Questionable Ethics #3

Welcome back to another edition of Questionable Ethics, where we demonstrate to Randy Cohen and the rest of the New York Times Magazine staff that ethics aren’t something you can simply decree. Let’s get right to it; here’s this week’s column and here’s the first letter.

My daughter, in her late 20s, has a same-sex partner. Most of our very large, very Catholic family knows this except my husband’s parents.They have a summer home, and their rule is that nonmarried children and their opposite-sex partners may not share a bedroom. My daughter and her partner often claim a small room for two, and her grandparents regard the girls, who live together, as good friends. My younger daughter thinks it unfair that she and her boyfriend must sleep in separate rooms. We have a family reunion coming up. Should I say something to my in-laws about my older daughter? NAME WITHHELD

Cohen says that it’s unethical for the writer to out her daughter without her knowledge or consent (unless some crazy monster threatens the globe, but can only be stopped by a lesbian). That seems straightforward enough. Then he goes on to assert that the daughter should “adhere to that rule or find another place to stay.” Sounds like a reasonable call, but what does it mean to adhere to the rule?

Perhaps the daughter and the girlfriend ought to admit that they are “nonmarried” and claim separate rooms. This will be confusing to everyone, since they have been sharing a room in the past. It effectively forces them to come out to the grandparents, which we’ve agreed is an unethical thing to do. (Ditto if they opt out and find their own room. What for? everyone will ask.) Additionally, the odds are pretty small that this family lives in a state where it is possible that this couple can currently become married. So they can’t stay in separate rooms as a nonmarried couple, and they can’t share a room as a married couple. It’s hardly ethical to compel a person to comply with a paradoxical rule like this.

Maybe this daughter simply can’t win with her grandparents. They disapprove of her sexual orientation, they disapprove of sex before marriage, they disapprove of same sex marriage. Yet she is (I assume) in a caring, committed, long-term relationship with someone she wants her extended family to get to know. At some point, one may certainly argue, the daughter is justified in defying rules which are oppressive and unfair. The spirit of the law her grandparents have laid down is that committed relationships are important, and promiscuity is to be discouraged. She is obeying the spirit of the law, and harming no one by ignoring the letter.

On a different course, one might point out that it’s unlikely the grandparents have no idea that these two young women are a couple. They’ve lived together for years. The friend always comes along on family trips, and is coming to a family reunion. I’ve never had that kind of relationship with a roommate, and I don’t know any people who have. One could suggest that the most ethical thing to do is to encourage the daughter to explain the situation to her grandparents, and allow the grandparents to decide which of their “family values” is most important: no homosexuality, no sex before marriage, or actually valuing your family.

Letter number two:

I locked my bicycle to a fence outside my building a few times over two weeks. One morning, it was gone. My landlady had the police remove it, claiming she tried to alert the owner by letting the air out of the tires. She left no note. At the precinct, an officer said she told them the bike had been there for three months. Fortunately, I reclaimed it undamaged. Unfortunately, the police cut the locks: replacement costs are $150. Should my landlady cover that? NAME WITHHELD, NEW YORK

Cohen claims that while the landlady had the legal right to have the bike removed, the ethical thing is for her to replace the broken locks and apologize. However, several points of fact are left ambiguous here. Perhaps they were trimmed out of the letter before publication. I am left wondering: does the fence count as part of the rental property? If so, then surely the writer is entitled to use it, just as one would have use of a lawn or a driveway that came along with a rental. Unless there was a clearly signed and established rule that bikes were not to be chained to the fence, it’s no more ethical (or legal) for the landlady to take the bike than it would be for her to go into the writer’s apartment and walk away with the television set. Of course, the entire building is technically the landlady’s property, but these rights of (reasonable) use are what is signed over in the lease.

If the fence is somehow distinctly part of the landlady’s property—for example, the writer rents a room or two in the landlady’s house, and all the other rooms in the house are considered solely hers—then it would appear that she acted completely within her rights and behaved appropriately. If you leave a bunch of your personal stuff on your neighbor’s porch without informing them, you effectively gave them your stuff. They have no obligation, legally or ethically, to tape a sign on it and wait ten days to see if anyone claimed it. That would actually seem kind of crazy. They are free to throw it away if they want to. The landlady’s actions could be seen as analogous to that sort of situation.

In the absence of answers to these questions, I don’t see how it’s possible to determine who is at fault, and who owes what to whom, and I don’t see how Randy Cohen can purport to have such authoritative knowledge on what is ethical here.

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September 22, 2009 · Written by
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