is there anyone else who is pro-life AND pro-gay rights, or is it just me?

[bryantm3]

?

[IsiliRunite]

I find the pro-life position prioritizes the more fundamental right of life (as opposed to the less fundamental right to end a life) and gay rights support the equally important pursuit of happiness. I guess I'm pro-life and pro-gay rights, then.

I'm not a big fan of government deeming anything to be "marriage" and consequently giving partial treatment to those who are married, but whatever...

[stimpee]

I find the term pro-life to be very deceptive. everyone is pro life. everyone loves life. just depends on how far you want to go. they need a new term.

I think its sad now that when I think of pro-life I think of people who murder doctors. Hardly pro-life is it.

[Strangelet]

Exactly. Define pro-life, Bryant and i'll see if I fit the bill

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

Exactly. Define pro-life, Bryant and i'll see if I fit the bill


As well as (-098)?

[BeautifulBurnout]

I'm gonna stir it up here by saying that it is very easy for a guy to be pro-life.

[IsiliRunite]

Before I even think of responding to that comment I would like to see you elaborate so I know what points you are trying to touch on.

[dubman]

i think that can be boiled down to the famous production called "THE DUDE AND THE UTERUS." it's been playing out since, oh, forever. it's an intriguing salad of power struggles, violence, and hilarious misunderstandings.

the continuing attempt to control the body through legislation/morality/shame, where the players involved seem far from coincidental, and thus can only be interpreted as socially and conceptually oppressive..

and so on.
basically, its not "the right to take a life", it's much more about the right to manage ones own body.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

i..., it's much more about the right to manage ones own body.

Good Luck there.

And don't get all panties tied in a knot on me, dubman, it's in general.

Please tell me you're not gay, I REALLY hope you procreate. :p However "stupid boy" you can be sometimes.

[Rog]

I find the term pro-life to be very deceptive. everyone is pro life. everyone loves life. just depends on how far you want to go. they need a new term.

I think its sad now that when I think of pro-life I think of people who murder doctors. Hardly pro-life is it.

my sentiments exactly.

Also its funny how many blokes are 'pro-life'

Instead of 'pro-life' Bryant, wouldn't you be better off describing yourself as Anti-abortion?

[Deckard]

pro-life AND pro-gay rights

No contradiction there, but obviously a lot of pro-lifers' opposition to gay rights tends to result from the common factor of the Bible and more specifically how they choose to interpret it. But that got me thinking: I wonder which is more uncommon amongst self-described conservatives: being anti-gay rights or anti-abortion?

[Strangelet]

Anyway I'm very much anti-life. In fact when I go out for a hike, and I'm in the mountains surrounded by nature I get really mean and say "god i hate all this fucking life everywhere."

[bryantm3]

Exactly. Define pro-life, Bryant and i'll see if I fit the bill

i see myself as pro-life in that i do not believe abortion should be allowed unless the mother's life is in danger. i believe that adoption should be the policy, because once conception occurs, the child is a seperate entity and 'aborting' them is no different than killing a newborn. on the same token, i believe that killing others is wrong and do not believe abortion clinics should be bombed, and i believe the death penalty should be abolished.

[bryantm3]

I'm gonna stir it up here by saying that it is very easy for a guy to be pro-life.

if i ever got a girl pregnant outside of marriage, i would have to commit to her and the kid as if i were having the child myself or i would be just as guilty as a woman having an abortion. although i could never hold the amount of responsibility of a pregnant woman, i would have to remember that the child is 100% my responsibility as well as 100% hers and treat it as such. people who get women pregnant and run off are as guilty or more because they leave the woman alone to raise the child and push them towards the decision.

[cacophony]

I'm gonna stir it up here by saying that it is very easy for a guy to be pro-life.
true. at the same time you could also say it can be very easy for a guy to be pro-choice. depending on what he did last night.

[cacophony]

Instead of 'pro-life' Bryant, wouldn't you be better off describing yourself as Anti-abortion?
anti-abortion, yes. and i can think of a number of more accurate ways to describe the position:

anti-choice, anti-individual rights, anti-women's health rights, pro-government intrusion, pro-government legislation over individual bodies, pro-revokation of individual civil rights, pro-punishment for reproductive females

etc etc

[cacophony]

although i could never hold the amount of responsibility of a pregnant woman
not even a whisper of a dream of a fantasy of the amount of responsibility of the pregnant woman.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

if i ever got a girl pregnant outside of marriage, i would have to commit to her and the kid as if i were having the child myself or i would be just as guilty as a woman having an abortion. although i could never hold the amount of responsibility of a pregnant woman, i would have to remember that the child is 100% my responsibility as well as 100% hers and treat it as such. people who get women pregnant and run off are as guilty or more because they leave the woman alone to raise the child and push them towards the decision.


I agree 100% with everything you've said here. Buuuuuuut, as history has always shown and I don't see it changing anytime soon, it's more common than not many males do not hold up to this side of the bargin.



And kudos to you in your way of responsible thinking, you should make every effort to preach this to as many of your fellow male friends as possible. Not that I can tell the future or anything, but I kinda see you as being one of those guys who, after getting married, has a grand litter(+) of kids. Kinda in-the-closest horny kinda guy. Not gay in the closest either.


See:

kinda want to make fun of this but then i'd sound like John Rodriguez.
oh no.

I prove another point, yet again. Comparing a match to a torch goofy boy.

[bryantm3]

anti-abortion, yes. and i can think of a number of more accurate ways to describe the position:

anti-choice, anti-individual rights, anti-women's health rights, pro-government intrusion, pro-government legislation over individual bodies, pro-revokation of individual civil rights, pro-punishment for reproductive females

etc etc
all of these things are not what my position (i don't know about others) stands for. i believe a woman has as much right as a man to do anything with her body that she wishes. however, once a child is conceived, i believe, and it is hard to disprove, that a child is alive and no longer part of the individual such as oocytes or semen. indeed, the child still depends on the mother for a nurturing environment in the womb and nutrition, but a newborn child does as well, and cannot survive on its own. arguing that a week old child is not a person vs. a newborn child is almost the same comparison as arguing that a newborn child is not a person vs. an adult.

so, to me, it's not about removing 'women's rights', it's about protecting the right of an individual to live who cannot stand up for her/his self. if it were in any way possible to safely 'adopt' a child still in the womb to another woman, i would support that procedure.

i do believe that a woman has a right to prevent herself from becoming pregnant if she wishes, via condoms, foam, diaphragms, etc.

[dubman]

not even a whisper of a dream of a fantasy of the amount of responsibility of the pregnant woman.

kinda want to make fun of this but then i'd sound like John Rodriguez.
oh no.

[dubman]

all of these things are not what my position (i don't know about others) stands for. i believe a woman has as much right as a man to do anything with her body that she wishes. however, once a child is conceived, i believe, and it is hard to disprove, that a child is alive and no longer part of the individual such as oocytes or semen. indeed, the child still depends on the mother for a nurturing environment in the womb and nutrition, but a newborn child does as well, and cannot survive on its own. arguing that a week old child is not a person vs. a newborn child is almost the same comparison as arguing that a newborn child is not a person vs. an adult.

so, to me, it's not about removing 'women's rights', it's about protecting the right of an individual to live who cannot stand up for her/his self. if it were in any way possible to safely 'adopt' a child still in the womb to another woman, i would support that procedure.

i do believe that a woman has a right to prevent herself from becoming pregnant if she wishes, via condoms, foam, diaphragms, etc.

now see, this is all what you want to do and see enacted because you believe in it.
regardless of the people who actually have to worry about this.

that's a lot of the issue right there. it's all the things cacophony said by virtue of turning it into a political issue, which was a fucking stupid idea in the first place.

[cacophony]

i do believe that a woman has a right to prevent herself from becoming pregnant if she wishes, via condoms, foam, diaphragms, etc.
damn those women who don't exercise their right to prevent themselves from being impregnated during rape or abuse. DAMN THEM TO HELL.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

But not the boys who refuse to wear a condom in the name of love or saying it's against they're religion. Because, ya know, they're just being boys.

[cacophony]

not even a whisper of a dream of a fantasy of the amount of responsibility of the pregnant woman.
let me clarify my point.

at week 20 of a high risk pregnancy, my husband was diagnosed with gestational hypertension. at week 25 his kidneys began to shut down and he was put on medication to control the raised blood pressure in the hopes of saving both his kidneys and his babies. at week 30 his pressure began to rise again and his risk of stroke increased significantly. his medication, which is not fully tested on the effects on fetuses, was increased. at week 33 while doing an audible non-stress test he heard the sound of one of the babies' heartbeats slow, then stop, then start again. that's when he received the news that the hypertension, which could quite possibly kill him, might be destroying the babies' shared placenta. he was rushed to the hospital where he tested positive for preeclampsia, a potentially fatal condition brought on by pregnancy. he was then pumped so full of magnesium sulfate that he was barely coherent, and he had two shots of steroids in his hips to help develop the premature babies' lungs. see, this happened because there was a very clear set of options: carry the babies to term and have a nearly guaranteed date with seizures and liver failure, or deliver two premature babies at 33 1/2 weeks in the hopes that they could survive without encountering one of a dozen life threatening conditions that are part and parcel of arriving almost 2 months early. and when they were delivered, he didn't get to hold them. they were taken away to the neonatal intensive care unit and he was kept bedridden for the next 24 hours, unable to see his babies while the preeclampsia was closely monitored. during this time his liver very nearly shut down.

no wait. that didn't happen to my husband. that happened to me. because i'm a woman and between the two of us i'm the only one with the physical ability to carry a baby and nearly die in the process.

so no, you don't carry a whisper of a dream of a fantasy of the responsibility of pregnancy that a woman carries.

and when you preach your noble stance on men sharing the burden of pregnancy i have to roll my eyes. because good for you, buddy. you be noble and stand there while the woman in your life submits her body either willingly or unwillingly to something that will change her forever. you preach your philosophy about life and the dependency of an embryo on its mother's environment and you make it a political or moral thing. because it's easy, for you. you're never ever EVER going to face the decision or the responsibility or the risk or the consequences a woman will face. bearing the emotional and financial burden are great, both parents do that. but only she bears the physical burden.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

WHOOOPLIIISHHHHH!

Fuck'im up Ma!!!! :D, :D.

Can I have more chocolate milk?

[cacophony]

now if you'll excuse me, i have to head back upstairs. the one on the left won't stay asleep. :rolleyes:

[dubman]

let me clarify my point.

at week 20 of a high risk pregnancy, my husband was diagnosed with gestational hypertension. at week 25 his kidneys began to shut down and he was put on medication to control the raised blood pressure in the hopes of saving both his kidneys and his babies. at week 30 his pressure began to rise again and his risk of stroke increased significantly. his medication, which is not fully tested on the effects on fetuses, was increased. at week 33 while doing an audible non-stress test he heard the sound of one of the babies' heartbeats slow, then stop, then start again. that's when he received the news that the hypertension, which could quite possibly kill him, might be destroying the babies' shared placenta. he was rushed to the hospital where he tested positive for preeclampsia, a potentially fatal condition brought on by pregnancy. he was then pumped so full of magnesium sulfate that he was barely coherent, and he had two shots of steroids in his hips to help develop the premature babies' lungs. see, this happened because there was a very clear set of options: carry the babies to term and have a nearly guaranteed date with seizures and liver failure, or deliver two premature babies at 33 1/2 weeks in the hopes that they could survive without encountering one of a dozen life threatening conditions that are part and parcel of arriving almost 2 months early. and when they were delivered, he didn't get to hold them. they were taken away to the neonatal intensive care unit and he was kept bedridden for the next 24 hours, unable to see his babies while the preeclampsia was closely monitored. during this time his liver very nearly shut down.

no wait. that didn't happen to my husband. that happened to me. because i'm a woman and between the two of us i'm the only one with the physical ability to carry a baby and nearly die in the process.

so no, you don't carry a whisper of a dream of a fantasy of the responsibility of pregnancy that a woman carries.

and when you preach your noble stance on men sharing the burden of pregnancy i have to roll my eyes. because good for you, buddy. you be noble and stand there while the woman in your life submits her body either willingly or unwillingly to something that will change her forever. you preach your philosophy about life and the dependency of an embryo on its mother's environment and you make it a political or moral thing. because it's easy, for you. you're never ever EVER going to face the decision or the responsibility or the risk or the consequences a woman will face. bearing the emotional and financial burden are great, both parents do that. but only she bears the physical burden.

...

was just gonna make fun of the wording
something like 'notion of a concept of a sparkle of a dust mote of a glint of a tremulous utterance of a-"

and so on.

..

then of course about how having kids is way easy for guys like me we just have to concentrate on our gut real hard.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

now if you'll excuse me, i have to head back upstairs. the one on the left won't stay asleep. :rolleyes:


I warned you. :p

[bryantm3]

let me clarify my point.

at week 20 of a high risk pregnancy, my husband was diagnosed with gestational hypertension. at week 25 his kidneys began to shut down and he was put on medication to control the raised blood pressure in the hopes of saving both his kidneys and his babies. at week 30 his pressure began to rise again and his risk of stroke increased significantly. his medication, which is not fully tested on the effects on fetuses, was increased. at week 33 while doing an audible non-stress test he heard the sound of one of the babies' heartbeats slow, then stop, then start again. that's when he received the news that the hypertension, which could quite possibly kill him, might be destroying the babies' shared placenta. he was rushed to the hospital where he tested positive for preeclampsia, a potentially fatal condition brought on by pregnancy. he was then pumped so full of magnesium sulfate that he was barely coherent, and he had two shots of steroids in his hips to help develop the premature babies' lungs. see, this happened because there was a very clear set of options: carry the babies to term and have a nearly guaranteed date with seizures and liver failure, or deliver two premature babies at 33 1/2 weeks in the hopes that they could survive without encountering one of a dozen life threatening conditions that are part and parcel of arriving almost 2 months early. and when they were delivered, he didn't get to hold them. they were taken away to the neonatal intensive care unit and he was kept bedridden for the next 24 hours, unable to see his babies while the preeclampsia was closely monitored. during this time his liver very nearly shut down.

no wait. that didn't happen to my husband. that happened to me. because i'm a woman and between the two of us i'm the only one with the physical ability to carry a baby and nearly die in the process.

so no, you don't carry a whisper of a dream of a fantasy of the responsibility of pregnancy that a woman carries.

and when you preach your noble stance on men sharing the burden of pregnancy i have to roll my eyes. because good for you, buddy. you be noble and stand there while the woman in your life submits her body either willingly or unwillingly to something that will change her forever. you preach your philosophy about life and the dependency of an embryo on its mother's environment and you make it a political or moral thing. because it's easy, for you. you're never ever EVER going to face the decision or the responsibility or the risk or the consequences a woman will face. bearing the emotional and financial burden are great, both parents do that. but only she bears the physical burden.

i didn't mean to upset you by what i said. i'm sorry, and what you say is true; i could never have that much responsibility (and i'm not just saying that because you probably know where i live ;) ). on the same note, i think abortion is permissible if your health is in danger; which it was. if it comes down to preserving a person that's already fully developed or preserving a child that may well die with the mother, realistically, it would be unreasonable to restrict a woman to have an abortion.

my idea of limiting abortion isn't a federally mandated law that says almost all abortions are illegal and having some huge legal counsel decide which abortion is OK.

my idea is more along the lines of a federal law that protects some abortion rights, and only restricting partial-birth abortion, and the states would go on a state-by-state basis. for example, all states would have to respect the right of a mother to have an abortion if her life was in danger, if she was raped, or if a family member raped her, yet from that point on it would be the individual state's decision to make abortion illegal or legal. so a state with people who largely support abortion rights, such as nevada, would have abortion legal. on the other hand, utah would probably make most abortions illegal. at that point i think it would be up to the doctor to decide whether to carry out an abortion or not rather than bring it before a judge and have to go through a legal proceeding. the penalty for performing abortions illegally would be up to the states, but i wouldn't favor any laws punishing women for having an abortion.

once again, i didn't mean for the discussion to get that personal and heartwrenching— you proved your point very well.

the ideal system, to me, would be to make abortion less common, more difficult to have done, and to make other options much more available, but not to entirely ban abortion from the country if it's truly needed in a case. the libertarian in me wouldn't let that happen. i'm upset enough about obama banning flavored cigarettes in the name of stopping teens from smoking.

[Rog]

in the end it should be the woman's choice about abortion, not a judge's, not a politician's, not a priest's, maybe a doctor if there are complications......and not a bryant either.............i guess that makes me pro-choice. an aggregation of a few non-differentiated cells is not a person.

[cacophony]

i didn't mean to upset you by what i said. i'm sorry, and what you say is true; i could never have that much responsibility (and i'm not just saying that because you probably know where i live ;) ). on the same note, i think abortion is permissible if your health is in danger; which it was. if it comes down to preserving a person that's already fully developed or preserving a child that may well die with the mother, realistically, it would be unreasonable to restrict a woman to have an abortion.

ahhhhhh but think about this. in my case it was week 20 when i developed gestational hypertension. abortions are only legal to week 24. and personally i don't support abortion rights after week 24 because at that point viability is absolutely plausible.

once again, i didn't mean for the discussion to get that personal and heartwrenching— you proved your point very well.

understand i'm not trying to make it all about me. what i'm trying to do is illustrate how a lofty moral stance affects individuals. because at the end of the day you're talking about individual lives.

one of the things that i always find striking about the anti-choice argument is that you guys all seem to think every pregnancy is normal and every baby is born healthy. well yeah, if a pregnancy is totally normal and the mother has no complications during delivery and no health complications following pregnancy and the baby is born with stellar APGAR scores, then sure it's a great idea that all women should be forced to carry every pregnancy and all babies will be adopted.

but the reality is pregnancy isn't a cute little baby bump that pops out a rolly polly bouncing baby without risk. and many times the risk to the mother's health doesn't manifest until she's going into delivery and suddenly she's hemmoraging and balancing on a razor's edge between life and death. what you're proposing is that women, and only women by necessity of nature, should bear the burden and risk of that mistake, and trying to make it all shiny and happy by lobbing out a noble statement about how men should be held accountable.

here's the point i'm trying to make: in my case i'm married, in my 30s, prepared for the responsibility and risk of pregnancy. i encountered some not uncommon health issues that not only threatened my life and put my babies' long term health at risk, but i'm also one of the lucky portion of women who get to keep their gestational hypertension post-pregnancy as a bonus prize. which means just the very act of getting pregnant resulted in a series of health events that very nearly GUARANTEES my death will be from cardiac arrest or stroke. lucky me. my husband? his health status is exactly the same as the day we conceived. i am, by necessity of nature, the only one who has to pop a pill every morning FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE in the hopes of staving off the inevitable burst blood vessel in my brain that will ultimately end my life. i say this partially to give you a little shake by the lapels because i don't think you've ever dreamed in your wildest fantasy that these things happen, but also to set up a hypothetical:

let's imagine a girl who accidentally gets pregnant in your ideal world, where women are forced to carry pregnancies unless her life is in danger. let's call her mary. mary is a recent college grad in a bad economy who can't find work in her field. as a result she takes a job as a waitress at TGI Fridays. part time, no health insurance. she starts dating another server at that same establishment, let's call him matt. neither one has insurance. they're careful about birth control but after several months of dating one slips past the goalie and she finds herself staring at a pink plus sign on a pregnancy dipstick.

now, as noble as matt may be, bearing "equal" responsibility for this pregnancy doesn't get her even one step closer to health insurance. still, they scrimp and pinch and get her to her first OB GYN appointment to make sure things are normal. by the way, this first OB GYN appointment costs $500 for the uninsured. That gets her a blood test to confirm the pregnancy, some lab tests to make sure hormonal levels are healthy, and a consultation with a doctor. this doesn't afford an ultrasound to confirm the implanted embryo but let's pretend they're willing to throw that in.

first ultrasound at 8 weeks: whaddya know, there are two babies in there. still no health insurance. oh and by the way, these twins are identical so she's only got one placenta. which takes her from a "high risk" category to a "very high risk" category. she's now obligated to monitor her health and the babies' health very closely, which translates to bi-weekly ultrasounds with a perinatal specialist, alternating with bi-weekly visits to the OB GYN. if it was $500 for that first consult, how much do you think they're now having to afford for these visits? we're talking thousands and thousands of dollars before she even hits viability at 24 weeks.

now let's give her my health complications. gestational hypertension, which equals extra monitoring. at 24 weeks she starts going to the perinatal specialist every single week. and she sees her OB GYN every single week. which means she's shelling out hundreds of dollars on tuesday and hundreds of dollars on thursday. oh, and by the way, she's been forced onto bed rest because of the hypertension and risk of premature delivery. so no more waitressing at TGI fridays, which means they're down to matt's meager income.

let's also give her my delivery story. she's rushed to the hospital a month and a half prematurely and she spends a week bedridden, hooked up to monitors. finally when she's informed that she may start seizing and her liver is on the verge of failure they admit her for an emergency c-section. she's also received two very expensive shots of steroids to help develop the babies' lungs at this point. they rush her into the OR where the standard double surgical team is standing by to deliver. there is literally twice the staff in this delivery room, standing by to receive two premature babies.

what do you think that costs?

the babies are lucky, they get good APGAR scores, but because they arrived on planet earth before 35 weeks they're rushed to the NICU. they're too little to have the jaw strength to eat so they have to be tube fed for several days before they learn to successfully drink from a bottle. 13 days in NICU for baby A, 18 days in NICU for baby B.

how much do you think that costs?

i'll tell you. the NICU alone, which ended up providing little more than warmth and feeding assistance (so no extra surgeries or equipment needed) costs $250,000. read that number carefully. the NICU alone costs a quarter of a million dollars. add in all of the prenatal care costs, the hospital expenses, the surgery expenses, and you've got a total bill for this one pregnancy of nearly half a million dollars. yeah. half a million for one pregnancy.

now. mary and matt didn't want this pregnancy. they were forced by law to carry it to term (or as close as they could get). who bears the burden of the expense? even if they could afford it, why should they? why should they be forced by law to bear the physical burden and the health risks as well as the financial ruin? do we put the half million tab on the taxpayers? does the hospital have to eat the cost?

i ask you this because too often the "pro lifers" want to paint the pretty picture of healthy pregnancies and adopted children. but realistically there are very ugly, dirty details to be managed. who pays for the unwanted pregnancies?

and beyond that, let's say these babies weren't so lucky. they could have easily been born with retinal malformation which can result in blindness. they could have been born with fluid on the brain which eats away at brain tissue, resulting in retardation. they could have been born with necrotizing enterocolitis, which means extended NICU stays and multiple surgeries.

who is adopting these babies?

if the mom is forced to carry her unwanted pregnancy to term and gives up her right of custody at birth, who cares for these babies in NICU? and where are the adoptive parents who want to sweep in and sit for hours on end at their babies' incubator, praying for a miracle to heal them? assuming they survive their health complications, who is waiting to adopt the poor baby with cerebral palsy resulting from birth complications? who's waiting to adopt the baby with down syndrome?

where are these legions of adoptive parents, willing to take on the children of complicated pregnancies and deliveries? have you signed up to be an adoptive parent yet?

the anti-abortion movement can come up with all kinds of good reasons why abortion should be outlawed in a just and healthy world. but the world isn't just, and not all women or babies are healthy. and not once in my entire life has a so-called "pro lifer" addressed the grim reality of what they're wishing on the rest of us.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

... let's call her mary ...


