President Obama: will he live up to expectations?

Mature Discussion
41

No. Their agenda goes beyond that and into the realm of conditioning us to believe that abortion should be a guiltless necessity.

It cheapens life into nothingness.

I don’t want to live in a world where life has no value, and I assume that neither do you.

There have been 45 million abortions performed since Roe v. Wade in the states.

Wholesome?

Consequences. The fuse needn’t be lit in the first place, and that is where the focus should be/go.

Safe sex. Sex with 100% reliable contraception. No one should care about abortion clinics losing business.

No sane person is arguing against safe abortion. Obviously, the option needs to remain.

If you kill someone, should you face the consequences? People pull triggers by accident too. What’s the moral of the story? Don’t play with guns. Grow up and be responsible. And even in the extreme case where despite all safety methods used, then I can see a case, but is that most cases?

No, it’s not.

No man in the picture? That’s right: he has no rights. But then, let us assume he’d want it aborted as well for the sake of argument. Because that is convenient for this particular picture.

It’s only a matter of time before 100% temp sterialisation drugs become available via injections to stop the action leading to that consequence.

If something fails and you want an abortion as a “safety net” it will only be seen as another form of contraception for the irresponsible. That should not be the perception set for it.

I tell you what, unless that fetus starts off in the womb where we’d normally find the fetus at 10+ weeks (where it resembles a human being with a nervous system etc), it’s going to have to go through that initial phase and is therefore life.

There’s no way around it.

And yeah, I’d rather see aborticides the day after than full blown abortions. If only to avoid the mental trauma.

People who expect for us and even demand for us to believe that because it’s not alive during that phase it’s therefore open season to hunt it down without any guilt attached, strike me as both logical and devoid of logic at the same time.

If the unborn child started as half grown, would we still turn killing that child into a business like we have now?

Going from amino acids struck by lightening into a sentient species consciously killing its own unborn creations is quite the irony, no?

No, she’s also deciding for the child’s body as well. This is pretty much defined by when the child could survive outside the mother. Give it 50 years and medical science will be able to keep a 1 week old fetus alive and bring it to term.

Is this really, truly, only about the mother? Neither the child nor father have any say at all? This is the pro-choice camp’s conditioning. It’s good I have to admit, but rests on a fallacy (i.e. the child not being a child).

Tbh, that’s not the main point. Abortions are going to happen anyway nowadays, so rather than outright villify it, I say focus on stopping it where it can actually be stopped: with proper education and contraception.

Instead, we recommend abortion at every turn. It really comes down to whether you want to reduce the millions of abortions every year or not. Do we, or don’t we? If we do, then we cannot promote abortion as a first resort. It has to be a last resort and seen that way by everyone so as to make them more responsible rather than lazy.

Regardless, if they do get all their legal rights with civil unions, why go mad over a term so inextricably entangled with religion?

It’s almost petty.

[quote=“Abadd”]No one is taking anything away from anyone. How do you claim gay marriage takes marriage away from religion? What about the religions that have no rules against gays? Are they not allowed to marry?

In fact, why is it that Christians pick that specific item in the Bible and spout it like it absolute, yet ignore a hundred other things. What was it that the New Testament said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”?[/quote]

Leviticus. They use it because it’s the most striking. That’s not the only part of the Bible where homosexuality is put in a bad light. Give me a fundamentalist and I’ll tear their faith apart quite quickly.

The aim here is to take marriage out of the hands of religion and put it solely in the hands of the government. Like I said, if legal entitlements were all they were really worried about, gay couples who I doubt are religious in the first place, then why would they care if the union isn’t called marriage?

Yeah but religion recognises heterosexual couplings and favours promoting them for obvious reasons. Marriage is still closely associated with religion unless someone would like to change that? That appears to be the aim. Secularize marriage so that there are no moral judgements.

It has subtracted religion from the equation. And made marriage a totally secular institution. What’s the point? Why steal marriage from religion when a state union gives the same rights while not taking a part of faith and twisting it to meet an agenda mainstream religion frowns on?

