs, dolphins and monkeys. Therefore you have no need to worry about eating a chicken or cow, unless you happen to know that the company you bought it from tortures its animals and you don't want to support that. Even that is true only if you do grant some minimal moral consideration to mere sentience.

Of course it's almost surely wrong to characterize our ethical considerations towards animals as the recognition of their "rights", as I don't see how they could ever assert those rights (Justice Douglas' looney theory aside.) And they're certainly not capable of respecting those rights in other beings or understanding the corresponding obligations as limits to their own actions.

Here's a couple,
The notion of choosing to live far away from work and burn fossil fuels to get there.
Possibly the death penalty (though I oppose it, so I suppose it doesn't qualify)
The notion of eating genetically modified foods

Possibly, the idea of valuing human life over the preservation of other species (when those species are close to extinction)

Obesity. People will find a way to stay slim, and we will look back upon the gorging upon food as wasteful and immoral, when many others starve.

Food production. We will be wondrous that we would actually pick a fruit before it is ripe, then expend all that effort and energy costs to ship it a thousand miles away so that someone could pay a lot for a tasteless, nutritionally poor meal. We will realize that never in history was that ever done, and we will be glad that that barbaric practice has been confined to the dustbin of history.

The notion that who a person sleeps with or what their skin color is has anything to do with morals or laws will be laughed at as immature, and really really bizarre.

The notion that who a person sleeps with or what their skin color is has anything to do with morals or laws will be laughed at as immature, and really really bizarre.

So I'll finally be able to own up to my steamy affair with Stalin?

The notion that who a person sleeps with or what their skin color is has anything to do with morals or laws will be laughed at as immature, and really really bizarre.

I see we agree. So incest and sex with children will be lost as a taboo.

"Deficits don't matter."

""Gorging" has been called "wasteful and immoral" basically forever. May I refer you to the sixth terrace of Dante's Purgatory?"

of course. But never in history has there been a population such as the US that is so morbidly obese. I predict that there will be a pill or procedure that will be made available cheaply and easily to keep us from overeating.

Dangermouse: "I see we agree. So incest and sex with children will be lost as a taboo."

Let me be more specific. Any laws or morals based upon discriminating against a person based on their skin color, race, gender or sexual orientation will be considered barbaric, as they should be,and we are in fact moving towards that already.

As incest and pedophilia are not considered sexual orientations, those would be outside of this discussion.

Sharia!

and if by chance Sharia becomes the law of this land also, then most of the sexual orientation related practices.

I think it's possible that there will be a consensus on abortion, one way or the other. Denying rights to gay couples will be abhorrent. We are about half way to understanding that there is no "away" to throw trash to; everything will be reprocessed, if not re-cycled.

It's possible that the current prohibition against drugs will be seen as a failed crusade like the former prohibition against booze, but I wouldn't bet on it.

It seems plausible that an understanding of the genetic and hormonal causes of homosexuality, combined with parental autonomy, will result in the disappearance of homosexuality in the next 100 years. That doesn't mean that people will look back and condone discrimination against gays, but they also won't care much about gay rights, much less gay marriage. A whole set of issues will simply go away.

pedophilia is not considered a sexual orientation? I'd imagine most folks consider it as such.

Ilya,

This strikes me as a facially plausible (and consistent) position on animal rights: (1) there is a moral obligation not to do certain things to animals (so they have certain rights), but (2) they do not have a "right to life" (i.e. a right not to be killed and eaten). Here's an argument for (1)

(A) if doing y to x makes x feel pain then there is a prima facie moral obligation not to do y to x.
(B) [e.g.] Stuffing cattle in tiny unclean cages makes them feel pain.
(C) There is a prima facie moral obligation not to stuff cattle into tiny unclean cages. [from A&B]

(1) quite clearly follows from (C), and (A)-(C) is sound. Does (A)-(C), mutatis mutandis, support the conclusion that animals have a right to life?

(A) If doing y to x makes x feel pain then there is a prima facie moral obligation not to do y to x.
(B') Killing [e.g.] cattle makes them feel pain.
(C') There is a prima facie moral obligation not to kill [e.g] cattle.

(C') follows from (A) and (B'), and "animals have a right to life" follows pretty directly from (C'). Unfortunately, (B') is false - there are ways of painlessly killing animals. So (A)-(C') is unsound and does not support that animals have a right to life. It is thus consistent to hold (1) and (2). But is (2) independently supported by some other argument? How about this:

(i) If x has or will have goals and projects of value to him, or desires not to die, or, by dying, would cause others great suffering then it is wrong to kill (and eat) x.
(ii) Cattle have goals and projects of value to them, or desire not to die, or, by dying, would cause others great suffering.
(iii) It is wrong to kill (and eat) Cattle.

