Informed consent
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Informed consent is Velcro® on your garden variety slippery slope arguments against homosexual marriage. Informed consent is also the biggest known enemy of scammers, as anyone savvy enough to be informed, won't consent to be scammed.
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[edit] Defining "informed" and "consent"
Informed consent is the ability to say "yes" to something potentially dangerous, risky, or just plain fun, without coercion or being under the influence of drugs (which is the "consent" part), having been made fully aware of the risks and activities involved (which is the "informed" part). It is a critically important matter in many fields of endeavor, including sex, medicine, politics, real estate, business, and even athletics.
[edit] Preventing slippery slopes
A lot of social conservatives have great troubles with the concept and often forget it when describing their hatred of homosexuality or same-sex marriage. For example, former Senator Rick Santorum's assertion that Lawrence v. Texas would lead to "man-on-dog" sex. This neglects widely agreed fact that bestiality is wrong because a dog or other animal cannot meaningfully consent (i.e. give "informed consent") to sex with a human being.[1]
[edit] Medicine
Medicine uses informed consent, in which a patient must be given information about a potentially risky procedure. This is often a legal, as well as moral, obligation on behalf of the doctor. It wasn't always this way in medicine, with doctors originally making sweeping didactic statements that must be obeyed; whereas now they technique is to talk very thoroughly with the patient what they're going to go through, the side-effects, the chances and finally give them a final say. With respect to young children, the final informed consent is made by the parents or other legal guardian, although attempts are sometimes made to get a child's opinion on the subject. This, however, produces a muddy, gray area where children can be denied life-saving treatments because their parents have said "no"; due to religious or New Age beliefs for example. This leaves local authorities and doctors torn between honouring the informed consent of the parents/guardians and honouring their oath to protect life and cure the sick.
[edit] See also
- Due diligence, the process of gathering information to give consent
- Blind faith, the very antithesis of informed consent
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Then comes the argument about people studying animal behavior to find out how a dog consents to sex with other dogs....or, in the case of larger animals (like horses), pointing out that a non-consenting horse can kick you to death pretty quickly.
