The "turn off homosexuality" button

[The Guid]

What if you had the chance to alter the entire world with a single button? This button would eliminate all homosexual leanings from your full blown homosexual to your occasional dabbler, and it would retroactively do so. It would do so in the least painful way this intelligent button could. It would try and give each person that has a partner an alternative, it would make sure they had similar life experiences up until that point as much as it could.

In future though all children would have no sexual interest in the same gender whatsoever.

Do you push the button?


For my part, I really don't know. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with homosexuality but then again its easy for me. I occasionally have fun fantasising about men or seeing some nice looking people in porn but at the end of the day I go home to a girlfriend, and we can have children, get married and live wherever we like and nobody will judge. Were I homosexual I would probably have had a more difficult time at school, face problem within my family and have difficulty having children. Would I then want whoever had the button to push it? I haven't the foggiest. And this isn't taking into account the tens, hundreds or maybe thousands who are killed every year just because of their sexuality. Would they, on some level want me to push the button, just so they could have an easier life?

I can't settle this one in my head. So I put it to SD.net, would yoou press it?

[Darth Wong]

Too bad there's no "turn off homophobia" button instead.

[Big Phil]

No - I have no problem with homosexuality. It may be a genetic mutation or something deviating from the norm, but that doesn't make it an abomination, wrong, sinful, etc.

[Simplicius]

Given that homosexuality itself causes harm neither to the homosexuals nor the people around them, I can see no legitimate reason to eliminate it.

This:

And this isn't taking into account the tens, hundreds or maybe thousands who are killed every year just because of their sexuality.

may be true, but is essentially blaming the victims for the offenses perpetrated against them. Would it make sense to transform every Jew in 1940s Germany into a Protestant to save them from being killed? Perhaps - but it would make much more sense to protect those people and go after the persecutors.

Not only do I not press the button, I dismantle it and mail every piece to a different country so no other fuckhead can press it either.

[Darth Wong]

No - I have no problem with homosexuality. It may be a genetic mutation or something deviating from the norm, but that doesn't make it an abomination, wrong, sinful, etc.

That's not really the question. Even if you personally have no problem with homosexuality, the scenario asks if you would magically turn all homosexuals into heterosexuals knowing that they would be much less likely to suffer from discrimination and abuse in life if you did so.

[drachefly]

Homosexuality probably evolved for a reason, perhaps population control, perhaps child-rearing assistance, whatever. No need to screw ourselves up as a population by turning off useful features.

[Darth Wong]

Homosexuality probably evolved for a reason, perhaps population control, perhaps child-rearing assistance, whatever. No need to screw ourselves up as a population by turning off useful features.

You are assuming that every variation in the human population must be useful, and there is no reason whatsoever to believe this is true. In fact, evolution predicts the persistence of sub-optimal features, because biological variation is always going to exceed the optimal range. If it didn't, then evolution would be strictly limited in exactly the manner of creationist strawman distortions of the concept.

[The Guid]

may be true, but is essentially blaming the victims for the offenses perpetrated against them. Would it make sense to transform every Jew in 1940s Germany into a Protestant to save them from being killed? Perhaps - but it would make much more sense to protect those people and go after the persecutors.

To play Devil's advocate here I would suggest that I suggest a hole in the argument. Yes it would make much more sense for me to try and protect every homosexual from the idiocy thrown their way but I don't have that power. But I don't have that power, even if I did everything in my power I wouldn't have the power. With this button though I can save people from persecution, what grounds do I have for not pressing it?

[Yogi]

If Homosexuality was retroactively destroyed, would the Bible then find something else to pick on instead?

[Darth Wong]

One of the big problems with this idea is that it essentially capitulates to hatred by eliminating the demographic which is hated, and that is a dangerous idea from a standpoint of principles even if the new Final Solution is a non-lethal one. If it is repeated as a precedent, one can imagine all manner of things which we might eliminate in order to appease the hateful among us.

[drachefly]

Homosexuality probably evolved for a reason, perhaps population control, perhaps child-rearing assistance, whatever. No need to screw ourselves up as a population by turning off useful features.