That’s the goal. Why not be content with civil unions? This will not end until there’s acceptance in churchs. So far religion has been painted as interolant but stuck to its guns despite volley after volley after volley fired at it. Why so firm in their belief? Maybe they believe what they are doing is truthful?

[quote=“Abadd”]By “Islamic world,” I suppose you mean the Middle East. Is this a “hey, those people over there are waaaaay worse than we are, so that makes it okay” sort of argument? Because it doesn’t work when far right wingers made the same claims about the abuses the American military were doing in the Middle East, so it sure isn’t going to work in this case.

Christians in California actively stripped people of rights. Gays had the right to marry under California law, and that right has been stripped. It wasn’t a clarification of a law, it was an amendment added to the California Constitution that specifically called out a minority group and took rights away.

If the reason for this is religious, then there are plenty of issues with that. 1) That is unconstitutional as defined by the 2nd Amendment. 2) That sets a precedent for the Christian majority to deny the rights of other religious groups for practices that they see as heretical. 3) If this is to protect the sanctity of marriage as defined by Christianity, where is the movement to outlaw divorce? 4) If this is about “traditional families,” where is the movement to require hetersexual couples to have children?[/quote]

Yes indeed, the Middle East and the 50+ countries still ruled by Sharia law where homosexuals are killed and women are treated like property. And somehow, it’s not a target for criticism, which is hypocrisy at its finest. It’s another irony that one of the real reasons for their burning hatred for the western world are liberal ideas. They’d sooner launch suicide nukecase bombers at us than let it flood into their culture. You cannot under-estimate the zeal of fanatics.

We are just a bit more tolerant. Just a bit. By a bit I mean a few miles more.

But anyway, I gather that civil unions aren’t enough. I’ve spoken to some of the peeps who voted yes on Prop 8. Good honest people who only wanted marriage to be/remain synonymous with the family. And since gay couples can’t have families of their own by impregnating one another, why not keep marriage for promoting heterosexual family units? They are the cornerstone of civilisation and therefore need to be prioritised.

No, I see you are convinced of the truth of it. But you really do need to see things from the opposing point of view as well. In these cases, abortion is viewed as murder and homosexuality is (like it or not) viewed as unnatural. Religion doesn’t even need to enter into it. The viewpoints are pretty much diametrically opposed, and thus irreconcilable, which is a shame because I am sure everyone wants to build a brighter future instead of merely focusing on the pleasures of the here and now, right?

[quote=“Abadd”]This blew my mind. You mean to tell me that the simple act of teaching children that there are homosexuals in the world would brainwash them into thinking they are homosexuals? If you were taught to tolerate gays when you were a child, do you think you would have turned into a homosexual? I’m not being facetious here - I’m just trying to understand why this is such a horrible thing.

I have homosexual friends and our other friends with children have no problem exposing their children to our gay friends. Most children don’t even notice it. And those that do simply ask what’s up with that. The correct way to explain is, “Well, most boys like girls. However, some boys were born liking other boys.” (of course, the girl/girl applies, too.) How is this brain washing? The child will grow up and know which one they are. But if they turn out to be gay, they will know it’s not something to be ashamed of.

There is no push to “advertise” anything. It is simply making children aware of different types of people.[/quote]

Lol dude.

I grew up in poverty totally surrounded by violence. The last thing I ever cared about was tolerating someone’s sexuality. If this is about ensuring that gays are treated equally, then let them be treated equally as people. People. If they are beat up for a hate crime, make sure that violence itself is intolerable.

This only creates divisions when we want and need unity. Do we want to teach five year olds to tolerate fat people too? Sure we do, but specifics are unnecessary. People will always see differences as something to be judged. That is inescapable human nature.

Sexuality is the last thing on a five year old’s mind, if it’s there at all. I personally, remember nothing from that age.

So what you need to do is assume that homosexuality is not meant to be, so why teach it? You wouldn’t want to teach kids how to be pedofiles, would you? People will also always find ways to distance themselves from perceived norms to claim unique identities as their own. Always.

