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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Gays Are Horrible Parents
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
Sergius-Melli: quote:
Not really, since the SoS is supportive of Civil Partnerships. Whilst the SoS has not expressed himself clearly the first time round (and everyone is guilty of that at somepoint, particularly those who appear on television without some pre-prepared speech to read from) he has clarified that his objection to the change of law would undermine the expressed purpose of marriage being that of biological procreation.
If we are to take his explanation as truthful and honest, and to be frank we have to since there is no evidence to the contrary, then there is no conflict in his initial statement and the clarification.
This is driving me nuts.
What Mr. Jones originally said was very different from what he said in his later statement. His second statement was not a clarification but a correction to (presumably) let people know his true current position on the matter. The first statement spoke to how a couple nurtures children bears on legalizing SSM, the second to how they conceive them and how that bears on legalizing SSM. Just because both statements are about couples and children, doesn't make the first statement just a muddled way of expressing the second version of his opinion. For whatever reason, he backtracked.
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sergius-Melli:
You are quite right, and I do the same thing, however, in terms of legal language, which in effect all laws are put in regardless of what the general population actually then label things, the argument is being made in this manner that that what is being discussed are two different types of relationship and therefore they can reasonably, in law, be expected to be termed in different ways to give clarity to what is being labelled.
Most laws don't go out of their way to create meaningless distinctions. Typically if two things are "termed in different ways" it's because they can expect to be treated in different ways by the law. Which begs the question, if it's so critically important to maintain the different label, what kind of different treatment should civil partners expect compared to their married fellow citizens?
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Simply put it is because allowing gays every right that straights enjoy would recognise them as legitimate and equal.
And opponents of SSM do not.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
Sergius-Melli: quote:
And whilst I always reject the simplistic notion that marraige was solely about procreation, I also reject the simplistic view that marriage was solely concerned with the disposal of property and wealth.
Of course you're right that marriage (as it really is) is not a simple thing. However, if we are talking about religious ideas of marriage and taking the Ten Commandments as our guide, it is fairly obvious that marriage is all about property rights. I refer you to Commandment 10, which forbids you to covet your neigbour's wife "or anything else that is your neighbour's". Women were property; that's why they are still 'given away' by their fathers in the marriage ceremony.
Nowadays of course, except for a few diehards, nobody believes that women are literally the property of their fathers or husbands. But that's why marriage was historically important, even for people who were so poor they didn't have to worry about whose children would inherit their land when they died. Having sex with a woman who belonged to somebody else was Not Allowed.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
And in England, the woman's legal identity was erased in marriage - see coverture. Marriage was defined as one person - the male. Hence, the woman could not take part in contracts, could not inherit, and of course, could be legally raped. She did not exist.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
ISTM that this story of the baby found in the subway and the parents who adopted him is the complete answer to the statement in the OP.
I don't care if it uses up one of your free views of this month's issues of the NYT. Read it!
And then tell the idiot politician to go home.
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Damn it HB, you made me cry.That should convince the idiots, but it will not.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Damn it HB, you made me cry. That should convince the idiots, but it will not.
No, it won't. According to the brief filed by supporters of California's Proposition 8 [PDF] with the U.S. Supreme Court, baby ACE/Kevin would have been better off being raised by his heterosexual biological parents. You know, the ones who abandoned him in the subway. That is, more or less, what the "marriage is about raising kids and gays can't do that so they don't need marriage" argument boils down to at the end. The idea that any and every heterosexual couple, no matter how neglectful or dysfunctional, are automatically better parents than any same-sex couple.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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The Great Gumby
Ship's Brain Surgeon
# 10989
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Posted
Has anyone ever done any proper research on how supporters of Prop 8 and similar proposals really think? I have a suspicion that while there might be a hardcore who genuinely believe that any straight couple is better than any gay couple, a lot of people support and vote for it out of a combination of identity and dog-whistle politics. Their thought process probably doesn't go beyond "gay bad".
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman
A letter to my son about death
Posts: 5382 | From: Home for shot clergy spouses | Registered: Feb 2006
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
Has anyone ever done any proper research on how supporters of Prop 8 and similar proposals really think? I have a suspicion that while there might be a hardcore who genuinely believe that any straight couple is better than any gay couple, a lot of people support and vote for it out of a combination of identity and dog-whistle politics. Their thought process probably doesn't go beyond "gay bad".