You are assuming that every variation in the human population must be useful, and there is no reason whatsoever to believe this is true.

I merely find it probable.

[Pick]

No, I wouldn't. It's simply trying to appease the people who are in the wrong. What we need to do is progress beyond these problems.

Besides, what would you think if someone posted this and it said "black people", "jews", etc. Would your decision be different? Why? And if you'd still push that button, why do you think it wouldn't be a perfect precedent for any of the others?

[drachefly]

Clarification:

I find it probable based on the existence of bees and ants. They are a great example of how not having everyone reproduce can be good strategy for gene propagation. It is no stretch to suppose that less extreme forms would maintain some utility.

In particular, I find it probable based on the failures of Malthusian predictions, that populations' growth modulates based on factors beyond ability to reproduce. What would be a very effective means of adjustable population growth control? Homosexuality. It isn't just an allele combination, so it can be modulated.

[FSTargetDrone]

One would think that if an individual had access to such kinds of power, it would be easier to simply change homophobes' attitudes to something positive.

That said, I would not press any such button. I have a good friend who is in a comitted relationship with another woman and I would not presume to change her and her girlfriend's life situation, experiences, memories, etc., (or somehow provide each of them with with a male mate) merely to satisfy the hateful attitudes of people who find such a relationship wrong or immoral. How can it possibly be justified to alter such a relationship? Even if this were somehow done instantly, with no awareness on the part of everyone else in the world, it would still be wrong.

[Ghost Rider]

No, because all that button justifies is that people who cause the problems are the ones getting rewarded. I could replace Homosexual with any other party and the answer is still the same.

[RedImperator]

No. It's not my right to change something so fundamental about other people, and especially not to appease the fundies.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

No way in Hell. I will not change other peoples' lives and memories arbitrarily merely to appease intolerance.

[Simplicius]

That said, I would not press any such button. I have a good friend who is in a comitted relationship with another woman and I would not presume to change her and her girlfriend's life situation, experiences, memories, etc., (or somehow provide each of them with with a male mate) merely to satisfy the hateful attitudes of people who find such a relationship wrong or immoral.

This is a good point. Pressing the button may save some people from persecution - but it also takes away present and future happiness.

This is purely personal and anecdotal, but I can put up with an awful lot of shit in life provided I have someone to love and who loves me, and I would not sacrifice that love even to make the rest of life a bit easier. Why should a homosexual feel any different - and what then gives me the right to make that decision for someone else?

[Simplicius]

Double post; sorry.

With this button though I can save people from persecution, what grounds do I have for not pressing it?

You are stopping some people from being persecuted, but only by effectively destroying them and replacing them with someone more palatable to a vulgar crowd. I would hardly call that 'saving.'

[CaptJodan]

This is a tough call for me. Pushing the button solves the symptom, not the overall problem of intolerance. Like others has said, fundies would only gravitate toward something else that was the greatest sin of our time. However I am going to treat this subject as if there are no other outside factors which may skew it and deal with just the homosexual issue.

Having said that, the ideal solution is to change people's perceptions of homosexaulity, thereby making the need for such a button moot. For me, however, the question is how many lives is the work towards that kind of progress worth? Everything from homosexual killings to emotional scaring happen on a daily basis around the world and have been for many thousands of years. I think we've got a couple hundred more years to go before the world at large learns to accept that homosexuals aren't devil spawn. And how many lives will be lost to that? (it's an interesting side question on morality, actually. How many lives is an idea of tolerance worth if you can change the rules of that idea at a whim?)

For the world, I don't know. I think the added diversity is a good thing, so eliminating it would allow one less set of difference that our world provides. In the end, such loss of diversity would hurt us in the long run. On the other hand, some people in some countries die for this. For myself personally? I'd push the button.

[FSTargetDrone]

As has been mentioned or alluded to several times already, if we had the option of pressing the "insta-hetero" button or a similar button labled "change homophobes to tolerant person," we'd obviously press the latter. The individual life changes that come from making hateful people to non-hateful people seem far less damaging that suddenly switching all gays to straight. But the OP doesn't give us that choice. Only a choice of whether to press the "insta-hetero" itself, or not.