See, kids, excellant use of comic relief right here. You're getting a star for that one.

[IsiliRunite]

Abortion is a health procedure, no doubt, and the health of the mother takes precedent over the health of the fetus, but some contemporary adults turn to abortion as a procedure of convenience when other viable options are available. I would like to see a run-down of the contextual numbers surrounding abortion, but I would probably be disappointed with how many abortions could have been avoided with abstinence (when two people could be doing something more productive than mating in the first place ie 16 year olds having unprotected sex at prom) or birth control, and even adoption.

No woman should have to bear a fetus that was forcefully brought into being inside of her womb by an overpowering male or end her own life in a facet of biology designed to create more life, but I find it more cautious to presume the fetus an actual lifeform whose life should not be terminated more often than not. The fact that these catch 22 situations can arise for a woman by the crime of a man is further justification, personally, for the extreme severity of rape as a crime. When individuals fuck around doing stupid shit with their own bodies on the day to day, that is just fine. To be wreckless in the babymaking ballpark, though, is a whole different story... I wish people realized that sex is more serious than their hormones would have them believe.

[bryantm3]

there are many many many children born with defects such as mental retardation, autism, etc. everyday. the fact of the matter is most of the time they don't know it until the baby is born, or even months after. i fail to see how that relates to abortion.

once again, i don't think abortion should be entirely unavailable— it will be up to the states. if the family doesn't think they can take the financial strain, go get an abortion a couple of states over. although i may not agree with their decision, if their state has made abortion illegal, they have made many people think twice about having an abortion because it is much more difficult. having abortion entirely outlawed would lead to abortions happening in alleyways (so to speak), which doesn't reduce the number of abortions and increases the number of mortalities, putting the women in danger. the goal is not to supress people's rights or to make it underground, the goal is to lower the number of abortions that occur.

in addition, mary and matt can apply for medicaid if they can't afford health insurance. if they can afford health insurance, in a year or so they can apply for the new health insurance program that obama is putting in place, that will include benefits for pregnant women. although you paint a very bleak picture, abortion is not the only option in their case, and birth defects still happen whether abortion is legal or not. i'm not trying to hold a 'lofty moral stance', i'm trying to put forth a proposition that both retains the rights of the individual while greatly reducing the number of abortions in this country.

[cacophony]

seriously, that is a laughably inadequate response the very specific situation i proposed.

you're living in fantasytown. let me know if you want to talk about the real world and answers to very real world scenarios. i'll be sitting over here with the rest of the rational adults. :rolleyes:

[cacophony]

I wish...
and that's my point. you "wish" the real world wasn't the real world.

you can't discuss abortion in the context of an ideal world. not when you're talking about revoking civil liberties in the real world.

[IsiliRunite]

Edumacation of the average person works for making ideals a reality...

A 'real world answer' is dependent on whether or not your, or our hypothetical person's, problem could have been pre-screened or screened early into pregnancy. Were you trying to have kids? I missed that. I was giving my ideals because that's the nature of this topic... I wasn't answering anyone. If I was responding to a specific post I would have quoted it.

I guess rational individuals make assumptions about sensitive topics, so I must not be rational. The only thing my post was trying to get at was that abortion is unfortunate but sometimes necessary, and can (and should be) avoided more than it already is.

BUT because you assumed I was talking to you, I might as well give you the response I am capable of giving now.

One point I disagree with you on is the couples' "accidental" pregnancy. There is no such thing as an accidental pregnancy. That's like staying awake for 3 days on end and 'accidentally' falling asleep in the middle of a movie. I think you mean 'unintended'. Accident is a term that puts responsibility on some other entity other than those affected. Sex can not happen accidentally. If you're tasting the fruit, you have to take care of the seeds...

In this case, I believe our character is going to die directly from pregnancy, which makes abortion slightly more reasoned in this case. Its a priority to keep functional adults alive. If the issue were solely monetary, an abortion would end two lives because she didn't take into consideration all the possible scenarios that could arise when little matt was going to town on her cat. If they're too poor to take care of the babies they might create by fornicating, they shouldn't be fornicating.

[bryantm3]

seriously, that is a laughably inadequate response the very specific situation i proposed.

you're living in fantasytown. let me know if you want to talk about the real world and answers to very real world scenarios. i'll be sitting over here with the rest of the rational adults. :rolleyes:
well, i'm sorry you think the system i proposed is inadequate. it's obvious that we both have strong opinions but i don't think either of our opinions are irrational, but well-thought and meaningful opinions. i think we should agree to disagree. still friends?

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

Edumacation of the average person works for making ideals a reality...

A 'real world answer' is dependent on whether or not your, or our hypothetical person's, problem could have been pre-screened or screened early into pregnancy. Were you trying to have kids? I missed that. I was giving my ideals because that's the nature of this topic... I wasn't answering anyone. If I was responding to a specific post I would have quoted it.

I guess rational individuals make assumptions about sensitive topics, so I must not be rational. The only thing my post was trying to get at was that abortion is unfortunate but sometimes necessary, and can (and should be) avoided more than it already is.

BUT because you assumed I was talking to you, I might as well give you the response I am capable of giving now.

One point I disagree with you on is the couples' "accidental" pregnancy. There is no such thing as an accidental pregnancy. That's like staying awake for 3 days on end and 'accidentally' falling asleep in the middle of a movie. I think you mean 'unintended'. Accident is a term that puts responsibility on some other entity other than those affected. Sex can not happen accidentally. If you're tasting the fruit, you have to take care of the seeds...

In this case, I believe our character is going to die directly from pregnancy, which makes abortion slightly more reasoned in this case. Its a priority to keep functional adults alive. If the issue were solely monetary, an abortion would end two lives because she didn't take into consideration all the possible scenarios that could arise when little matt was going to town on her cat. If they're too poor to take care of the babies they might create by fornicating, they shouldn't be fornicating.


I think you're being a bit nit picky. "Accidental" here was used in the context pertaining to "unintended".

I'm REALLY holding back on the whole "if they're too poor to take care of the babies they might create by fornicating, they shouldn't be fornicating", just to avoid going off into MY style of different arguemental tangents. I really do get where you're coming from though.

[stimpee]

well, i'm sorry you think the system i proposed is inadequate. it's obvious that we both have strong opinions but i don't think either of our opinions are irrational, but well-thought and meaningful opinions. i think we should agree to disagree. still friends?Well, i'm sorry that you think it necessary to start a thread, encourage discussion and then edit your original post until it just says "?". If you start a discussion, you should expect it to heat up a bit. Please don't feel as if you need to back down or run away just because everyone doesn't whole heartedly agree with you. Maybe they have rational and logical reasons for their beliefs, even if they are the opposite of yours. Keep em coming bryantm3 :)

[Future Proof]

I find the term pro-life to be very deceptive. everyone is pro life. everyone loves life. just depends on how far you want to go. they need a new term.

I think its sad now that when I think of pro-life I think of people who murder doctors. Hardly pro-life is it.

DINGDINGDINGDING tell him what he's won, Bob!

I love life and I love babies. To be honest, the thought of an abortion and the inherent irresponsibility that figures into the decision to get one in most cases turns my stomach. It's people making stupid decisions, and then following up their stupid decisions with a terrible solution to their problems, that's what most abortions end up being.

But of course, you have the isolated cases where a woman is assaulted and impregnated, and other rare exceptions. I had a friend in college that was raped while on vacation and became pregnant, and she went and got an abortion. And as you can imagine, my support for her and her situation was unwavering because of the absolute vileness of circumstances. To be pro-life politically would mean to usurp her choice to abort a pregnancy which was created out of evil means, and that's not an option as far as I'm concerned.

But on a more philosophical and sociological slant... it's kind of hard for me to be pro-life when I see case after case of the stupidest people popping out kid after kid. It's garbage genes coming together, and once the baby is born it's going to be garbage food, garbage education, garbage nurturing, all offered generally in garbage surroundings. So it's no surprise that once baby grows up they generally turn out to be a piece of garbage. And many of the checkpoints that the human race had to go through in centuries/millenniums past are now gone. Due to technology, medicine and other factors, the weak are now surviving along with the strong, and their crap genes are spreading and dumbing everyone down. And as much as I hate to say it, I believe that abortion is one way that the spreading of bad genetics is getting slowed down.

Sorry, I've just been on a big kick lately about de-evolution.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

But on a more philosophical and sociological slant... it's kind of hard for me to be pro-life when I see case after case of the stupidest people popping out kid after kid. It's garbage genes coming together, and once the baby is born it's going to be garbage food, garbage education, garbage nurturing, all offered generally in garbage surroundings. So it's no surprise that once baby grows up they generally turn out to be a piece of garbage. And many of the checkpoints that the human race had to go through in centuries/millenniums past are now gone. Due to technology, medicine and other factors, the weak are now surviving along with the strong, and their crap genes are spreading and dumbing everyone down. And as much as I hate to say it, I believe that abortion is one way that the spreading of bad genetics is getting slowed down.

Sorry, I've just been on a big kick lately about de-evolution.

But wait minute, it's the supposed intellectual, high-society people with alot of money that have been making decisions during the past decade that have fucked the country all the way close to hell. No?

I guess they just don't LOOK like garbage, huh?*

*Please refer to my song of the day.

[Future Proof]

But wait minute, it's the supposed intellectual, high-society people with alot of money that have been making decisions during the past decade that have fucked the country all the way close to hell. No?

I guess they just don't LOOK like garbage, huh?*

*Please refer to my song of the day.

I don't think that too much that has happened on Capital Hill, or in Visa's HQ, or the mortgage industry has swung too fiercely on how John Q. Public would benefit. Financially speaking the focus has been more on interest and opening new accounts, though it didn't seem to strike the mortgage sector that if they gave loans to people buying max house on min income that they would default entirely. Major credit cards also made the same mistake of giving people credit when they absolutely didn't deserve it, and gave them astronomical interest rates on top of it. But all they saw was what would happen when everyone paid on their interest, they didn't see people going belly-up.

These were bad decisions, based on an irresponsible level of greed and profiteering. I wouldn't equate bad decisions to low intelligence though. Not to mention, it doesn't really bother me much that banks were willing to go bonanza on subprime lending, what bothers me is that there were many uninformed consumers out there that thought that they were actually a good idea.

Industries that deal with credit being one example of the general fuckery of the state of the union in the past 10 years.

EDIT: I'm not following why this thread is about being pro-life and pro gay rights, aside from political affiliation in the more extreme cases. It would seem that these are 2 stances that are generally made independent of each other.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

I don't think that too much that has happened on Capital Hill, or in Visa's HQ, or the mortgage industry has swung too fiercely on how John Q. Public would benefit. Financially speaking the focus has been more on interest and opening new accounts, though it didn't seem to strike the mortgage sector that if they gave loans to people buying max house on min income that they would default entirely. Major credit cards also made the same mistake of giving people credit when they absolutely didn't deserve it, and gave them astronomical interest rates on top of it. But all they saw was what would happen when everyone paid on their interest, they didn't see people going belly-up.

These were bad decisions, based on an irresponsible level of greed and profiteering. I wouldn't equate bad decisions to low intelligence though. Not to mention, it doesn't really bother me much that banks were willing to go bonanza on subprime lending, what bothers me is that there were many uninformed consumers out there that thought that they were actually a good idea.

Industries that deal with credit being one example of the general fuckery of the state of the union in the past 10 years.

EDIT: I'm not following why this thread is about being pro-life and pro gay rights, aside from political affiliation in the more extreme cases. It would seem that these are 2 stances that are generally made independent of each other.

Umm, I wasn't referring to the economy, though it can still apply IMHO(this acronym now rocks).


Oh, and in regards to your edit. I think he's referring to that "i" word again. I think.

[bryantm3]

Well, i'm sorry that you think it necessary to start a thread, encourage discussion and then edit your original post until it just says "?". If you start a discussion, you should expect it to heat up a bit. Please don't feel as if you need to back down or run away just because everyone doesn't whole heartedly agree with you. Maybe they have rational and logical reasons for their beliefs, even if they are the opposite of yours. Keep em coming bryantm3 :)

My original post was posted as I was running out the door and originally said something like fhwgads, so I thought a question mark was more appropriate. I'm definitely not backing down, but it's obvious Cacophony is not going to change her mind, and it's obvious I'm not going to change mine, and since we've both stated our points clearly, I don't think it's necessary to let it degrade to a point where feelings are hurt and people are upset— this is an internet forum, not capitol hill. I do appreciate your support, however. :)

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

Oh shit: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31528426/ns/us_news-faith/

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

My original post was posted as I was running out the door and originally said something like fhwgads, so I thought a question mark was more appropriate. I'm definitely not backing down, but it's obvious Cacophony is not going to change her mind, and it's obvious I'm not going to change mine, and since we've both stated our points clearly, I don't think it's necessary to let it degrade to a point where feelings are hurt and people are upset— this is an internet forum, not capitol hill. I do appreciate your support, however. :)


Well then, we'll need fhwgads defined.

[Rog]

DINGDINGDINGDING tell him what he's won, Bob!

I love life and I love babies. To be honest, the thought of an abortion and the inherent irresponsibility that figures into the decision to get one in most cases turns my stomach. It's people making stupid decisions, and then following up their stupid decisions with a terrible solution to their problems, that's what most abortions end up being.

But of course, you have the isolated cases where a woman is assaulted and impregnated, and other rare exceptions. I had a friend in college that was raped while on vacation and became pregnant, and she went and got an abortion. And as you can imagine, my support for her and her situation was unwavering because of the absolute vileness of circumstances. To be pro-life politically would mean to usurp her choice to abort a pregnancy which was created out of evil means, and that's not an option as far as I'm concerned.

But on a more philosophical and sociological slant... it's kind of hard for me to be pro-life when I see case after case of the stupidest people popping out kid after kid. It's garbage genes coming together, and once the baby is born it's going to be garbage food, garbage education, garbage nurturing, all offered generally in garbage surroundings. So it's no surprise that once baby grows up they generally turn out to be a piece of garbage. And many of the checkpoints that the human race had to go through in centuries/millenniums past are now gone. Due to technology, medicine and other factors, the weak are now surviving along with the strong, and their crap genes are spreading and dumbing everyone down. And as much as I hate to say it, I believe that abortion is one way that the spreading of bad genetics is getting slowed down.

Sorry, I've just been on a big kick lately about de-evolution.

heh! the thick will inherit the world and they're fuckin welcome to it!:D

[Sean]

DINGDINGDINGDING tell him what he's won, Bob!

I love life and I love babies. To be honest, the thought of an abortion and the inherent irresponsibility that figures into the decision to get one in most cases turns my stomach. It's people making stupid decisions, and then following up their stupid decisions with a terrible solution to their problems, that's what most abortions end up being.

But of course, you have the isolated cases where a woman is assaulted and impregnated, and other rare exceptions. I had a friend in college that was raped while on vacation and became pregnant, and she went and got an abortion. And as you can imagine, my support for her and her situation was unwavering because of the absolute vileness of circumstances. To be pro-life politically would mean to usurp her choice to abort a pregnancy which was created out of evil means, and that's not an option as far as I'm concerned.

But on a more philosophical and sociological slant... it's kind of hard for me to be pro-life when I see case after case of the stupidest people popping out kid after kid. It's garbage genes coming together, and once the baby is born it's going to be garbage food, garbage education, garbage nurturing, all offered generally in garbage surroundings. So it's no surprise that once baby grows up they generally turn out to be a piece of garbage. And many of the checkpoints that the human race had to go through in centuries/millenniums past are now gone. Due to technology, medicine and other factors, the weak are now surviving along with the strong, and their crap genes are spreading and dumbing everyone down. And as much as I hate to say it, I believe that abortion is one way that the spreading of bad genetics is getting slowed down.

Sorry, I've just been on a big kick lately about de-evolution.You and me both. One of the reasons I love the movie "Idiocracy".

[cacophony]

In this case, I believe our character is going to die directly from pregnancy, which makes abortion slightly more reasoned in this case.

medical experts would disagree with you. our character's life was never at risk for dying until 33 1/2 weeks, when suddenly her health took an unfortunate turn. at that point the babies were viable.

your statement would actually result in more unnecessary abortions, not fewer, because if you looked at the hypertension at 20 weeks and determined that might lead to the life threatening condition later, you'd end up aborting two very viable babies.

the point is, you can't predict every complication. and because you can't screen or predict every complication unforseen medical expenses will result, and long term (possibly life-long) health consequences may result for both mom and baby. how do "pro-lifers" intend to deal with these circumstances in the real world? no "pro-lifer" has ever been able to adequately address this issue.

If they're too poor to take care of the babies they might create by fornicating, they shouldn't be fornicating.
oh well that's a realistic expectation. if human beings are good at anything, it's resisting sex. :rolleyes:

wishing for an inhuman world doesn't solve the human problem.

are you a virgin?

[cacophony]

well, i'm sorry you think the system i proposed is inadequate. it's obvious that we both have strong opinions but i don't think either of our opinions are irrational, but well-thought and meaningful opinions. i think we should agree to disagree. still friends?
if i saw you at the starbucks on haynes bridge i wouldn't spit in your coffee. ;)

seriously, though, i don't think your opinion is well thought out. i think you mean well but i don't think you're considering the real world and the actual medical practicalities. if you have you could address the situation i described and how the medical practicalities should be handled, and what the morality is of condemning a woman to a lifetime of health consequences, i would feel more assured that you were putting forth a well thought out, informed position.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

are you a virgin?


Now you'll need to define that one.

Esp. after the many "Abstinence Only" lectures, which a few I've been to, we've been teaching the last generation.

[cacophony]

WELL I AIN'T TALKING ABOUT DOING IT IN THE EAR!!!




:D

[Future Proof]

Umm, I wasn't referring to the economy, though it can still apply IMHO(this acronym now rocks).


Oh, and in regards to your edit. I think he's referring to that "i" word again. I think.

What were you referring to? I don't think I've been following you from the start.