(i) is an attempt (cribbed to some extent from Don Marquis) to enumerate the necessary and sufficient conditions of its being wrong to kill something; it seems roughly correct insofar as it generates the correct results (it basically allows euthanasia to be performed on lonely old men, those who are irrevocably comatose and not many else). It also, happily, does not entail that it is wrong to kill and eat Cattle, because (ii) is quite clearly false. Unlike (most) humans, cattle do not have goals and projects at all, nor do they have a desire not to die (they don't have the cognitive faculties to form such a desire) nor would their death cause others great suffering (or, at least, I imagine we could make it so that their deaths don't bother anybody).

In short, (A)-(C) supports (1) but not (2), so one can justifiably hold (1), and hold (2) and be consistent. On the other hand, animals have a right to life iff (i)-(iii) is sound. But (i)-(iii) is unsound, so (2) is true. One should hold (1) and (2).

Hope that helps...

To further clarify, there is a difference between sexual orientation and sexual practices. One can be into S&M, for instance, but that isn't an orientation. Sexual practices is the catchall phrase you are looking for, and orientation is a subset of that, not the other way around.

Furthermore, orientation deals with our ingrained desires, not outward practices. One can be gay or straight and be a complete virgin, for instance. One can be gay but have engaged in only heterosexual activity, but that doesn't change the fact that you are gay.

Likewise, being a virgin ins't a sexual orientation either. It's just means you have never had sex.

You're positing dogma, Randy, you're guessing, insisting, declaiming, asserting and preaching - and claiming it as positive knowledge when in fact it is not.

We've covered the same ground previously, upon firm epistemic and scientific grounds.

The majority assumes "progress" proceeds with time's arrow. That's not guaranteed, if history is a guide. Consider the Victorians. Our children's children could certainly revolt against the past. More puritan than Puritans.

Randy your definition of sexual orientation is limited to gender by your choice alone. A more reasonable definition of "orientation" is a relative position as between any mutually exclusive alternatives. Thus a sexual attraction to or preference for children as opposed to adults is just as much of an orientation as a sexual attraction to or preference for your own gender as opposed to the opposite gender or vice versa. You are therefore the one who is, of course, wrong.

Individual real property rights will be resented as immoral and selfish.

wm13:
It seems plausible that an understanding of the genetic and hormonal causes of homosexuality, combined with parental autonomy, will result in the disappearance of homosexuality in the next 100 years. That doesn't mean that people will look back and condone discrimination against gays, but they also won't care much about gay rights, much less gay marriage. A whole set of issues will simply go away.

I fear that this is indeed possible. If homosexuality is indeed innate, then it is likely that it has a genetic component, acting alone or in combination with environmental influences. If this gene can be detected in utero, very few homosexually-oriented children will be born thereafter.

"That is very essentialist. Can you go to church every Sunday but still *be* Jewish? Can you register Republican and vote for Republicans but still *be* a Democrat? Can you graduate from Harvard but still *be* a Yalie? I find these possibilities highly problematic."

Sure. I know many gay men who had only heterosexual sex with women, een to the point of getting married. Some hope that getting married will "cure" them. It of course did not, and they certainly were not happy. Eventually, they stopped the farce, got divorced and came out and lived as happily gay men. Unfortunately, there are still a great many men out there living as straight men when in fact they are gay.


Michael B: "You're positing dogma, Randy, you're guessing, insisting, declaiming, asserting and preaching - and claiming it as positive knowledge when in fact it is not. "

Coming from someone who's antipathy towards gays is well known, I really wouldn't be calling other people dogmatic, guessing, and so on. However, I base my conclusions not upon dogma or antipathy towards any group, but what the experts and scientists say. For instance:

From Wikipedia:"Pedophilia is a medical diagnosis, it is defined as a psychological disorder in which an adult experiences a sexual preference for prepubescent children.[1][2][3] According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), pedophilia is specified as a form of paraphilia in which a person either has acted on intense sexual urges towards children, or experiences recurrent sexual urges towards and fantasies about children that cause distress or interpersonal difficulty.[4] The disorder is frequently a feature of persons who commit child sexual abuse;[5][6][7] however, some offenders do not meet the clinical diagnosis standards for pedophilia.[8] In strictly behavioral contexts, the word "pedophilia" can also be applied to the act of child sexual abuse itself, also called "pedophilic behavior."

Seeing as how none of the major psychological or psychiatric or medical associations term pedophilia a 'sexual orientation' I follow their lead. If you want to come up with your own definition, by all means, go ahead, but it won't be supported by any scientific evidence.