Like it or not, that is how a lot of people see it. Heterosexuality is relegated to an option among many, and that’s not wholesome for a stable future.

For the record, Luther King’s family have been against gay marriage.

42

Geoffrey, there’s a particular dichotomy to your viewpoint, just from what I’ve witnessed from the handful of more serious threads here. I believe you understand that I’m not religious, but as a genuine humanist I also often object to totalitarian dismissals of Christianity, and certainly as an icon Jesus has been far too powerful a catalyst for progressive social reforms to just forget about. As you pointed out, both the abolition of slavery - and to a somewhat lesser extent the civil rights movement - in the US, were successful largely by an appeal to the Christian values of people who might not have cared to change otherwise.

So you know I’m on board with you there, in a fundamental way. Now, a few times you’ve also brought up the oppression of women in Islamic cultures, seemingly as a contrast to the enlightenment of the Christian world. But that’s not something that can be connected to innate Christian ideology with any clarity, and it ignores how oppressed women have indeed been under some form of Christian theocracy at other times in history. And that’s why the feminist movement for one was not advanced by any direct appeal to Christian sensibilities, because it’s awfully hard to find any support for ideological egalitarianism in the Bible.

Don’t mistake any of that as a defense of Islam, or even another discount of the positivity of Christianity. The simplicity and purity of Jesus’ direct words tend to shine through a lot of other noise, and can yet be credited for the general foundation of tolerance and empathy on which much of the social enlightenment we take for granted rests. But remember, there was a time when Christians were the relative barbarians trying to wipe out all infidels… at a time when those particular infidels were on a very moderate and tolerant mode. Secular prosperity and complacency, or conversely strife and unrest, always seem to trump ideology in practice.

More rambling I know, anything philosophical or psychological captures my full attention and… distraction, it’s pathological. :anjou_happy:

Two points, one each about gayness in general and abortion. But I’ll try to keep it more terse. gasp

Though I was never predisposed to being shocked about homosexuality, I can recall the degree of distaste I had when first really confronted by the notion. I think some homophobic unease is normal for almost everyone… but after learning a little about Alfred Kinsey and the precepts of his research, a lot of things made sense to me. It seems quite evident, even from personal observation, that many people are indeed “bi-curious” by nature, and to varying degrees. And at some point I arrived at a conviction that I’m probably even unusually heterosexual.

And in some odd way that had a part in my own sense of the distinction between the sort of sovereign love/sex response and a more primal abstraction. So I think part of what I’ve been trying to get at, is that our modern ideals for what constitutes “love” in this context has to do with the parity of the higher emotional energies with sexual energies. You find out ‘what’ you truly are where those two meet… or something. Perhaps that’s a round about way of claiming I am “entirely comfortable with my own sexuality”, but in truth my straightness cannot feel any sort of threat to it’s… validity, in those terms. And I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that virtually no one who’s invested in this marriage issue would ever talk about heterosexuality as “optional” since these are the same people who are trying to make it clear that their homosexuality is not optional for them either.

OK, not terribly terse there but… abortion: I will keep this simple especially since I don’t want to seem antagonizing. But while I want to make clear I’m not like, a fan of abortion, I do take exception to the cut and dry “life” argument. We all take “life” in order to continue our own, even plants are “alive”. What makes our own lives different is consciousness, and pain and pleasure both as we know it is a reflection of that consciousness. On a purely biological level, a female body will preserve itself over it’s fetus in many circumstances, that is natural in a sense. As human beings we prioritize social and emotional factors over purely material in so many other ways, so for myself I cannot trivialize any priorities of another fully developed consciousness or their right to control any part of themselves.

43

Geoffrey Duke: You say that legalizing gay marriage would be enforcing a government mandate upon the church. If this was the case, I would totatally be against the idea. But it isn’t. Churches would still be allowed to refuse to marry people they do not want to. But homosexual-types could then get LEGAL marriages to give them legal status. It also would allow religions that approve of gay marriage (ie Unitarian Universalists) to preform the ceremony and have it be legally recognized.