[bryantm3]

Well, my whole point was that if abortion is absolutely necessary, it's still available in every state under those 3 conditions, and for other reasons you can travel outside of your state and have an abortion done, it's just a lot less convenient, giving a disincentive for having an abortion, allowing the mother to think about other options that may be available. I'm certain that not all 50 states will ever entirely ban abortion. I have thought this out over a very long period of time and have come to the conclusion that the amount of people who have abortions out of convenience outnumbers the amount of people who have it done because they're in danger of losing their life. I know you're arguing that there are many different cases, but allowing individual states to decide both gives a considerable disincentive to those considering abortion out of convenience, while still allowing those who really feel there is no other way out, like in your special cases, to have an abortion in a different state.

if it helps prove my point, i'll specifically respond to the situation you posed

let's imagine a girl who accidentally gets pregnant in your ideal world, where women are forced to carry pregnancies unless her life is in danger. let's call her mary. mary is a recent college grad in a bad economy who can't find work in her field. as a result she takes a job as a waitress at TGI Fridays. part time, no health insurance. she starts dating another server at that same establishment, let's call him matt. neither one has insurance. they're careful about birth control but after several months of dating one slips past the goalie and she finds herself staring at a pink plus sign on a pregnancy dipstick.
I know that there is no realistic way to prevent people from having sex before marriage. It would be great if things were that simple, but they aren't, and situations like this do happen a lot. I won't give a lecture about 'they shouldn't have been having sex' because it is so common that to dismiss this situation is to dismiss the entire problem. Therefore, the rest of my argument assumes that situations like this can and do happen.

now, as noble as matt may be, bearing "equal" responsibility for this pregnancy doesn't get her even one step closer to health insurance. still, they scrimp and pinch and get her to her first OB GYN appointment to make sure things are normal. by the way, this first OB GYN appointment costs $500 for the uninsured. That gets her a blood test to confirm the pregnancy, some lab tests to make sure hormonal levels are healthy, and a consultation with a doctor. this doesn't afford an ultrasound to confirm the implanted embryo but let's pretend they're willing to throw that in.

first ultrasound at 8 weeks: whaddya know, there are two babies in there. still no health insurance. oh and by the way, these twins are identical so she's only got one placenta. which takes her from a "high risk" category to a "very high risk" category. she's now obligated to monitor her health and the babies' health very closely, which translates to bi-weekly ultrasounds with a perinatal specialist, alternating with bi-weekly visits to the OB GYN. if it was $500 for that first consult, how much do you think they're now having to afford for these visits? we're talking thousands and thousands of dollars before she even hits viability at 24 weeks.

now let's give her my health complications. gestational hypertension, which equals extra monitoring. at 24 weeks she starts going to the perinatal specialist every single week. and she sees her OB GYN every single week. which means she's shelling out hundreds of dollars on tuesday and hundreds of dollars on thursday. oh, and by the way, she's been forced onto bed rest because of the hypertension and risk of premature delivery. so no more waitressing at TGI fridays, which means they're down to matt's meager income.

let's also give her my delivery story. she's rushed to the hospital a month and a half prematurely and she spends a week bedridden, hooked up to monitors. finally when she's informed that she may start seizing and her liver is on the verge of failure they admit her for an emergency c-section. she's also received two very expensive shots of steroids to help develop the babies' lungs at this point. they rush her into the OR where the standard double surgical team is standing by to deliver. there is literally twice the staff in this delivery room, standing by to receive two premature babies.

what do you think that costs?

the babies are lucky, they get good APGAR scores, but because they arrived on planet earth before 35 weeks they're rushed to the NICU. they're too little to have the jaw strength to eat so they have to be tube fed for several days before they learn to successfully drink from a bottle. 13 days in NICU for baby A, 18 days in NICU for baby B.

how much do you think that costs?

i'll tell you. the NICU alone, which ended up providing little more than warmth and feeding assistance (so no extra surgeries or equipment needed) costs $250,000. read that number carefully. the NICU alone costs a quarter of a million dollars. add in all of the prenatal care costs, the hospital expenses, the surgery expenses, and you've got a total bill for this one pregnancy of nearly half a million dollars. yeah. half a million for one pregnancy.



this is exactly the reason that i support a premium based voluntary national health care plan, and the reason that i support s-chip (minus the crooked cigarette lobbyist addition 'tax loose cigarette tobacco $50 a pound while taxing cigarettes only $1 a pack to run competitors out of business... but that's a whole different story.) and medicare programs to pay for the bills people have to encounter in situations like this.

i have heard others argue that 'you pay when your car gets repaired, why not pay to go to the doctor?' the reality is that medical costs are completely unreasonable and it's turned into the biggest racket ever created by mankind, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars for people to get treated. pregnancy is only one of the things that needs to be covered under such a plan. however, after the health care bill is passed and matt and mary cannot afford a health care payment, they almost certainly can apply for medicaid, which does pay for pregnancy costs.

in addition, at this point, if mary's life was in danger, the doctor could perform an abortion. if mary's life was not in danger and she felt she had no other option, she could have matt drive her out of state and get an abortion.


now. mary and matt didn't want this pregnancy. they were forced by law to carry it to term (or as close as they could get). who bears the burden of the expense? even if they could afford it, why should they? why should they be forced by law to bear the physical burden and the health risks as well as the financial ruin? do we put the half million tab on the taxpayers? does the hospital have to eat the cost?

i ask you this because too often the "pro lifers" want to paint the pretty picture of healthy pregnancies and adopted children. but realistically there are very ugly, dirty details to be managed. who pays for the unwanted pregnancies?
this is where we get down to a moral issue rather than a practical issue. why should they pay the cost, even if they could afford it? they should because it's their child. and i'm not being judgmental— there's a two year old at our church that has a terrible heart defect and is having to have thousands of dollars of surgery. why do his parents want to pay that amount of money? because it's their child. they want to do everything they can to save him. whether they've seen their child or not, it's still their child. it doesn't change the fact that he is still a human being.

if they are on medicaid, the taxpayers are already paying it. and to be honest, i think $500,000 for a child whose parents are under the poverty line is a much better use of money than building a $200 million bridge in alaksa- that's why medicaid isn't a mainstream political football.

more later, have to go.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

What were you referring to? I don't think I've been following you from the start.


Well, let's see. We're talking about pro-life. Yet our country is involved in two wars that are ending human life (American lives folks). Wars that started based on lies, or no wait - unintended or accidental choices.

Not to deter from the thread, of course. Yet, I'd love to see how many people on the pro-life(anti-abortion) front were so willing to start this mess accidentally.

I know, I'm just stirring shit. But hey, when in Rome.

WELL I AIN'T TALKING ABOUT DOING IT IN THE EAR!!!




:D

Of course not, but, ya know, studies show kids these days don't believe doing it in the (?)ear is sex. I'm not making this up.

My damn mouse thingy is all fucked up too, so if some of my posts appear like I'm drunk, it's not me.

[IsiliRunite]

Our inability to predict all of the complications that can arise in a pregnancy is unfortunate, but the option of abortion beyond a certain stage of development seems like a frail attempt at keeping humans empowered. Its good to have options, but ending lives past a certain stage of development in a calculated decision loses site of what the babymaking process is about. Life isn't perfect, and creating life isn't either... the fact that things can't be perfect does not justify ending a life. If a woman develops a complication that might end her life without endangering the life of her children, beyond whatever arbitrary point policymakers decide on, that is truly unfortunate. Babymaking is serious business. It would be good to focus on treating the mother, maximizing the amount of life that can be preserved with medical attention. Sometimes people die, though. That's life. Think about the consequences of your actions before you do them ie getting knocked up effecting your wallet and your health.

I buy into the ability to control your body under normal circumstances, but the body most affected by abortion is the fetus'. Sex and conception are in a realm beyond the individual person... mulitple parties civil liberties must be taken into account as well. I keep coming back to this point in my mind, as I write these responses, and I think that's where people who support the right to have an abortion (or the right to not be told you can't, more formally) and those who do not disagree... 'pro-choicers' view the fetus as an extension of the female form while 'pro-lifers' view the fetus as its own entity with its own rights.

[Rog]

I have thought this out over a very long period of time and have come to the conclusion that the amount of people who have abortions out of convenience outnumbers the amount of people who have it done because they're in danger of losing their life.

it doesn't require much thought to work that one out. In this world of over-population isn't it better to not bring yet another unwanted child into the world.....especially if you are poor.

I believe this is mainly a womens issue and it's up to the woman in the end to make her own choice and not some catholic men........

Incidently, which church are you a member of?

[Deckard]

In this world of over-population isn't it better to not bring yet another unwanted child into the world.....
That's where teh gays come in.
Serving the world since 1845. (BC)

[stimpee]

Bryantm3: youre saying that travelling out of state should be enough of a deterrent / lesson learned. But what if the whole of the USA bans abortion? Until youre in a relationship where your girlfriend/wife accidentally gets pregnant (believe me it can happen, pills and condoms arent 100%) or the baby has been scanned and is so mentally/physcially deformed, or is likely to cause problems that it will be still born, I dont see how you can judge the situation. Do you want to ban the morning-after pill also? how about contraception? Would you like no-sex-before-marriage to become law? Should people only have sex to pro-create? Where do you draw the line? Just how much freedom and civil liberty do you restrict in order to impose "moral values"? Moral values which usually have been written in religious scripts dating back centuries. Times change but religious beliefs dont, it seems.

I think that the decision to have an abortion should be the mothers and hers alone. The time up until she can make that decision, how many weeks pregnant is probably a medical one not a religious or political one. If there are two things which trample all over civil rights, its religion and politics and usually a combination of the two.

[Rog]

That's where teh gays come in.
Serving the world since 1845. (BC)

LOL!

[bryantm3]

and beyond that, let's say these babies weren't so lucky. they could have easily been born with retinal malformation which can result in blindness. they could have been born with fluid on the brain which eats away at brain tissue, resulting in retardation. they could have been born with necrotizing enterocolitis, which means extended NICU stays and multiple surgeries.

who is adopting these babies?

if the mom is forced to carry her unwanted pregnancy to term and gives up her right of custody at birth, who cares for these babies in NICU? and where are the adoptive parents who want to sweep in and sit for hours on end at their babies' incubator, praying for a miracle to heal them? assuming they survive their health complications, who is waiting to adopt the poor baby with cerebral palsy resulting from birth complications? who's waiting to adopt the baby with down syndrome?

where are these legions of adoptive parents, willing to take on the children of complicated pregnancies and deliveries? have you signed up to be an adoptive parent yet?


you automatically assume that most women who have abortions do so because their pregnancy becomes a danger to their own personal health. as i have stated time and time again, the doctor should be able to perform an abortion if the situation is like the one above. in addition, abortion doesn't magically get rid of birth defects in newborn children, as most children aborted are not aborted because of complications in childbirth:
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3711005.pdf

That poll, conducted in 2002 by the Alan Guttmacher Institute among women who had abortions, finds that 93% of women primarily had them because of convenience issues instead of significant health issues or other problems such as rape or incest. these abortions are what should be eliminated by disincentives, ie: making it more inconvenient to have an abortion. not every aborted child has a birth defect.

[bryantm3]

Bryantm3: youre saying that travelling out of state should be enough of a deterrent / lesson learned. But what if the whole of the USA bans abortion? Until youre in a relationship where your girlfriend/wife accidentally gets pregnant (believe me it can happen, pills and condoms arent 100%) or the baby has been scanned and is so mentally/physcially deformed, or is likely to cause problems that it will be still born, I dont see how you can judge the situation. Do you want to ban the morning-after pill also? how about contraception? Would you like no-sex-before-marriage to become law? Should people only have sex to pro-create? Where do you draw the line? Just how much freedom and civil liberty do you restrict in order to impose "moral values"? Moral values which usually have been written in religious scripts dating back centuries. Times change but religious beliefs dont, it seems.


stimpee, first of all, not every state is going to ban abortion. california? florida? new york? hell, even virginia and iowa would probably not ban abortion. get real. secondly, you're taking this way too far with your slippery slope argument. i previously stated that sex before marriage happens and it shouldn't be judged. it's not a great idea, but let's be realistic. why would i ban contraception when it prevents pregnancies in the first place?

the reason i want to allow individual states to ban abortion is because the child that has been conceived has the same rights as the mother does to live, and those that are so strongly pro-choice seem to either ignore this part of the argument or don't care. why does an unborn child not hold certain rights if he or she is alive? what is the difference between aborting a child out of convenience and 'aborting' a newborn child that you don't think you have the responsibility to take care of? my point is not to legislate 'morality', my point is to protect the rights of an unborn child to live because he or she cannot stand up for themselves. i would stand up for the rights of the mother and father to make choices if condoms were proposed to be banned, or if some of your other situations became true. i oppose abortion because one conception occurs, there is a third person involved and it seems that no one wants to respect the inalienable rights of that person.


Incidently, which church are you a member of?
I'm Episcopalian.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

the reason i want to allow individual states to ban abortion is because the child that has been conceived has the same rights as the mother does to live, ...

I'm Episcopalian.

And if that child turns out to be gay? What then?

[Sean]

It just seems to me that the issue of abortion is so peppered with legitimate physical health and psychological issues that it's virtually impossible to restrict it legally without causing someone serious injury in one form or another. I think most people would agree with the concern that too many abortions are based on decisions of convenience, so it's probably fair to say that this is largely an issue of educating the public about the potential consequences of irresponsible sex, about what abortion does to a fetus and mother, about what childbirth does to a mother, about contraception, about adoption, etc. No solution I've ever heard will be perfect, but the more we can find ways to guide people towards making responsible, mature decisions about the specific, personal situations they find themselves in, the more long-term positive affects we'll see. Simply legislating things like this just won't cut it in my opinion.

[cacophony]

'pro-choicers' view the fetus as an extension of the female form while 'pro-lifers' view the fetus as its own entity with its own rights.
wrong. so very very wrong.

[cacophony]

you automatically assume that most women who have abortions do so because their pregnancy becomes a danger to their own personal health.
no, i'm not automatically assuming anything. i'm deliberately creating a scenario for you that falls out of the "knocked up irresponsible sinful slut deserves what she gets, damnit" category.

again, the problem with "pro-lifers" is that you want to make this an issue of responsibility and morality. but the fact is there are many things that happen in pregnancies that have nothing to do with responsibility and morality. the difference between me and "mary" is that i knew it was time to welcome a new life (lives) into my life, and i was willing to put my health on the line. and if there had been a complication like CP i was committed to seeing it through.

by and large the women who make it to delivery are women who are committed. it takes commitment to put your life and health on the line and face the unknown number of possible outcomes. a world where abortion is banned leaves unprepared and unwilling women to bear the burden of those consequences. you will see an increase of cost of complications passed on to taxpayers and you will see more children with congenital defects up for adoptions that WILL NEVER COME because the people who were not prepared to commit themselves to life in any form will have bailed out by then.

your world creates a ballooning population of needy babies for whom no one may be waiting to receive them with open arms. you create more wards of the state.

it's not about "kids with CP and DS are born every day." it's about the parents who are willing to commit to their care.

i've said this to my father in law (a raging "pro-lifer") and i'll say it to you: it's not about all of the scenarios you can think of. it's about the ones you can't. and it's about protecting the rights of people who fall into these minority categories becaues when you add up all of the minority categories you get a great big group of people who deserve to have the choice.

as i have stated time and time again, the doctor should be able to perform an abortion if the situation is like the one above.

and as i've stated, this really shows your ignorance in sparkling clarity. the complications i described didn't manifest until after the current legal cutoff for abortions. by the time it became life threatening the babies were well into "viability." your statement basically says you'd open the door to MORE abortions during the time when anyone, even pro-choicers, could argue that it really is murder.

in an effort to protect the 12 week old embryos, you're willing to slaughter the 30 week viable lives. congrats, you really thought this one through.

[bryantm3]

i'll be honest with you, i got confused and thought where you said the health problems were starting to occur was a little after the 8 week period, yet you posted 24 weeks. my mistake. from what i understand at even 23-24 weeks a child can be delivered prematurely via c-section and the remaining time can live in an incubator, therefore if the mother is having serious health problems before that time period, she can have an abortion, or if it's close enough to 24 or after 24 they can deliver the child, leaving no need for an abortion.

i know what you're talking about now. sorry for not reading your argument more thoroughly; i need to take more time with these responses, i'm writing them in 5 minute segments cos i've got a lot going on.

[IsiliRunite]

wrong. so very very wrong.

then why is it okay to murc a little baby?!?! :eek:

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

then why is it okay to murc a little baby?!?! :eek:

Because poor, garbage people don't want their accidental children to be used by intellectual, rich people to be killed in an accidental war they say god told them to start.

Or something.

[Sean]

then why is it okay to murc a little baby?!?! :eek:Looks like you need to start from the top once again Cacophony....:rolleyes:

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

No you don't Ma.

Because poor, garbage people don't want their accidental children to be used by intellectual, rich people to be killed in an accidental war they say god told them to start.

Or something.

[IsiliRunite]

Or, more reasonably, address the inconsistencies in what she is saying.

[cacophony]

then why is it okay to murc a little baby?!?! :eek:
how is that a response to my comment. you said pro-choicers think a baby is just an extension of the female form.

sorry, brotherman. i grew two babies. i can say unapologetically that you've got no clue what that's like and you can only speculate wildly about how women regard the lives that grow inside of them. at no point were either of those babies extensions of my body. that's what you're so totally wrong about. no, pro-choicers don't feel a baby grow inside of them and think "meh, whatever."

i teetered on the edge of liver failure for those babies and if given the choice i would have died so they could be born. and yet somehow i still believe the government has no right to hold my health hostage and i believe women should have the choice to control their own bodies.

it's a quandry but i don't expect you to understand. frankly you're never going to be able to experience the depth of emotion, you're going to have to speculate from afar and navelgaze over the philosophy of something that you will never ever ever be at risk for.

[cacophony]

Looks like you need to start from the top once again Cacophony....:rolleyes:
yeah maybe i'm patting myself on the back but i think i've been rather eloquent and clear about my points. instead of getting actual responses to the scenarios i'm offering i'm getting a lot of "but people shouldn't have sex!" and "don't murder babies!"

okay. if you guys don't want to have a conversation about it that's fine. it's a lot easier to just stick to your position and ignore the complicated reality of the situation than to really ponder what this legislation would do to real people's lives.

[IsiliRunite]

so you think a fetus is a unique human being (with civil liberties?) but also believe that ending the life of said fetus is only taking control of your own health?

you're gonna have to resolve that contradiction before i bother typing anything else. stop patting yourself on the back... you're typing a whole lot of nonsense disguised as contextual nuances.

'I got this great idea to start killing non-consenting organ matches so more people can be healthy. thoughts? Don't dare judge me, there are a bunch of complications and stuff.. you'll never understand it.'

[cacophony]

don't put words in my mouth.

and also try not being an asshole about it. i've been very civil about this discussion and you've done nothing but respond with illogical platitudes. snap out of it and get your shit together and participate in an adult discussion.

[IsiliRunite]

I'll take that as a "No."

[Sean]

so you think a fetus is a unique human being (with civil liberties?) but also believe that ending the life of said fetus is only taking control of your own health?Based on what I've read, this is an overly-simplified boiling down of what Cacophony's written to the point that it's a complete misrepresentation.

Frankly, despite being pro-choice myself, I've always had questions about people who say abortion is about a woman's right to control her own body for the same reason some here have pointed out. I always thought, "but this issue is about a fetus - a separate but dependent living entity". Of course the woman's body was obviously involved, but the "life" in question was that of the baby's. But after reading the detailed and thoughtful posts from Cacophony on this specific question here, I finally feel a better sense of understanding about it. You just don't hear about all the affects that childbirth can have on a woman's body as outlined in this thread very often. It seems that maybe you either haven't read, or haven't taken the time to really absorb the information that's been shared here IsiliRunite, and I for one have found it to be extremely enlightening.

[cacophony]

Based on what I've read, this is an overly-simplified boiling down of what Cacophony's written to the point that it's a complete misrepresentation.
which is why i'm done with the conversation. if he's not even going to make a teeny effort to try to comprehend my point, which really means he's not reading anything i'm writing, then what's the point.

i get tired of investing effort into debates when people are too lazy to read and just keep parroting their point as though i'm on ignore.

[Sean]

which is why i'm done with the conversation. if he's not even going to make a teeny effort to try to comprehend my point, which really means he's not reading anything i'm writing, then what's the point.

i get tired of investing effort into debates when people are too lazy to read and just keep parroting their point as though i'm on ignore.Well, for what it's worth, I really did find your points to be quite eye-opening. They are appreciated.

[dubman]

cacophony demeans isilirunite's ability to comprehend actually being pregnant and what it means.
how unreasonable
especially considering how extremely relevant that is.
oh hey did we just get to the crux of the issue or was the response just a highly defensive appeal to ridicule.

[IsiliRunite]

I read everything she said, and I comprehend it just fine. She has said nothing to reconcile my belief that a pregnant woman, sick or not, has a human being inside of her that she does not have the right to kill. Even in the interest of her own health. I apologize for having concise principles that can't be talked around...

Quite simply... I do not support the right to conduct an abortion in which the mother contracts a condition via pregnancy that will kill her after the babies are delivered. Yes, that means a full-grown adult woman is going to have to die, sooner or later, in an otherwise normal attempt to bring another life into the world. This risk will always be present and unavoidable. Sometimes there are no 'right' answers. Sometimes people have to die. There are circumstances in which aborting can save more than it destroys ie aborting babies when both the mom and babies would otherwise die, but the specific examples we are talking about did not include that circumstance.

I ask you now... was there anything I missed? I'll gladly continue this discussion with someone who wants to contend my beliefs. Who knows, they may or may not change. Please attack my thoughts, and not my ability to conduct them.

[Sean]

I read everything she said, and I comprehend it just fine.Then why have your last few posts so wildly misprepresented what she's said? I mean you actually claimed that Cacophony argued "a fetus is a unique human being (with civil liberties?) but also...that ending the life of said fetus is only taking control of your own health", despite the fact that she repeatedly made comments about how complications for both the mother and the fetus need to be considered, as well as the long-term effects that carrying a baby to term despite said complications could potentially have on both parties.

Perhaps what you're misconstruing is Cacophony's central point that legislating away the right of a woman to retain abortion as an option would have catastrophic consequences on the health of mothers who find themselves in these difficult situations. But no one here, Cacophony included, has denied that having an abortion clearly involves taking control of the life of the fetus. In fact, she even went so far as to say that given the choice, she would have traded her own life for her twins in the face of the complications she personally experienced. Clearly, this stance indicates that she recognizes the impact her choice would have had on all parties. So if you can quote an instance of that point being made - that "ending the life of said fetus is only taking control of your own health" - then I'll gladly concede.

