In each of these questions think of the moral principles that you are using to make your decision. Please remember that because of the separation of church and state in the U.S., Americans must use nonreligious principles to establish laws against specific behaviors.

Note: strictly speaking one does not have a human "baby" until birth. The fertilized egg is a zygote or conceptus, the embryo is capable of being implanted in a womb, and a fetus is the correct name for the human being as it develops in the womb. As a side note, over 60% of human zygotes are never implanted and are absored back into the mother's body.

1. Who is a better person? A gay man who is sincere in his religious belief or a straight man who pretends that he is a religious person? Let us say that the two men are equal in all other virtues and vices.  Read this article on sodomy.

2. Should gay and lesbian couples be allowed to marry and thereby attain all the rights of married couples? Keep in mind that if the reason for marriage is procreation, then infertile couples or straight couples who choose not to have children would not be allowed to marry. Also keep in mind that a great many straight married couples practice the same "unnatural" sexual practices as nonstraights do.  Read this article on sodomy.

3. Some African-American leaders argue that their brothers and sisters should receive back pay with interest for the 205 years of slave labor that their ancestors contributed to the American economy. What do you think of this argument and what moral principles, if any, are behind it?  These leaders claim that there is now precedent for this because Japanese Americans have received payments for their internment during World War II and Holocaust victims are not getting reparations from the German government and German corporations who used them as slave labor.  Specifically, should the Etna Life Insurance Company pay the descendants of slaves for the money it made by insuring their ancestors' lives as property?

4. Many infertile couples have gone to fertility clinics and the scientists there have produced embryos from their eggs and sperm. Should these couples be able to donate the extra embryos for stem cell research or any other type of scientific research? Note that the crucial issue here is whether the human embryo is a person. For background on this issue, read this article on the web.

5. The traditional theories of a just war make strict provisions for the protection of noncombatants. However, warfare in the 20^th Century has extended the battlefield to cities, and in the case of Vietnam, to villages. The most dramatic examples of this were the fire bombing of German cities and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What moral principle can we use to make this exception to the time honored theory of the just war?

6. Many states now have extra penalties for acts of murder, rape, or assault that are motivated by hatred against nonwhites or homosexuals. What moral principle(s) could be used for such legislation?

7. Recently conjoined twins (formerly known as Siamese twins) were surgically separated by order of a British court. The medical situation was such that the one twin named Rosie was very poorly developed physically and mentally and would, if the surgery were not performed, eventually kill her stronger sister Gracie. The operation would involve letting Rosie die. The parents did not want the operation because they said that God ordained that the twins be this way. Was the British court morally correct in ordering the surgery? Note: Gracie did survive the surgery and is doing quite well.  Read this article on the web.

8. Should taxpayer’s money be used for stem cell research, which requires that human embryos be used in the laboratory? What do you think about President’s Bush’s recent decision that federal money could be used for work on embryos already killed but not on those still frozen and viable? Again the basic issue is whether or not the human embryo is a person. Check out this article for some background.

9. The U.S. Congress recently banned human cloning, but the British Parliament just passed a bill allowing it under strict guidelines. Can there be any moral justification for making a genetic copy of any human being? Could, for example, human cloning be legitimately used to produce organs for needed transplants? Please note that these clones will actually be less similar than identical twins, primarily because of the age difference. They will also be different persons both morally and legally, just as identical twins are.

10. Should women be allowed to be surrogate mothers for infertile couples? Would it make any difference if the woman were a stranger or a close relative? For example, a few years ago an Oklahoma mother carried her daughter and son-in-law’s conceptus-embryo-fetus to term.

11. Does going to war in Iraq qualify as a just war?  Check here for the moral principles of a just war.