OK, Steve Shaw, here's what you said:

But what I don't do is to try to superimpose some kind of moral dimension onto stuff I don't understand. There is no more morality involved in two blokes making love than there is in you and me going out for a Big Mac or a cappuccino. There is no more morality in a young woman having an abortion than there is in her teachers not providing her with the education required to help her not have got into that position in the first place, or in her mum and dad having been too shy to talk to her about sex. There is no more morality involved in a bloke infecting someone else with HIV than there is in the state not having provided that bloke with the education and the wherewithal towards working at that not happening.

Morality isn't a matter of judging people with a bunch of arbitrary rules, Steve. It's making decisions about what is harmful, and what is helpful.

For most of us, two people making love is certainly more significant than having a Big Mac or capuccino. It can be a sublime and profound expression of love, or it can hurt one or both people very deeply - so it is a moral decision, one not to be taken lightly.

Abortion, too, is a moral decision that must not be taken lightly. There's the potential life of a child involved, and the possibility of lifelong grief and regret for those who will mourn the loss of that child. Nonetheless, there are often many factors that make abortion the best of a number of bad options. Certainly, it's also wrong for schools and parents to fail to give their children sex education - but I think that nowadays, relatively few schools (religious and otherwise) and relatively few parents (religious and otherwise) fail to do this. My kids went to Catholic schools in the US in the 1980s, and they got sex education from both their schools and their parents in more detail than they wanted to have. And if a woman didn't have sex education, it still behooves her not to take the decision to abort lightly.

Yes, it is immoral (and gravely harmful) for a person to knowingly or recklessly give another person HIV. And yes, it is also wrong for the state to fail to give education and materials to help prevent the spread of HIV. But it's not an either-or proposition. Both actions are immoral.

That's what morality is - deciding whether to do harm or do good. All people in society need to be moral people - it's not just a religious thing. And all people in society need to speak out when they see injustice.

-Joe Offer-