In a way, court briefings like this are a form of research in this area. Filing legal briefs requires them to articulate their beliefs in as coherent a form as possible and forces them to stick to either the the truth or what's arguably true.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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The Great Gumby
Ship's Brain Surgeon
# 10989
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Posted
Yes, but isn't this driven by the people who are central to the campaign, rather than the many other people who just end up voting for the proposition? It's the non-campaigning, not-very-engaged voters that I'm interested in.
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman
A letter to my son about death
Posts: 5382 | From: Home for shot clergy spouses | Registered: Feb 2006
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
I think that the argument would go something like this. Of course there are gay people who do a good job looking after children and there are straight people who do not but, by and large, the natural order of things is that children ought to be brought up by their biological parents within the estate of wedlock.
At least, this is the line the less bovine-spongiform types seem to take on Comment Is Free.
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
I merely report, leo.
Personally, I think that nature is partly discovered and partly created. (A claim which says nothing either way about the doctrine of original sin)
If it were the case it might be theoretically possible to argue, in my view, that we know that gay people can't be good parents. However AFAICS the empirical data we have seems to suggest that they are at least as good as the average straight parents because a gay couple frequently have to go to some lengths to end up in that position and at the very least have to be motivated to bring up a child whereas all a straight couple have to do is have unprotected sex.
To use the jargon of the existentialists epistemologically existence proceeds essence. That is to say there isn't a rationally knowable human subject upon whom we can draw to say what is and what isn't natural. We can say that this or that has been tried in a given society and had this or that effects or that this or that seems to facilitate or impede human flourishing. But there isn't a human nature out there, as it were, known by reason around which we can organise our ethics and societies.
This is, of course, a position at odds with most religions which postulate a natural law which, conveniently, dovetails with revealed truth but also with an Enlightenment tendency which postulates a human nature which could be rationally known once the obfuscations of priests and kings were removed from the equation.
A Thomist would probably argue that we know that bringing up a child by homosexual parents is wronger than a wrong thing that is wrong because we know that this violates the rationally known natural order of things. An Enlightenment Fundamentalist (to borrow an expression from a self-described enlightenment fundamentalist whom I admire very much) would say that this is mystical obfuscation and reason and science show us examples of gay penguins bringing up children and that gayness is itself natural. I say fie upon your conceptions of the natural, all we can say is that gay people are clearly capable of sacrifical love for one another and that they are capable of sacrificial love for the children they rear. That is all we can know and, frankly, all we need to know.
[ 06. March 2013, 21:22: Message edited by: Gildas ]
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
Yes, but isn't this driven by the people who are central to the campaign, rather than the many other people who just end up voting for the proposition? It's the non-campaigning, not-very-engaged voters that I'm interested in.
Yeah, but they're harder to pin down. Legal briefs theoretically represent the most convincing arguments put forward by the movement's best and brightest. Getting the opinions of individual voters relies on self-reporting, something your typical "not-very-engaged voter" isn't inclined to do.
Here's some thoughts by a woman who voted for Prop 8. And here's a take-down, explaining several of the insufficiencies of the post.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
Yes, but isn't this driven by the people who are central to the campaign, rather than the many other people who just end up voting for the proposition? It's the non-campaigning, not-very-engaged voters that I'm interested in.
Yeah, but they're harder to pin down. Legal briefs theoretically represent the most convincing arguments put forward by the movement's best and brightest. Getting the opinions of individual voters relies on self-reporting, something your typical "not-very-engaged voter" isn't inclined to do.
Here's some thoughts by a woman who voted for Prop 8. And here's a take-down, explaining several of the insufficiencies of the post.
That first link was painful to read, as she describes eloquently how her gay cousin was bullied, and became depressed, and appeals to Christians not to be homophobic, but then she still says that he is going the wrong way down a one-way street. Eh?
So she disapproves of the nasty kind of homophobia, her kind is much nicer.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
And it's somehow a sign of his gayness to read Les Miserables?
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Hello! It was a musical. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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The Great Gumby
Ship's Brain Surgeon
# 10989
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
Yes, but isn't this driven by the people who are central to the campaign, rather than the many other people who just end up voting for the proposition? It's the non-campaigning, not-very-engaged voters that I'm interested in.
Yeah, but they're harder to pin down. Legal briefs theoretically represent the most convincing arguments put forward by the movement's best and brightest. Getting the opinions of individual voters relies on self-reporting, something your typical "not-very-engaged voter" isn't inclined to do.