She has said nothing to reconcile my belief that a pregnant woman, sick or not, has a human being inside of her that she does not have the right to kill. Even in the interest of her own health. I apologize for having concise principles that can't be talked around...Well that may be, and you're entitled to hold whatever beliefs you like, but that isn't the issue. The issue is that you're arguing your point by employing blatant misrepresentations of the points being made by others which, unfortunately, makes it difficult to continue any kind of meaningful dialogue.

[IsiliRunite]

I asked a clarifying question. I think ya'll took it as a statement.

ME: ...'pro-choicers' view the fetus as an extension of the female form while 'pro-lifers' view the fetus as its own entity with its own rights.
COCOPHONY: wrong. so very very wrong.
ME: so you think a fetus is a unique human being (with civil liberties?) but also believe that ending the life of said fetus is only taking control of your own health? [NOTE: "only taking control of your own health" = "not taking control of another person's health as well"]

I thought some of her views could contradict each other depending on her beliefs, but she never actually clarified what her beliefs were. I'm not even sure what she thinks a fetus is... that's not an insult, I just have no idea what I'm discussing with who I'm discussing it with. If I use a question mark, that means I would actually like an answer. CONFUSING, I KNOW! She could have said, "No you're totally wrong" and that would have been more constructive.

I appreciate her perspective on pregnancy just as much as the next fully developed fetus, but I don't feel like I know her reasoning well enough to discuss it in a debate.

[stimpee]

Do you want to ban the morning-after pill also? how about contraception? Would you like no-sex-before-marriage to become law? Should people only have sex to pro-create? Where do you draw the line? Just how much freedom and civil liberty do you restrict in order to impose "moral values"?I notice these questions werent answered. Dont have to be if you dont want to. Like when does it become "another life" inside a woman? At conception?

[cacophony]

The issue is that you're arguing your point by employing blatant misrepresentations of the points being made by others which, unfortunately, makes it difficult to continue any kind of meaningful dialogue.
the issue is that he's not remotely interested in debating or discussing it. he's firm in his arrogance and his only interest in participating is to hammer people with the righteousness of his opinion.

i'm long past the age when i felt compelled to hold a one sided debate with someone who has no clue what that entails.

[bryantm3]

Do you want to ban the morning-after pill also? how about contraception? Would you like no-sex-before-marriage to become law? Should people only have sex to pro-create? Where do you draw the line? Just how much freedom and civil liberty do you restrict in order to impose "moral values"?
notice these questions werent answered. Dont have to be if you dont want to. Like when does it become "another life" inside a woman? At conception?

i did answer the questions near the end of page two, unless you were referring to isilirunite. i believe that a child is a seperate being at conception, and is undoubtedly a seperate life by 22 days when its own heartbeat begins.

banning the morning after pill would be iffy, both legally and morally. the technicalities involved in banning that pill would be so difficult to add to the list of banned drugs by the DEA... and to have it enforced? it would result in such a government expansion that i can't say i would be for it. ideally, it would grow to be socially unacceptable so that people can choose to not use it, rather than an outright government ban.

contraception i would never ban because it prevents this whole problem in the first place. if everyone used condoms (and i know they don't work 100% of the time) the rate of abortion would decrease dramatically. contraception is morally fine in my eyes because it does not kill a child that is alive, it prevents the situation from happening. i think using contraception is very wise, and teens should be taught to use it, rather than being taught about abstinence only to get an abortion later.

i believe that before an independent life is conceived, the sperm and oocytes are the property of the individual and can be managed as they see fit, which is why banning sex except for procreation is the over-the-edge part of your slippery slope argument. i never once argued that morality should be dictated to the individual. i do not think gambling is a good idea, however, i don't think it should be banned because it's the individual's right to do whatever they wish with their property. i also believe that credit (usury) is forbidden in the bible, therefore i don't use it, but i wouldn't think about telling everyone else that they could not. i think getting involved smoking pot is a terrible idea, but i think it should be legalized. where in my positions do i want to 'dictate morality'? i think every life should be treated as equal under the law, including the life of the unborn child.

[Sean]

I asked a clarifying question. I think ya'll took it as a statement.

ME: ...'pro-choicers' view the fetus as an extension of the female form while 'pro-lifers' view the fetus as its own entity with its own rights.
COCOPHONY: wrong. so very very wrong.
ME: so you think a fetus is a unique human being (with civil liberties?) but also believe that ending the life of said fetus is only taking control of your own health? [NOTE: "only taking control of your own health" = "not taking control of another person's health as well"]

I thought some of her views could contradict each other depending on her beliefsWhen your "clarifying question"...

so you think a fetus is a unique human being (with civil liberties?) but also believe that ending the life of said fetus is only taking control of your own health?

...is followed immediately by this sentence...

"you're gonna have to resolve that contradiction before i bother typing anything else."

...then you've just transformed your "clarifying question" into an accusation. You're demanding she defend a position that she never took. In fact, it's a position that you and you alone have introduced, so I don't see why she should be forced to defend it.

but she never actually clarified what her beliefs were. I'm not even sure what she thinks a fetus is... that's not an insult, I just have no idea what I'm discussing with who I'm discussing it with. If I use a question mark, that means I would actually like an answer. CONFUSING, I KNOW! She could have said, "No you're totally wrong" and that would have been more constructive.Interesting you should be explaining to us how to be constructive. In my opinion, "constructive" would've been an actual request for clarification rather than a demanding accusation. "Hey Cacophony, at what point do you consider a fetus it's own, separate, living entity?" Something along those lines would probably ellicit a more informative response.

I appreciate her perspective on pregnancy just as much as the next fully developed fetus, but I don't feel like I know her reasoning well enough to discuss it in a debate. Fair enough.

[IsiliRunite]

In retrospect, it was a contradiction that I perceived, and not one she explicitly said herself. To be fair, "wrong. so very very wrong," in response to my statement lead me to believe the pro-choice portion of my statement was in fact the opposite of reality. I don't think anyone here would disagree with the statement that pro-lifers view the fetus as its own entity. Coincidentally, I can't conceive of a middle ground between a fetus being an extension female form or a unique being, so the "wrong. so very wrong" statement lead me to believe I picked the wrong orientation with respect to pro-choicers' views. I'm still trying to get things straight upstairs... Sorry for the miscommunication I guess. So I guess I'll have to throw out the question, "When does a fetus become a person?" "Is aborting a baby not the most un-motherish thing, biologically, that a mother can do?"

I'm really not THAT arrogant. I'll admit that I've been more eager than others to get to the meat of what there is to discuss.

[stimpee]

i i believe that a child is a seperate being at conception, and is undoubtedly a seperate life by 22 days when its own heartbeat begins.

i think every life should be treated as equal under the law, including the life of the unborn child.interesting. every life. you know, there are fish out there with more consciousness and intelligence than a 22 day old foetus (so shouldnt everyone should be vegan?)

Fish have great memories and they feel pain and yet we leave them out to suffocate, cut their gills and let them bleed to death without a thought. They surely have a much more developed brain (if a foetus indeed has a brain at 22 days). Surely if every life should be treated as equal under the law then killing fully developed adult fish, (sometimes fish that don't reach maturity until the age of 25) is a much worse thing than "killing" something 22 days old that isnt fully formed?

Oh here's some reading from New Scientist and the Royal Society in case you doubt me:
http://www.fishinghurts.com/pdfs/animalminds-newscientist.pdf
http://royalsociety.org/news.asp?year=&id=1697
..and the fish that reaches maturity at 25 is the Patagonian Toothfish, which is sold in the USA as a Chilean Seabass and has now been overfished almost to extinction.

No, i'm not a vegan :) I don't agree with abortion after a certain number of weeks because that would be killing a baby that is capable of living outside of its mothers womb. Viability (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viability)I believe, so anything after 22-24 weeks is out of the question. Until that point, the mother has the choice of what to do with her body although if she is going to choose abortion, then the earlier the better for her health. And I think the majority of abortions at 22 weeks are for extreme medical reasons where the welfare of the mother is in danger, and not someone who hasnt realised she's pregnant and doesnt want the baby. Most of those pregnancies are terminated within a few weeks, and I don't see why a woman should be forced by law to carry a baby to term and then bring an unwanted baby into the world. Surely the world is already suffering from overpopulation.

[bryantm3]

stimpee, why are you talking about fish? that's like if we were having a discussion about the death penalty and you said "well if we're going to ban the death penalty, we should stop eating animals". i don't mean to be insulting, but that's really from left field. a fish isn't a person. a grown cow has more intelligence than a newborn child, but does that mean it's okay to kill a newborn child?

Surely the world is already suffering from overpopulation.
So, in the name of overpopulation, certain members of the population should be eliminated for the common good.

[cacophony]

In retrospect, it was a contradiction that I perceived, and not one she explicitly said herself. To be fair, "wrong. so very very wrong," in response to my statement lead me to believe the pro-choice portion of my statement was in fact the opposite of reality. I don't think anyone here would disagree with the statement that pro-lifers view the fetus as its own entity. Coincidentally, I can't conceive of a middle ground between a fetus being an extension female form or a unique being, so the "wrong. so very wrong" statement lead me to believe I picked the wrong orientation with respect to pro-choicers' views. I'm still trying to get things straight upstairs... Sorry for the miscommunication I guess.

where you went wrong was assuming there are only two possible viewpoints: yours and the polar opposite. an arrogant assumption on your part that yours gets to be one of the two.

for many of us neither point you illustrated matches our view. but since you weren't interested in being constructive and simply asking for my view and instead forced a rather pejoratively worded perspective on me as though i originated it, i don't feel any particular need to clarify myself.

So I guess I'll have to throw out the question, "When does a fetus become a person?" "Is aborting a baby not the most un-motherish thing, biologically, that a mother can do?"

1) i wish you'd asked that earlier when i had any interest in discussing it with you.

2) what does that have to do with anything? that's the weirdest question i've ever come across in an abortion debate.

II'm really not THAT arrogant. I'll admit that I've been more eager than others to get to the meat of what there is to discuss.
pardon me, but all i did was get to the meat of it. the actual flesh, the real meat. all you've done is float around in happyland, postulating philosophical questions as though they have any merit in reality.

[IsiliRunite]

Fish have great memories and they feel pain and yet we leave them out to suffocate, cut their gills and let them bleed to death without a thought. They surely have a much more developed brain (if a foetus indeed has a brain at 22 days).
Don't you have to kill what you want to eat? Besides, the priority of laws is not to violate human rights. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" hasn't got much sway in aquariums. In fact, killing a fish is part of one person's pursuit of happiness that does not violate other people's rights, then it is totally legal. Law sets the standard of interpersonal relationships, mediated by government, because people willfully enter in the social contract of government. Government, and coincidentally the rule of law, aren't universal maxims. At this stage in history, humans can't even avoid killing each other... Good luck getting people to aim their biological need to eat. Noble, but impractical for today's world. Can be keep the abortion debate framed within humans and the laws we apply to ourselves?

pardon me, but all i did was get to the meat of it. the actual flesh, the real meat. all you've done is float around in happyland, postulating philosophical questions as though they have any merit in reality.
If we followed your line of discussion there would be thousands of special cases we would have to entertain. That's just not practical. That's why lawmakers turn to reasoning.... Nuances are important after you've laid out the groundwork. I don't like to build my house with the furniture first, basically.

Speaking of that reasoning. When it comes to our little misunderstanding... if the fetus is not a unique individual, and its not an extension of the female form... what could it be? Nothing. That is why the polar opposites interpretation was sound. Oh, well. I made a mistake. WE GET IT: You're madz0rz! If you're too busy being sore to discuss what we're talking about now, don't respond. You're not a victim... go do something productive.

[stimpee]

stimpee, why are you talking about fish? that's like if we were having a discussion about the death penalty and you said "well if we're going to ban the death penalty, we should stop eating animals". i don't mean to be insulting, but that's really from left field. a fish isn't a person. a grown cow has more intelligence than a newborn child, but does that mean it's okay to kill a newborn child?

So, in the name of overpopulation, certain members of the population should be eliminated for the common good.youre the one talking about "i think every life should be treated as equal under the law, including the life of the unborn child." and a fish isnt a person, and neither is a 1hr old pregnancy. neither is a 22 day old heartbeat. So I guess it comes down to viability again. You're right, i got distracted. Let me try to clarify.

There will always be abortions. Making it illegal will just mean more women die in the process. Nobody wants to have an abortion. Nobody wakes up in the morning, thinking 'I hope I get pregnant so I can have an abortion.' This is why contraception exists. I don't know of any person who thinks abortion is an easy solution. Why would anyone want to go through the pain, humiliation, and emotional stress of having an abortion if they could prevent it? Contraception isnt 100%.

The bible says that abortion is wrong. What gives the church the right to dictate to government its "moral" values? What happened to separaton of church and state? God shouldn't have any say in the matter because not everybody believes in his existence.

What is supposed to happen to all these unwanted babies that women are being forced to carry to term? adoption? anyone who uses this argument should be willing to adopt the baby themselves.

Until a foetus can survive outside the mother's body, it is not a human being and should not enjoy the same rights as the mother does. Until that point, if you ask, who has the right to live, the woman or the foetus? It should be the woman, every time.

Abortion is a not a quick and easy way out. Women don't just show up in a clinic, hand over their credit cards (in countries where its not free) and get an abortion. There are doctor visits and councelling to go through. Making the choice is hard enough by itself. Going through it must be difficult and painful physically and mentally.

I wish pro-lifers would put their energy and convictions into bettering education and the availability of contraception. Prevent the problem instead of rabidly opposing one of its solutions. Nobody is trying to make them do something they don't want to do. They should extend that courtesy to others who don't share their beliefs.

I'm spent with this thread. If you want to carry on imposing your religious values on people I dont want to hear about it.

over and out.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

... go do something productive.

She DID, twice at one time!

[Sean]

"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" hasn't got much sway in aquariums. Great line. :D


If we followed your line of discussion there would be thousands of special cases we would have to entertain. That's just not practical. That's why lawmakers turn to reasoning.... Nuances are important after you've laid out the groundwork. I don't like to build my house with the furniture first, basically.I think that's kind of the point. In the case of abortion, there are so many variables, so many unique cases, so many significant possibilities to consider that it seems counter-productive to me to even try boiling it down to simple, blanket legislation. Any law put on the books, even about late-term abortions and such, really requires a laundry list of caveats and exceptions written into it in order to be at all constructive. And not to keep pointing this back to Cacophony, but I think her first-hand examples along with her hypothetical situation illustrated that point very clearly.

Speaking of that reasoning. When it comes to our little misunderstanding... if the fetus is not a unique individual, and its not an extension of the female form... what could it be? Nothing. That is why the polar opposites interpretation was sound. Not necessarily. I mean, this question strikes right at the heart of what really drives the abortion debate, which is at what point does an individual life begin? Personally, I don't consider an early cluster of developing cells to be an individual life yet. There's no functional structure as far as the concept of a body is concerned, no brain to provide a consciousness, no chemical reactions to induce emotion....it's a cluster of cells that is relatively quickly forming into what will one day be a tiny person. I don't say that to detract from the incredible nature of the cluster of cells, I'm just referring to the issue of what constitutes an individual life and where I personally stand on it.

Of course when that cell cluster actually becomes a living, conscious, emotional individual is a question that I don't think anyone has been able to answer, so I have no idea when that cut-off mark would be. But even after that point has come and gone, there are still many, many situations that people may find themselves in where they have to choose between the life of the mother and the life of the baby, and it's simply not my place to make that choice for them. It seems to me that this is where you and I really part ways. Overall, when you consider everyone's unique health situations, everyone's individual financial situations, everyone's unique social situations (abusive homes, dangerous environments, etc), everyone's religious beliefs, everyone's ages....all the major factors that would play into this kind of a difficult decision....then I just cannot bring myself to feel any kind of confidence about telling them "sorry, but your situation isn't exempt from the law that restricts you from having an abortion. You'll just have to accept that you're going to live the rest of your life in financial ruin/bring a baby into an abusive situation/give birth to a rape baby/die/etc."

[myrrh]

Of course when that cell cluster actually becomes a living, conscious, emotional individual is a question that I don't think anyone has been able to answer[/I]


Well... according to Islaam, this happens at 120 days, as this is when the soul is put into the baby. Prior to this point, it is not an actual 'being' (for lack of better words) and rather just the collection of cells being forming into the human. And thus prior to this point, abortion is legal for due reason - like rape, incest, fetal deformity etc.

[Deckard]

....it's a cluster of cells that is relatively quickly forming into what will one day be a tiny person. I don't say that to detract from the incredible nature of the cluster of cells, I'm just referring to the issue of what constitutes an individual life
This is ripe for a thread of its own.

I suppose life is probably too generic a word, too broad, and we need to break it down more than that. Perhaps it's better asking the question, what exactly are we taking away?

In my view, it's more a potential than it is a self-conscious being with a view of itself continuing into the future. The capacity of the foetus to suffer is nothing like the capacity of the mother to suffer.

For that reason - for me - the mother and the mother alone gets the choice. Every time.

If she wishes to take whatever risks to go through the pregnancy, that's up to her and her alone.

I'm sure we've had a similar discussion to this on here in the past.

Stimpee: I actually kind of appreciated the point you were trying to make re. the fish. If we take sanctity out of the equation, awareness of self and awareness of suffering are very good barometers for what some of us view as morally right or wrong. (I fully recognize that means I'm probably living unethically if not hypocritically in some ways, but I accept that is an inconsistency on my part between my own ideals/ethics and how close I choose to stick to them).

[cacophony]

Speaking of that reasoning. When it comes to our little misunderstanding... if the fetus is not a unique individual, and its not an extension of the female form... what could it be? Nothing. That is why the polar opposites interpretation was sound. Oh, well. I made a mistake. WE GET IT: You're madz0rz! If you're too busy being sore to discuss what we're talking about now, don't respond. You're not a victim... go do something productive.
well you've done much in this conversation to convince me that pro-lifers aren't just dicks. :rolleyes:

[Sean]

Stimpee: I actually kind of appreciated the point you were trying to make re. the fish. If we take sanctity out of the equation, awareness of self and awareness of suffering are very good barometers for what some of us view as morally right or wrong. (I fully recognize that means I'm probably living unethically if not hypocritically in some ways, but I accept that is an inconsistency on my part between my own ideals/ethics and how close I choose to stick to them).It's tough being omnivores who have evolved such a heightened aptitude for empathy. I think that's one of the reasons that we as a species still rely so heavily on religious concepts to get by in life - religion allows us to view ourselves as special, even superior to other species. The pain a cow, or a chicken, or even a fish feels isn't a major consideration as we eat a steak, pork chop, or fish n' chips because those animals weren't made in "God's image" like we were. So if you remove the conceit of religious beliefs from the equation, the fish comparison actually does become relevant. What life is worth valuing? If we're willing to be so flippant about the lives of the animals we eat and use for clothing and such, then why is a cluster of cells that hasn't even begun to resemble a human being yet held as so sacred?

Please keep in mind that I'm a meat-eating atheist, so I'm not trying to advocate a vegan diet or anything here. I'm personally at peace with the fact that humans are simply a link in a food chain, and that a portion of our diet requires the nutrients we can get from meat. And I generally place the preservation of human life above other animals simply because I am a human, and the survival of all species depends on self-preservation. I'm just interested in the contradictions we face at this point in our species' evolution, and it's undeniable that as we learn more about the planet we live on and the space around us, we're forced to re-examine many of our long-held beliefs that have been shaped largely by religious dogma. Which, incidentally, leads quite nicely into the other half of this thread's subject that's been passed over so far - gay rights.

Aside from religiously-based views of homosexuality, what's the problem with affording all the same rights to gays that straight people enjoy? As I've said before, the whole concept of marriage being between a man and a woman made far more sense in the past when procreation was a necessity for survival - families needing more hands to tend the fields, do the chores and such. But at this point in our history, marriage has simply become a public declaration and celebration of our commitment to the person we've chosen to share our lives with. And along with it has come a set of rights that respect that commitment, and make it easier to get through difficult situations as a couple. Or how about children? How do those who oppose gay adoption justify the consequences of that position? Why would they rather see a child denied a loving home at all than see them raised by a loving gay couple?

If we as a species are capable of empathy that extends all the way to an unformed cluster of cells in the womb, then why is it so hard to extend the same empathy to a fully matured man who finds themselves physically and emotionally attracted to other men, or a woman attracted to other women? What is the actual threat that justifies a law called "The Defense of Marriage Act"? It even amazes me that a name like that has been assigned to it....the DEFENSE of marriage...as if there were a bunch of gay people with torches and pitchforks coming to burn down marriage with their gayness or something.

I believe it's time that we as a species thought a little more. We're capable of it, but we're lazy. Instead of applying critical thought, we use religious dogma and "tradition" as a crutch. Or we allow politics to trump knowledge, as in the case of the 212 House Representatives that opposed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill the other day, defending their positions with statements such as saying climate change is a “hoax...perpetrated out of the scientific community” - a declaration that was actually met with applause. But religion and tradition says that gays are bad, so they don't get the same rights as the rest of us. And religion says human life is sacred, so abortion must be banned (although we'll kill the doctors who perform them:confused:). It's extremely disheartening, and we're not going to survive as a species if we don't start thinking better.

