Morality? Pshaw.

Poor Mack. For months I ignore every single one of his posts, and then, the one post that moves me to act doesn't even get me to comment on his entry. I have to blog it here, and steal off traffic from him by Trackbacking him. Oh well.

It's like this. Government asks the people if it's a good idea to distribute free condoms and hypodermic needles. Of course, predictably, religious authorities flip out. I was guessing that the Muslims authorities, typical of them, would flip out. Oh, and possibly the Catholics. But it looks like they're all flipping out. How nice. Makes you want to be an atheist, it does.

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of difficulty for me. I don't have to flip out. Maybe because it's because I'm used to feeling and doing immoral things? You never know.

While it is immoral to endorse and condone the act of premarital and extramarital sex and intravenous drug use, it is far more immoral to refuse treatment and prevention to people who may need it. And by prevention, yes, that means needles and condoms, no matter how distasteful it is to our sensibilities.

It is a matter of who is most harmed by what we do and endorse. And as far as I'm concerned, we harm more by not trying to prevent it and reduce its scope for harm. Distributing condoms and free hypodermic needles, with the proper education for its use, reduces the scope for diseases like AIDS to harm. Not reducing harm tends to be an immoral act. Therefore, preventing the spread of free condoms and needles tends to be an immoral act.

There's definitely a leap of logic over there, which no doubt will be tediously discussed by wonderfully tedious people, who may not realize that by the time that they hash out their Logic 101 books I will no longer give a shit. That's apathy for you.

While it may be a spurious argument, at least I take comfort that while I have leaps of logic, nothing beats “spreading the use of condoms and hypodermic needles == condoning and encouraging immorality”. Whatever let's you sleep at night.

That's all there is to it. The lives and deaths of sinners do not come anywhere near to the issue. That's up to them to decide — we can only do what we must, which is to try and prevent more harm from happening to people who may not deserve what may happen to them.

Now, was that so difficult?