Legalizing gay marriage is a secular concern. For many, marriage has been a secular thing for quite a while. Calling them “civil unions” does not actually provide all the benefits of marriage since other things (such as inheritance laws) depend upon the term “marriage”. Also “civil unions” are only recognized in the state in which it is legal while marriage is recognized everywhere.

And there is a lot of claim about the family and how children need a mother AND a father to grow up stable. This is untrue, methinks. Studies keep being preformed and keep showing that children who are raised by homosexual parents grow up equally stable as kids with hetrosexual parents. And what about single parents? Note that nobody seems to be arguing that single parents should have their children taken away from them and given to a married man and woman. Nor is there any push to take away children of people who are getting/have had a divorce.

And as it stands, gay people can currently live together adopt children and live as a family. I don’t understand how anyone could deny the “family” status of such peoples. Nor does anybody try to. Instead they just want to make sure they aren’t married. The reason for this confueses me greatly.

BTW another aspect about abortion. GD, you make the claim that life starts at the zygote stage and that since it is life, it has rights. I think a zygote has no rights. Rights are something which all people have and cannot be taken away without stripping a person of their humanity (ie, to remove somebody’s freedom of speech you must either mutilate them beyond belief, imprison them in solitary confinement, or kill them). And the right to life is something all fully formed developmentally sound people have, if left alone a person would live. But not a zygote. A zygote/fetus has no rights because it is not fully formed and as such, if left alone, would die instantly. Having an abortion is indeed forsaking the “duty of motherhood” but it is not an act of opression since a fetus has no rights. Is this “biased against the unborn”? Maybe but it is also a reasonable claim. If fetuses have a “right to be born” (as pro-life types often claim) then there should also be a legal punishment for miscarriages (since the mother clearly is blocking the rights of the child, even if unintentionally). But this is a ridiculous notion because, AFAIK, pretty much all miscarriages are not on purpose but “just happen”.
Until very late term at least. Once there is even the slightest chance of it being able to survive outside the womb, it is too late for abortion.

Does a zygote have a soul? I don’t know how anyone could possibly claim to have knowledge on that subject.

[quote]Tbh, that’s not the main point. Abortions are going to happen anyway nowadays, so rather than outright villify it, I say focus on stopping it where it can actually be stopped: with proper education and contraception.

Instead, we recommend abortion at every turn. It really comes down to whether you want to reduce the millions of abortions every year or not. Do we, or don’t we? If we do, then we cannot promote abortion as a first resort. It has to be a last resort and seen that way by everyone so as to make them more responsible rather than lazy.[/quote]

I agree but the pro-life movement is to make abortion totally illegal and indeed “outright villify it”, not about promoting education/contraception. I don’t know where you are living but anyplace I have lived, abortion is regarded as a last resort.

44

This. So why assume “it” (better yet, he or she) doesn’t and make abortion okay?

Miscarriages are an entirely different matter. If someone dies of old age do you look for his murderer? What if he dies of a disease (say, cancer), do you convict his family for not taking better care of him? A baby can die in the same way, of natural causes. Abortion is clearly intentional and there are always other options (go through with the pregnancy then give the child for adoption), unless the mother’s health is at risk. If what’s at risk is simply society’s or the family’s opinion of the woman as it often is, then it’s hardly enough of a reason to go through with it. The woman should seek help, not get rid of a baby as if he/she is the problem rather than the warped minds of the people around her.

Also, there are other categories of people, other than fetuses, who would die without aid from others. I don’t think that for many of those, say elders with alzheimers or young autistic children (or hey, most young children) it would be considered okay to not provide for them and leave them to die or outright kill them.

I agree with what you said about marriage. It should be legal. Making marriage legal doesn’t mean you force a priest to perform a Christian wedding ceremony for a gay couple. Each religion can keep their own habbits and customs but gay people (men or women) should be able to have the same rights in every other aspect. Obviously they’re not Christian anyway, why try to get inside a Christian church? I’m sure most don’t want that, only wish to be recognised equally by the state and by society, not by a religion they do not believe in. They may share some Christian values but until a Christian church accepts gay unions they’re not really Christians, unless they make their own religion like we have Catholics and Orthodox and what not. Anyway, entagling legal issues with religious issues isn’t so good for a society that attempts to allow people to believe in whatever religion (or lack of one) they wish.

