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I am surprised that this is the top comment. It appears that quite a few folks here do not believe that the right to sexuality is a basic human right. I belie

by miek 13y ago

I am surprised that this is the top comment. It appears that quite a few folks here do not believe that the right to sexuality is a basic human right. I believe that it is, but I will backpedal and start here: First, the intentions behind the law must be separated from its function. Unrelated example: intention of laws allowing our government to spy on everyone may be good, but in practice lead to a lot of problems. Regarding Russia's law in question, the stated intention is to protect children, however the law itself is vague and targets simply the "promotion" of homosexuality. A translation I read here said: "...it is necessary to establish measures to ensure intellectual, moral and mental security of children, including the prohibition onto perform any act aimed at the promotion of homosexuality." This is incredibly vague. Now for Russia's track record: There is no law in Russia that prohibits discrimination against LGBT people, and violent crimes against them receive little (any?) attention from authorities. In fact, police are known to use violence against them. How do you think this new law will be interpreted? It won't be good. It's bad enough that the country doesn't protect gays from discrimination, but now they have passed a law that will likely encourage it. Can gay people now legallly hold hands in public? Gay parents in Russia are now unsure of how their communication with their children, their children's friends etc., could be construed as promoting homosexuality. You believe "that a gay rights movement really would be deeply socially disruptive in a really bad way in much of the world (including Russia)." I believe that any human rights movement concerning religion, race, color, sexuality, gender, class, political affiliation, etc. is always a good thing. It is always good because humans should be treated equally.

einhverfr 13y ago
> It appears that quite a few folks here do not believe that the right to sexuality is a basic human right. I believe that it is, but I will backpedal and start here: So, to be clear, would you say that human rights are faith-based? I.e. are they whatever the individual believes they are? If not, what other basis can they have? > First, the intentions behind the law must be separated from its function. To some extent, yes. But as I think you are getting at below, you can't separate either, really, from enforcement, and I would point out you can't separate enforcement from local politics. > Can gay people now legallly hold hands in public? Given what I know of Russian culture, I doubt that would be seen as gay. > You believe "that a gay rights movement really would be deeply socially disruptive in a really bad way in much of the world (including Russia)." I believe that any human rights movement concerning religion, race, color, sexuality, gender, class, political affiliation, etc. is always a good thing. It is always good because humans should be treated equally. I think you need to define "treated equally." There are plenty of cases where facial equality is in fact not equal at all. The lack of women as new tech founders is not caused by a lack of facial equality, but due to the differences in how a facially equal culture affects men and women differently. If you were planning on starting a family within a few years and knew it would cause an earnings hit, would you work long hours with uneven paychecks for uncertain rewards? But let's look at specifics. The problem is intergenerational duties and interests. Strong intergenerational duties tend to be associated with difficulty remarrying after having kids, retirement with the kids, strong, enforcible interest in who one's children may marry, and so forth. In such an environment, there is no way to have equality because the tool of last resort to overthrow parental opinion (premarital sex resulting in pregnancy) is unavailable to same-sex couples. This means, to have equality you have to: 1. Isolate children from their parents, at least as of adolescence and adulthood. 2. Isolate parents from their children in retirement. These are the things I think would be harmful, in fact so harmful that I don't support internationalizing such movements. Now obviously we do both of these things in the US, but most of the world doesn't and the question is what right do we have to redefine the parent/child relationship as necessary to give equality on the basis of our notions of sexual orientation.

by miek 13y ago

einhverfr 13y ago

> It appears that quite a few folks here do not believe that the right to sexuality is a basic human right. I believe that it is, but I will backpedal and start here: So, to be clear, would you say that human rights are faith-based? I.e. are they whatever the individual believes they are? If not, what other basis can they have? > First, the intentions behind the law must be separated from its function. To some extent, yes. But as I think you are getting at below, you can't separate either, really, from enforcement, and I would point out you can't separate enforcement from local politics. > Can gay people now legallly hold hands in public? Given what I know of Russian culture, I doubt that would be seen as gay. > You believe "that a gay rights movement really would be deeply socially disruptive in a really bad way in much of the world (including Russia)." I believe that any human rights movement concerning religion, race, color, sexuality, gender, class, political affiliation, etc. is always a good thing. It is always good because humans should be treated equally. I think you need to define "treated equally." There are plenty of cases where facial equality is in fact not equal at all. The lack of women as new tech founders is not caused by a lack of facial equality, but due to the differences in how a facially equal culture affects men and women differently. If you were planning on starting a family within a few years and knew it would cause an earnings hit, would you work long hours with uneven paychecks for uncertain rewards? But let's look at specifics. The problem is intergenerational duties and interests. Strong intergenerational duties tend to be associated with difficulty remarrying after having kids, retirement with the kids, strong, enforcible interest in who one's children may marry, and so forth. In such an environment, there is no way to have equality because the tool of last resort to overthrow parental opinion (premarital sex resulting in pregnancy) is unavailable to same-sex couples. This means, to have equality you have to: 1. Isolate children from their parents, at least as of adolescence and adulthood. 2. Isolate parents from their children in retirement. These are the things I think would be harmful, in fact so harmful that I don't support internationalizing such movements. Now obviously we do both of these things in the US, but most of the world doesn't and the question is what right do we have to redefine the parent/child relationship as necessary to give equality on the basis of our notions of sexual orientation.