Wright and Rong

I watched an episode of Bones today—mostly to catch the oh-so-hot Michaela conlin—but ended up getting much more out of it. This was the one where Bones' father was being prosecuted for murdering a corrupt cop that was threatening their family.

Dr Angela (Michaela's character) refuses to testify when put on stand. In a brave, defiant, and moving argument with the judge she asserts her right not to say anything that would incriminate Bone's father. She gets held in contempt, and as she is hauled away she assures Bones, "Sweetie, this is one of those times when I know I'm right, and everyone else is confused!"

And one more emo prison scene where Bones thanks her for being a friend that can't be expressed in words.

"Friends don't send friends' dads to the electric chair," to which Bones replies something about lethal injection. "It's the principle!"

Later, Booth tells Bones to use her heart and not her head, that it's alright for her to want her dad to come home, even though she thinks he committed the crimes. And she holds him to that, at the end, but getting her dad's defense lawyer to construct a story where she could've well been the murderer. Yeah, so no beyond a shadow of doubt that the dad's guilty, no charges, no jail/electric chair.

So I thought about how we're always harping on what's right and wrong... sometimes maybe it'd be a good thing to be wrong. Because the rules aren't always written to protect us. In fact, no one knows who wrote the rules anyway. Just take the whole homosexuality thing for example.

My dad strongly believes that there is something wrong with homos, that they should pursue a heterosexual lifestyle, and that AWARE and all these other groups shouldn't be allowed to be gay-neutral, which to him is pro-gay. I don't like to argue with him on that but I think it's absolute rubbish.

Homosexuality is found in the animal kingdom and is highly likely that a group of genes are responsible for it. I'm very sure that no one encourages elephants to be gay and many homosexuals seemingly have no "environment" to blame. If it's a result of genetics then, isn't forcing them to change tantamount to saying to someone who has hemophilia, "Stop your bleeding. It's not right! It's not natural. Why can't you just be like everyone else?"

But who's to say what's natural and what isn't? You? God's holy scriptures? Reproducible scientific studies that show there is variation in every population? There can be no end.

Ethical [moral] values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience. Humanists ground values in human welfare shaped by human circumstances, interests, and concerns and extended to the global ecosystem and beyond. We are committed to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity, and to making informed choices in a context of freedom consonant with responsibility.

From the American Humanist association.

I like this.