45

We’re forever locked in a battle of the animal versus the soul. Now what happens if we teach people that we are nothing more than animals, or more than merely animals? Their whole perspective shifts.

“Tell a lie long enough and loud enough and people will start to believe it”.

Kinsey’s research and sampling was questionable, but this really is much more simple than people make out. Human beings are not hermaphroditic. In fact, it seems like intelligence itself is a threat to procreation. Maybe we should de-evolve to make sure we don’t choose not to play by nature’s rules. That would be evolution.

This whole debate shows how it was never just about having the legal rights of married couples and mostly about wanting to secularize marriage.

It’s not unheard of to positively descriminate against a lifestyle favoured by a society. Marriage for heterosexual couples, tax breaks for each child etc.

Gay marriage would make that much less meaningful and not solely family-directed. I don’t see why the moral majority should pander to a minority pursuing what is seen as unnatural, arguably products of a sex crazed society driven crazy by itself to search for sex/love beyond where you normally expect so as to create more unique senses of identity etc.

To give an example: we hear about gay people going into heterosexual marriages to feel normal, having children of their own while denying their true selves. Yet, they’ve had children. That’s all nature cares about.

I don’t expect everyone to agree, but that is how it is seen.

As for abortion, it’s all about treating the fetus as if it was a non-living parasite threatening life itself, and that’s dangerous. People cannot advocate abortion on one hand while saying it’s killing a baby on the other. They have to dehumanize it to sell their product first. Go into some circles and they will convince you that fully grown humans are nothing more than chemical reactions exploding in an electromagnetic storm within flesh and thus replaceable. Soul-less. We grow on trees and sentience is an illusion of intelligence.

Life has value.

We should value an unborn child as the life that it is in order to ensure people are responsible enough to properly use contraception (not be lazy) and afterwards the vast majority of abortions would disappear. Unless we are against that? Currently those unborn children are viewed as a disease with abortion being the first available cure.

That’s one step away from putting the homeless in gas chambers. We care more about teaching five year olds how (it’s ok) to be gay than giving a lost generation a sense of direction.

Society really has its priorities in the wrong order. It’s fascinating really, watching people destroy themselves and yet justify it.

I’ve made my points loud and clear anyway. Feel free to disagree; I don’t want to argue when it seems like everything is set in stone already.

46

You confuse me, at times you appear to want humans to be more than animals, more than just what “nature” wants, then on the other hand you seem to be against gay marriage because it promotes something un natural? Yes, it is seen as that (though many animal species also have homosexual individuals) but do you agree with how it is seen? If so, then you believe that it’s OK for people to go against their (gay) nature and get in a heterosexual marriage because that’s fine by “nature”?

I don’t get you I think, I thought you’re against it but then this last sentence about how “it is seen” makes me think you believe the opposite because clearly seeing it like that is wrong…

Unless your point is that because society has this view of gays, even us, who apparently believe to know better and have a different view, should be against gay marriage because of the effects it will have on the society and how it perceives it? If so, well, I think we should strive to fix society’s opinion, even if it’s the majority that is wrong in this case, than to limit a minority’s rights and condemn them because of their NATURE which causes no harm to any other individual.

47

If people really wanted to be that way, then there wouldn’t be any need for this imposition on the rest of us.

We have better things to worry about. Like poverty, starvation, disease. All these things have been sidelined. How can people be proud of that?

Gay people having kids by going against their own nature through heterosexual unions while going with nature is quite the paradox. It shows how much of an influence conditioning can have. And if it can go one way, it can certainly go the other.

Give them their civil unions and leave marriage alone IMO. If their aim is to take it away from the family unit, then it’s more shallow than I imagined. This has almost come down to being the equivalent of children trying to prove one another wrong in its pettiness.

Anyway, less arguing, more levelling my paladin! Wrath of the Lich King is everything we hoped it to be by the way!