Randy R.: If someone who experiences sexual desire towards adults of his/her own sex has a homosexual "orientation," and someone who does likewise towards adults of the opposite sex has a heterosexual "orientation," then are you saying that someone sexually attracted to adults of neither sex, but to children of one or both sexes, has no sexual orientation? Never mind DSM for the moment; just try to define "sexual orientation" in such a way that everyone has one (which you believe, yes?), and then try to fit pedophiles into the schema. Can you imagine a male "heterosexual" repulsed by all adult females? A male "homosexual" repulsed by all adult males? I can't.

Maybe the idea in Fritz Leiber's "Coming Attraction" that exposing your real face in public will become offensive. Concept also appeared in Jack Vance's "The Moon Moth".

Death. Letting people rot, just because we can't presently return them to full health.

When cryonics, or some other form of backup of the contents of one's mind, becomes feasible, declaring people "dead", and letting their bodies rot away, destroying their minds, will be viewed as barbarism. Today it's almost universally accepted, chiefly because it's unavoidable.

One day people will look back on this era, and wonder why we let billions of unique individuals suffer entropic decay when plopping them into liquid nitrogen for fifty or sixty years until technology could fix what ailed them was perfectly feasible.

Michelle: "Randy R.: If someone who experiences sexual desire towards adults of his/her own sex has a homosexual "orientation," and someone who does likewise towards adults of the opposite sex has a heterosexual "orientation,"

Correct.

" then are you saying that someone sexually attracted to adults of neither sex, but to children of one or both sexes, has no sexual orientation?"

As far as I know, there have been no cases of anyone not having any attraction to either sex. Therefore, your question doesn't make any sense.

All pedophiles HAVE a sexual orientation -- towards either their own sex, or the opposite sex. This is how the FBI has classified pedophiles, and it states that the vast majority of pedophiles are actually heterosexuals. So -- a heterosexual pedophile will be attracted to little girls, and a homosexual pedophile will be attracted to little boys. If, as you argue, pedophilia is itself a sexual orientation, then we would see equal interest in boys AND girls from all pedophiles. However, that is not the case.

It is strange, I find, that people such as Michael B and other strive so hard to include pedophilia as a sexual orientation, just like heterosexuality. Me, I consider it a disease (because that's how the professionals regard it), and I certainly don't want a disease classified as something that I am a part of. But that's just me.

With the increasing advancement of video technology, it will be possible to easily simulate child pornography. No actual children will be harmed. You see this today already. This will coursen society in the long run. Child pornography will become more mainstream. The common age of consent will be lowered to maybe 13 or 14.

ForestGirl:

Good Points. My parents had many good friends who were deeply involved in the Sanctuary Movement, and while they weren't directly involved, they certainly offered real support. Twenty years later, there is a recognition that we sponsored some fairly brutal behavior in many parts of Central America and this is distasteful.

However, there is another element as well, and this is how we continue to whitewash our own history in order to avoid looking at it too closely. Any time one brings up arbitrary killing or expulsion of Jews due to antisemitism in Europe, everyone thinks of the Holocaust, forgetting that deep problems occurred elsewhere and the holocaust was only the worst instance (though probably not bad enough to be worse than the aggregate experience of Jews in Europe during the few centuries prior).

How many people think the South was much more racist than the North around the time of the Civil War?

As always it is easier to point out the spec in the neighbor's eye than to see the timber in our own.

Michelle: "My point, such as it was, was that if you find adults of both sexes sexually off-putting, but are aroused by children...."

But that's the issue. As far as I know, there are NO cases (or perhaps very rare), in which a person is not attracted to either sex. They may not like sex with adults, but they are still attracted to one gender or another.

" You aren't "oriented" towards adult sexual beings at all. misleading to call you either "straight" or "gay." You aren't "oriented" towards adult sexual beings at all."

Perhaps not. But you are still oriented towards either female children, or male children. In other words, the sexual orientation comes first -- toward either females or males. But your attraction may not be towards adults, but only children. Fine, but it doesn't change the fact that you are either gay or straight. (or bi)

"I am surprised, though, to learn from you that male pedophiles interested in boys are actually gay men, only sick ones. Other people I've read on this subject (in connection with the abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, for example, where the victims were nearly always boys)"

Not true. The majority of sexual abuse cases have been women both within the Catholic Church scandals and in the greater society. It's only that the males who were abused have been more vocal with regards to the Church. The fact is that about half of all members of the victims' organizations of the Catholic Church are female. (Furthermore, FBI stats show that the vast majority of pedophiles are heterosexual men who abuse young girls.)

There are likely cases of females abusing children, either boys or girls, but again that is rare. The vast majority of pedophilia cases are commited by men.

