Sexual ethics, marriage, and sexual autonomy: the landscapes for Muslimat and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Muslims

Muslims today are increasingly re-examining gender and human rights in the light of Qur’anic teachings, and these issues crucially intersect in the terrain of sexual autonomy. The Qur’an insists that men and women are spiritually equal, yet dominant interpretations of sexual rights in Islam are not gender symmetrical. This paper asks whether Islam’s depiction of sexuality and marriage allows a space for female, and non-heterosexual, sexual autonomy. It also explores current interpretations of Islam, sexuality and same-sex relationships amongst British Muslims who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered. Large issues are at stake for contemporary Muslims re-examining their institutions and identity. Does marriage remain authoritative when paradigms of sexuality shift, and what does this mean for sexual autonomy in the wider Muslim consciousness?     

Sexual Discretion: Black Masculinity and the Politics of Passing

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to examine the relationship between religious orientation and attitudes towards two contentious issues about human sexuality in the Church of England, by studying the broad range of people found attending an Anglican cathedral carol service. A sample of 381 individuals who attended a carol service at Worcester cathedral in December 2009 thoroughly completed the New Indices of Religious Orientation (NIRO). The scales were found to be reliable for the sample. The same participants responded to two statements relating to their attitudes towards gay marriage and the appointment of homosexual men as bishops. Both men and older people are found to report higher levels of negative attitudes towards both issues. Strong positive correlations are found between intrinsic religious orientation and negative attitudes towards gay marriage and gay bishops; these remain after controlling for age and sex. After further controlling for intrinsic and extrinsic orientation, it is found that quest orientation is positively associated with favourable views towards both issues. Areas for further research are identified.     

法律的道德审视:当代中国卫生法伦理学研究的使命

卫生法伦理学是由医学、法学和伦理学三大学科相互交融、渗透而结合的产物。卫生法伦理学作为一门独立的学科有着独特的研究对象。法律的道德审视,不仅是法伦理学研究的基础途径,更是当代中国卫生法伦理学研究的使命。     

Rhetoric,reasonableness and ethics: An essay on Perelman

The article deals with an interpretation of the work of Ch. Perelman. The author tries to determine the meaning of reasonableness in a hermeneutical and anthropological perspective. He then places the work of Perelman in the light of the theory of symbolic interactionism of G.H. Mead.     

道德、宗教和文化的完整性:对跨文化伦理学及公共政策论的意义

分析传统对宗教与道德之间关系的两种模式（A）与（B）都是过分偏激容易引起误解。它们所代表的观点亦不容易在实践中可以持续。（A）模式坚持道德必须直接地依赖宗教作为它的惟一来源。（B）模式则认为道德应完全独立于宗教。然而,欧洲启蒙运动所追求的一种具普遍性和独立于宗教的理性伦却明显已经“破产”。因为并没有任何一个群体能够完全摆脱它自身拥有的历史、文化与宗教遗产。提出一个辩证法的模式,即认为宗教与文化应有一个相互依赖、相互诠释的关系,一个群体／社会的文化完整性才得以保存。这模式对跨文化伦理对话以及公共政策的讨论都具有相当的意义。     

Computers,information and ethics: A review of issues and literature

Editorial note:The following bibliographic survey of computer ethics is intended as a general introduction useful to guide both preliminary research and course development. It is the first of a series that Carl Mitcham will be doing on a number of specific discussions of ethics in science and technology. Future installments are projected on nuclear ethics, engineering ethics, ethics in scientific research, and biomedical ethics. With this [book] I issue “a call to arms.” The world needs much more discussion and writing on the social and ethical issues surrounding computing. I hope readers .... will take up the challenge.     

A Whig History of Ethic: A Review of The Invention of Autonomy by J. B. Schneewind

J. B. Schneewind's The Invention of Autonomy has been hailed as a major interpretation of modern moral thought. Schneewind's narrative, however, elides several serious interpretive issues, particularly in the transition form late medieval to early modern thought. This results in potentially distorted accounts of Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, and G. W. Leibniz. Since these thinkers play a crucial role in Schneewind's argument, uncertainty over their work calls into question at least some of Schneewind's larger agenda for the history of ethics.     