Here's some thoughts by a woman who voted for Prop 8. And here's a take-down, explaining several of the insufficiencies of the post.
Which is my point. Taking the views of the high-profile campaigners as normative for anyone who votes the same way, as you seemed to be doing, is unlikely to be helpful or informative. People are complicated, and their motivation rarely corresponds to a neatly packaged theoretical "best argument", but will be a mishmash of all sorts of different factors.
For example, the Pope is theoretically the "best and brightest" of the Catholic church, but how many Catholics in the pews agree with everything he says? Repeated surveys suggest that a huge number of Catholics disagree with his and the church's doctrine on even the most fundamental issues, but they continue to identify and act as Catholics. It's not as simple as "high profile person says X".
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman
A letter to my son about death
Posts: 5382 | From: Home for shot clergy spouses | Registered: Feb 2006
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
For example, the Pope is theoretically the "best and brightest" of the Catholic church, but how many Catholics in the pews agree with everything he says?
Except that unlike arguing legal briefs, being Pope doesn't require being intelligent or articulate. In other words, the Pope isn't necessarily "the best and the brightest" of the Catholic Church (although he might be), he's simply supposed to be the most Catholic member of the Church. (Catholicest?)
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
In practical, non-cynical terms: he is the one most likely to travel the direction the current cardinals perceive to be correct.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
Yes, but isn't this driven by the people who are central to the campaign, rather than the many other people who just end up voting for the proposition? It's the non-campaigning, not-very-engaged voters that I'm interested in.
In several of the trials on Prop 8, the lawyers against gay marriage have been brought up short several times when asked to show why it's bad. They are the center, but they haven't thought about it either in many cases.
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
In several of the trials on Prop 8, the lawyers against gay marriage have been brought up short several times when asked to show why it's bad. They are the center, but they haven't thought about it either in many cases.
Well, they either haven't thought about it or have thought about it and haven't come up with any answers that aren't stupid, hateful, irrelevant, or obviously incorrect. You can get away with a lot more when you're not in court.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
I must be stupid. I doan geddit.
Our laws allow hets to adopt children, whether or not they are fertile. (Adoption agencies do place restrictions, depending on the agency and on state law, on who's allowed to adopt -- not too old, not too young, not too poor, etc.) This, in effect, posits that citizens who either cannot or do not wish to physically reproduce, and who meet age, health, psychological, and economic requirements, can have families.
Yet a significant number of adoptions, regardless of adopters' sexual orientation, fail. Children get returned by people who have met the agency criteria.
And a few families, where the parents are egregiously neglectful or abusive, do get broken up, and children are taken away by the state.
Reproducing/having families, despite our being in zero danger of running out of human beings any time soon, is deemed a human right (despite occasional hilariously misinformed attempts by legislators in my own state to enforce sterilization of any woman on welfare with the temerity to get knocked up).
Our laws also recognize the equality of citizens.
Yeah, yeah, "children are better off with a mommy and a daddy." But in reality, all this actually boils down to is that children are economically better off with more (rather then fewer) people supporting them, because kids are damned expensive. I suspect it makes more difference what those parents do at work all day (and what kind of paycheck they bring home) than what they do in the bedroom (or actually, what they don't do; all the parents I know are too tired to have sex, regardless of brand).
Why don't we require that kids have four parents? Many kids in the U.S. effectively already do; the two original parents, plus the two new stepparents the originals provided by re-marrying after divorce.
The whole thing's idiotic, and the human population is far too large already anyway.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
I must be stupid. I doan geddit.
''''
Why don't we require that kids have four parents? Many kids in the U.S. effectively already do; the two original parents, plus the two new stepparents the originals provided by re-marrying after divorce.
You're getting close to the evolutionary advantage that having gay/lesbian siblings gives a heterosexual couple. ;-)
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
I came across this article today about how an adoptive parent came to support same-sex marriage.
quote:
We have never thought of our marriage as anything but pleasing to anyone who cared to judge it, and have never imagined that the sanctity of our marriage might threaten the sanctity of other marriages, not to mention the institution of marriage itself.
Until now.
What has changed our understanding of the way some people see our marriage is, of course, the general debate unleashed by the last two days of argument before the Supreme Court on the subject of same-sex marriage. No, my wife and I are not of the same sex; I am a man and she is a woman. But we are infertile. We did not procreate. For the past nine years, we have been the adoptive parents of our daughter; we are legally her mother and father, but not biologically, and since Tuesday have been surprised and saddened to be reminded that for a sizable minority of the American public our lack of biological capacity makes all the difference — and dooms our marriage and our family to second-class status.
