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Jack

What fallacy is this? Appeal to extrmes, False Analogy or other?

I can't quite put my finger on it but I am almost certain this is a fallacy:

The argument that "Homosexuality isn't a choice and therefore shouldn't be considered wrong" falls apart when you examine it in a relative manner.

So let's take the above statement and try to apply it to another ideology and see if it holds weight.

"Pedophilia isn't a choice, people can't choose to not be sexually attracted to children and therefore it shouldn't be considered wrong".
I'm going to go with a "No" on this one, seems that the fact that it's not a choice doesn't deserve any weight".

"Zoosexuality isn't a choice, people can't choose to not be sexually attracted to animals and therefore it shouldn't be considered wrong".
Again I'm leaning towards "No", seems that the fact that the person feels that way naturally doesn't really matter.

The core of this argument is that because something isn't a choice...it's not wrong to do it. This is so ethically wrong it's not funny. If there were any remote truth to this statement then you could literally apply it to anything else and it would work but it doesn't. Using this excuse is ethically reprehensible and from a logic standpoint, it's downright deception intended to play on people's sympathy in order to bypass standards of morality.



Also, was my following response a fallacy and be honest:

So your argument in standard form is thus:

Premise 1: Some say that homosexuality isn't a choice and therefore isn't wrong.

Premis 2: Pedophilia isn't a choice either but that's wrong.

Conclusion: Therefore, Homosexuality is wrong!

Sorry dude, but you're gonna have to do better than that. Because pedophilia is wrong does not mean homosexuality is wrong.

asked on Thursday, Jan 09, 2020 06:46:12 PM by Jack

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Bo Bennett, PhD
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What the person appears to be arguing is simply that JUST because homosexuality isn't a choice, that doesn't mean it is not wrong. Their reasoning is good. I think you might be reading into what they are saying (i.e., creating a strawman) by claiming that THEY are claiming that homosexuality is wrong. As far as I can tell, they did not write that nor do I think it is even implied.

If there is a fallacy in there somewhere, it might be with a form of equivocation. Homosexuality can refer to a) natural feeling, b) behaviors, or c) identity. If we are talking about a natural feeling, this is very different from behavior. A good argument could be made that having sexual feelings for someone of the same gender is not wrong because it is not a choice, just like a pedophile should not be held morally responsible for their natural feelings (in the case of pedophilia, it is is a serious mental disorder because of the harm/risk to others). The behaviors are a different story since one can choose their behaviors (for the most part). Given this, comparing homosexuality to pedophilia could be deceptive if referring to the feelings of someone who is gay vs. the actions of a pedophile.
answered on Thursday, Jan 09, 2020 07:11:28 PM by Bo Bennett, PhD

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Bill
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Just a simple point, that your argument (homosexuality, pedophilia, etc.) is an analogy, and analogies are almost always faulty.
answered on Thursday, Jan 09, 2020 09:39:54 PM by Bill

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mchasewalker
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I've always found the Argument from Biological Imperative to be problematic. What if someone
consciously, or even temporarily chooses a gay lifestyle?
(There are many instances where this is certainly true e.g.
British public schools, boarding schools, seminaries, prisons, military isolation,
ancient Greek culture, etc.)
Freud hypothesized a latency period in all human development both male and female.
Bonobo chimps share 98% of our DNA and practice same-sexuality as a means for
defusing territorial and intertribal violence, as well as communal stimulation
and emotional bonding. It is a survival strategy.
In other extreme situations a human individual will adopt
one lifestyle for convenience and accessibility,
and then return to their preferred sexual expression upon normalization.

So, the question becomes: is it morally repugnant simply because the individual chooses the lifestyle or because
they have at times felt same-sex attraction, but didn't act on it? Where is the standard of wrong here?
Who's judging, and what is the basis or moral code for that judgment? (We all know the usual suspect here).

Religious moralists find themselves on shaky ground by condemning the choice to act
in favor of repressing the actual attraction itself. Their remedy is to repress and deny the natural tendency
and NOT ACT.

This so-called imposition to repress is considered the moral high ground,
and yet, for some, such draconian sexual repression can lead to mental illness and other aberrant behaviors which
are even more morally and socially reprehensible. We certainly see this evident in the celibacy laws and pandemic pedophilia
prominent in the Catholic Clergy.