Beyond the 'Awkward Embrace': DisabilityRights, Dialogue and 'Law, Loveand Language' Revisited

Despite the perceived 'human rights revolution' within Church teaching since Vatican II, a measure of dissonance survives between secular rights theory and practice on the one hand and, on the other, ethical thinking informed by the natural law tradition. This article examines some recent developments in that secular theory and practice for signs of possible rapprochement. In particular, it considers the way in which the emergence of 'disability' as a rights issue, for example in the recently ratified United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, has contributed to the transformation of equality and human rights law and so has helped shape a broader transformation of rights theory and practice. Central to that transformation has been the ambition of establishing human rights as the basis of a progressive political programme, as witnessed for example by the work of Sandra Fredman and by the Hamlyn Lectures of Conor Gearty, whose Catholic provenance makes his approach especially salient. The article concludes by considering Herbert McCabe's interpretation of Aquinas' ethics, especially in his Law, Love and Language , and proposes some potentially fruitful points of contact between McCabe's approach and the identified developments in secular rights theory.     

Sterilization, Catholic health care, and the legitimate autonomy of culture.

Disagreement over the legitimacy of direct sterilization continues within Catholic moral debate, with painful and at times confusing ramifications for Catholic healthcare systems. This paper argues that the medical profession should be construed as a key moral authority in this debate, on two grounds. First, the recent revival of neo-Aristotelianism in moral philosophy as applied to medical ethics has brought out the inherently moral dimensions of the history and current practice of medicine. Second, this recognition can be linked to Catholic morality through Vatican II's affirmation of the legitimate autonomy of culture, including the sciences. A partial precedent for understanding the moral authority of medicine can be found in the recent history of Catholic medical morality, and we further argue that a full contemporary recognition of that authority would weigh against an absolute prohibition of direct sterilizations. Institutionally, we propose the allowance of direct sterilizations in cases where the clinically perceived biomedical good of the patient is at stake.     

The Book of Concord and Human Sexuality,Seen Through the Institution of Marriage

Abstract : Although The Book of Concord says only a few things about sexuality explicitly, by observing the distinction between law and gospel and the way the reformers correlate the law with their social situation, today's Lutheran readers may reach broader conclusions about their approach to such matters. The most important issue regarding sexuality in the sixteenth century arose from the reformers' desire to distinguish monastic celibacy from true chastity and thus to support their conviction that every‐day married life was a God‐pleasing, Christian vocation.     

Neuroscience, the Person, and God: An Emergentist Account

Strong forms of dualism and eliminative materialism block any significant dialogue between the neurosciences and theology. The present article thus challenges the Sufficiency Thesis, according to which neuroscientific explanations will finally be sufficient to fully explain human behavior. It then explores the various ways in which neuroscientific results and theological interpretations contribute to an overall theory of the person. Supervenience theories, which hold that mental events are dependent on their physical substrata but not reducible to them, are explained. Challenging the determinism of "strong" supervenience, I defend a version of "soft" supervenience that allows for genuine mental causation. This view gives rise in turn to an emergentist theory of the person. Still, I remain a monist: there are many types of properties encountered in the world, although it is only the one nature that bears all these properties. The resulting position, emergentist monism , allows for diversity within the context of the one world. This view is open at the top for theological applications and interpretations while retaining the close link to neuroscientific study and its results. Theology offers an interpretation of the whole world based on a yet higher order of emergence, although the notion of God moves beyond the natural order as a whole. It therefore supplements the natural scientific study of the world without negating it.     

A Bad Disease, a Fatal Cure: Why Sterilization is Permissible and the Autonomy of Medicine is Not

The debate in this issue regarding the Roman Catholic condemnationof the morality of sterilization is puzzling for Protestants.As I will argue the puzzlement arises on two grounds. First,why would anyone object to direct sterilization for the cureor prevention of disease? Second, if one wanted to challengesuch an objection on moral grounds why would one turn to medicineto do so? For Christian ethics there is nothing wrong in principlewith direct sterilization when there are good reasons for precludingthe possibility of an additional pregnancy; and it is a serioustheological mistake to treat medicine as an independent moralauthority.     

Some thoughts on the diffusion of psychoanalysis: the group dimension, ethics and the sense of identity

In this paper the author questions some of the ways in which psychoanalysis is passed on to the wider public, one of which is sometimes evocative of the sales promotion of a consumer product in contemporary society. This methodology does not give sufficiently deep prior thought to the eventual consequences of side effects. The detailed exposition of clinical cases, for example, raises sensitive ethical issues, even when anonymity is preserved. Although it is true that making information about Freud's theories more widely available may indeed encourage people to think about training as psychoanalysts, it is noticeable that this process is sometimes considered to be a form of training in itself. Some participants feel that acquiring a psychoanalytical vocabulary and reading clinical reports form a sufficient basis for practising thereafter as psychotherapists, both in institutional contexts and in private practice. The absence of group work on the part of the organizers might explain why closer study is not made of the methodologies of transmission and the different levels that it involves. This is sometimes due to the absence of a common object, formed within and by the group, and to the emergence of manic defences in the group.     