Okay, I'm just rambling now, but I did try to keep it somewhat on topic....:o:D

[bryantm3]

There will always be abortions. Making it illegal will just mean more women die in the process. Nobody wants to have an abortion. Nobody wakes up in the morning, thinking 'I hope I get pregnant so I can have an abortion.' This is why contraception exists. I don't know of any person who thinks abortion is an easy solution. Why would anyone want to go through the pain, humiliation, and emotional stress of having an abortion if they could prevent it? Contraception isnt 100%.
practically, in the way i spelled it out, abortion would only be illegal in the states that wish to make it illegal, while some basic abortion rights would be defined for every state. no one in this entire thread has once addressed the issue of practicality in a state-by-state situation, even though i have addressed it many times. instead, all i'm getting is an emotionally-based argument about how abortions and pregnancies are complicated. yes, they are complicated. i realize this. but i have not once propounded that all abortions should be made illegal. i think there should be abortion disincentives, such as abortions being illegal in certain states, however, if a woman really wishes to have an abortion, it is possible, but inconvenient.


The bible says that abortion is wrong. What gives the church the right to dictate to government its "moral" values? What happened to separaton of church and state? God shouldn't have any say in the matter because not everybody believes in his existence.
have you read the bible recently? abortion is never mentioned in the bible at all; however, there is a mention of a woman in the old testament who eats her own child. this is not about separation of church and state. your argument is full of holes. what if i argued that because murder is forbidden in the bible, the government cannot dictate that murder is illegal because of the separation of church and state? it's not a religious issue, it's an issue of basic inalieable rights that every human being has.


Until a foetus can survive outside the mother's body, it is not a human being and should not enjoy the same rights as the mother does. Until that point, if you ask, who has the right to live, the woman or the foetus? It should be the woman, every time.
this isn't a proven scientific fact, this is your opinion. and secondly, it isn't that cut-and-dry, the independence of the baby depends on how old it is. at 24 weeks, a baby can live in an incubator, at 37 weeks a baby can live with constant attention by the mother such as breastfeeding, etc. at 18 months after birth a child requires less attention, but still needs help eating, and so on. a child cannot be independent until he or she is about 10 years old.


I wish pro-lifers would put their energy and convictions into bettering education and the availability of contraception. Prevent the problem instead of rabidly opposing one of its solutions. Nobody is trying to make them do something they don't want to do. They should extend that courtesy to others who don't share their beliefs.
i AM for increasing availability of contraception. has anyone here read this thread? it seems that all the pro-choicers here are giving a generic argument against the generic pro-lifer without actually conversing with me or taking any of my opinions seriously. i find it extremely comedic that y'all are so upset with isilirunite for not reading your arguments thoroughly and not considering everything you have to say when that is -exactly- what you're doing to my argument. instead of considering what i have to say, the same old generic pro-choice argument points are thrown out and none of the new things i have introduced in this discussion have even been considered.


I'm spent with this thread. If you want to carry on imposing your religious values on people I dont want to hear about it.

over and out.
i'll make sure to send you a free gideons' bible when i start fining people for lack of religious texts in their vehicles.

[myrrh]

It's tough being omnivores who have evolved such a heightened aptitude for empathy. I think that's one of the reasons that we as a species still rely so heavily on religious concepts to get by in life - religion allows us to view ourselves as special, even superior to other species. The pain a cow, or a chicken, or even a fish feels isn't a major consideration as we eat a steak, pork chop, or fish n' chips because those animals weren't made in "God's image" like we were. So if you remove the conceit of religious beliefs from the equation, the fish comparison actually does become relevant. What life is worth valuing? If we're willing to be so flippant about the lives of the animals we eat and use for clothing and such, then why is a cluster of cells that hasn't even begun to resemble a human being yet held as so sacred?

Well, your point is only really relevant in accordance to Christianity, which views that Man was created in "God's image". Most other religions, don't have that concept.

However, the fact is that we, as humans, are superior to the rest of the animals. And this is because we have the ability to choose and think out our actions. We don't just go on instinct like the animals do. This makes us vastly different than the animals. When a lion is hungry, it is going to go hunt and kill some other animal to satisfy it's hunger. When we are hungry, we can choose to wait awhile before eating, or not even eat at all.

This is why the fish thing doesn't hold water for me. However, an interesting thing could be said that because people like you (no offense, here) hold this opinion, it actually allows humans to act like animals. After all, if we evolved from animals, then there is justification for us acting like them. And this is where the whole marriage thing comes into play. Marriage is yet another thing that separates us from the animals. If you come out of the club at the end of the night and see the dogs running around, you will see them all chasing down that one female dog. Then they get, and do their thing, and away she goes. How is this not different then a lot of human behavior, especially in modern times? Seriously, think about it.


Aside from religiously-based views of homosexuality, what's the problem with affording all the same rights to gays that straight people enjoy? As I've said before, the whole concept of marriage being between a man and a woman made far more sense in the past when procreation was a necessity for survival - families needing more hands to tend the fields, do the chores and such. But at this point in our history, marriage has simply become a public declaration and celebration of our commitment to the person we've chosen to share our lives with.

I may have used to agree with you here, but I don't anymore. This is because I have been doing a lot of research about older civilizations, and to be honest, I don't think that they were much different then us today. Sure we may have cars and phones etc, and they had horses and donkeys and message boys, but aside from the material way of living, we are the same. If you look into the way past civilizations developed, they are the same as us. At a certain point in Roman history, procreation was now longer a necessity for survival. Then came the Islamic Empire, then came the Renaissance. Once a culture moves from a total farming life to a city based life, then it is no longer needed to procreate for survival's sake. We, at least in the Western world, are at this point again. However, this could change in a heartbeat, like it did when WWII happened. And that was just sixty years ago.

how about children? How do those who oppose gay adoption justify the consequences of that position? Why would they rather see a child denied a loving home at all than see them raised by a loving gay couple?

To be honest, this is just a personal moral issue. There is really nothing to say that a gay couple CAN'T raise a child, and give him or her a loving home etc. However, from my point of view, a person is not born as a homosexual. People may be born with desires that are of a person of the same sex, and in the case of a homosexual, he or she is choosing to act on those desires. In my system of morals, to act upon these desires is a huge sin. This is because by acting upon such desires goes completely against the natural disposition of man.

Because of the above, I can never say that it would be 'okay' for a gay couple to adopt or raise a child. Once again, it is not because they are incapable of it - I personally know a Lesbian couple who raised a girl who is 21 now and she is, in a general sense, perfectly normal. It is simply because I could not put a child into a situation that I consider to be morally wrong. To me it is similar to giving a child to an alcoholic (who is of the non-violent type). The alcoholic could be perfectly capable of providing a loving and caring home, however most people would object to giving a child to him or her. Why? Because most people think that it is wrong to expose a child to that type of behavior.

So where do we draw the line? This is the issue I have with how society is going. There are no longer any lines to be draw, and everything is becoming 'okay'. This to me is bad, and the 'traditions' of society are there for a reason, even if we no longer remember what that reason is.

[Deckard]

However, from my point of view, a person is not born as a homosexual.
Technically they're born asexual. If we're talking about potential, then they are as much born a homosexual as a heterosexal is born a heterosexual. ie. with the genetic predisposition of a sexual attraction that will kick in a decade or so later.

(Environmental factors may or may not contribute to that outcome - none of us knows for sure at this stage - but either way, by the time a person is 11 or 12, same-sex attraction is as natural and innate and feels as impossible to alter as opposite-sex attraction is for heterosexuals)

People may be born with desires that are of a person of the same sex and in the case of a homosexual, he or she is choosing to act on those desires.
Here though, you're defining the word homosexual in a more narrow way than it is typically used. Virgins can be homosexual as well as heterosexual. If a straight person stopped having sex, they wouldn't cease to be heterosexual. Sticking to the most commonly-accepted definitions and framing this as the rights and wrongs of sexual activity will avoid confusion.

In my system of morals, to act upon these desires is a huge sin. This is because by acting upon such desires goes completely against the natural disposition of man.

Your argument is flawed in several ways:

1) There is no single "natural disposition of man" in the way that you insinuate. If 6% or whatever (for the sake of argument) of the population have a fundamental attraction to members of the same sex, that is their natural disposition. It exists naturally, thus it's perfectly natural. It just makes it less common. Common and natural (as in innate) are not the same thing.

2) The fact that the natural disposition of that 6% rules out the ability to sexually procreate doesn't make the disposition (or behaviour) of that 6% less natural or less innate. It just means it doesn't fit into the cycle of natural reproduction.

3) There exists no single reasoned argument that links morality to the mere fact that something doesn't fit into the cycle of natural reproduction. I say no reasoned argument - there are of course plenty of arguments that resort to the world's many creation myths.

To most of the rest of us though, right and wrong are typically not decided by:

a) whether something is common
b) whether something leads to procreation

If you're judging this whole issue objectively, it should be quite telling that most opponents of homosexuality are more likely to subscribe to one of the various creation myths with their primitive ideas about sin (despite you using the words "in my system of morals") whereas those who resort to reason alone are far more likely to reach the conclusion that there is nothing morally wrong with it.

To me it is similar to giving a child to an alcoholic (who is of the non-violent type). The alcoholic could be perfectly capable of providing a loving and caring home, however most people would object to giving a child to him or her. Why? Because most people think that it is wrong to expose a child to that type of behavior.

1) Argumentum ad-populum. You have not actually explained why the parental behaviour in question (same-sex togetherness and occasional displays of affection) should be considered morally wrong. There may be an argument about the greater likelihood of promiscuity amongst gay couples, and the affect on familial stability - but that's a different argument to the one you're putting. I would hope rigorous adoption procedures would filter out the latter and identify those most likely to offer a stable family unit.

2) What do you fear will happen if you "expose a child" to same-sex 'togetherness' and occasional displays of affection? My guess is they will simply be more likely to end up tolerant and broad-minded. More likely to grow up appreciating that homosexuality is not a sin. There is no evidence that they will grow up gay any more than the millions of heterosexual parents of homosexuals were able to make their offspring straight, despite the overwhelming social pressure (and in most cases, personal desire) to conform to heterosexuality.

So where do we draw the line?
I'm somewhat amazed you need to ask. Consenting adults? Harming no-one else? All pretty standard stuff. Rules out bestiality, paedophilia and all the other horrors that slippery slope proponents wave around. Panic about where to draw the line is unnecessary. We can - and do - always draw a line.

[Deckard]

...as if there were a bunch of gay people with torches and pitchforks coming to burn down marriage with their gayness or something.
Shhhhhhh!!!

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

Yeah, and make EVERYONE in the world gay. That would be scary, I mean, all these witty trash talking bitches EVERYWHERE. I WOULD commit suicide if that happened.

[Sean]

Well, your point is only really relevant in accordance to Christianity, which views that Man was created in "God's image". Most other religions, don't have that concept. The "God's image" point specifically is derived from Christianity, Catholicism and all their derivative religions, yes. But the idea of human superiority to other species does tend to show up in many religious beliefs in various other forms, so my point isn't unique to Catholics and Christians. And even religious beliefs aside, many people simply share in the human propensity for fear-based conceit by making sweeping assumptions about things they don't understand (which incidentally, is the foundation of religious mythology). I'm not certain of course what motivates your position on the subject specifically, but you do actually go on to illustrate this point when you say:

However, the fact is that we, as humans, are superior to the rest of the animals. And this is because we have the ability to choose and think out our actions. We don't just go on instinct like the animals do. This makes us vastly different than the animals. When a lion is hungry, it is going to go hunt and kill some other animal to satisfy it's hunger. When we are hungry, we can choose to wait awhile before eating, or not even eat at all. Out of curiosity, what exactly are you basing these conclusions on? Personal beliefs, or religious teachings maybe? Either way, the facts don't bear out your conclusions. In recent decades, testing and observation of a variety of animals has revealed that they share our ability to reason, think, conceptualize, and even be creative (http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/animal-minds/virginia-morell-text) (highly recommended article). For example, Orangutans have been observed fashioning dolls of sorts out of twisted up bundles of leaves that they then proceed to cradle, pretending they're babies. This requires far more than instinct - it involves the cognitive sophistication to visualize a baby, the creative process of fashioning something into an abstract representation of a baby, and then the imagination necessary to pretend it's a baby. And even some birds, creatures we share no significant common ancestry with, have shown the development of thought and creativity on a level that allows them to conceptualize their goals enough that they take the time to plan and build tools in order to achieve them. As an example, here's a summary of some experiments done with a New Caledonian crow in which a piece of meat was tucked into a basket at the bottom of a glass tube, out of the crow's reach:

The scientists had placed two pieces of wire in the room. One was bent into a hook, the other was straight. They figured Betty (the crow) would choose the hook to lift the basket by its handle.

But experiments don't always go according to plan. Another crow had stolen the hook before Betty could find it. Betty is undeterred. She looks at the meat in the basket, then spots the straight piece of wire. She picks it up with her beak, pushes one end into a crack in the floor, and uses her beak to bend the other end into a hook. Thus armed, she lifts the basket out of the tube.

"This was the first time Betty had ever seen a piece of wire like this," Kacelnik said. "But she knew she could use it to make a hook and exactly where she needed to bend it to make the size she needed."

They gave Betty other tests, each requiring a slightly different solution, such as making a hook out of a flat piece of aluminum rather than a wire. Each time, Betty invented a new tool and solved the problem. "It means she had a mental representation of what it was she wanted to make. Now that," Kacelnik said, "is a major kind of cognitive sophistication."

Now these examples may not be on par with the extent of human ability to think - I mean hell, we've gone to the freakin' moon and landed probes on Mars for cryin' out loud. But just because a cheetah runs far, far faster than us doesn't mean we're incapable of running. We're just not evolved to be as fast a runner as cheetahs, exactly as other animals haven't evolved to be as complex a thinker as humans. But the abilities to "choose and think" themselves are in no way unique to us.

This is why the fish thing doesn't hold water for me. However, an interesting thing could be said that because people like you (no offense, here) hold this opinion, it actually allows humans to act like animals. After all, if we evolved from animals, then there is justification for us acting like them. And this is where the whole marriage thing comes into play. Marriage is yet another thing that separates us from the animals. If you come out of the club at the end of the night and see the dogs running around, you will see them all chasing down that one female dog. Then they get, and do their thing, and away she goes. How is this not different then a lot of human behavior, especially in modern times? Seriously, think about it.No offense taken because, factually speaking, humans ARE animals. To say that we "evolved from animals" is misleading - we're simply animals who have gone down our own specific evolutionary path.

And where marriage is concerned, our mating habits are not unique to us. We share similar behavior to quite a variety of animals. Penguins stay with a single mate for life, as do gibbons, wolves, many types of eagles, etc. All told at this point, we've observed that approximately 3% of all animal species share this monogamous behavior with us. Likewise, we share no significant common traits in reproduction with other animals, like sharks or turtles. But again, we certainly aren't unique in this sense.

So when you say my beliefs "allow humans to act like animals", frankly, I don't see what the problem you're trying to illustrate is. We are animals, so of course we act like animals. What's inherently bad about being an animal?

I may have used to agree with you here, but I don't anymore. This is because I have been doing a lot of research about older civilizations, and to be honest, I don't think that they were much different then us today. Sure we may have cars and phones etc, and they had horses and donkeys and message boys, but aside from the material way of living, we are the same. If you look into the way past civilizations developed, they are the same as us. At a certain point in Roman history, procreation was now longer a necessity for survival. Then came the Islamic Empire, then came the Renaissance. Once a culture moves from a total farming life to a city based life, then it is no longer needed to procreate for survival's sake. We, at least in the Western world, are at this point again. However, this could change in a heartbeat, like it did when WWII happened. And that was just sixty years ago. What's odd to me here is that it appears you actually do agree with me. My point is simply that most arguments against gay marriage turn at one point or another to the fact that gay couples are incapable of procreation as reason to restrict gay rights to marry. Yet, as you have confirmed, procreation is not crucial to our survival as a species at this point in human history, so why is it a concern? The fact that other eras in history also illustrate the point has no bearing on it's validity.

To be honest, this is just a personal moral issue... Deckard has spoken eloquently to these points, and I fully agree with him.

So where do we draw the line? This is the issue I have with how society is going. There are no longer any lines to be draw, and everything is becoming 'okay'. This to me is bad, and the 'traditions' of society are there for a reason, even if we no longer remember what that reason is.I disagree whole-heartedly. It's not that there are no lines to be drawn, it's that we've evolved to a level of intelligence, and have amassed enough knowledge that we need to re-evaluate our stances on certain subjects through facts, reason, empathy and foresight. It's not enough now to say that tradition tells us homosexuality is bad, any more than it was enough hundreds of years ago for the church to force Galileo to recant his discovery that the earth orbits the sun because it clashed with traditional teachings. What good does it do us to deny factual knowledge in favor of hurtful dogma? It's a strange, inherently conflicted stubbornness that I don't understand. The most religiously righteous people people out there tend to be the first to point to our ability to think and rationalize as defining human traits, but are then also the first to discount the discoveries and conclusions of those exact traits in favor of clinging to ideals of the past. So which should we be doing? Celebrating our intelligence and inventiveness as a species through exploring and embracing our advances, or suppressing it to the point that we're actually willing to hurt those who don't fit in with our "traditional" preconceptions?

[myrrh]

Technically they're born asexual. If we're talking about potential, then they are as much born a homosexual as a heterosexal is born a heterosexual. ie. with the genetic predisposition of a sexual attraction that will kick in a decade or so later.

If we were born without sexual organs, and they developed after 10 years, then you would have a point. However, we are both as a sex, either male or female. Therefor the natural disposition of a male species is to be with the female of that species and vice versa. Like I said, you may have feels towards a member of the same sex, but to act upon them goes against this natural disposition.


though, you're defining the word homosexual in a more narrow way than it is typically used. Virgins can be homosexual as well as heterosexual. If a straight person stopped having sex, they wouldn't cease to be heterosexual. Sticking to the most commonly-accepted definitions and framing this as the rights and wrongs of sexual activity will avoid confusion.

The definition I am using is pretty basic. It says "sexually attracted to people of one's own sex." This is from the dictionary on my laptop. That same dictionary states that a person who is a virgin is someone who has not yet had sexual intercourse. If further goes on to define sexual intercourse as "sexual contact between individuals involving penetration, esp. the insertion of a man's erect penis into a woman's vagina, typically culminating in orgasm and the ejaculation of semen."

So technically, a lesbian who never had been with a man is still a virgin. Same with a man who has never been with a women.

I am just stating this because I am not sure if you meant that a virgin can be both a homosexual and a heterosexual (as in the same time), or they can be either one or the other.




1) There is no single "natural disposition of man" in the way that you insinuate.



This I wholeheartedly disagree with. So there is no point in debating what followed it because it is based off your belief in the above.





To most of the rest of us though, right and wrong are typically not decided by:

a) whether something is common
b) whether something leads to procreation



I would say that it is our natural disposition that instinctually tells us what is right and wrong.

I am running out of time, I'll address more later.

[myrrh]

I'll write more of a response to you later, I just want to mention something here.




So when you say my beliefs "allow humans to act like animals", frankly, I don't see what the problem you're trying to illustrate is. We are animals, so of course we act like animals. What's inherently bad about being an animal?




So then, if I saw you and your wife walking down the street, and I happen to be horny, you would have no problem if I roundhouse kicked you in the head to knock you out, then bend your wife over and take her right there on the street corner? After all, isn't this how animals act? Would I be wrong, when you say that I raped her, that my response would be that we are animals and I was just acting like one?

[Strangelet]

So then, if I saw you and your wife walking down the street, and I happen to be horny, you would have no problem if I roundhouse kicked you in the head to knock you out, then bend your wife over and take her right there on the street corner? After all, isn't this how animals act? Would I be wrong, when you say that I raped her, that my response would be that we are animals and I was just acting like one?

I lol'ed. a frog and a horse come up to a body of water. The frog swims across and the horse gallops around it. Would you criticize the horse for not swimming? Would you call the frog not an animal because it swam?

humans are social animals, and therefore require cohabitation and therefore require a body of ethics in order to survive. Its as much our animal-ness to be ethical and treat eachother with compassion as it is natural for the frog to swim.

nice try though. there's a bunch of this kind of fallacy in the book of mormon too.

[Sean]

I'll write more of a response to you later, I just want to mention something here.





So then, if I saw you and your wife walking down the street, and I happen to be horny, you would have no problem if I roundhouse kicked you in the head to knock you out, then bend your wife over and take her right there on the street corner? After all, isn't this how animals act? Would I be wrong, when you say that I raped her, that my response would be that we are animals and I was just acting like one?Setting aside the inappropriateness of the analogy for now, what in the world does being a violent asshole have to do with the human species being a member of the animal kingdom? And yes, you would be absolutely, 100% wrong in saying "we are animals and I was just acting like one", because not all animals violently take a mate from another animal....especially humans. Nor are we compelled to duplicate the behavioral tendencies of another species simply because we're all animals. For instance, both lions and koala bears are animals, right? When a male lion takes over a pride, they kill and eat any baby lions left behind by the previous male leader. So by your logic, it should follow that koalas would share this behavioral tendency because they too are animals - and yet they don't. Have you ever seen any footage of a cute, cuddly koala with a blood-stained mouth devouring adorable little koala babies? I haven't. So why in the world would you suddenly assume that assault and rape could be somehow justified for humans simply because some other species out there exhibits those tendencies?

Sea turtles are animals, yet they lay their 20-some-odd eggs in holes on the beach, bury them and leave them to fend for themselves when they're born. Humans give birth to a single baby at a time and raise them until they're at least in their teens.