The common reply from the gay and lesbian community is that their sexual expression is not a choice, but a biological
imperative, and there is certainly a preponderance of evidence that supports this, but isn't it a bit of an equivocation?

Religionists claim it is the choice to act that is the sin.

Gays and Lesbians respond to this by claiming they have no choice and are helpless in the face of their natural sex drive.

Now that seems to be equally problematic and somewhat of a diversion into the straw man/false dichotomy fallacy of choice v natural or biological drive, when in fact both choice and natural preference should be honored and treated respectfully.

The Choice to Act responsibly is a basic human right and the higher morality is to support that right
to the individual's pursuit of happiness within the guidelines of social health and common weal.

That being said, it is a big mistake and a rather offensive claim to analogize homosexuality and lesbianism
with pedophilia. The former when conducted by consenting adults is natural and perfectly permissible, or at least
it should be, whereas pedophilia is a classified form of mental illness, and therefore to compare the two is false.

Throughout history there have been societies that condone child brides and marriage to minors, but these are
not all examples of pedophilia, per se, but of social mores and contracts particular to various regions, traditions and customs.

According to Wikipedia:

Pedophilia (alternatively spelt paedophilia) is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Although girls typically begin the process of puberty at age 10 or 11, and boys at age 11 or 12, criteria for pedophilia extend the cut-off point for prepubescence to age 13. A person must be at least 16 years old, and at least five years older than the prepubescent child, for the attraction to be diagnosed as pedophilia.

Pedophilia is termed pedophilic disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), and the manual defines it as a paraphilia involving intense and recurrent sexual urges towards and fantasies about prepubescent children that have either been acted upon or which cause the person with the attraction distress or interpersonal difficulty.[4] The International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) defines it as a "sustained, focused, and intense pattern of sexual arousal—as manifested by persistent sexual thoughts, fantasies, urges, or behaviours—involving pre-pubertal children.

In popular usage, the word pedophilia is often applied to any sexual interest in children or the act of child sexual abuse.This use conflates the sexual attraction to prepubescent children with the act of child sexual abuse and fails to distinguish between attraction to prepubescent and pubescent or post-pubescent minors.Researchers recommend that these imprecise uses be avoided, because although some people who commit child sexual abuse are pedophiles,child sexual abuse offenders are not pedophiles unless they have a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children, and some pedophiles do not molest children.

While it is true that homosexuality and Lesbianism until recently were classified as sexually aberrant behaviors it has since been entirely repudiated.
answered on Friday, Jan 10, 2020 11:52:22 AM by mchasewalker

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mchasewalker
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If I'm not mistaken aren't you a Creationist, or anti-evolutionist?
In the future, if you wish to argue a point I suggest you make the necessary citations.

This is from Science Magazine, not Christianity Today:

Ever since researchers sequenced the chimp genome in 2005, they have known that humans share about 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, making them our closest living relatives. But there are actually two species of apes that are this closely related to humans: bonobos (Pan paniscus) and the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes).

This has prompted researchers to speculate whether the ancestor of humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos looked and acted more like a bonobo, a chimpanzee, or something else—and how all three species have evolved differently since the ancestor of humans split with the common ancestor of bonobos and chimps between 4 million and 7 million years ago in Africa.

The international sequencing effort led from Max Planck chose a bonobo named Ulindi from the Leipzig Zoo as its subject, partly because she was a female (the chimp genome was of a male). The analysis of Ulindi's complete genome, reported online today in Nature, reveals that bonobos and chimpanzees share 99.6% of their DNA. This confirms that these two species of African apes are still highly similar to each other genetically, even though their populations split apart in Africa about 1 million years ago, perhaps after the Congo River formed and divided an ancestral population into two groups. Today, bonobos are found in only the Democratic Republic of Congo and there is no evidence that they have interbred with chimpanzees in equatorial Africa since they diverged, perhaps because the Congo River acted as a barrier to prevent the groups from mixing. The researchers also found that bonobos share about 98.7% of their DNA with humans—about the same amount that chimps share with us.

Bonobos Join Chimps as Closest Human Relatives https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/06/bonobos-join-chimps-closest-human-relatives<>
answered on Friday, Jan 10, 2020 12:41:45 PM by mchasewalker

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Aryan
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I would put it as Faulty Comparison, because he is comparing Homosexuality with Pedophilia, when they are really nothing alike and should not be compared.

answered on Thursday, Mar 05, 2020 12:00:29 AM by Aryan

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