Ethicist

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times’, The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today’s post, “Your Sister Won’t Vaccinate Her Son. Can You Help Him?" My sister and her ex are against vaccinating their kids, and I completely disagree with them. Vaccines have helped usher in the modern age; our life spans have been lengthened by the eradication or suppression of smallpox, polio, measles, flu, and so on. Recently, my 12-year-old nephew told me out of the blue that he wasn’t vaccinated and wanted to be. He got swine flu a year or two ago. He was very sick and has no desire to repeat anything like that again. We talked about reasons that people don’t give their…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times’, The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today’s post, "What Should You Do When Customers Make Racist Remarks?" I grew up in New York and moved to a small Pacific Northwest ski town a year and a half ago. I work as a bookseller-manager at an independent bookstore. I love my job, but this election cycle brought out some heated feelings. I am white, and the town is mostly white. A number of incidents in the past few weeks have made me uncomfortable and left me feeling helpless. Incident No. 1: Every day we choose a book of the day. I chose “Another Day in the Death of America,” by Gary Younge.…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times’, The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today’s post, "Do You Get Involved When a Parent Treats a Child Badly?" I was walking home from dinner with a friend one evening down a quiet residential street. Two boys, ages somewhere between 8 and 10, were biking down the road accompanied by a middle-aged woman. I assumed she was their mother. The front wheel of the second boy’s bike took a glancing blow from the curb and sent its rider straight onto the sidewalk. The boy, nursing what looked like a bruised knee and ego, held back tears. I stopped, expecting his mother to help him back up. Instead, I saw her slow…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times’, The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today’s post, "Should I Call My Friend Out for Her ‘Service Dog’ Scam?" My friend got a service dog solely to circumvent the “no pets” policy in her building. She does have the disability this dog is trained to help with, but she doesn’t use him for this purpose and even jokes about how long it took her to “deprogram” him. But she takes full advantage of his service-dog status, taking him with her to restaurants and stores that otherwise don’t permit dogs. This seems unethical on many levels: the time and money the nonprofit spent to train the dog and the additional wait time…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times’, The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today’s post, “Am I Obliged to Support My Elderly Mother?" I recently graduated from college — the first person in my family to do so — and am trying to make a life for myself in New York. My father passed away several months ago, and my mother, who is in her 70s, is incapable of financial independence. She has never been financially responsible, and now the burden has fallen on my shoulders, because she has no family and I’m an only child. In my view, she lives way beyond her means; each time I suggest that she cut out a few expenses (fewer trips…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times’, The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today’s post, “Is It O.K. to Double-Cross a Swindler?" I manage my elderly father’s financial affairs and was unable to stop payment on a check he sent to a tech-support scammer. His bank investigated and determined, properly, that they could not intervene because he had signed the check. My phone calls to this company bore no fruit, so I offered them a choice: If they didn’t return half the money, I would report them to the consumer-affairs division of their state’s attorney general’s office and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, register complaints on websites and so forth. My instructions were that they were to send…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times’, The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today’s post, “My Ex Is Advertising for Sugar Daddies. Can I Tell Her Mother?" I recently broke up with a longtime girlfriend. We are both in our mid-20s. She was temporarily without work for the summer and low on cash. After our breakup, it came to my attention that she had made an account on a “dating” website and had been messaging much older men about, basically, exchanging herself for money. Establishing “relationships” like these is in vogue among girls in our age bracket who seek to pay off college loans or take exotic Instagrammable vacations on someone else’s dime. Yes, I understand it’s 2016,…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times’, The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today’s post, "Should You Tell a Man’s Fiancée That He Faked His Degrees?" A few years ago, I realized that a close friend was misrepresenting himself professionally as having multiple graduate degrees that he did not actually earn. When I confronted him in a compassionate way, he denied it, but could offer no evidence to the contrary. We have fallen out of touch, but he is now engaged to a woman I know. We have several mutual friends. I want nothing to do with this guy and have done my best to forget about his deception, but if I were his fiancée, I would certainly…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times’, The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today’s post, "Can a Woman Pretend to Be a Lesbian to Get a Couples’ Discount?" My local pool offers memberships for single people, couples (defined as “significant others living together”) and family memberships. The couples and family memberships are discounted from the rates for single people. I am a woman married to a man. I wanted to join this pool, but my husband was not interested, so a female friend and I joined as a “couple” to obtain the discounted rate. On the application, I described my female friend as my “partner” and listed her address as my address. When one of my colleagues learned…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times’, The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today’s post, "Do I Have to Tell My Family I’m No Longer Religious?" I am an African-American woman from a very religious Southern Baptist family. I now live in Europe with my husband, who is an atheist, and my two children. I am spiritual but not religious in any way that my family would recognize. We are teaching our children about all religions, as well as how to be good, compassionate, humble humans. We are going to visit my extended family in the Bible Belt, and I’m really nervous about what will happen. I haven’t told my family about my beliefs, and they have very…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times’, The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today’s post, “Should I Tell My Friend I Had a Fling With Her Ex?" After attending a house party that my friend S. hosted, I made a rather rash decision to text her the next day and hopefully strike up a fling. Surprisingly, she took the bait. Soon enough we picked up momentum and enjoyed a month long, unofficial relationship. I did take some things into consideration before I decided to text her. For instance, I made sure that she was not in a relationship; she said she was only casually seeing other people. I called it a rash decision because we’d known each other…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times’, The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today’s post, “Should a Teacher at a Sketchy College Help Recruit Students?" I am a professor at a university that has experienced serious financial problems in the last five years. As a result, our university has brought in a number of “consultants,” many of whom work largely for for-profit universities. In response to their advice, the university has significantly shifted its profile, its mission and its ways of doing business. In short, we now accept everyone who applies to the school, and professors and administrators have been strong-armed into passing almost everyone, regardless of how shoddy their work is. I am embarrassed that people are…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times’, The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today’s post, "My Wife Wants to Adopt. When Do I Tell Her I Won’t?" My wife and are I childless. We can’t have children of our own, and in any case, I have never wanted children. Now we are in our 40s, and my wife is starting the process of adoption. She is very well aware that I do not want to adopt a child, but to keep the peace in our relationship, I go along, under protest. I drag out every task required of me (writing application essays, for instance) for as long as I can, hoping either to change my mind (not happening…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times’, The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today’s post, “When a Friend Cheats Often on Her Husband, Should You Keep Quiet?" More than two years ago, my best friend’s husband discovered that she was cheating on him with her business partner. They decided to work on their marriage and go to counseling, together and separately. I’ve had long conversations with my friend, and she confessed to me that she has slept with more than 10 other men while being married and even slept with an ex-­boyfriend while she was engaged. She has gone to addiction support groups; however, she’s still seeing and sleeping with the man she was caught cheating with, engaging…

