This seems like a wilfully unfair description of Chris’s position.
It’s a scam if you take someone’s money intending to do something other than what you tell them you’ll do with it, or (maybe) intending to do it for very different reasons from the ones you give them, or with very different prospects of success. But Chris’s hypothetical youngster is doing with the money exactly what his/or her parents expect (getting educated), with the same purpose and the same likely outcomes as if s/he were straight. Where’s the scam?
And the donors in question aren’t generic “people”. They’re hypothetical-youngster’s parents. Maybe that makes it worse (“you’d lie to your own flesh and blood?”), maybe it makes it better (arguably they owe him/her an education, if they can afford it and s/he would genuinely gain from it), but it certainly makes a difference.
I think there is an argument to be made against Chris’s position along those lines, but such tendentious language isn’t the way to start it.
The parents are presumably intending to support their child along a particular path, which leads through college, and involves a good career, marriage to a nice woman, and grandchildren.
Another factor is that the student is protecting their parents from doing something that they will likely later regret.
I’ve known a number of folks who came out to their parents and got fearful and hostile responses — which the parents later apologized for and tried to make amends for. This seems to be a pretty common pattern, in fact. Broadly, people want to have good relations with their families, but they may not always act that way in the moment — and they come to regret actions that harm those relations.
Putting people in situations where they will predictably behave in ways they will later regret is widely regarded to be pretty crappy social behavior. It’s certainly not the sort of thing that people endorse doing to those they love. If avoiding that situation requires a certain amount of narrowly targeted deception, so be it.
Adopting a deontological-style rule of not explicitly lying (using evasion or refusing to answer, for instance) may be worthwhile. Avoiding deception in general is a good idea for consensual relationships willingly entered and willingly left. Parent/child is not that kind of relationship, though — not in our society and economy. Even though it would be desirable to cultivate a world in which there were no violent outbursts in response to true facts, it would be negligence to the point of malice to advise people in dependent social situations to pretend that they live in such a world.
I’ve known a number of folks who came out to their parents and got fearful and hostile responses — which the parents later apologized for and tried to make amends for. This seems to be a pretty common pattern, in fact. Broadly, people want to have good relations with their families, but they may not always act that way in the moment — and they come to regret actions that harm those relations.
People whose families eventually realized the error of their ways are probably rather more comfortable talking about their experiences than people whose families really did reject them permanently. Suspecting there may be some availability bias going on here.
In a world of consensual social relations, there aren’t rapists or violent homophobes, yes. I think you’re reading the boundaries around the hypothetical scenario differently from how I intended them there, although I see how the phrasing is unclear.
This seems like a wilfully unfair description of Chris’s position.
It’s a scam if you take someone’s money intending to do something other than what you tell them you’ll do with it, or (maybe) intending to do it for very different reasons from the ones you give them, or with very different prospects of success. But Chris’s hypothetical youngster is doing with the money exactly what his/or her parents expect (getting educated), with the same purpose and the same likely outcomes as if s/he were straight. Where’s the scam?
And the donors in question aren’t generic “people”. They’re hypothetical-youngster’s parents. Maybe that makes it worse (“you’d lie to your own flesh and blood?”), maybe it makes it better (arguably they owe him/her an education, if they can afford it and s/he would genuinely gain from it), but it certainly makes a difference.
I think there is an argument to be made against Chris’s position along those lines, but such tendentious language isn’t the way to start it.
The parents are presumably intending to support their child along a particular path, which leads through college, and involves a good career, marriage to a nice woman, and grandchildren.
Another factor is that the student is protecting their parents from doing something that they will likely later regret.
I’ve known a number of folks who came out to their parents and got fearful and hostile responses — which the parents later apologized for and tried to make amends for. This seems to be a pretty common pattern, in fact. Broadly, people want to have good relations with their families, but they may not always act that way in the moment — and they come to regret actions that harm those relations.
Putting people in situations where they will predictably behave in ways they will later regret is widely regarded to be pretty crappy social behavior. It’s certainly not the sort of thing that people endorse doing to those they love. If avoiding that situation requires a certain amount of narrowly targeted deception, so be it.
Adopting a deontological-style rule of not explicitly lying (using evasion or refusing to answer, for instance) may be worthwhile. Avoiding deception in general is a good idea for consensual relationships willingly entered and willingly left. Parent/child is not that kind of relationship, though — not in our society and economy. Even though it would be desirable to cultivate a world in which there were no violent outbursts in response to true facts, it would be negligence to the point of malice to advise people in dependent social situations to pretend that they live in such a world.
People whose families eventually realized the error of their ways are probably rather more comfortable talking about their experiences than people whose families really did reject them permanently. Suspecting there may be some availability bias going on here.
Um. Think about that statement for a second, if you don’t see what’s wrong with it try replacing “gay” with “pedophile” or “rapist” in your example.
In a world of consensual social relations, there aren’t rapists or violent homophobes, yes. I think you’re reading the boundaries around the hypothetical scenario differently from how I intended them there, although I see how the phrasing is unclear.