You Have The Right...

I read the following post recently. http://friendlyatheist.com/2011/02/09/mostly-harmless/

The author wanted to start a discussion about groups that are stigmatized for being different, which is often unfair because the difference is harmless. No matter how different you are in what you stand for, you should not face any discrimination, as long as what you stand for is in general harmless. The idea is that different groups of people, such as atheists and LGBT groups, can relate to each other's problems better, because they face the same problems too.

However, after I went through all that, it was the list of ten hypothetical rights at the bottom of the page that caught my attention. The question posed is, is each of these rights harmless? The blog is one that focuses on atheism and related issues, hence the more pointed question is, should an atheist find it logical to support these rights?

The key word is logical. Actually, the key word was probably intended to be atheist, along with logical, since that's the theme of the post. But I'm ignoring that for now, because atheist or not, the logical factor seems to me to be more fundamental in thinking about the question.

Each right really represents a section of people that believe that what they are doing is harmless, and they should be allowed that right without any discrimination from others. More likely than not, there would be at least one right that people would find disturbing or unacceptable. But unless they can bring a logical reason why they would oppose that right, to the extent that they would legislate against it, their objections cannot be considered valid.

Most of us have the ideas of the culture that we grew up in ingrained inside us, and it's often difficult to break out of that training and think logically. We all say that we should be tolerant and accepting and open to new ideas and new people and so on, but in spite of all that, very often, when faced with this kind of a situation, we tend to go along with our knee-jerk reaction, inbuilt due to all that training.

My own responses: (Original author's note: Note that these examples should all be considered consensual, adult situations.)

The right to marry members of your own gender.

I agree. I see no reason to object to a person marrying whoever they choose, regardless of gender. Each person's marriage is their own choice, and and official marriage gives important legal rights which should belong to every family.

The right to adopt children, whether you’re gay or straight, and whether you’re single or not.

I agree. Child-rearing is one of the most primal instincts. Sexual orientation would not affect how a parent behaves towards a child. I would be more worried about a person's history of violence or drug habits, rather than their orientation, if they were to raise a child. As for single parenthood, I personally feel a child would be emotionally happier with two parents rather than just one, and certainly two people together would have more time / money to raise a child, rather than just one. On the other hand, we're talking about adoption, and I'm sure any child would be delighted to have one caring parent, rather than no parents at all. If a single person is emotionally and financially equipped to take care of children, there is no reason to stop them.

The right to smoke marijuana (with certain restrictions similar to those on alcohol and cigarettes).

This I'm not so sure of. To start with, I don't know everything about marijuana, and what I do know could be rather biased. Marijuana is often termed a gateway drug, but it is not in itself very harmful. Alcohol and cigarettes cause enough damage as it is, so why add more? But people are smoking pot anyway, legal or not, and maybe making it legal with restrictions can pave the way to educating people about responsibility and enforcing restrictions better.

The right to choose euthanasia.

I agree. For those who don't know, euthanasia is the practice of assisted suicide, often for someone with a terminal illness with no chance of recovery. I have read enough sad stories about people who due to disease or accident were crippled for life in the prime of their youth, bedridden and paralyzed without a chance to return to normal, brain dead with body breathing. Some of those people might want to live as long as they can, and some of them may just want to end it all and pass away. It is their choice to make, because they are the ones who are suffering. And they should have the right to make that choice.

The right to change sex or gender, whether through surgery, hormones, cross-dressing, or some combination.

I agree. I've learnt slowly over the years, that people aren't just defined into a finite number of categories like a clear-cut diamond. It took quite some reading to understand the concept of genderqueer and such. Each person has the right to choose what they want to be, in terms of gender and sexual identities. It is each person's own choice to make. Nobody should have to dictate to anyone else on this issue.

The right to marry multiple people.

This is a sticky one. My knee-jerk reaction to this one was, no this shouldn't be. But then I reconsidered. And I can't come to a conclusion. People should have the right to live as they choose. If someone wants to marry multiple people, and if that choice makes them happy and harms nobody else, why should anyone else try to legislate that?

