 I have a moral question for you, and I'm going to couch it in the most extreme terms I can, so there's no confusion over the issues. Let's suppose you're down on your luck, maybe unemployed. Just move to a strange town. You have no friends, very little money, and feeling very lonely and isolated, so you go down to the local community center and check out the bulletin board. You spot a group that sounds interesting, so you check it out. At the first meeting, the group have really good free coffee and donuts in the back. You make some friends within a few minutes, and the group is really nice and welcoming. One person even offers to let you crash at their place and raid their fridge. Your problems are solved. This is a great group to belong to. It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy to be part of this community, but there's a catch. The group is Nambla, the North American Man-Boy Love Association. They're a group united around a common interest in pedophilia. You have no such interests, of course, but you really like the group you've met. Now the question is, if you stay for the free coffee, but you really aren't a pedophile, do you have any reason to feel responsible for the actions of the other members? What if you just pay dues but don't actually attend? What if you just show up at the fun run, or the bake sale? At what point is your level of responsibility essentially negated? Now, slightly different question. What if you join Nambla, but you try to work from within to steer the group towards, say, older boys, 18-year-olds, for example. You might not be successful, but at least you've stood up for what's right. Does that negate your complicity? Do your positive actions from within separate you from the group? Does taking a stand against the core principle of the group clear you of complicity so long as you keep paying your dues and attending the meetings? Let's try a different moral question. If you were a member of the Sierra Club, and one of its members turned out to be a pedophile after you joined, what would be your responsibility? You might still debate whether to leave the club or not, but there's a distinction between a group founded on a love of nature that included a pedophile, and a group founded on love of sexual abuse of children that contained a pedophile. If the pedophile were expelled, it would send a clear message that the Sierra Club is not going to tolerate that kind of behavior, that it violates the core principles of the organization. Now, what if that Sierra Club had an officer that was convicted of raping the young son of one of the other members, and instead of removing the officer, he was instead transferred to a new club? Wouldn't that be a statement about the values of the organization, regardless of what was written in the charter? Would you still attend the meetings and pay your dues? It would seem that the moral distinction has to do with the core principles of the group, as well as the tolerated actions of the members in good standing. This is what separates actual guilt by association from the fallacy of association. I'm not going to say that all Muslims are terrorists. I'm saying that some terrorists are terrorists because they are Muslim. The day that scientists start blowing themselves up over molecular biology research, I may have to consider a new career. Likewise, moderate members of a religious group do not get a free pass. Muslims who object to being lumped in with terrorists or extremists need to understand why they have a responsibility to those actions that are supported by citing the Quran. I believe all Roman Catholics share a complicity in child rape by paying their dues to a group that tolerates it among the members. The Catholic Church has made it clear that pedophilia does not disqualify one from being an officer in their organization. If I were a Catholic, I would stop attending church until the issue has been resolved to my satisfaction. I wouldn't tithe regardless of the cost to Catholic charities. Now, I don't see Catholics deserting their faith en masse. I don't see Muslims rewriting the Quran to remove the bits about martyrdom and beheadings. That says to me that either they think that by objecting to the actions, paying lip service, they're cleansed of complicity, or possibly they don't consider their membership in the group to be truly voluntary. They're compelled to be members of a group that tolerates child rape or murder. It can be argued that I'm a hypocrite in this. I belong to the United States of America citizenry, essentially willingly. So I must answer for any actions done by the US military and tolerated by the administration I help delect. It's a valid argument, and I don't have a strong defense. The US has committed sins, and I feel guilty for them. Even though my grandparents were all from outside the US, I still feel complicity in the policies of racism and discrimination of my chosen country. These things have been largely corrected in my time, but it could still be argued that I should be looking for a more egalitarian country to live in, more in line with the principles I stand for. When I was young, I was a boy scout, and they have a policy of discrimination against homosexuals. They also have had sex scandals since their inception. I can make the choice now not to enroll my son in their program as a result. I make sure my donations don't fund organizations that are counter to my personal morality. This is a responsibility I take very seriously. I've quit jobs that I felt required my complicity in unjust acts, but I'm not claiming to be perfectly moral either. Now, inevitably, someone will mention that all Germans were not responsible for the actions of Hitler. We would find a continuum of gray areas from the baker who baked the bread that fed the Nazi soldiers that rounded up the Jews, all the way to the planners and death camp guards of the Holocaust. You can throw out all sorts of gray areas, equivocation, anything to keep from being confronted with the very serious responsibility of what voluntary groups we support with our presence and our money. I know I'm on shaky formal logic here. No doubt. In comments, someone will come up with a clever point I didn't consider. But intuitively, I know I'm right. You can't be moral and support immoral organizations. You can make the moral choice now. Stop buying from unethical companies. Quit jobs with unethical employers. Cancel your membership in unethical clubs. And if your religious organization is unethical, you can quit that too. The choice is yours. But the bottom line is there is no exception given to people who are just in it for the free coffee. Thanks for watching.