Frogs are animals, and some of them are capable of naturally morphing into the opposite sex as adults when the environment they live in necessitates it...doesn't mean we can do that too.

Birds are animals and they feed their babies by regurgitating into their mouths, but we don't feed our young that way.

Why should we automatically take on any of these behaviors simply because we too are animals? A fish doesn't behave like a moose, a dog doesn't behave like a bird, a lizard doesn't behave like a monkey, an elephant doesn't behave like a rat - so why should it stand to reason that humans should behave like anything but a human? There's absolutely no reason for it....in fact the reasons against taking on these behaviors far outweigh any thin reasoning that we somehow should. Your points on this stuff are so off-base as to be ludicrous. Can you support your extreme stances with anything factual?

[Strangelet]

Because of the above, I can never say that it would be 'okay' for a gay couple to adopt or raise a child.

I think we have something in common. We both have a segment of the population whom we feel are not adequate to raise or adopt children. For you its homosexuals. For me its the religiously pious. Just being honest.

And its clearly prejudiced and intolerant to paint all religiously fervent people as abusive parents. But you are doing nothing less with gays. You are talking about a nebulous environment of immorality under which children of gay parents must be raised. I can also talk about a nebulous environment of subjugation of individuality and of warping the relationships between a person and others, even their own bodies, under which children of the religiously fervent must be raised.

I'm using the same logic, but I kind of just used it to show that you are probably much more ill equipped to raise a child than Deckard. But of course that's not the kind of argument I'd want to make about a group of people. Even after I've seen what I've seen in my own religiously fervent community.

[Strangelet]

I lol'ed. a frog and a horse come up to a body of water. The frog swims across and the horse gallops around it. Would you criticize the horse for not swimming? Would you call the frog not an animal because it swam?


Frogs are animals, and some of them are capable of actually changing sexes as adults when the environment they live in necessitates it...doesn't mean we can do that too.


yeah...i'm just going to get out from between you too. lol

[Sean]

yeah...i'm just going to get out from between you too. lolNo...it's good to see the same points being raised. Although I did modify the wording of my frog example after reading it back when you quoted it. Didn't want it to lead into some trans-gender conversation...

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

So then, if I saw you and your wife walking down the street, and I happen to be horny, you would have no problem if I roundhouse kicked you in the head to knock you out, then bend your wife over and take her right there on the street corner? After all, isn't this how animals act? Would I be wrong, when you say that I raped her, that my response would be that we are animals and I was just acting like one?

You'd risk getting gutted, like a fish, too.

[myrrh]

I think we have something in common. We both have a segment of the population whom we feel are not adequate to raise or adopt children. For you its homosexuals. For me its the religiously pious. Just being honest.

And its clearly prejudiced and intolerant to paint all religiously fervent people as abusive parents. But you are doing nothing less with gays. You are talking about a nebulous environment of immorality under which children of gay parents must be raised. I can also talk about a nebulous environment of subjugation of individuality and of warping the relationships between a person and others, even their own bodies, under which children of the religiously fervent must be raised.

I'm using the same logic, but I kind of just used it to show that you are probably much more ill equipped to raise a child than Deckard. But of course that's not the kind of argument I'd want to make about a group of people. Even after I've seen what I've seen in my own religiously fervent community.


This is why I rarely post here anymore. I have never said that anyone is ill equipped to raise a child. In fact, if you read my post, I said exactly the opposite.

Let me restate my position again in the simplest terms I can:

I feel that a homosexual couple can raise a child, and provide the child with a loving and caring environment.

However, since I don't agree with a homosexuality, I can not support something that would say that it is 'okay' for a homosexual couple to raise a child. I don't think that it is 'okay', based on my person opinion, ideology and moral's.

These are my personal opinions, and I am entitled to have them. I don't feel that I am forcing them upon anyone here, nor do I think that I am not an open or broadminded person. In fact, I would say that I am very opened minded, unless your definition of opened minded means that you have to accept everything as being okay, and not have an opinion other than that.

I have nothing against Deckard, or Sean. I tend to only comment on things they post because they are two people who speak in well thought out logical, and rational terminology. They don't resort to the snide bullshit like was quoted here, that tends to be spit out by many. Because of this, I can sit and discuss things with them, and people like them, even on points where we clearly disagree. I don't feel that I disrespect them (or anyone) with my posts, either.

If anyone here feels differently, then feel free to speak up, and I will attempt to correct my speech.

[dubman]

If anyone here feels differently, then feel free to speak up.

i think you're pretty funny.
i think a lot of people here are improbably patient with you because they dont know what yr fucking deal is couched in, thinking that protesting is just another form of terrorism, or that somehow people who you 'allow' to be perfectly functioning people shouldnt be allowed to exist as such and raise a family because of what you believe in.

i think yr a classy idiot whose lucidity is all thats keeping him from being in the same circle of forum-hell as jOHN. i dont care if you stop posting, honestly.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

Don't hate because I'm beautiful.

[dubman]

JOHN SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

As long as I know I've made you scream, I'm satisfied.

Click the fucking ignore button bitch.

[dubman]

i literally scream everything i write.
i *do* have you on ignore, i just get logged out an awful lot.

besides, why is it on me to avoid you?
you should stop posting.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

You are just so cute when you get pissed off. I could just pinch your cheeks(on your face).

Please, just ignore me, I have more fun just reading what you have to say about what's going on with the other voices here.

Oh, and with this little shit right here:

you should stop posting.

Mum always told me when people tell you can't do what they do, you just do more. Pisses them off.

[dubman]

people refrain from talking to you directly because they think you're autistic and they would feel bad

[Deckard]

we are both as a sex, either male or female. Therefor the natural disposition of a male species is to be with the female of that species and vice versa.

The above premise/conclusion is decidedly shaky, mostly I think because of that phrase 'natural disposition'.

Yes we can deduce that we are split into male or female, because of natural reproduction, because that's what has enabled the continuation of the species. So yes, obviously there is a reason for the two separate sexes, absolutely. Not only that, the majority of our species has a natural disposition - or inclination, if you like - to members of the opposite sex. Again, obviously, and the reasons are apparent to anyone.

However..... what is ALSO natural - and this is what you're glossing over - is that there exists a fairly significant minority with a disposition towards members of the same sex. A disposition that occurs just as naturally, even though it doesn't contribute to sexual reproduction.

You're effectively only commenting on what you think should be the universally natural order of things - based on procreation. I think I'm providing a more realistic and honest account of what the natural order is. Ie. for whatever reason, there exists a certain percentage of us who are gay.

Insisting that there exists a single 'natural disposition' actually doesn't tell us anything of substance beyond what I've been willing to acknowledge. All it does is imply - in a somewhat vague way - some higher purpose that things should be universally this way. Well maybe they should and maybe homosexuals are - from an evolutionary perspective - defective. I'm not offended if anyone wants to speculate in that way because it's essentially a scientific and philosophical question. Evolutionary biologists have some interesting things to say about it. But the point is, things are not universally that way, and protesting "but they should be!" is pretty pointless.

I am just stating this because I am not sure if you meant that a virgin can be both a homosexual and a heterosexual (as in the same time), or they can be either one or the other.
The virgin reference was to make the point that you don't have to have ever had sex to still be classed as, say, heterosexual. In other words, homosexual and heterosexual usually refers to sexual orientation rather than sexual activity. I was just trying to establish a common definition (and trying to avoid that godawful phrase "practising homosexual").

Quote:Originally Posted by Deckard

1) There is no single "natural disposition of man" in the way that you insinuate.

This I wholeheartedly disagree with. So there is no point in debating what followed it because it is based off your belief in the above.
OK, but I think I've explained elsewhere the reasoning behind it.

If we're getting hung up on that natural disposition phrase, then let me ask you: would you agree that same-sex attraction occurs naturally to the 6% or whatever of the population? By natural, I specifically mean in the sense of being hard-wired into us. For the moment, don't think about whether or not we choose to act on our feelings, or dwell on the fact that such activity is not compatible with sexual reproduction - just tell me whether you accept that same-sex attraction occurs naturally - in nature?

If it does, it is natural. The fact that homosexuals still happen to have genitals that can fit into the genitals of a person of the opposite sex does not change the fact that the same-sex attraction is still naturally occurring and possibly genetically-predetermined.

If you don't believe it occurs naturally and isn't as hard-wired as opposite-sex attraction is to you, then who or what is responsible for this sexual orientation? The devil?

And what of the 1,500 or so other species in which homosexual activity has been recorded?

I would say that it is our natural disposition that instinctually tells us what is right and wrong.
I think you would be interested to study the origin of ethics - specifically, the evolutionary origin, or at least ethics in the animal kingdom generally. It's quite humbling. That's not to deny we don't each have our personal code of morals, whether it's rooted in the golden rule or the idea of consenting adults and not causing harm, etc. But it's useful, if for no other reason than to keep our egos in check.

But with regard to homosexuality, you have still not laid out how or why not contributing to sexual reproduction prompts a moral dimension to take over once we act on those feelings. Why does a biological issue have to become a moral issue? Or at least, acting on our biological inclination - given that no harm needs to be caused to anyone else, and both parties consent? Why the heck does morality have to be introduced at this point?

I know you're keen to emphasize that these are all your own personally held views, but in truth I think you're not being completely honest with us, and the moral dimension is in fact introduced from your religion. You're just trying to make the beliefs sound more reasoned than they are by avoiding referring to Islaam explicitly, which I guess is understandable given all the times we've criticised you for it over the years. However, the strangely arbitrary point at which morality lands into the argument is, I think, the point at which the influence of your religion's teachings is exposed.

Feel free to convince me otherwise though, that there is a rational basis for this moral angle that can be explained independent of religion.

[Sean]

Technically they're born asexual. If we're talking about potential, then they are as much born a homosexual as a heterosexal is born a heterosexual. ie. with the genetic predisposition of a sexual attraction that will kick in a decade or so later.
If we were born without sexual organs, and they developed after 10 years, then you would have a point. However, we are both as a sex, either male or female. Therefor the natural disposition of a male species is to be with the female of that species and vice versa. Like I said, you may have feels towards a member of the same sex, but to act upon them goes against this natural disposition. Well, we're only born with a partially formed set of sexual equipment really. Sure, the wee-wee and hoo-hoo are there, but that's only the most visible portion of the entire sexual package - the hormones and chemicals necessary to activate everything sexually like sperm and egg production don't kick in for a good decade at least. So effectively, we are indeed born asexual.

[cacophony]

here's a random fact: every single one of us, male and female, started out as a female embryo. the male chromosome doesn't kick in until a few weeks after fertilization.

[Strangelet]

people refrain from talking to you directly because they think you're autistic and they would feel bad

lol this rules.

john, fuck off already.

[Strangelet]

They don't resort to the snide bullshit like was quoted here, that tends to be spit out by many. Because of this, I can sit and discuss things with them, and people like them, even on points where we clearly disagree. I don't feel that I disrespect them (or anyone) with my posts, either

You are right. Sean and Deckard are more respectful and articulate. Which is why I hold the amount of respect I do for them.

Doesn't mean I want to take back what I posted, even if you felt disrespected, which was not my intention at all. You clearly have a problem with some of our lifestyle choices, even though you are clearly trying to persuade us that you don't judge us or anybody in particular. Maybe Sean and Deckard have the courtesy to rerfrain from turning that on its head towards you, but I don't.

I have serious problems with the life choices and attitudes that your posts represent. So is it really my invective that you find disrespectful, or that someone would actually have the nerve to tell you this?

Because, as little as you care for my ideas/posts, I find it very advantageous to read your ideas because of how contrary they are to my personal views.

[Deckard]

I would hardly call you less articulate, my friend!

In all honesty, you say what I think Sean and I probably feel like saying anyway. It's a good arrangement. You take the flak, we get the credit. :D ;)

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

The above premise/conclusion is decidedly shaky, mostly I think because of that phrase 'natural disposition'.

Yes we can deduce that we are split into male or female, because of natural reproduction, because that's what has enabled the continuation of the species. So yes, obviously there is a reason for the two separate sexes, absolutely. Not only that, the majority of our species has a natural disposition - or inclination, if you like - to members of the opposite sex. Again, obviously, and the reasons are apparent to anyone.




As well as an individual's sexual "desire"(I'm sure there's a better, scientific term for this, but I'm being all Freudian Autistic) does not become an awareness to the individual until around the age of 5.


If we're getting hung up on that natural disposition phrase, then let me ask you: would you agree that same-sex attraction occurs naturally to the 6% or whatever of the population?

That percentage is way off, more like 10-15%.


people refrain from talking to you directly because they think you're autistic and they would feel badlol this rules.

john, fuck off already.

Oh I do declare, ya'll ah fightin' ova my love. My heart is justa pitter apatterin'.

[Sean]

You are right. Sean and Deckard are more respectful and articulate. Which is why I hold the amount of respect I do for them. Well almost every time I post, I have to remind myself of how much more informative debates Deckard participates in turn out being than they've been when I get all pissy, so I credit him. But my natural tendency is definitely to be pissy. For the most part, I have to sit and breath deeply for a little while before replying to stuff - especially posts like that last analogy Myrrh offered up involving my wife...

[dubman]

why do you take that personally?
jsut because he doesnt frame his posts like a complete retard doesnt mean he should eb taken with a straight face either. dude is a joke.
is it really so low to acknowledge that some things go nowhere and just resort to basic ridicule for being such a crass twit?

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

is it really so low to acknowledge that some things go nowhere and just resort to basic ridicule for being such a crass twit?

And here we go folks...

[stimpee]

dubman/john: go grab your handbags and duel outside of this thread :)

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

Have yet to be shown where anything I've said has not made sense or not so.

I'd love to see anyone who has made those accusations prove it to be so. Yous got nothing...

Come now, try to show me and I'll show how yous're wrong again. But don't get upset when proved wrong. Again.

[dubman]

dubman/john: go grab your handbags and duel outside of this thread :)
fuck off, you

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

fuck off, you


(this should appear in italicks, but those in control are nazi-ish without even knowing it)

Everyone is peeled to screen awaiting stimpee's, "NO WIRE HANGERS!" moment on du(m)bman/bitch.

(end italics)

[bryantm3]

i vote that the thread starter should have the ability to lock their own threads when they degenerate into off-topic rants.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

i vote that the thread starter should have the ability to lock their own threads when they degenerate into off-topic rants.

Well, if you get that power, let us all hope you are able to go back and follow and recall/remember who started the off-topic rants.

Don't look at me.

As well as, the thread starter, should answer questions from the lost flock(:rolleyes:) who are trying to clarify what the topic is about, if he has the balls to do so. That would be you.

[cacophony]

i vote that the thread starter should have the ability to lock their own threads when they degenerate into off-topic rants.
just be zen about it and let it flow where it goes. if you started a conversation at a party and it ended up degenerating into a rant, you wouldn't be able to lock people's mouths.

unless this was an episode of the twilight zone.

and i hope it's not.

[Sean]

Getting back on topic - sort of - Massachusetts is spearheading a new effort to take down the ominously named "Defense of Marriage Act". The state has filed a lawsuit against the federal government (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GAY_MARRIAGE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT) charging that "In enacting DOMA, Congress overstepped its authority, undermined states' efforts to recognize marriages between same-sex couples, and codified an animus towards gay and lesbian people".

While I'm ashamed of my current state of residence, California, for prop 8, I can at least be proud of the state I was born and raised in, Massachusetts! Rock on witcho' bad self!

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

More words of wisdom: To Be Continued.

From the Land of Oz...

[Sarcasmo]

Well, this was fun to read on a Sunday morning. I wish my fingers worked. I typed that last sentence about 6 times...

As far as abortion goes. I say this: develop a well thought out, reasonable explanation for what you believe, and then shut your fucking mouth until you're thrown in that position. Try clinging to the "every life is sacred" creed when you're an unemployed pothead living in your parents' basement, with no education, no savings, and no health insurance. When it comes down to it, what you believe is what you believe, and that's fine. What's not fine is when you run around and try to cram that belief down someone else's throat, especially when you've got no real world experience to base your opinion on. As far as I'm concerned, cacophony would probably write a better abortion law than 99.99% of the legislators in the country, and I would be infinitely satisfied with whatever she came up with. Abortion opinions should be reactive, not proactive. If someone asks you what your opinion on abortion is, feel free to tell them. Otherwise, just keep it to yourself.

And I love how all the straight religious folks, many of whom have fucked up, sham marriages in the first place, suddenly get all bent out of shape about the sanctity of marriage when it's the gays that want to get married. Head's up, all you'se religious types: If your church is against gay marriage, THEY WONT MARRY GAYS!! You're safe. You don't have to worry about Steve and Trenton sitting next to you in church, wondering, as are everyone else in attendance, why your wife has bruises on her arms, and why your children wont look you in the eye. They'll do what reasonable, sensible people do; skip on the pomp and formality, and get married in a courthouse, in a totally non-religious ceremony. If marriage were such a sacrosanct and holy institution, Britney and K-Fed never would have happened. So...before we go around denying basic civil liberties to people simply because they are into their own gender, maybe, just maybe, we could do something about the fact that we, apparently by the example I stated in the previous sentence, allow complete and total morons to get hitched and squirt little fuckup babies all throughout this great nation.

bryantm3, bravo on creating a thread that at least brought back a smidge, or a skosh if you will, of what this forum used to be. You took yer lumps like a man, and when you get into it with cacophony, it's hard not to take lumps.

As an aside, and I know that this portion of our tale should go into the noise section, lots has been going on with me recently. I moved back to Wisconsin, got a job, and just when I thought things were settling down a bit, the fiance and I decided, "Why the fuck don't we just get this whole marriage thing knocked out?" So we decided to do that. Then we decided to combine our newly married status, as well as my status as a veteran, into the fiscal Voltron known as The VA Home Loan. THEN my beautiful bride decided that she'd let one of those "aggregations of non-differentiated cells" implant itself within her uterus, thereby transforming her into some kind of vicious, rabid, land shark.

[IsiliRunite]

can we talk about abortion again?

marriage isn't the government's job. sorry. in fact, the benefits I won't receive because I don't get married at some point in my life constitute as discrimination.

[cacophony]

bryantm3, bravo on creating a thread that at least brought back a smidge, or a skosh if you will, of what this forum used to be. You took yer lumps like a man, and when you get into it with cacophony, it's hard not to take lumps.

:D

As an aside, and I know that this portion of our tale should go into the noise section, lots has been going on with me recently. I moved back to Wisconsin, got a job, and just when I thought things were settling down a bit, the fiance and I decided, "Why the fuck don't we just get this whole marriage thing knocked out?" So we decided to do that. Then we decided to combine our newly married status, as well as my status as a veteran, into the fiscal Voltron known as The VA Home Loan. THEN my beautiful bride decided that she'd let one of those "aggregations of non-differentiated cells" implant itself within her uterus, thereby transforming her into some kind of vicious, rabid, land shark.
excellent news all around! i'm glad you shared this here instead of noise because i always forget that forum section exists and i never would have seen it. congrats to you and your blushing bride and your cellwad!

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

((((:D))))

[Sean]

can we talk about abortion again?

marriage isn't the government's job. sorry. in fact, the benefits I won't receive because I don't get married at some point in my life constitute as discrimination.I think my main question to you would be which benefits afforded to married couples do you feel you're missing out on? The bulk of the benefits are specific to the unique needs of a married couple that single folks don't typically have. Here's a partial list of examples I just came across:

* joint parenting;
* joint adoption;
* joint foster care, custody, and visitation (including non-biological parents);
* status as next-of-kin for hospital visits and medical decisions where one partner is too ill to be competent;
* joint insurance policies for home, auto and health;
* dissolution and divorce protections such as community property and child support;
* immigration and residency for partners from other countries;
* inheritance automatically in the absence of a will;
* joint leases with automatic renewal rights in the event one partner dies or leaves the house or apartment;
* inheritance of jointly-owned real and personal property through the right of survivorship (which avoids the time and expense and taxes in probate);
* benefits such as annuities, pension plans, Social Security, and Medicare;
* spousal exemptions to property tax increases upon the death of one partner who is a co-owner of the home;
* veterans' discounts on medical care, education, and home loans; joint filing of tax returns;
* joint filing of customs claims when traveling;
* wrongful death benefits for a surviving partner and children;
* bereavement or sick leave to care for a partner or child;
* decision-making power with respect to whether a deceased partner will be cremated or not and where to bury him or her;
* crime victims' recovery benefits;
* loss of consortium tort benefits;
* domestic violence protection orders;
* judicial protections and evidentiary immunity;

So I'm just wondering if you could be more specific in your stance that single people not getting benefits like the ones listed above amounts to discrimination.

[Sean]

Well, this was fun to read on a Sunday morning. I wish my fingers worked. I typed that last sentence about 6 times...

As far as abortion goes. I say this: develop a well thought out, reasonable explanation for what you believe, and then shut your fucking mouth until you're thrown in that position. Try clinging to the "every life is sacred" creed when you're an unemployed pothead living in your parents' basement, with no education, no savings, and no health insurance. When it comes down to it, what you believe is what you believe, and that's fine. What's not fine is when you run around and try to cram that belief down someone else's throat, especially when you've got no real world experience to base your opinion on. As far as I'm concerned, cacophony would probably write a better abortion law than 99.99% of the legislators in the country, and I would be infinitely satisfied with whatever she came up with. Abortion opinions should be reactive, not proactive. If someone asks you what your opinion on abortion is, feel free to tell them. Otherwise, just keep it to yourself.

