If you run over my flowerbed, I have no way of ever knowing what your motivation was. It could be a "hate crime," an "innocent mistake," etc. We maintain a legal system to try to determine intent, but that's a guess. What I want from you when it happens is full damages, and my flowerbed returned to it's original condition.
Yes, you bring up an additional point wrt to the legal system which does somewhat factor intent into punishment. That is a separate issue (but important in its own right) from trying to understand causes, and what one might do to alter the situation in the future.
For example, the Judo-Christian scriptures traditionally explain homosexuality in terms of sin, wickedness, or evil. The pieces are falling into place for science to first provide a much more illuminating explanation, then follow that up with a "cure", both of which I expect to see in the next decade or two. Considering that the former explanation has endured for 2K years, and that 100's of millions of modern people use that explanation in ordering their personal & political lives, this will be interesting to watch.
I remember in HS when I first became interested in computers, reading the story of Alan Turing. In college I used the VLSI design textbook by Conway & Mead. So in my profession, I'm very indebted (as are most who work in the field) to the contributions of those two. Society was not so kind to them in return. At the time, my background made me quite clear on what was evil, namely their sexual issues. Now I wonder if the evil might not have been more in how society responded to them instead. I've learned that understanding things is more important than labelling them. |