The evolution of the primates: Anglicanism,primacy and conciliarity

Contemporary debate about the relationship between civil and religious law, highlighted by the Archbishop of Canterbury's 2008 lecture on ‘Civil and Religious Law in England’, prompts a reassessment of the place of ius divinum in the understanding of the nature of law. This article questions the assumption of modernity that there is no place for divine law, and briefly surveys the different role played by divine law in Judaism, Islam and Christianity. It examines the contrasting Christian perspectives of Aquinas and Duns Scotus, which leads to a critique of the relationship between personal welfare and the common good. Since, in the context of post-modernism, questions related to divine law are once again being addressed, the article criticises aspects of a fundamentalist approach to it in both Islam and Christianity. It argues that, from a Christian perspective, the personal truth of Jesus Christ embodies the place where the divine freedom comes into relation with human freedom. It concludes that in reflecting on a common praxis for humanity, it is this embodied relationship which provides the basic perspective for practitioners of canon law to contribute in a significant way to the debate now gathering momentum.     

Traversing boundaries: clinical ethics,moral experience,and the withdrawal of life supports

While many have suggested that to withdraw medical interventions is ethically equivalent to withholding them, the moral complexity of actually withdrawing life supportive interventions from a patient cannot be ignored. Utilizing interplay between expository and narrative styles, and drawing upon our experiences with patients, families, nurses, and physicians when life supports have been withdrawn, we explore the changeable character of boundaries in end-of-life situations. We consider ways in which boundaries imply differences – for example, between cognition and performance – and how the encounter with boundaries can generate altered meanings important for understanding decisions and actions in these contexts. We conclude that the reliance on mere roles to support the moral weight of withdrawing medical interventions is inadequate. Roles that lead us to such moments are exceeded by the responsibility encountered in such moments. And here, we suggest, is the momentous character of withdrawal: it presents the grave astonishment, the trembling awe, in the not-being-there of the other in death.     

Effects of counselor sex,student sex,and student attractiveness on counselors' judgments

Thirty-two male and thirty-two female high school counselors in a large metropolitan school district were provided with routine student profile data and asked to make predictions about the student's potential for post-high school education and to suggest occupations for the student to explore. All data reviewed by the counselors were identical except for a photograph of the student attached to the profile. Within counselor sex groups, counselors were randomly assigned to one of the following four photograph conditions: (a) attractive female; (b) unattractive female; (c) attractive male; and (d) unattractive male. Male subjects were found to discriminate on the basis of student sex when they suggested occupations for the student to explore. Predictions of post-high school education and the social status of suggested occupations were not found to be related to counselor sex, student sex, or student attractiveness.     

湖北省保健干部健康状况主要影响因素分析

临床见习对整个医院医学体系维持、运行和发挥功能起着很重要的作用,但在具体实践中与患者的隐私权发生冲突时,又该如何保护患者的隐私权?以案件为例进行伦理分析,并通过伦理论辩求证"尊重自主原则"是保护患者隐私权的主要原则。     

Stress,achievement, marriage and social support: Effects on the psychological well-being of physicians entering midlife/mid-career

Abstract

The major aim of this study was to examine the relative contribution of stress, professional achievement, personality, quality of marriage and family life, social support satisfaction, work satisfaction, average hours worked and family responsibilities to the psychological well-being (life satisfaction and psychological symptoms) of medical practitioners entering mid-life/mid-career. Fifty-nine female and 57 male physicians completed interviews, questionnaires, and daily stress records. The results confirm the central role that stress plays in the well-being of physicians. Pearson correlations and hierarchical multiple regressions showed other major variables examined did not explain additional variance in psychological symptoms, but did in some instances (professional achievement, quality of marriage, social support satisfaction for work issues) contribute to life satisfaction. A path model indicating a direct and independent effect of professional achievement on life satisfaction and a specific causal sequence of stress, quality of marriage and social support satisfaction for work issues is suggested.