48

Why do you only want them to have a “civil union” and not “marriage”? Heck, what’s the difference? If it’s religious in your language then okay, I agree, but if it’s different in how a couple is seen from the state, the law or society then gays should be able to use the word too. Like said already, gay couples can have children too, either via adoption or via one (or both) of them going through pregnancy if they’re women so if the civil union instead of marriage somehow reduces their rights compared to a man and wife then that distinction shouldn’t exist and they should be able to use marriage, obviously not by a Christian or other church, but by law. And yes, we have better things to worry about so why worry enough to want to stop this group in this case?

49

^Because the tyranny of tradition thrives on people being diverted by ideology. All walls are built as much to keep people in, as others out.

50

Alex, if it’s seen as a behavioral choice then someone somewhere is going to have to play favourites with what the foundations of society should be. Even if it’s not, some things are going to be prioritized.

This is a movement aiming to turn marriage into a secular institution when it has been traditionally religious. Instead of fighting for acceptance in mainstream religion, it’s being bypassed completely, de-emphasizing spirituality. That’s cultural Marxism.

51

Religion will not accept them until society accepts them. Why should they not bypass them? I don’t think marriage is a religious institution. If it is then how do we treat the same couples of different religions or couples of atheists?

If in your language marriage MEANS religious (I guess my known translation of the word is neutral on the matter) then I agree with what you say, a religion should NOT be forced to accept them. They will, in time, on their own as it’s to their benefit.

But if being married gives you more rights than having a “civil union” then they should upgrade civil unions to have the exact same rights and be seen as “marriage” in anything and everything but the religious aspect.

52

[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]
Anyway, less arguing, more levelling my paladin! Wrath of the Lich King is everything we hoped it to be by the way![/quote]

Come on Geoffrey Duke, gay marriage isn’t anywhere near as destructive to society as World of Warcraft is >:)

53

Personal update:
In my previous post I said that the unborn have no rights. I just want to say that I’m now rethinking this. I don’t think my “conclusion” was rock-solid.

Anyway, Obama probably won’t be doing anything on the issues of abortion or gay marriage. Unless there is an attempt by Congress to ban gay marriage on a Federal level which I am hoping there will not be.

54

Our viewpoints are so vastly different on this matter, that I don’t think there is any reason to further debate. I will simply clarify a few things.

  1. Marriage is already a secular institution in the US. Anyone of any denomination, religion, or lack thereof can get married. If the religious right has an issue with the secularization of marriage, then they should be advocating to have the word used in the law books changed, not passing legislature that strips the rights of individuals. Doing so only promotes bigotry. (And no, civil unions are NOT the same as marriage. A civil union is only recognized within the state that performs it, and a few select other states. Marriage is recognized nationwide, and internationally. In addition, now that gays cannot marry in California, couples that were married before the ban now will need to be required to prove that their marriage occurred before the ban date, something heterosexuals do not have to do.)

Regardless, it is not petty, as you put it, to argue against separate-but-equal. Did we learn nothing from the civil rights movements of the 50s and 60s? Saying homosexuality is a choice is like saying heterosexuality is a choice. Unless you are willing to say that you choose to be a heterosexual, you cannot say that about gays.

  1. The rights of the father have nothing to do with abortion. This is about the woman’s body. I do not endorse all-abortions-all-the-time. My stance is that it should remain safe and legal. There is too much gray area to start making hurdles for people to jump over in order to obtain a safe abortion when it is necessary. Do you make a rape victim prove that she was raped? How? What about mothers who have a percentage chance of dying in childbirth? Where do you draw the line for what is an acceptable risk to their life? We may never know whether or not a fetus is capable of actual thought, etc, but in the end, it is a moot point. The point is about letting the mother have control over her own body. Plain and simple. Drawing false equivalencies to murder are specious at best, simply because that is one person exerting force upon another.
55

A lot of Christians voted for Obama knowing his stance on abortion. More wealth equates to less abortions in their minds since most are done due to lack of the necessary finances to raise a child. And they had given up on abortion being outlawed. I can understand that logic, but as long as the child is belittled into a parasite, nothing will really fundamentally change.