And I love how all the straight religious folks, many of whom have fucked up, sham marriages in the first place, suddenly get all bent out of shape about the sanctity of marriage when it's the gays that want to get married. Head's up, all you'se religious types: If your church is against gay marriage, THEY WONT MARRY GAYS!! You're safe. You don't have to worry about Steve and Trenton sitting next to you in church, wondering, as are everyone else in attendance, why your wife has bruises on her arms, and why your children wont look you in the eye. They'll do what reasonable, sensible people do; skip on the pomp and formality, and get married in a courthouse, in a totally non-religious ceremony. If marriage were such a sacrosanct and holy institution, Britney and K-Fed never would have happened. So...before we go around denying basic civil liberties to people simply because they are into their own gender, maybe, just maybe, we could do something about the fact that we, apparently by the example I stated in the previous sentence, allow complete and total morons to get hitched and squirt little fuckup babies all throughout this great nation.

bryantm3, bravo on creating a thread that at least brought back a smidge, or a skosh if you will, of what this forum used to be. You took yer lumps like a man, and when you get into it with cacophony, it's hard not to take lumps.

As an aside, and I know that this portion of our tale should go into the noise section, lots has been going on with me recently. I moved back to Wisconsin, got a job, and just when I thought things were settling down a bit, the fiance and I decided, "Why the fuck don't we just get this whole marriage thing knocked out?" So we decided to do that. Then we decided to combine our newly married status, as well as my status as a veteran, into the fiscal Voltron known as The VA Home Loan. THEN my beautiful bride decided that she'd let one of those "aggregations of non-differentiated cells" implant itself within her uterus, thereby transforming her into some kind of vicious, rabid, land shark.Hey, congratulations! Good to know that smart people are still breeding so that we can avoid our Idiocracy future....

And of course, well said on the other stuff.

[bryantm3]

just be zen about it and let it flow where it goes. if you started a conversation at a party and it ended up degenerating into a rant, you wouldn't be able to lock people's mouths.

unless this was an episode of the twilight zone.

and i hope it's not.

do you remember the twilight zone movie where the little boy shut his sister's mouth permanently with his mind? eek! that gave me nightmares.

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

And I love how all the straight religious folks, many of whom have fucked up, sham marriages in the first place, suddenly get all bent out of shape about the sanctity of marriage when it's the gays that want to get married. Head's up, all you'se religious types: If your church is against gay marriage, THEY WONT MARRY GAYS!! You're safe. You don't have to worry about Steve and Trenton sitting next to you in church, wondering, as are everyone else in attendance, why your wife has bruises on her arms, and why your children wont look you in the eye.

Thank you for such a rational non-biased argument

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

For the record I think that cacaphony brought up some excellent points, albeit in a very smug and condescending way that nearly made me skip over most of it. Constantly attacking the other person is not as civil as you think it is. Also I'm not sure what your argument is here; abortion should be legal through all trimesters because fringe cases like that could happen? That's like arguing against traffic fines because people can have seizures while they're driving.

[Strangelet]

I wish pro-lifers would put their energy and convictions into bettering education and the availability of contraception. Prevent the problem instead of rabidly opposing one of its solutions. Nobody is trying to make them do something they don't want to do. They should extend that courtesy to others who don't share their beliefs.


This is exactly the whole abortion debate for me. I'm also really convinced this thing would be in the bag if all the conservative religious leaders capped and traded all their hot air condemning the action into fixing the problem.

For me its simple: put contraceptives in the drinking water. Antidotes given by application only (and prerequisite IQ test)

[cacophony]

For the record I think that cacaphony brought up some excellent points, albeit in a very smug and condescending way that nearly made me skip over most of it. Constantly attacking the other person is not as civil as you think it is. Also I'm not sure what your argument is here; abortion should be legal through all trimesters because fringe cases like that could happen? That's like arguing against traffic fines because people can have seizures while they're driving.
smug and condescending is how i roll. this forum used to be active and fun because people weren't afraid to lay it out on the table. folks had thick skin and i never saw an argument taken personally until, say, the last year or so. things have changed, i suppose. except me, i'm not interested in change.

and frankly i don't think i made an argument. i'm not going back to re-read but i'm fairly certain i made no statements about my personal beliefs when it comes to abortion rights. i presented a scenario and asked those who think all abortion should be illegal to explain how the issues would be handled in a no-abortion world.

i certainly don't believe abortion should be legal at any point during pregnancy. frankly, having experienced pregnancy myself i'm actually very uncomfortable with the legal limit being set at 24 weeks. i felt one of the boys move at 16 weeks and at that moment i knew he was a separate being who wasn't just a cluster of cells, but my child. i didn't feel the other baby move until later because of where he was positioned, but i felt the same way about him, too.

unfortunately as much as i'm uncomfortable with the idea of legal abortions up until 24 weeks, i have to think through what i now know of the pregnancy screening process. for most pregnancies 20 weeks is the earliest you can do some crucial testing to tell you whether there are developmental or chromosomal abnormalities. if you wait until 20 weeks and get bad results, retesting would push you out to at least 22 weeks for confirmation. like if you ended up needing an amniocentesis, for example. in situations where there may be serious concerns about the development of the baby, i can see needing to allow for action to take place at that stage.

i know too many girls from the twin groups i'm a member of who delivered at 24 weeks to feel comfortable with that as a cutoff. and a week doesn't make a damn bit of difference to me, 23 is too early. which means 22 is too early. so my gut says fuckit, let's just say 20 is your last chance.

but here's the thing. there's a difference between what i believe in terms of a baby's viability and what i believe should be established as a legal framework around the procedure.

in my perfect world there would be no abortions after, say 12 weeks. that, in my opinion, is long enough to realize you've missed a period, pee on a stick, visit a doctor for confirmation, and make a decision about your pregnancy. after 12 weeks, in my opinion, cold feet should no longer be a valid excuse for abortion. only personal hardship and medical reasons should apply after that point.

but see, that's me superimposing my personal beliefs gained through my personal sense of connection to my own pregnancy. when you start talking about bringing government into it you cross a line that i don't think should be crossed. there's a danger in applying your own emotional baggage to society as a whole and trying to craft laws (which inevitably must apply punishment for violations) to the rest of the population. so while i feel strongly that my babies were people from the moment they were conceived, i refuse to force the rest of society to create a law based on that. hell, i also believe my dead mother visits me in my dreams. shall we create laws around that, too? my personal beliefs concerning the existence and persistence of the soul belong about a thousand lightyears away from any governing body.

So then i come back to rationalize it again. 24 weeks makes sense as a cutoff because at that point there is a small but real chance of viability, that the baby(ies) could survive outside of the womb. for medical emergencies the procedure should be on the table after that, but not for any other reason. i don't like it, not one itty bitty bit. i don't like the idea that someone would go 16 weeks (4 months!!) into a pregnancy and suddenly go, "you know what, i changed my mind." i don't like the idea that people aren't keeping their goddamn knees together or using appropriate protection and preventing themselves from making babies in the first place. hey, it ain't hard. i did it for 31 years, never even had a scare.

but i'm not going to advocate the idea that we make laws to punish people who aren't as paranoid about pregnancy as i was. i don't drink either, and you don't see me out campaigning to make booze illegal. when you weigh out the consequences of the two choices, terminating unwanted pregnancies versus forcing women to bear unwanted children, i think the second choice is a worse crime.

this probably reads like a disjointed string of gobbledygook because i'm up way past my bedtime thanks to two cranky boys who didn't ask permission to split their egg into two 19 months ago.

[Sarcasmo]

Thank you for such a rational non-biased argument

And thank you for the non-sarcastic, totally genuine response. To clarify my stance; I just recently got married. In a church. Belonging to a protestant religion so close to Catholicism, we may as well take advice from the Pope. I myself am a religious person, and I take my wedding vows as the sacred promises they are. However, like cacophony, I'm able to divorce my particular situation from the reality of what I see, and what I see is a society that thinks marriage is some kind of neat thing to do, and discard, on a whim. I see a society that bases their opinion of gay marriage on fear and bigotry rather than evidence and logic. I see a religious community stirred up by attention-seeking politicians and paranoid fundamentalists that are totally missing the point. Hypocritically so.

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

And thank you for the non-sarcastic, totally genuine response. To clarify my stance; I just recently got married. In a church. Belonging to a protestant religion so close to Catholicism, we may as well take advice from the Pope. I myself am a religious person, and I take my wedding vows as the sacred promises they are. However, like cacophony, I'm able to divorce my particular situation from the reality of what I see, and what I see is a society that thinks marriage is some kind of neat thing to do, and discard, on a whim. I see a society that bases their opinion of gay marriage on fear and bigotry rather than evidence and logic. I see a religious community stirred up by attention-seeking politicians and paranoid fundamentalists that are totally missing the point. Hypocritically so.

Yeah, there's a point to be made here, and you had me right up until you said something implying that the same anti-gay marriage people were beating their wives and children; afaik that'll land you in jail. I don't really know much about the gay marriage argument, and honestly don't really care; I think it's pretty much inevitable that it'll pass, probably sooner rather than later. I don't think 'society' bases their opinions on fear and bigotry; honestly I have yet to meet someone who argues against it on anything but logical grounds.

[Deckard]

I don't think 'society' bases their opinions on fear and bigotry; honestly I have yet to meet someone who argues against it on anything but logical grounds.
What an opinion is based on and how it's openly argued are often two very different things. I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss underlying fear and ignorance as causes, despite how the opinions are justified.

[cacophony]

I don't think 'society' bases their opinions on fear and bigotry; honestly I have yet to meet someone who argues against it on anything but logical grounds.
saying "the bible says adam and eve, not adam and steve" has nothing to do with bigotry, and is totally a logical argument?

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

And thank you... I'm able to divorce my particular situation from the reality of what I see, ...


But you don't want to piss me off, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry... :p

ITSA JOKE! ITSA JOKE!!!

And could everyone just STFU about the gay marriage bit?!?

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

saying "the bible says adam and eve, not adam and steve" has nothing to do with bigotry, and is totally a logical argument?

That's true, but it's an argument for "according to the bible, the first married couple was a man and a woman" and not much else. We've all outgrown the garden.

What an opinion is based on and how it's openly argued are often two very different things. I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss underlying fear and ignorance as causes, despite how the opinions are justified.

This does swing both ways though. You can pretty much apply this to anything. How many of the people who want marijuana legalized simply want to smoke it themselves without fear of retribution? Does the RIAA really think that file-sharing hurts the artists? Likewise, couldn't it be argued that all the gays that support same sex marriage are biased and will argue in favor regardless of whether or not, deep down, they think it's a good idea for society? Wouldn't a midget argue in favor of lowering rollercoaster height standards being relaxed and call the theme parks "anti-midget rights"?

[Strangelet]

Likewise, couldn't it be argued that all the gays that support same sex marriage are biased and will argue in favor regardless of whether or not, deep down, they think it's a good idea for society?

I really have no idea where you're going with this and what you're getting at, but....

I think it should be pretty clear why the LBGT side is fighting for same sex marriage. To have society accept relationships under the construct of marriage is de facto total acceptance of their lifestyle. So its not about any one priviledge afforded by civil contracts, but full integration as a minority into society.

Basically if you can get married and be gay you can be gay categorically.

[Sean]

That's true, but it's an argument for "according to the bible, the first married couple was a man and a woman" and not much else. We've all outgrown the garden.Clearly we haven't "outgrown the garden", otherwise the lame "Adam and Steve" slogan wouldn't exist. And it certainly isn't a logical argument - which is the point that was being made - given that the Adam and Eve story is a parable meant to convey the idea of creationism, which is hardly a logical theory. Simply dismissing this point out of hand doesn't make it cease to exist.

This does swing both ways though. You can pretty much apply this to anything. How many of the people who want marijuana legalized simply want to smoke it themselves without fear of retribution? Does the RIAA really think that file-sharing hurts the artists? Likewise, couldn't it be argued that all the gays that support same sex marriage are biased and will argue in favor regardless of whether or not, deep down, they think it's a good idea for society? Wouldn't a midget argue in favor of lowering rollercoaster height standards being relaxed and call the theme parks "anti-midget rights"?Okay, but that doesn't remove bigotry, or right and wrong from the issue, which was the point being made. Sure you can apply the "what's their motivation?" question to anything, but that doesn't change the fact that many people simply believe that homosexuality is an abomination and a sin that gay folks will burn in hell for. And they translate these bigoted beliefs into legislation that actually strips basic civil rights away from an entire group of people, like prop 8 here in California. So midgets wanting to lower the height requirements of roller coasters has absolutely no bearing on whether or not opposition to same-sex marriage is motivated by bigotry or not. In fact, I don't even understand the point you're trying to make with the above argument. Especially since file sharing actually does hurt artists (argument for another thread (http://www.darktrain.org/dirty/forums/showthread.php?t=9739) ;))

And to take it a step further, of course gay people who support gay marriage are in it to suit their personal desires. They don't want to be discriminated against! Do they consider the affect on society? Who knows, but in my personal opinion, bigotry-based discrimination has never been good for society, so the pro-same sex marriage crowd has a far more stable logic-platform to stand on than the cons do.

[Deckard]

This does swing both ways though. You can pretty much apply this to anything.
Sure, but you were the one arguing that you don't think 'society' bases their opinions on fear and bigotry. I already accept that it works both ways - all ways. Your remark seemed to play that down if not outright reject it.

Likewise, couldn't it be argued that all the gays that support same sex marriage are biased and will argue in favor regardless of whether or not, deep down, they think it's a good idea for society?
I agree that could be argued, because there's self-interest. But then we can move on to speculate about the motivations of the non-gay population - and on that score, I'd say the self-interest is more damning to the opposers. Keep in mind that few people, gay OR straight, are arguing for it because it's good for society - but many are arguing against it because it's bad for society.

Sure, on a broad level, people will acknowledge that defeating discrimination is good for society, but you know I'm not sure that's the principle thinking of those who support it. I think it's more realistic to say that there are:

(a) those who argue against it because they feel it's sinful or bad for society
(b) the rest who quite simply see no problem with it, and - in the absence of a convincing argument to oppose it - are generous enough to consider those of us who don't have that right.

Really, I don't see any great movement of people supporting it because they think gay marriage will somehow benefit society.

But then I've yet to see a single convincing argument against gay marriage that wasn't rooted in religion (or similarly woolly notions of a natural order or cosmic intention or whatever).

[Sarcasmo]

This does swing both ways though. You can pretty much apply this to anything. How many of the people who want marijuana legalized simply want to smoke it themselves without fear of retribution? Does the RIAA really think that file-sharing hurts the artists?... ...Wouldn't a midget argue in favor of lowering rollercoaster height standards being relaxed and call the theme parks "anti-midget rights"?

Holy crap...you had the balls (albeit passive aggressive ones) to infer that my statements were somehow irrational? And that just applies to your last sentence. Your first two examples can't even relate to gay marriage. Or are you implying that smoking weed and filesharing are civil rights? Are you implying that gay people want to get married for the novelty of it? Like they're feeling left out of the club? Dude, gay people want to get married so that they can enjoy the same basic rights and provisions granted to married folks. If you can't think of any, Sean posted a ton of them on page 15. Your first two examples fail utterly because they simply cannot compare to gay marriage.

Your last example is so incredibly illogical as to be laughable. But I'm going to argue it, just so that you can't come back and say that I didn't. Theme park rides are designed for normal sized adults because there are exponentially more normal sized adults than there are little people. It's economics, Holmes. There is no way to make an average theme park ride safe enough for for a little person to ride, and there is no way to build a viable business out of a theme park designed for little people. The process of mechanical, electrical, and structural engineering that goes in to these places, not to mention marketing, food, park attendants, etc makes a theme park one of the most financially nightmarish operations outside of Las Vegas. Your example simply could not exist in reality. I'm fairly certain that Stephen Hawking proved this somewhere.

And if I sound condescending or insulting, I'm very tired. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of your arguments...

[dubman]

This does swing both ways though. You can pretty much apply this to anything. How many of the people who want marijuana legalized simply want to smoke it themselves without fear of retribution? Does the RIAA really think that file-sharing hurts the artists? Likewise, couldn't it be argued that all the gays that support same sex marriage are biased and will argue in favor regardless of whether or not, deep down, they think it's a good idea for society? Wouldn't a midget argue in favor of lowering rollercoaster height standards being relaxed and call the theme parks "anti-midget rights"?
people are kinda twiddling about trying to "debate" this point with you but,
really
that was just fucking retarded.

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

Clearly we haven't "outgrown the garden", otherwise the lame "Adam and Steve" slogan wouldn't exist. And it certainly isn't a logical argument - which is the point that was being made - given that the Adam and Eve story is a parable meant to convey the idea of creationism, which is hardly a logical theory. Simply dismissing this point out of hand doesn't make it cease to exist.

Okay, but that doesn't remove bigotry, or right and wrong from the issue, which was the point being made. Sure you can apply the "what's their motivation?" question to anything, but that doesn't change the fact that many people simply believe that homosexuality is an abomination and a sin that gay folks will burn in hell for. And they translate these bigoted beliefs into legislation that actually strips basic civil rights away from an entire group of people, like prop 8 here in California. So midgets wanting to lower the height requirements of roller coasters has absolutely no bearing on whether or not opposition to same-sex marriage is motivated by bigotry or not. In fact, I don't even understand the point you're trying to make with the above argument. Especially since file sharing actually does hurt artists (argument for another thread (http://www.darktrain.org/dirty/forums/showthread.php?t=9739) ;))

And to take it a step further, of course gay people who support gay marriage are in it to suit their personal desires. They don't want to be discriminated against! Do they consider the affect on society? Who knows, but in my personal opinion, bigotry-based discrimination has never been good for society, so the pro-same sex marriage crowd has a far more stable logic-platform to stand on than the cons do.


Maybe because I'm from Wisconsin, but I have honestly never heard the "Adam and Steve" argument used as anything other than sarcasm.

The point of the argument is that pretty much everyone is biased, not just the bigots and hateful. It's in response to this thread's general attitude which seems to be that the anti-gay marriage people don't just dislike the idea but are also homophobic, bigoted, hateful people. It is not the argument that I dislike. I don't see anything wrong with same sex marriage personally. But honestly I would be afraid to ever argue against it because no matter *what* argument I come up with I would be called hateful. Same as arguing against affirmative action. I don't see it as stripping them of their "basic civil rights". They can still get married, it just has to be someone of the opposite gender.

I don't wanna argue the file sharing thing, because my point is that it was ambigious. You think it hurts you, fine. Mike Doughty claims that he'd be flat broke if not for it. Could be argued either way, and I'd wager that most arguments made on the topic are biased in some way.

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

Sure, but you were the one arguing that you don't think 'society' bases their opinions on fear and bigotry. I already accept that it works both ways - all ways. Your remark seemed to play that down if not outright reject it.

I'm not downplaying it. I'm just saying it swings both ways. Maybe I'm just too much of an optimist but I think that fear and bigotry aren't the reasons for half the things they're claimed to be.


But then I've yet to see a single convincing argument against gay marriage that wasn't rooted in religion (or similarly woolly notions of a natural order or cosmic intention or whatever).

That it's a slippery slope?

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

Holy crap...you had the balls (albeit passive aggressive ones) to infer that my statements were somehow irrational? And that just applies to your last sentence. Your first two examples can't even relate to gay marriage. Or are you implying that smoking weed and filesharing are civil rights? Are you implying that gay people want to get married for the novelty of it? Like they're feeling left out of the club? Dude, gay people want to get married so that they can enjoy the same basic rights and provisions granted to married folks. If you can't think of any, Sean posted a ton of them on page 15. Your first two examples fail utterly because they simply cannot compare to gay marriage.

Your last example is so incredibly illogical as to be laughable. But I'm going to argue it, just so that you can't come back and say that I didn't. Theme park rides are designed for normal sized adults because there are exponentially more normal sized adults than there are little people. It's economics, Holmes. There is no way to make an average theme park ride safe enough for for a little person to ride, and there is no way to build a viable business out of a theme park designed for little people. The process of mechanical, electrical, and structural engineering that goes in to these places, not to mention marketing, food, park attendants, etc makes a theme park one of the most financially nightmarish operations outside of Las Vegas. Your example simply could not exist in reality. I'm fairly certain that Stephen Hawking proved this somewhere.

And if I sound condescending or insulting, I'm very tired. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of your arguments...

If you think I'm using those examples to compare specifically to the issue of gay marriage, you're missing the point. Every man has the civil right to marry a woman and every woman has the civil right to marry a man. As for the theme park thing; do you believe that the owner of the park HATES midgets? Of course not. There



people are kinda twiddling about trying to "debate" this point with you but,
really
that was just fucking retarded.

Then go and cry about it...for the love of god do not attempt to refute it

[Sean]

Maybe because I'm from Wisconsin, but I have honestly never heard the "Adam and Steve" argument used as anything other than sarcasm.Well, you're very lucky to have been able to avoid the bigots of the world. I've been taken by surprise and shocked as hell by them throughout my life, and all across the country. Just when you least expect it, BAM! Some bigot pops up and makes someone close to me feel like shit right in front of our faces.

