Ayn Rand on Anti-Gay Marriage Initiatives

What would Ayn Rand have said about Prop 8 if she were alive today? These words of wisdom were spoken nearly 50 years before it passed.

Ayn Rand is currently in fashion among tea partiers, as conservative pundits have been promoting her work since Obama was elected. But these people need to realize that her support for individual rights goes for everyone, including gays, and using the democratic process to deny gays civil rights is contrary to a politics of freedom.

There is currently a push in Iowa to repeat what prop 8 accomplished in California, where the majority voted to restrict the individual freedom of their gay fellow citizens. Don't let it happen again.

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Tags:

• Ayn Rand
• Objectivism
• Mike Wallace
• interview
• 1959
• gay marriage
• prop 8
• california
• maine
• iowa
• new hampshire
• vermont
• connecticut
• massachusetts
• minnesota
• NOM
• maggie gallagher
• brian brown
• courage campaign
• hrc
• rights
• homosexuality
• gay
• maryland
• wyoming
• indiana
• rhode
• island
• individual
• civil

[nicksum29]

And yet, Ayn loathed the gays. And was quite happy to see them thrown in jail. Tell the whole story. This "philosopher" was pure poison.

[gplus46]

@AssemblyMass

I've only read that homosexual relations between a man and a youth were acceptable?

[DarthJeffery]

@AssemblyMass Firstly, you haven't shown that morality does not involve logic. Secondly, my arguments have tried to establish that non-objective morality is an oxymoron, it cannot exist. I think those arguments were purely based on logic, and correct. Morality that is not objective contradicts itself (it must), and thus cannot be true.

[AssemblyMass]

@DarthJeffery In our conversation I've never claimed a moral stance. I have argued that your moral stance is subjective and shown you that it doesn't involve logic. I don't think you realize that your own morality has no objectivity, yet your still claiming to believe in it based on 'logic', claiming it's authority is based on universal truths and an innate capacity for realizing said truths.

[DarthJeffery]

@AssemblyMass I claimed your morality is not objective. I believe mine is. You have claimed logic does not have anything to do with morality, I disagree. If something is not objective, can you conclude it exists? That is absurd, to claim that you cannot objectively believe in something, yet it is rational to believe in it. Either your moral choices have no moral weight (because they are not objective), or they are objective. You either believe in objective morality or no morality.

[AssemblyMass]

@DarthJeffery Which is proving my point. Where does your morality gain it's authority from? If morality is not objective, then you can refute any 'universal truths' which you appealed to below and we've already established that formal logic has nothing to do with your morality either. You may find gay marriage immoral, but such opinions are not based on anything other than your subjective opinion, not an innate morality which appeals universal truths.

[DarthJeffery]

@AssemblyMass Just because morality is a concept, does not mean it is objective (this is obvious). Morality that is not objective contradicts itself (see Kant's categorical imperative), and thus cannot have authority. Cogito Ergo Sum refutes the idea of an objective morality not concluded from an innate moral code. Immunization is a technology, not a moral choice. Would our ancestors have chosen to use the technology if they could? Then we do not differ from them morally.

[AssemblyMass]

Immunization isn't found throughout human history. Does that mean I can argue that it is morally wrong to allow the state to mandate immunization of children? We can outgrow our ancestors ignorance.

[AssemblyMass]

I would start worrying. I don't need an innate moral code to comprehend the concept of morality, because morality is just that, a concept. You are conflating logic and morality. You don't use logic to distinguish between two moral options, for those options are not within logical constraints. Cogito ergo sum does not relate to logic but proves subjectivity is most certain, subjective values are not the same as matters of fact.

[DarthJeffery]

@AssemblyMass I have read some of Russel, and I stopped reading because it was somewhat silly (over simplistic analysis of most moral questions). Perhaps I read the wrong book? Also, you fail (as Nietzsche did) to establish a congruent basis for morality. If you do not base morality on absolutes, than it becomes incongruent and absurd. I could understand a disbelief in morality at all (as some would argue), but not relativistic definitions.