Even with all the horrible things that have happened to gays throughout history, simply because they are gay, I still cannot bring myself to make such a sweeping alteration of those people's positive experiences for the sake of satisfying those who would persecute them.

[K. A. Pital]

Pushing the button solves the symptom, not the overall problem of intolerance.

Core of the problem.

If there was a button that said "eliminate all causes of intolerance", perhaps that'd be worth pressing. However, eliminating a symptom case of intolerance is not really helping it.

Remember that "Sliders" episode where they came to a World in which Nazism never existed, and the U.S., i think, was about to elect a Nazi leader? Same dilemma: eliminating a particular "symbol" or "symptom" is not solving the problem. It will re-emerge later or in other forms.

Sometimes there is great human cost, but at this cost humanity gains collective understanding and appreciation of problems. And perhaps transpires beyond them, in the "good case".

[drachefly]

If I were shown a button that would eliminate all causes of intolerance, I wouldn't push it. Too much risk that among the causes of intolerance is something vital, that instead of being eliminated should be sublimated, or repressed when it's acting inappropriately.

Now, if I could see a list of the changes, there'd be a chance...

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

This is a bit of a tough question because it can be approached from various points of view, even within the larger Utilitarian construct. If the idea is to minimize suffering, maximize happiness, or fulfill the preferences of those whom the decision is affecting, then it would give a different answer. Some overlap; some are absurd.

If I were approaching it from an act-preference perspective, I wouldn't certainly make the decision for those who are being harmed by having their preferences violated, persecuted unless I could have some general idea how they felt about it.

Since those are the people who would necessarily be affected by my policy action, I would try to line up my decision with their actual projected preferences. Perhaps a preliminary poll would suffice. Would they prefer to have a different life free of their woe and suffering. If so, then yes, certainly I would. If not, then no. Of course, I likely wouldn't get a complete answer, so it might be an average response. The same can be said of this decision when switched from act to rule variations. One could create a reliable, non precedent-forming rule that we could alter people who want to be altered so as to minimize their own suffering/satisfy their preferences according to their own desires.

From the Hedonistic view, the whole idea would revolve around their suffering and promotion of a higher quality life, but it relates to the preference view as well. Not all suffering is paramount; some they might want to tolerate for their own preferences. You need only decrease unwanted, unnecessary suffering and make them happy in a way they would want. Obviously, if most feel that the suffering is not worth the change, then I wouldn't be right in saying to them "yes it is, you're wrong." They are the best judge of their own pain and suffering, I think, so long as they are acting rationally and are competent to make that decision.

The standard Negative Hedonistic perspective would call for elmination of all unwanted suffering. If in fact this will lead to the elmination of net suffering or an average decrease in suffering, it would be desirable, even if it does violate their rights, preferences, or validate the hatred. Negative Utliitarianism doesn't consider that. It really only considers minimizing or eliminating suffering of value, unlike standard Utilitarianism. This has a problem, however, since there's been no real explanation as to what level of suffering would warrent what action, or at least I haven't seen any philosophers discuss the issue. Most seem to dismiss Negative Utilitariianism as leading to absurd conclusions, since it is a one-criterion wonder. It makes no qualms about how you eliminate the suffering, even short of killing people (or at least that is what I am told about it), since it doesn't say you have to give someone happiness and a quality life in response to eliminating that suffering. It doesn't necessarily take into consideration happiness or preferences at all--just the actual or projected suffering to be done away with. In that case, if suffering is the only thing to be evaluated, and you want to minime or elminate it (depending on the form of Negative Utilitarianism, they wouldn't differentiate between "changing" the homosexuals and just killing them painlessly.

So in that regard, I think I would go with the preference utilitarian or satisficing blend of Hedonistic Utilitarianism so as to avoid making that absurd decision.

[zippy]

What, and lose all that Lesbian porn? Nothing is worth that surely.