It's broke

I'm reposting some remarks I made at Denny Burk's blog, in response to a couple of commenters, on the suicide of Josh Alcorn:

steve hays January 3, 2015 at 10:04 pm #

“Stop loving people as you wish to love them. Just don’t do it. Love them as they ask.”

What if somebody’s a masochist. What if they suffer from deep self-loathing, and feel they deserve to be hurt. Would you “love” them as they ask (by whipping them)? Or would you treat they as they ought to be loved, despite their request to be brutalized?

steve hays January 3, 2015 at 10:23 pm #

If you think there aren’t real people who suffer from self-loathing and feel they deserve to be hurt, you don’t know as much about the human condition as you presume to. The fact that you think I’m kidding speaks volumes about your provincial understanding of the real world. You need to learn more and moralize less.

steve hays January 3, 2015 at 10:38 pm #

We got to it because I’m answering you on your own terms. You framed the issue in terms of “loving” people as they ask rather than how we wish to love them. You need to keep track of your own argument. Does your reaction mean you’re retracting your original claim? Do you now admit that it is wrong to treat people the way they ask if, in fact, what they ask is harmful to them?

steve hays January 3, 2015 at 11:59 pm #

So, by your own admission, you suffer from a persecution complex.

Actually, the bullies are the gay and trans lobbyists who put elderly florists out of business.

steve hays January 3, 2015 at 10:51 pm #

BTW, if a person suffers from xenomelia, should we “love them as they ask” by consenting to their surgical mutilation? How, if at all, do you consider xenomelia to differ from gender dysphoria? Is dismembering them upon request the right and loving thing to do?

steve hays January 3, 2015 at 11:55 pm #

So you're ducking the question. Why is that?

This is called an argument from analogy. You make a claim, I give a counterexample. It’s a test of your consistency–or lack thereof.

Amputation is to xenomelia as a sex-change operation is to gender dysphoria. That’s the comparison.

You said we should love people as they ask, not as we wish to love them. Very well then. How should someone with xenomelia be treated? Should we grant their request to be dismembered? That would be doing what they ask. Do you have a consistent principle? Or do you make ad hoc exceptions depending on your personal proclivities?

steve hays January 4, 2015 at 12:25 am #

“I’m not hiring you as my surgeon.”

You seems to have difficulty following your own argument. Let’s try again. Your stated principle is that we should love people as they ask, not as we wish to love them.

So the question is how you think we should treat people who suffer from xenomelia. Is it loving to dismember them upon request?

“you are describing a surgery that removes key body parts.”

How is excising arms or legs the removal of key body parts, but excising sex organs not the removal of key body parts? The body can survive in either case.

“THE ISSUE IS WHETHER OR NOT YOU KNOW WHO PEOPLE ARE BETTER THAN THEY KNOW THEMSELVES.”

Which is what makes people who suffer from xenomelia analogous to people who suffer from gender dysphoria.

“If you were to start driving people with the condition of xenomelia into killing themselves by telling them their identities are worthless or wrong, then we’d have an actual analogy on our hands.”

What if their “identity” is a mental illness? Should no one be diagnosed as having a mental illness?

steve hays January 4, 2015 at 12:48 pm #

“if people can’t even respect someone enough to call them by THEIR name and gender”

That’s why I, for one, refer to Alcorn by his real name and gender. He real name was Josh (not Leelah) and his real gender was male.

It’s a pity that transgender lobbyists disrespect his true identity. They care more about their ideology than they do about people.

“I stand by my statements that the overwhelming ignorance and hatred here is not fitting of adults and especially not adults who consider themselves to be pious Christians.”

What’s truly hateful is people who condemn folks like Josh Alcorn to an unnatural, self-destructive identity and lifestyle, by refusing to offer them hope of possible restoration in this life or the next.

steve hays January 4, 2015 at 8:30 pm #

“You can’t fix it if it ain’t broke.”

Ironically, it’s not Christians who say people like Josh Alcorn are broken; rather, it’s people like you and he who implicitly say that about yourselves. You said: “THE ISSUE IS WHETHER OR NOT YOU KNOW WHO PEOPLE ARE BETTER THAN THEY KNOW THEMSELVES.”

Well, the people in question claim that their psychological identity contradicts their physical (i.e. genetic, morphological) identity. That’s radically “broken.”

Likewise, if you think people in that condition are entitled to undergo sex-change operations and/or hormone therapy, then they are desperately trying to fix what they themselves perceive as broken.

steve hays January 5, 2015 at 1:05 am #

It’s demeaning for you to refer to a 17 year old as a “child,” which you do repeatedly in your comment. Many people are 17 when they graduate from high school. 17-year-olds can marry. 17-year-olds can join the armed services (with parental consent).

To the extent that other people drove him over the edge, that would be LGBTQIA propagandists who filled his head with dangerous illusions.

steve hays January 5, 2015 at 12:41 pm #

And, Travis, what we’re getting from “people like you” is a purely emotive, unreasoning response. The fact that your antagonism towards Christians and Christianity is so thoughtless is hardly an indictment of Christians or Christianity.

Fact is, had Alcorn’s parents “accepted” his imagined gender, he would in all likelihood have died of AIDS, colon cancer, or some other LGBT related/aggravated disease.

steve hays January 5, 2015 at 12:54 pm #

Once again, that’s another comment from you with zero intellectual merit.

steve hays January 5, 2015 at 1:16 pm #

You haven’t demonstrated that the Bible is a book of myths. Moreover, you haven’t shown that secular ethics can ground objective moral norms or human rights.