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Yes.
I understand why it was done and I support the sentiments but you don't stop a landlord from being racist by making his action illegal. He'll still hold the same views and that is the real issue at stake.
I take your point and also agree with person earlier on this thread that it is better to draw these attitudes out into the open, in order to try to educate - rather than 'criminilasing' people with racist/homophobic attitudes etc and galvanising their unity, by prohibiting them through legislation.
However - there is a difference between racist behaviour and racist attitudes, as pointed out above. I tend to think legislation should try to strike a balance between outlawing racist behaviour; but allowing as much freedom of speech as possible, in order to draw out their opinions and counter them.
The actions of racist landlords have a material effect on real people's lives, so I conclude by agreeing that the legislation should stand. Turning a blind eye to it only gives the impression of condoning racism, whilst materially affecting people's lives.
More effort needs to be put into drawing the BNP etc into active discussion and debate, whilst continuing to outlaw discriminatory practices across the board
I'm actually very liberal as a person and don't consider myself racist. However, I have a few friends who are racist, quite openly. I don't consider them cunts, I don't hate them because they are racist... They are my friends and are as entitled to ther beliefs as I am. I'm sure many of us are in the same position.
Hmmmmm...I feel tempted to quote The Specials on this one.
I was thinking about moral relativism Vs moral absolutism etc yesterday. I don't think that either position is correct, I think there's a dialectic there. What we believe to be right or wrong depends on our viewpoint, our influences, personal values, politics, ethics, where we are in society etc, so it's relative to all those things. However, our sense of our own ethics or morals has to sometimes feel like an absolute - otherwise anything can be justified because it's "someone's opinion". Not all opinions are equally valid. So ethics/morality/whatever you want to call it, are both relative and absolute - relative to where you stand, however this does not mean that I will defend racist friends because "they're entitled to their beliefs" - of course they are, but those beliefs are wrong and I'm entitled to not be friends with someone because of that.
If that makes any sense.
Surely that contradicts your whole post.
Nope, it reinforces my post. Those beliefs are wrong - from where I stand, from my ethical framework. Have a different ethical framework and they're not. However, I have to behave as if my ethical framework is an absolutist one sometimes, otherwise I could end up justifying all sorts of shit.
You've refused the posibility of a genuine absolute, that there is a moral stance that is not subject to outside influence. As zero Kelvin is abosolute freezing and there is no temperature colder.
How can there be? Morality is a human concept.
Prove it.
Anywhere in the universe?
That assumes God has morality, or that God's morality could in any way translate to human affairs. An omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent being who is not constrained by time or space would have a very different morality to humans. Our affairs would seem inconsequential to such a being, we would be like ants or microbes to them.
She's right about absolute zero. Dunno what it has to do with morality though.
Maybe.... but if you take the Darwinian view that we are just apes with brains you end up with the same result. Our intelligence allows us to foresee death and the likelihood of the Hobbesian 'war of every man unto every man' if we don't set a few obvious rules to guide us. These basics then evolve into a moral code which is likely to be pretty universal amongst humans.
Not that arguing this really matters, because you don't believe in an absolute deity. I was simply pointing out you've missed the possibilty of an absolute with a morality that is not subject to influence or change.
If I was a landlord I wouldn't let racists rent, what's the difference?
I basically agree with MoK and namaste.
Good point - or, alternatively put, what if God exists and is actually a bit of a cunt?
It would certainly explain a few things!
My mum is probably colder when she's pissed off.
It has nothing to do with morality. She's a Christain you see, fucking nutjobs. Joke.
So even considering for a second the idea of some magical wizard creating everything out of smoke in seven days - I only see evidence that a 'creator' has no more idea of what is right and wrong, or what the future holds, than anything else. Otherwise, using the judeo-chrisitian myths as an example, why have the tree of knowledge, the floods, why be shocked by Sodom and Gamorra?
Either that or 'god' just likes the idea of watching people fail to meet his unclear and uncommunicated standards.
The idea of some 'a piori' absolute in morality sounds more like the dream of Socrates or Aristotle then a realistic view of theology.
I do believe in moral absolutes, but in the same way Blagsta does - because they are my absolutes, from the perspective of my life.
I don't believe anyone should ever be raped - it doesn't matter to me why I hold that convinction ultimately, I know it to be true, just as I know there are people who don't hold it to be true.
That's a circular argument.
I haven't missed it out, I've rejected it.
Define racism?
There's a difference between a card carrying BNP member with a swastika tattoed on his head and say someone who is a racial nationalist who doesn't shout his mouth off about it.
They don't "have to". However, it's a nice illustration of the problems of property rights.
You're making a rather fundamental category error there.