Abortion will remain the de facto form of contraception until you start sterializing people. The debate really hinges of whether a fetus is considered alive or not. And the general consensus from what I gather is, it’s not. It’s convenient to see it that way: as disposable. So in the end, the only value life has is what we give it, and that’s dangerous.

If the millions of women terminating unwanted pregnancies every year had ensured proper contraception by being responsible and by not being lazy, the vast majority of cases would disappear. I doubt they were all rape victims.

That’s the best way to end the debate. Instead, abortion is advertised as a contraception unto itself. I see people getting a huge power trip out of denying parenthood.

So the key word here is contraception. We can at least agree on that.

[quote=“Al3xand3r”]Religion will not accept them until society accepts them. Why should they not bypass them? I don’t think marriage is a religious institution. If it is then how do we treat the same couples of different religions or couples of atheists?

If in your language marriage MEANS religious (I guess my known translation of the word is neutral on the matter) then I agree with what you say, a religion should NOT be forced to accept them. They will, in time, on their own as it’s to their benefit.

But if being married gives you more rights than having a “civil union” then they should upgrade civil unions to have the exact same rights and be seen as “marriage” in anything and everything but the religious aspect.[/quote]

It doesn’t give more rights though. A civil union would give them the same rights just in different wording without religion being involved at all. So then this becomes wanting the term marriage and to separate it from religion. Churchs agree with heterosexual secular marriages because they endorse their belief in stable family units. Just because there are so many broken homes already, doesn’t mean we should justify there being more.

Why reserve marriage for the family? Why treat marriage as something special? Why treat marriage as the foundation for the family?

Because, as you see in Europe where in a lot of places, the growth rate of the natives is flat, people tend to see children as the by-products/accidents of sex. Nature is pretty much built on tricking people into having offspring through the temptation of pleasure in the first place, but you could argue that there’s a big spiritual component to having kids as well.

Given the choice, and bear in mind that most people starting families in the states wait until their mid-late 30s or even early 40s now, lots of people would prefer all of the pleasure (sex) with none of the pain (children), especially in a secular world where we are taught that we are nothing more than a highly evolved animals. This is why some scientists have theorised that intelligence is a detriment to natural selection.

Fair enough. So by keeping marriage for families you hold them in a higher regard. By not, you make it meaningless. After all, plenty of people cohabitate now, and domestic/civil marriages/unions give all the monetary rights they need. It’s no longer a bonding of spiritual significance. It can be one of love, but no longer solely family directed.

So in my humble opinion, people are attempting to redefine the core of human nature. For better or for worse, and sooner or later they will win all because it’s more convenient in the short term which needless to say, is self-destructive in the long run.

56

I can respect elements of your perspective Geoffrey, but I cannot ever truly relate to such totalitarian attitudes. You have repeatedly characterized both issues by defining and demonizing an extremist version of the opposition, while also implying everyone on that side must share that extremist position.

If you do not, will not, or shall not see any more middle ground than such, I will just echo Abadd… and agree to disagree. :anjou_love:

57

So vastly different viewpoints and yet the discussion hasn’t succumbed to Godwin’s Law, I am impressed.
I have a few questions, answers to which may help me understand the different positions on the abortion subject.
The word “life” has been used fairly often in a general way and i would like to know what the word means to you guys.

-Do you distinguish between “human” and “animal” life ?
-Did you occasionally mean “soul” when you used the word “life” ?
-Is the life of an embryo/foetus worth more or less than that of a full-grown individual?
-Is the life of a human embryo/foetus more precious than that of an animal embryo/foetus?
-Do you distinguish between foetus and embryo ?
-Where do you draw the line between an acceptable/inacceptable abortion, purely based on the growth of the embryo/foetus leaving the element of the reason for the abortion out of the equation ?

On a side note: How could there be a discussion about the gay marriage ban without mentioning the brilliant South Park Episode “Follow that Egg” ?