But things are not really that clear cut. To start with, there is a great cultural bias against this idea in most parts of the world. It won't be an easy right to get, and it would be even more difficult to practice. Secondly, there is the possibility of abuse of such a right. What if a person marries a partner but does not tell them that he / she has other partners? They should have the right to know, and if they do not want to be involved in a multiple marriage, they should have the right to not be tricked into it. Even if they have the option of divorce or annulment once they find out they have been cheated, there would be so much time wasted for them, when instead they could be with a partner who shares their views. Or, what if a person is in such a marriage, and then later changes his / her mind, and wants out? And this could happen a lot, so how much in terms of resources would we be willing to spend in this sort of thing?

Polygamy and polyandry have existed historically in many cultures, and are still practiced today in some communities. They were practiced for various reasons, most relating to the structure of society as it was at that time. For instance, in some cultures, several brothers would share a wife, because this ensured that family property would remain within the same family line. In others, males were often killed in wars, and polyandry was practiced so that all fertile women would have a mate and produce children, ensuring that the community population stayed stable.

But in today's world, society is more stable than it has been earlier, and moreover, marriage is associated with important legal rights. Having multiple partners complicates these issues to a great extent. For example, if a person dies, how is his / her property to be divided? Equally amongst all heirs - partners and children? Apportioned to each partner equally? Apportioned to each partner depending on how many children were produced? What about the right to make medical decisions? If all partners have the right, and they make conflicting decisions, how is that to be resolved? How do we arrive at a consensus on such things?

The right to have an elective abortion in the first or second trimester. 

I agree. There is no thinking about this one. Pregnancy is a complicated issue, and every woman knows best what she is capable of undertaking. Forcing a woman to have a baby when it would be detrimental to the quality of either her life or the baby's is unacceptable. Abortion may seem like termination of life to some people, and it may not feel good to undergo the procedure, but that is no reason to legislate against it. A fetus in the womb is nothing like a baby already born.

The right to have an elective abortion in the third trimester.

The third trimester is special because abortion in this case is somewhat dangerous. A lot of doctors don't feel comfortable about doing it, because of the risk involved. A woman may want her pregnancy terminated for whatever reason, but what if the doctor feels it is potentially fatal to the woman? He / She may not want to take up that kind of responsibility. I'd say that the right to abort the fetus should be there nevertheless. I don't know about the doctor's right to refuse the abortion if he / she in good faith feels that he / she might not be able to save the woman.

The right to engage in incest.

I really don't like this one. If both relatives are consenting adults, why should anyone else interfere? And yet it feels weird, undesirable even, due to social conditioning. It was socially accepted in quite a few ancient cultures and cousin marriages are legal in several places today as well.

The actual trouble with incestuous relations is that children of such relations tend to have a greater risk of genetic birth defects. Inbreeding over generations in succession increases the chances of these defects spreading over the population, causing a dip in the overall quality of the gene pool. This is a long-term effect that would be visible over several generations (check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding#Humans ).

How far can we legislate on this? Should we give preference to the possibility of long-term harm? What if two adults want to have a relationship, but with no children? It's another sticky question, and there is no single "right" answer.

The right to express belief in any religion or philosophy.

At first, this seems like a no-brainer: secularism means tolerance for others' beliefs. But this too has the ability to become a sticky problem.

What if someone's religion or philosophy tells them to cause damage to society in some way? Adolf Hitler's philosophy was that Aryans were supreme and Jews should be eliminated, so does the right to express belief in that philosophy mean we can't condemn him for the death camps he started? Apartheid is the philosophy that dark-skinned people are inferior to fair-skinned people. Should dark-skinned people be expected to respect that kind of idea? A good number of religious texts dictate that homosexuality is a sin. And yet isn't that idea abhorrent to so many of us, homosexual or not? What happens to the right to express belief, in these cases?

Someone might try to get technical and say that this right is just about expressing belief, not about actually implementing it, so it would then simply come down to a matter of freedom of speech. After all, if someone just says they have such-and-such idea, but won't actually implement it, no harm's done, right? I don't think so. Expressing belief is not just about words, it's about actions too. Implementing belief comes under expression of belief; it is not a separate thing.

Certainly everyone should have the right to express what they believe. You can't really legislate against that. But this cannot be an absolute kind of right. Nobody should be able to use this right to discriminate against other people.

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I'm no legal or social expert, and I am certainly in no position to legislate on stuff like this. The rights that I'm sure of, well, I'm sure of them, for reasons that make sense to me. The ones I find problematic, well, I can't come to a conclusion on them. I don't want to stick to a knee-jerk response on them, but I won't blindly justify recognition of those rights either.