Philosophy Films: flame on!: morality reconsidered

“Homosexuality is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love – all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce.” –Plato

I don’t understand all this “drama” over homosexuality. I think we should just let them be. Who cares if they are homosexual or not? To me that’s as big of a deal as someone wanting to dye his or her hair. Homosexuality is simply a choice, a lifestyle. If we don’t agree, then we don’t agree because there isn’t anything anyone can say or do that would change that particular individual. The only thing we can do is inflict pain, intentionally or not. I am neither saying that homosexuality is right nor criticizing that it is morally wrong; I just so happen to be a firm believer in individuality and I don’t believe that change can be forced.

I agree with this film when it talks about the fact that different time periods perceive different things with different opinions. One example that immediately comes to my head is the concept of “beauty.” Even though each individual hold their own uniquely defined understanding of “beauty”, the general concept of “beauty” accepted by society changes periodically from era to era. For example, back in the day, the epitome of beautiful woman can be simply defined as Marilyn Monroe - she has fair hair, fair skin, fair eyes with a voluptuous body. Whereas today, beautiful is more vaguely defined as someone long legged and skinny. In this modern society we embrace uniqueness as attractive, not as different and ugly. Thus, beautiful today would not be generally be accepted as beautiful in the past. In that sense, we cannot assume that everything is ever for certain; we can wake up tomorrow and learn that the things we lived our lives believing suddenly became false.