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[quote=“Abadd”] …]Historically, society has accepted 1st cousins marrying - it is relatively recently that this became taboo. Siblings marrying, however, has been much less common, though there are many aboriginal cultures, and hell, royal families, in which it was relatively common. I took a class on Scandinavian folklore back in college, and it seemed like half the stories were about fathers or brothers marrying their daughters or sisters.

Aside from the risk of Down Syndrome, there are other extremely problematic genetic diseases that can come about due to incest, but we don’t necessarily stop two individuals who are unrelated from marrying due to genetic risk. To be honest, other than the sheer “wtf?!” factor, I can’t think of a single reason why you shouldn’t have the right to marry your sister. Is it f’ed up? In my opinion, dear god yes, but does that mean it should be legally banned? I’m not entirely sure.
…][/quote]

Aside from the obvious genetic reasons why incest would be the inferior choice and other breeding partners should always be preferred, it is ofc rather a cultural thing, so the acceptance is a matter of conditioning.

To me,when watching the Godfather Part III , it just felt so wrong to see that relationship between cousins.So wrong! Or when a friend of mine announced his brother marrying a cousin , i just thought “Gross!”.
I am biased but i’m trying to rationalize:
You have to take into account the environment where these cases of incest happen. Keeping bloodlines “pure” among royal families (vertical societal structures, not taking risks with heritage disputes, “gods” not interbreeding with “humans” as in egypt) being the obvious reason for the incest in that case.

As for the folklore/aboriginal culture (tribal cultures overall perhaps?)
Doesn’t it all boil down to the organization of society? I mean if you live in small,secluded communities, with the next village or clan being days of travel away, the rise of the probability to conceive a child with someone related to you seems just logical and hardly surprising.

Based on that thought , now that there are millions of realistic potential breeding-partners, it only seems to be a bad choice to stick with the partner with the most common genes.(to keep it watertight: yes i know of the possibility of a complete stranger still sharing more common genes with you than your cousin)

At least that’s how i explain the taboo of cousin-cousin relationships, but i’m not an anthropologist/historian, so correct me where i am wrong.

Btw,in folklore they also eat babies, genitals transform into trees, humans having sex with animals. There is a lot of weird stuff going on and i wouldn’t necessarily take all metaphors as possible referrence to societal conventions of that time. There is also lots of incest in the bible as well, now that i think of it…

59

[quote=“Abadd”]If you are suggesting letting gays have civil unions while others have “marriages,” this poses a few unique issues (but if you’re just suggesting that everyone get civil unions, right on).

In the US, we have fairly clear equality laws on “separate but equal” issues. Allowing some to have marriages and others civil unions would fall under that. Another one of the problems is that some states do not recognize civil unions. The rights don’t transfer from state to state. It’s sticky.[/quote]

Sounds like the recognition issue between different states needs to be cleared up. In New Zealand, marriage is reserved for male-female couples, whereas civil unions are legal for either same sex couples or male-female couples. This means that an atheist couple could get a civil union, if they did not like the concept of marriage, while still retaining the legal rights of a married couple. I think this approach works well enough.

I’m all for choice; believe me when I say I’m for giving people choice when it only affects them/doesn’t harm anyone else. Abortion adds the unborn child into the equation. Pro-choice advocates put the decision onto the mother, but it does conveniently take any direct consequence away from them.

Maybe there isn’t a law that will fit all situations. I’m not interested in blames though; I’m interested in solutions. What is being done to minimize the number of abortions? As a society, are we doing enough? Or do people just not care?

True story: A guy I used to know had a one night stand. They didn’t use safe sex, and the girl got pregnant. My understanding was that she was planning to have an abortion, and it most likely went ahead.

Was the abortion really necessary? In my opinion no, it could have been prevented by safe sex or adoption. Okay, so if abortion was illegal she might not have gone ahead with it, or she might have still had it done illegally. My point isn’t really a legal one, it’s that somewhere along the line our society failed preventing that abortion from taking place.

60

Now that Barack Obama is the president of the Unites States, how do you guys feel he’s handling the job so far?

Things are certainly looking up when it comes to helping to look after the environment, which gives him my respect in that area.