“As an extreme example, if you find an old minhag to put a fir tree in your living room on Channuka, and you decide to adopt that minhag because you want to fit in with your goyish neighbors, you are still doing something wrong- even if there is some basis. Because of your motivation.”
That would be because the fir tree has specifically come to symbolize the goyishe holiday. I would not color hardboiled eggs for Pesach, either. But making a Friday night oneg shabbos on the occasion of the birth of either a son OR daughter, does not seem to be commensurate with either of those things.
Ah, but you’re changing the topic. I am discussing only the motivation.
Won’t you agree that the fir tree motivation is bad. And that the motivation would be bad enough to sink it regardless of anything else?
Look, let’s get out premises out.
Premise: If the motivation is bad, the action is bad. (meaning, worse than a neutral motivation- a bad motivation.)
Now, we should either argue about that premise, or argue about what the motivation is in this case, or about whether that motivation is bad.
I think the motivation is to show that women and men are in all ways equal and have equal roles, and that any minhag we have which differentiates men and women was done for chauvinistic reasons. Do you disagree?
I think that motivation is bad, because it substitutes modern morality for chazal and the torah’s morality. Do you disagree?