Sans Fig Leaf
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"The nature of wrongs"
10 April, 2008
Imagine you're babysitting two young children. One of them calls the other a bad name, and punches him. Clearly, you need to intervene. The kids need a time out from each other, perhaps. There needs to be some action taken, the wrong identified, and some consequences.
Now imagine that you're doing some gardening in your back yard. Over the fence you hear what sounds like a child screaming in genuine fear and pain. You look over the fence and see a knife-wielding man attacking a small child. Clearly, you need to intervene. You will try to stop the man, save the child, and summon the proper authorities.
Those are easy. Let's try a harder one.
You hear a screaming and crying child in the house next door. You also hear a voice that you recognize as one of the parents of the child, yelling at the kid to stop being such a baby and to accept their punishment. After a while, the crying subsides.
Do you intervene? Or do you try to investigate further? After all, sometimes a child will cry and scream without any physical abuse at all, right? Perhaps you try to observe the children and the parent later when they are in the yard or some other public place? Make casual inquiries to the other neighbors?
What would it take to make you decide that some kind of intervention was required? Frequent visible bruises on the children? Visits to the hospital for treatment of broken bones where the story is always some vague tale of how "the kid fell" again? Bruises or a black eye visible on the other parent?Still too easy.
Suppose your neighbors live a life you disapprove of, in a serious way. They conduct themselves in a manner that violates your most fundamental moral principles. They aren't involved in anything technically illegal, so far as you know, or perhaps some things they do are things you wish were illegal, but for various reasons aren't. They have children, and they are raising their children to consider these immoral things as normal and acceptable. Further, you are convinced that the kids will grow up to have severe emotional and mental problems--they may even become sociopathic. You have heard statistics somewhere that say kids raised in this sort of environment suffer from a much higher rate of teen suicide than average.
Do you intervene? Should you have the right to intervene? These are children in danger, right?
If I told you that the statistics came from the Surgeon General's office during the administration of the elder President George Bush, the conclusion of a study that had begun during the Reagan administration, would it change your answer?
Are you sure?
What if I told you that the study concluded that the best way to prevent many of those teen suicides was to teach the kids that being gay, lesbian, or bisexual is just as all right as being straight? That the study went further and said the single best way to make a significant reduction in teen suicide was to urge parents, teachers and churches to stop preaching intolerance for gays and lesbians? To urge society as a whole to accept and love all kids as they are and not demonize the sissies and tomboys and other "freaks"?
Are you surprised that this report was practically buried and ignored by politicians in both parties for the seventeen years since it was published?
Teaching kids that it is all right to fear or loathe or pity others because of who they love, is teaching them hate. Hate is immoral. Various studies, not just the one mentioned above, have shown that allowing that kind of intolerance to flower unchecked in schools is responsible for all sorts of serious problems, ranging from the emotional to physical; and all-too-often resulting in death.
But is it wrong in the same way as physically harming a child?
Some people are convinced
that teaching a child to accept certain
inclinations in others could lead them to spend eternity in a very bad
place. They especially believe that allowing a child to accept those
inclinations in him or herself will lead to that outcome. They might
conclude that the loss of one's immortal soul is far worse than
physical harm or death.
At what point does opposing wrong become wrong?
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.
--Henry David Thoreau
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