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times’, The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today’s post, "Can I Put Down My Aging Pooch?" Our family dog, a 14-year-old terrier, is currently living with my wife and me in Paris. She has made the trans-Atlantic flight three times in the past year (crated in the belly of the plane) when we return home for various family events. The trip is stressful for her (and for me), but she has always rebounded quickly to her normal self, which is a pretty energetic and healthy dog. Recently, however, her health has declined a bit: less energy, hearing loss, brief moments of apparent confusion and an as-yet-unexplained brief seizure. But she is happy…

Continuing my series of alternative responses to the New York Times', The Ethicist, without imposing values on others, here is my take on today’s post, “Can I Stay Friends With an Abusive Husband?" I have been good friends with a couple, “Jack” and “Jane,” for about eight years. They have been together for about 15 years. Although historically I have spent more time with Jack because we share more interests, I consider both of them to be among my closest friends. Indeed, because of many shared life experiences, I think my connection with Jane is deeper than my connection with Jack. I knew for some time that they did not have the ideal relationship, but recently I have discovered that things are much, much worse…

Continuing my series of alternative responses to the New York Times column, The Ethicist, without imposing values on others, here is my take on today’s post, "Can I Tell a Dying Friend’s Secret to His Children?" One of my closest friends is dying of cancer. He will leave behind a wife, an ex-wife and two children from his first marriage, both of whom are over 21. I’ve known him for 40 years, and I believe I am the only person in his circle of friends and family who knows that he has another child with another woman. That child is probably close to 30 now. My friend has had no contact with the child since birth and almost no contact with the child’s mother. This…

Continuing my series of alternative responses to the New York Times column, The Ethicist, without imposing values on others, here is my take on today’s post, "Should I Have Talked to My Father About His Cross-Dressing?" My father died seven years ago. He was 93. When I was getting divorced in the late ’80s and sharing my sexual woes with my mother, she confessed to me that my father dressed up in women’s clothes, and that she never could deal with it. She wished she had gone to therapy years earlier when she first discovered it. She made me promise never to talk about it. I later found out that both my sisters knew about this as well. As my father aged, it seemed as…

Continuing my series of alternative responses to the New York Times column, The Ethicist, looking at the consequences of one’s actions instead of imposing values on others, here is my take on today’s post, “Should I Hire a P.I. to Investigate a Relative’s Boyfriend?" My husband’s sister has had the same boyfriend since she was in her early teens, and they are now engaged to be married. He has nothing in the way of character, morality or intelligence to offer. No one in the family cares for him, and all but me have expressed to her their unease with her relationship, which she patently refuses to discuss, causing strain between herself and the rest of the family. Recently, she went to the emergency room with…

Continuing my series of alternative responses to the New York Times column, The Ethicist, looking at the consequences of one’s actions instead of imposing values on others, here is my take on today’s post, “You’re Going to Sell Your Home. Should You Mention the Snakes?" We live in a large house on a one-acre plot, and one-quarter of that is a wooded ravine, full of wildlife like deer, raccoons, the occasional woodchuck, possum or even fox — and quite a few copperhead snakes. We have lived here for 45 years. I see one to three snakes a year. They are not aggressive, and you learn to take precautions. Nevertheless, I have been bitten, as have several neighbors. They can show up in the backyard, in…

Continuing my series of alternative responses to the New York Times column, The Ethicist, looking at the consequences of one’s actions instead of imposing values on others, here is my take on today’s post, "Can You Keep a Woman From Courting Your Elderly Dad?" We are a large family, and our father is in his 80s. Our mother died several years ago, so our father moved into an upscale retirement community. A handsome, successful, charming gentleman with plenty of money in the bank, he was an instant hit with the ladies. From the beginning, he was seriously pursued, but he always kept it light. Two years ago, a manager of my dad’s retirement community began to single him out for special attention. She is in…

Continuing my series of alternative responses to the New York Times column, The Ethicist, looking at the consequences of one’s actions instead of imposing values on others, here is my take on today’s post, "Should a Friend Be Told the Real Reason He Didn’t Get the Job?" A friend whom I like and admire a great deal applied for a teaching job at a private school where my wife used to work, and where she and I maintain friendly connections with top decision-makers. On the face of it, our friend exceeded all qualifications for the job, and my wife and I each wrote glowing recommendations for him, including to the head of the department to which he was applying. We thought he was a slam-dunk…