<snip>
Since my wife and I adopted our daughter, we’ve come to know many same-sex couples who are also adoptive parents, and it is exactly as proponents of “natural marriage” fear: it is their prowess as parents, rather than as pro-creators, that turns out to be persuasive. I have come to believe that they have the right to be married because I know that I have the right to be married, and I know that they are the same as me — because I know that I have more in common with gay adoptive parents than I do with straight biological ones. In my wife and in me, the self-evident biological purpose of procreation may be broken, but by God, we earn the right to be called parents because of the effort required to raise our child apart from the sacred biological bond...and so they, our friends engaged in the same effort, the same mighty and holy labor, earn the right to be called married. People wonder why public opinion regarding same-sex marriage has shifted so quickly; although I can only answer from my own experience, I can tell you that in my case my recognition of the right of same-sex couples to marry grew directly from the arguments mustered against it, because ultimately I realized they were also mustered against my wife, against me, and against the one person all the pro-marriage protestors and pamphleteers have pledged themselves to protect:
My child.
The whole thing is worth a read. I'm not sure there's any way "marriage is about procreation, so the gays can't have it" can be spun that doesn't end up being incredibly derogatory towards adoptive opposite-sex parents.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
If marriage were truly about procreation, wouldn't we . . .
. . . require heterosexual couples who seem to be reproductively incompatible to divorce while still in their child-bearing years and make them try again with a new partner?
. . . require couples past their child-bearing years to part company? I mean, with reproduction as the glue in the marital bond, what's the point of keeping senior-citizen couples together?
. . . perhaps require couples to demonstrate, pre-nup, their fertility? And only allow couples to tie the knot once the uterus-equipped partner has successfully conceived by the semen-bearing partner?
. . . prohibit marriage for anyone who's been heard to claim, "I don't want children?"
I mean, c'mon. In the crap-shoot of life, most heterosexual couples probably do marry partly in hopes of reproducing, but there's no guarantee, and it's still common in European & US cultures to marry before producing offspring. Some of these couples will be profoundly saddened to learn that their reproductive hopes will not be fulfilled in the usual fashion.
I fail to see why same-sex couples should be treated any differently than heterosexual couples who decide to adopt. We are, after all, still talking about people. Species-ist as this may be, I personally have a deep-seated bias toward human children being reared by human adults. These adults aren't meant to be having sex with their kids, but each other, presumably behind closed doors, so I don't quite grasp what the problem is.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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ToujoursDan
Ship's prole
# 10578
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Posted
The obvious (but often overlooked fact is that) gay couples do have children. They either have them from previous marriages, by artificial insemination or through adoption. All withholding marriage from these couples does it put their children at greater risk, as the protections and responsibilities of marriage aren't there if they are needed. It will do nothing to stop gay people from caring for kids.
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"Many people say I embarrass them with my humility" - Archbishop Peter Akinola
Facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/toujoursdan
Posts: 3734 | From: NYC | Registered: Oct 2005
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bad man
Apprentice
# 17449
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Posted
The dear old Church of England has put out its Faith and Order Commission report on marriage - available here.
Para 23 is a corker: letting us know that any child of a widow, or a widower, or any adopted child, or any child produced by IVF or AID or surrogacy, or any child with a step-parent, let alone any child of a same sex couple - is getting a worse upbringing just because of who is looking after them.
quote:
This does not mean, of course, that only an ideal family unit of two biological parents can provide a home for children. Society has good reason to be grateful to adoptive parents and step-parents, as also to single parents who must sometimes undertake heroic struggles. But the struggles underline the point: they would be less, other things being equal, and the child more securely placed, had it grown up within the marriage-bond of its mother and father.
Wow. Just --- wow.
Posts: 49 | From: Diocese of Guildford | Registered: Nov 2012
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
I enjoyed paragraph 25. The previous two paragraphs were spent arguing that any penis-vagina pairing that resulted in children automatically provides superior child-rearing skills compared with matched-genital pairings, unpaired genitals, or penis-vagina pairings that don't result in children. Then suddenly:
quote:
Persons in relation are not interchangeable units, shorn of whatever makes one human being different from another. They are individuals who bring to the relationship unique experiences of being human in community, unique qualities, attributes and histories.
That reversal was so abrupt I almost got whiplash.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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