Friday, July 23, 2010

Misc. repugnant transactions

A transaction is repugnant if some people don't want other people to do it. Here are some recent developments:

International Space Station sex ban : "Commanders do not allow sexual intercourse on the International Space Station, it has been disclosed"

The journal of the American Enterprise Institute has an article by a father-daughter kidney recipient and kidney donor called Our Deeply Unethical National Organ Policy. It argues in favor of compensating organ donors. It ends with this list of further readings on the subject:
"FURTHER READING: Gershowitz earlier offered, with Stephen Porter and Stephen Fuller, “A Stimulus That Would Work.” Dr. Sally Satel discussed “The National Kidney Foundation’s Bizarre Logic” against rewarding kidney donors, and “The Limits of Bioethics.” Satel lauded Israel’s steps to solve its organ shortage in “Kidney Mitzvah,” and just published a book on compensating kidney donors: When Altruism Isn’t Enough."


Argentina Approves Gay Marriage, in a First for Region July 15, 201 BUENOS AIRES — Argentina’s Senate narrowly approved a law early on Thursday authorizing same-sex marriages, making Argentina the first country in Latin America to allow gay couples to wed.

"After nearly 15 hours of debate, the Senate voted 33 to 27 in favor of the measure, which was sponsored by the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. For weeks, she waged a bitter war of words with the Roman Catholic Churchover the issue, saying that it would be a “terrible distortion of democracy” to deny gay couples the right to wed and that it was time for religious leaders to recognize how much more liberal and less discriminatory the nation’s social mores had become.

"In its race to derail the change, the church organized large protests involving tens of thousands of opponents of the measure, with Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, calling the bill a “destructive attack on God’s plan.”

"Portugal and Iceland also legalized gay marriage this year, adding to the small but steadily expanding list of nations, most of them in Europe, to do so."

Vatican Revises Abuse Process, but Causes Stir July 15, 2010 VATICAN CITY — "The Vatican issued revisions to its internal laws on Thursday making it easier to discipline sex-abuser priests, but caused confusion by also stating that ordaining women as priests was as grave an offense as pedophilia."

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