<div>Michael, Ed et. al.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Social Science, like Political Science, is an oxymoron... but I think that "morality," and certainly not sexual morality, may have little to do with the survival or demise of a given society. Some very brutal and dictatorial societies (ancient Egypt) survived for millennia, but not because they were "moral" by the standards of morality you appear to follow. In fact, I think a good case could be made that some societies fall in part because they are "moral," meaning, from my moral perspective, less violent and brutal. Other societies survive by doing whatever it takes to survive, "moral" or not.
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<div> </div>
<div>Success in warfare is one of the most critical variables in maintaining the survival of many societies throughout history, and the more ruthless and vicious the warriors and the tactics employed, the more the society has the means to maintain itself against external threats, or to conquer other societies. Thus the willingness to kill "enemies," to wipe out or assimilate entire other cultures without compunction, may be a very important variable to maintain the success of a society, but I trust this does not fit your definition of how a "moral" society functions.
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<div>Societies not structured around the willingness and the technology to wage all out brutal take no prisoners warfare may be at a disadvantage in competing with more war oriented societies. Why did the invading European culture dominate the native cultures in North America, ending in genocide for many of the native cultures? One dominate variable: superiority in warfare. This may have had more to do with war technology and the numbers of Europeans invading (small pox blankets were a clever tactic, a form of biological warfare), than a lack of willingness on the part of the native cultures to fight and kill.
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<div>But I doubt it had anything to do with the European rejection of homosexuality based on Biblical or Judeo-Christian moral superiority, or any other moral or religious principle that rendered the European culture morally superior. In fact, I think the European culture invading North America, based on this vaunted Judeo-Christian moral tradition, was morally despicable, that their treatment of native cultures in North America ranks among the most horrendous and cruel examples of human inhumanity to other humans in the history of the human race. And that the Judeo-Christian tradition was in fact employed as ideological/religious justification/rationalization for the hideous, cruel, monstrous conduct of the Europeans against the native cultures.
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<div>QED </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Ted Moffett<br><br> </div>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 4/22/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Michael</b> <<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:metzler@moscow.com" target="_blank">metzler@moscow.com</a>> wrote:
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">Ed Writes:</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"> </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">>> My example (in </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">>> gestalt form) was specifically meant to illustrate that when we began </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">>> to accept homosexual marriage and relationships as normal, we morphed </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">>> from the idea of being a Christian or Judeo-Christian society based </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">>> on biblical morality. And, of course, this is historically when </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">>> societies get into trouble--the beginning of the end so to speak. My </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">>> previous post laid out all the societal dangers for normalizing </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">>> homosexual activity..... So, some say that there are so few, embrace </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">>> them. The issue is not how any individual poses a threat to anyone, </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">>> but how the normalization of homosexuality endangers the entire </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">>> society.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"> </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"> </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">I think we have too easily dismissed this argument. The problem is not the inference; the problem is making the premises probably true. Ed now has to tell us a short world history, focused on the causal relations between acceptance of homosexuality and the general moral break up of society, and the typical cultural result in the West when the classical and/or Judeo-Christian framework is rejected. There is still the possible problem of confusing appropriate law with appropriate morality, but I think we could table that in order to hear Ed out. So, Ed, are you going to start in the ancient East or the ancient West? If you can historically verify these claims I think you would have one interesting argument.
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"> </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">Michael Metzler </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"> </span></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">P.S. And thanks for treating us like normal human beings; not often you see conservatives do that around here. </span></font></p></div></div><br>_____________________________________________________
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