George M

Assume the following : you are the president of a country that has a significant ethnic minority. (we''ll call them "pogos")

There is sudden outbreak of a virus that has a 100 % mortality rate. The virus is spread exclusively by contact with an infected pogo. Although pogos can be infected, they show no signs of the disease and do not get ill. There is no reliable test available to determine whether a pogo is infected or not.

Since the disease is highly contagious, your scientists tell you that at current rates the entire non-pogo population will become infected and die within a few months, with only the pogo minority surviving.

There is not enough time to build internment camps for pogos, so the only option would be to round all pogos up and execute them.

1) Would this be morally justified, considering both that not all pogos are infected and that those who are became infected through no fault of their own ?

2) Would your answer be any different if the virus was deadly for pogos as well ?

If possible, try and provide some reasoning for your answer and not just a yes/no.

This is a bit long, so bear with me.

I often have discussions with people that are anti-homosexual - religious and non-religious people alike - about why exactly it is, that homosexuality should be perceived as wrong or sinful. Then reasons I usually get are:

- It’s disgusting/no normal person would do that

- It’s against the bible (Leviticus etc.)

- It’s just wrong

- It leads to xyz (all of which is easily disproven by modern day science)

I wondered if anyone ever actually heard any substantive argument as to why homosexuality is bad, that is not just based on personal preference or on section of a religious text, in which no further reasoning is given either.

To give you an example of what I mean :

If the statement is: ”War is wrong”, then a valid argument would be “because people get killed and that is murder [assuming here that we’ve already established that murder is wrong]. One could disagree with that statement, but one would have to concede that it is a valid argument.

Not a valid argument would be something like: “War is just wrong”, “I don’t like war”, “War is against my personal belief”, or “War leads to the Marsians gaining control over our brains”.

I’m not necessarily looking for arguments you would agree with – just arguments that could conceivably be used in a rational debate – as astonishingly I have yet to hear a single one….

I can understand why you'd be interested to know the sexuality of close family & friends.

But why do people care about things such as homosexual people living next door ? After all no one cares if left-handed people live there or red-haired people. Why does it bother people so much to see people of a different sexual orientation, even though they have no social interaction with them whatsoever ?

Why are all (or almost all) of the US prison uniform shirts short-sleeved ? Is it really that warm in prison ?