" have been quick to say that pedophilia is something quite apart from sexual orientation,"

True. That's exactly what I have been trying to say! pedophilia is not a sexual orientation! It is, however, a disease.

"such that a man might be sexually interested in adult women and nonetheless molest boys. Not true?"

Not true. Or,at least I have seen no cases in which that is true. Perhaps there are some, but I'm not aware of it. In any case, it would be quite rare.

Men who are sexually oriented towards women and are pedophiles will molest young girls. Men who are sexually oriented towards men and are pedophiles will molest young boys.

Michael B: "You're the one who assumes, who imputes "hate," "antipathy," etc., not I. Such imputations and assumptions, at best, are strawman arguments"

Well, then. I didnt' say you hate gays, yet you just said I did. Furthermore, you attacked me by saying that I merely used dogma, preaching, etc when in fact I used a reasoned argument grounded upon the current scientific consensus, and you said so regarding my statements saying that pedophilia was not a sexual orientation. You are free to disagree, but you should at least be thoughtful enough to use rationality. In other words, if you want to be treated with respect, then please use some yourself. Thanks.

The victims' sex abuse organization is SNAP,and you can find it online. INterestingly, there is a whole page devoted to female abuse victims, and while many are priests, turns out nuns were abusing young girls as well. Therefore, female pedophiles may not be as rare as I thought, at least within the Church. I stand corrected.

"There are definitely people who claim not to experience sexual attraction to anyone of either sex. I have yet to see any evidence that they're mistaken or lying. I would describe these people as having an "asexual" sexual orientation (which is also the term they use for themselves)."'

I stand corrected. However, these people are not pedophiles either, and my overall point remains. If you are not sexually attracted to either sex, then that pretty much precludes you from being attracted to either sex, regardless of age.

"Of course, as a categories suitable for everyday life, "straight," "gay," and "bisexual" do just fine. But it's a mistake to assume that the three-category scheme reflects some deep truth about the nature of human sexuality. "

Of course you are correct. I am well aware of the Kinsey scale. But as this is really a bit off topic, I didn't want to get into all the specifics. That's why I was careful to say "generally" and to include bisexuals. The fact remains that everyone falls into one of the categories at any one time. Over a lifetime, who knows? The real point is that we know very little about human sexuality, which I'm sure you will agree. I just wanted to argue the specific point that pedophilia is not considered a sexual orientation, and so far no one has provided any proof that it is.

Of course you are correct. I am well aware of the Kinsey scale. But as this is really a bit off topic, I didn't want to get into all the specifics. That's why I was careful to say "generally" and to include bisexuals. The fact remains that everyone falls into one of the categories at any one time. Over a lifetime, who knows? The real point is that we know very little about human sexuality, which I'm sure you will agree. I just wanted to argue the specific point that pedophilia is not considered a sexual orientation, and so far no one has provided any proof that it is.

Fair enough.

Clarification: human sexuality is not simply polymorphous and learned, a more expansive explication is of course needed. There are all manner of biological, morphological, environmental, familial, psychological, socio-cultural, etc., etc. factors, but the science does not support the dichotomized view, the purported "orientation" of either homosexual or heterosexual, or some variation upon that more or less dichotomized view.

B: "My view, one substantiated by the varied anthropological evidence and as reflected in this earlier comment and thread, is that human sexuality is polymorphous and learned."

Perhaps. As we all agree, no one knows the cause of anyone's particular sexuality. What we DO know is that there is no evidence a person can change their sexuality. in other words, a homosexual cannot change and become heterosexual, or vice versa. So learned or not, its' pretty much set at a very early age and doesn't change significantly. One can certainly suppress one's sexuality, i.e., deny that one has some or total attraction for a person of the same sex, but that doesn't change the over all orientation.

Frissell: Really? You mean that gays have one set of laws, and straight have another? And our ethics are compeletly different? Any evidence, or are these just scare tactics?

No Randy, I disagree almost entirely with the sentiments expressed.

Firstly, I said "substantiated," not proven in some type of absolute, deductive and never again to be questioned sense. I substantiated my position on rational grounds, in fact rather thoroughly, so there's no "perhaps" about it.

Secondly, that substantiation (of the polymorphous pov) calls into question the dichotomized, reductionist view as reflected in the term "orientation" (which is why arguments are forwarded to claim a "genetic" basis - and therein a putatively "scientific" determinism), so that general framework is itself being called into question.

Thirdly and finally I'll simply emphasize that when I used the term "learn" I was doing so simply as a shorthand expression and was not used in some simplistic sense. So I wouldn't have a problem with the "orientation" term in a softer, more fluid, non-deterministic sense, but that doesn't appear to be the manner in which you're using the term.