American Clarity Essays political, philosophical, and theological from an American romantic.

Conservatives have been taking a lot of flack over the past few decades for an “intolerant” stance on sexuality–including both homosexuality and promiscuous heterosexuality–and to be quite honest they’re losing the battle.  In this writer’s opinion, they’re losing for more than one reason, but particularly due to one: that they’re incapable of explaining the concept of evil to reasonable people.  As such, this writer has undertaken the task of presenting the concept of evil as it relates to sexual perversions, borrowing heavily from C.S. Lewis’s modern ethical masterpiece “Mere Christianity.”

So what is evil?  Well, without even determining exactly what moral codes are, we can understand that good exists independently of evil, but that evil’s existence is completely dependent upon good.  For instance, no person–regardless of how many times they’ve watched The Fifth Element–could possibly believe that an act of evil is committed purely for evil’s sake.  The pursuit of sexual satisfaction, financial stability, and peace are all good things, but if they’re pursued through rape, cheating, or killing all your political rivals, then the pursuit of those good things becomes evil.  Simply put, evil can only exist if good things are pursued the wrong way.  Even acts of cruelty are committed by people seeking some sort of tangibly good–yet wrongly pursued–effect, be it sexual satisfaction or a feeling of “justice.” (more…)