The point of the argument is that pretty much everyone is biased, not just the bigots and hateful. It's in response to this thread's general attitude which seems to be that the anti-gay marriage people don't just dislike the idea but are also homophobic, bigoted, hateful people. It is not the argument that I dislike. I don't see anything wrong with same sex marriage personally. But honestly I would be afraid to ever argue against it because no matter *what* argument I come up with I would be called hateful.Unfortunately, I think it is true that it's hard to take the anti-same sex marriage stance without being pegged as homophobic. But there is a reason for that, which is that the "defense of marriage" side of the debate has most publicly manifested itself in the form of legislation that strips basic civil rights away from a minority group. Historically, those kinds of policies have been inherently driven by bigotry, and that seems to be the case with many opponents to same sex marriage now based on the arguments I've heard. Arguments based on things like homosexuality being a "sin", or on the idea that same-sex marriages would somehow destroy the value and meaning of marriage despite the increasingly cavalier attitudes that contemporary straight couples have towards marriage. Being born with a less common sexual orientation does not qualify someone as a "sinner", and does not make someone a threat. But to make those arguments is to say, in essence, "you're different, and that's bad" (which, incidentally, is still one of my favorite "worst children's book" (http://forums.multiplay.co.uk/rants-raves-other-nonsense/17234-worst-childrens-book-titles) titles :D)

Same as arguing against affirmative action. I don't see it as stripping them of their "basic civil rights". They can still get married, it just has to be someone of the opposite gender.Okay, now that's a messed up thing to say. I mean, just over 40 years ago, back when whites and blacks couldn't legally marry, the same argument could have been made this way:

"I don't see it as stripping them of their 'basic civil rights'. They can still get married, it just has to be someone of the same color."

I assume it's clear why that's a limitation of basic civil rights, yes? And as far as I can tell, it's pretty obvious how these two cases are extremely similar. If they're not to you, then I'm happy to discuss it further.

I don't wanna argue the file sharing thing, because my point is that it was ambigious. You think it hurts you, fine. Mike Doughty claims that he'd be flat broke if not for it. Could be argued either way, and I'd wager that most arguments made on the topic are biased in some way.I don't think it hurts me. I know for a fact that it has taken money out of my pocket, and the pockets of other lesser-known musicians I've worked with. Sure it's helped some others, but unfortunately, it seems that the prevailing attitude of those who illegally download music is that they're doing nothing wrong and/or hurting no one, and that attitude has to stop. But if we want to talk more about that, we should take it over to the "P2P/Torrent Sites" (http://www.darktrain.org/dirty/forums/showthread.php?t=9739) thread.

But subject matter aside, your focus on "bias" seems to run throughout all of these topics to an unusual level. While we certainly need to recognize where bias enters into all of this, it simply doesn't disprove or counter things like facts, or real-world consequences. My personal "bias" has led me to assert that file-sharing, when used irresponsibly, has hurt many smaller artists, but that doesn't remove the "fact" that it actually has. And your personal "bias" has led you to claim that gay people "can still get married, it just has to be someone of the opposite gender", but that doesn't change the "fact" that gay couples who want to marry have had the legal benefits that are afforded to straight married couples stripped away from them through legislation like prop 8. "Bias" only excuses just so much stuff before it becomes irrelevant.

[dubman]

Then go and cry about it...for the love of god do not attempt to refute it
well no, that'd be taking you seriously

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

Okay, now that's a messed up thing to say. I mean, just over 40 years ago, back when whites and blacks couldn't legally marry, the same argument could have been made this way:

"I don't see it as stripping them of their 'basic civil rights'. They can still get married, it just has to be someone of the same color."

I assume it's clear why that's a limitation of basic civil rights, yes? And as far as I can tell, it's pretty obvious how these two cases are extremely similar. If they're not to you, then I'm happy to discuss it further.


I figured someone would bring this up. I think if you compared society's bias vs. blacks a couple of generations ago vs. today's bias vs. gays you would be able to make a much stronger argument that the ban on inter-racial marriage WAS just a product of bigotry. I don't think there ever was a decent or logical argument for banning inter-racial marriage was there? I still know of many people who think of marriage as primarily a vehicle for couples who plan to have children. I think it's pretty obvious that gender is a much more significant distinction than race.

As for the rest; I don't have much to argue about there. I'm not saying there isn't some kind of bigotry out there, I'm just saying that assuming that ALL opposers to your point of view are bigots is pretty unfair.

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

well no, that'd be taking you seriously

Are you 12?

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

Thank you so much for saying that. I have wanted to say that for so long. He can be so insightful, sometimes, and then he goes a bit, I don't know. Like a 12 year old.


Oh, and you (god knows what the hell this damn long number name is supposed to mean), I'll get back to your arguement later...


34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j
pants (WOW, LOOKIT, IT LET ME COPY AND PASTE THAT!)

[dubman]

oh excuse me, i didnt know fusing little people and 420 activicts with gay rights and bundling it all up inside an Appeal to Ridicule was such a mature and developed way to approach things, then telling people they missed the point when it was the main thrust of "well that logic could go there".

gotta brush up on my internet rhetoric machine i suppose.

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

oh excuse me, i didnt know fusing little people and 420 activicts with gay rights and bundling it all up inside an Appeal to Ridicule was such a mature and developed way to approach things, then telling people they missed the point when it was the main thrust of "well that logic could go there".

gotta brush up on my internet rhetoric machine i suppose.

It's not that hard to understand is it? The point is that everyone is gonna argue based on whatever bias they have, even if the idea itself is not a good one. Any other kind of 'link' is just your imagination - are you seriously just looking for something to argue or do you have a point somewhere?

[dubman]

my point is that you're full of shit, and i think it's a classic mistake of this forum to not ignore shit posts like that and try to reason with it when it should just fall away like so much deadweight.

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

my point is that you're full of shit, and i think it's a classic mistake of this forum to not ignore shit posts like that and try to reason with it when it should just fall away like so much deadweight.

Alright!

It's obvious you have no clue what my argument even is, so I would suggest taking a reading comprehension class before posting again.

Ciao!

[Sean]

I figured someone would bring this up. I think if you compared society's bias vs. blacks a couple of generations ago vs. today's bias vs. gays you would be able to make a much stronger argument that the ban on inter-racial marriage WAS just a product of bigotry. I don't think there ever was a decent or logical argument for banning inter-racial marriage was there? I still know of many people who think of marriage as primarily a vehicle for couples who plan to have children. I think it's pretty obvious that gender is a much more significant distinction than race. Well, I don't personally feel there was ever a decent or logical argument for banning inter-racial marriage, and frankly, I have yet to hear the decent or logical argument for banning same-sex marriage.

So far, your two arguments cited against same-sex marriage as I've seen them have been the potential "slippery slope", and that "marriage as primarily a vehicle for couples who plan to have children".

The slippery slope argument is flawed in multiple ways. One, what slope are we supposed to be afraid of exactly? I assume it's the "if gays can marry, then what's to keep people from making it legal to marry their siblings/animals/the Eiffel Tower (http://www.independent.co.uk/extras/sunday-review/living/i-married-the-eiffel-tower-832519.html)/etc?" The first response to that would be that we'd still need to have public opinion swing in favor of each of these individual scenarios enough for them to be legalized - simply allowing same sex marriage wouldn't nullify the individual issues of health, consent, common species, etc. that would have to be overcome for that to happen. That's not to say that I discount all slippery slope arguments - for example, I happen to think that the current war on tobacco and cigarettes will lead down the slippery slope of erosion of personal choice in favor of legislated health - but in the case of same-sex marriage, I see no comparable, logical progression of events that would follow affording basic civil rights to gay couples.

And the second response to the "slippery slope" argument is that it inherently equates homosexuality with inbreeding, beastiality, and a whole host of other extreme issues that it doesn't really have anything in common with at all, aside from the fact that none of them are included in the current definition of marriage. To clarify, take my fears about the war on cigarettes again. It logically follows that once cigarettes are banned for health reasons, other similarly unhealthy products will follow. Cheese, candy, prime rib, pizza - all of these things share very comparable unhealthy qualities to cigarettes that make it reasonable to understand the risks of going down that road. But gay couples have far more in common with straight couples than they do with inbreeding couples, or people who want to have sex with animals, or children, or most any of the other potential results of a "slippery slope" that opponents point to. It's simply not a logical fear as far as I can see.

The next argument you cited, that "marriage as primarily a vehicle for couples who plan to have children", is far less legitimate. Where does it say marriage is about having children? I've been married for 11 years, and my wife and I have no kids. Should we annul our marriage? What about married couples who are infertile? Should they have their marriages dissolved as well? What about couples who choose to adopt rather than procreate? Why should they be allowed to marry if marriage is "primarily a vehicle for couples who plan to have children"? I could go on, but do I really need to?

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

No, you don't have to, because I personally agree with pretty much all of it. I just can't take the interracial marriage = gay marriage thing because I don't think there was ever any argument against it that WASN'T based in fear or racism. I'm merely staying that for gay marriage, there are arguments against. I don't think they are great arguments either, but the idea does fly in the face of what some believe marriage is about. Maybe not even the idea of pregnancy, but rather the idea of sex, which some would argue isn't really possible in some marriages. Some people believe it's unnatural. My point is that all the opposers are not necessarily bigoted, hateful morons. No doubt some of them are. The idea of marrying someone of the same gender is waaay more radical than marrying someone of a different race.
I guess a similar example would be Affrimative Action; it's possible to form an argument against it without being racist, isn't it?

[Deckard]

FWIW (:rolleyes:)

I'm not downplaying it.
Yes you were. Specifically, "I don't think 'society' bases their opinions on fear and bigotry". Whereas my response was that opinions are frequently based on fear and - if not bigotry (I'm not comfortable with that word), then at least ignorance.

That it's a slippery slope?
No. That's called a fallacy. When I said "argument", I meant something, you know, with legs. I also used the word convincing, and used it very deliberately.

I don't argue that opponents of gay marriage are bigots or homophobes. But an argument doesn't automatically become watertight by mere virtue of not being rooted in homophobia or "bigotry".

Anyway I'm taking dubman's advice and cutting out the rest of my post, particularly having just read this:

The point is that everyone is gonna argue based on whatever bias they have

Really, if we can't get past the catch-all accusation of "you're biased!" then I can't be bothered wasting my time.

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

FWIW (:rolleyes:)


Yes you were. Specifically, "I don't think 'society' bases their opinions on fear and bigotry". Whereas my response was that opinions are frequently based on fear and - if not bigotry (I'm not comfortable with that word), then at least ignorance.


No. That's called a fallacy. When I said "argument", I meant something, you know, with legs. I also used the word convincing, and used it very deliberately.

I don't argue that opponents of gay marriage are bigots or homophobes. But an argument doesn't automatically become watertight by mere virtue of not being rooted in homophobia or "bigotry".

Anyway I'm taking dubman's advice and cutting out the rest of my post, particularly having just read this:



Really, if we can't get past the catch-all accusation of "you're biased!" then I can't be bothered wasting my time.


I don't really think it's airtight either. But the argument does exist. Maybe I misinterpreted something when I wrote that I don't think 'society' is voting on fear or ignorance. What I meant to say was quite a bit more complex than that. Of course people vote on fear all the time, but I don't necessarily think that fear has to be out of hatred or bigotry.

That 'fear of gays' thing is going to subside anyway; I'm 99% positive gay marriage is going to be legal in my lifetime, probably sooner rather than later.

I think maybe you should drop the bias thing, because that's really not what I meant. Read my posts again. Some people are biased, and some are not. My only point behind that is that it doesn't just swing one way. I don't like the argument of "we are using logic and reason, and you are biased" and some of the forceful language in this thread was implying. I'm not sure why people got so hung up on it.

[Sean]

My point is that all the opposers are not necessarily bigoted, hateful morons. No doubt some of them are.I agree with that. But frankly, I think the majority - not all - who oppose it are probably basing it on some level of bigotry (unlike Deckard, I'm very comfortable using that word ;)), or at the very least, ignorance.

[Deckard]

I don't like the argument of "we are using logic and reason, and you are biased" and some of the forceful language in this thread was implying
Sure. From my point of view, that's fair enough.

Btw - how about you give us a shorter name so we don't have to copy/paste it when typing?

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

I agree with that. But frankly, I think the majority - not all - who oppose it are probably basing it on some level of bigotry (unlike Deckard, I'm very comfortable using that word ;)), or at the very least, ignorance.

Maybe so; I guess it all depends on what you call bigotry or ignorance. When people talk about that, they talk about race hate, the things that led to slavery, and the Holocaust. The issue is more complex than that. Would I rather sit down at a lunch table full of men or women? If I say men, could you ask me "why the men, do you not think men and women are equal?" Of course, but I don't think it's really a fair question. The reality is that the majority of straight people are not going to understand gay issues well, and pretty much all the gay people are going to be biased on them. I suppose you could call that bigotry and ignorance too, but I don't see it that way.


Sure. From my point of view, that's fair enough.

Btw - how about you give us a shorter name so we don't have to copy/paste it when typing?

You can just shorten it to 349...how do you think I feel when I have to log in??

[Sean]

Maybe so; I guess it all depends on what you call bigotry or ignorance.I go by the classic definition of bigotry, as in the Merriam Webster dictionary, where a bigot is defined as "a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices ; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance".

The vast majority of those who oppose same-sex marriage do so based on their religious beliefs that homosexuality is an abomination and a sin. For example in California, the campaign for prop 8 which constitutionally banned same-sex marriage was largely backed by the Mormon church. And two other groups largely responsible for voting the proposition into affect were hispanics and blacks - both of whom are traditionally strongly religious groups. So there are your groups that are "obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices". And of course their "obstinate opinions" manifested themselves in constitutionally stripping a minority group of basic civil rights, which I'd say falls quite neatly into the category of regarding or treating "the members of a group with hatred and intolerance".

As for ignorance, I again go by the standard definition: "the state or fact of being ignorant : lack of knowledge, education, or awareness"

Where ignorance plays into it is that it doesn't appear to me that many people who oppose same-sex marriage have any idea what it would really mean. Allowing same-sex marriage would ONLY mean that the federal and state governments would legally recognize a same-sex marriage so that they can be afforded the same rights hetero married couples have in regards to filing joint tax returns, inheritances, hell - simply being legally recognized as a family member to your partner. It WON'T mean any private or religious group will be compelled to start performing same sex marriages, or that children will suddenly decide to become gay since it's legal for gays to marry, or that straight marriages will suddenly lose their value, etc. To believe or argue any of these fallacies is ignorance, plain and simple.

When people talk about that, they talk about race hate, the things that led to slavery, and the Holocaust. "Bigotry" has never been in reference to ethnic hatred alone. That's your own limitation on the definition being introduced.

The issue is more complex than that. Would I rather sit down at a lunch table full of men or women? If I say men, could you ask me "why the men, do you not think men and women are equal?" Of course, but I don't think it's really a fair question.
I can't say I really follow the analogy you're using here about being asked a stupid question in regards to what gender you prefer to sit with. I don't mean that to call you stupid, I just mean that I see no connection between saying you're more comfortable sitting with men and being asked if you think men and women are equal as a result. It has nothing to do with equality.

The reality is that the majority of straight people are not going to understand gay issues well, and pretty much all the gay people are going to be biased on them. I suppose you could call that bigotry and ignorance too, but I don't see it that way.

You're bringing "bias" back into the whole debate again, which I still don't understand. Honestly, it seems that you only invoke "bias" when it's in reference to points that counter your side of the argument. But to respond to your comments, sure, many straight people won't understand gay issues well. So what? Since when does not understanding a minority group's issues well justify stripping them of civil rights? As a middle-class white guy, I can't possibly understand all the issues faced by many African Americans as a result of this country's history of slavery, but I still recognize why they deserve basic civil rights. And sure, gay people are typically going to be "biased" on the issue of same sex marriage because of course they don't want to have their basic civil rights constitutionally banned. Again, so what? Do you believe that because you can call this a "bias", somehow it can be discounted? Aren't cancer patients going to be "biased" towards searching for a cancer cure? Does their "bias" somehow nullify the importance and goodness of their support for a cure? So what does a gay person's bias towards legalizing same sex marriage have to do with anything?

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

This is really a handful, so let me say this:

There is a difference between bigotry and ignorance, and I would agree that most of the prop 8 voters weren't really aware of what the bill was going to do. It's pretty obvious that religion is ultimately what brought this down, so I can't really argue that. The point I'm trying to argue is a lot smaller than what you're implying. I do think that the people who voted against gay marriage did so for religious reasons that are in themselves bigoted, but I don't think the people themselves were. I don't think your average prop 8 voter would really mind if a gay couple moved next door.
I don't disagree with your other point either; I realize that the whole thing is sort of a tangent, I just really don't like the idea that some posters have that Christians who vote down gay marriage are hateful, ignorant, fearful people that beat their wives and molest their children. The problem with any political internet discussion is that like 95% of the people who discuss political are liberal and anti-religion; so it just becomes one big circlejerk where you can say hateful things like that and nobody ever calls you out. Frankly it makes me sick.

Since when does not understanding a minority group's issues well justify stripping them of civil rights? So if there's a minority group that loved goats should they be allowed to marry one? It's not a civil right for gays to get married. In fact, I would argue that marriage is an institution and not a civil right at all. It's no more a civil right than getting a drivers license is. Of course, you can bring up the inter-racial thing too; okay, so even then, I wouldn't say not allowing me to marry a black girl is necessarily stripping me of a right; it's just a right that doesn't exist yet. Of course you could argue that way the institution is defined is unfair. But I just don't see it as "not allowing gays their rights", when they're talking about something that would radically change the definition of marriage.

[Sean]

I just really don't like the idea that some posters have that Christians who vote down gay marriage are hateful, ignorant, fearful people that beat their wives and molest their children. The problem with any political internet discussion is that like 95% of the people who discuss political are liberal and anti-religion; so it just becomes one big circlejerk where you can say hateful things like that and nobody ever calls you out. Frankly it makes me sick.If you're refering to Sarcasmo's posts, I didn't take what he wrote as saying "Christians who vote down gay marriage are hateful, ignorant, fearful people that beat their wives and molest their children". Especially when he clearly stated that he himself is a religious married man, and I doubt he categorizes himself as the above. I just understood it as pointing out the glaring faults in viewing same sex marriage as a threat to the institution of marriage when there are already plenty of straight people out there as we speak who are trashing marriage, and that we ought to be worrying about instead. Basically, why is a same sex couple considered a threat when there ARE so many straight folks out there (religious or not) adding to the incredibly high divorce rates of today, being abusive to their spouses or children, etc. If opponents really want to "defend marriage", then perhaps that's where they should focus their attention.

Since when does not understanding a minority group's issues well justify stripping them of civil rights? So if there's a minority group that loved goats should they be allowed to marry one?Okay, I'm going to ask you to justify this stunning leap in logic before I reply to it - especially since it's a comment that's already been addressed in my past few posts.

It's not a civil right for gays to get married. In fact, I would argue that marriage is an institution and not a civil right at all. It's no more a civil right than getting a drivers license is. Of course, you can bring up the inter-racial thing too; okay, so even then, I wouldn't say not allowing me to marry a black girl is necessarily stripping me of a right; it's just a right that doesn't exist yet. Of course you could argue that way the institution is defined is unfair. But I just don't see it as "not allowing gays their rights", when they're talking about something that would radically change the definition of marriage. You seem to have a different definition of civil rights than I do. Part of the generally accepted definition includes "the rights to full legal, social, and economic equality" - primarily for blacks when first instituted, but it applies to many groups (excluding goat fuckers of course, because among other things, that's an issue of beastiality and being in a relationship with a party that's unable to express it's thoughts and desires).

And the simple fact is that the rights regarding marriage do exist, which is why those who penned, backed, and voted for prop 8 in California felt it necessary to actually create a constitutional amendment that specifically prohibited same sex couples from being able to marry. So they were very literally and actively stripped of their constitutionally guaranteed right to "social equality".

Since we're at the point where you're actually asking me to defend my position against goat fuckers - which I did in my parenthetical above incidentally - I'd like to ask you a question, and I'd really appreciate a serious answer. Keeping in mind what we've already discussed, what are the good, logically sound, non-discriminatory arguments against same sex marriage in your opinion, and why?

[Strangelet]

I just really don't like the idea that some posters have that Christians who vote down gay marriage are hateful, ignorant, fearful people that beat their wives and molest their children. The problem with any political internet discussion is that like 95% of the people who discuss political are liberal and anti-religion; so it just becomes one big circlejerk where you can say hateful things like that and nobody ever calls you out. Frankly it makes me sick.


Ok now I get it. You're a Christian who has a problem with gay marriage but doesn't want to be known as a bigot who beats his wife and molests his children, and wants everyone in the world to know how hip you are that you don't mind if they move next door, per se.

But you're right, sometimes this place is a circle jerk, but then you're still making slippery slope comparisons between zoophilia and homosexuality after pages and pages Sean and Deckard giving solid challenges to your thinking. which means, the biggest circle jerk right now is the one going on in your head. start responding to people's thoughts if you want a meaningful contrast.

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

Ok now I get it. You're a Christian who has a problem with gay marriage but doesn't want to be known as a bigot who beats his wife and molests his children, and wants everyone in the world to know how hip you are that you don't mind if they move next door, per se.

I'm Jewish and in support of gay marriage. Did you read my posts??

[Strangelet]

I'm Jewish and in support of gay marriage. Did you read my posts??

sorry didn't read the I'm a gay loving jew post. All i've read is circumlocution and cant for pages cherry picking little grievances, that honestly has been not worth the effort to figure out exactly what's got your goad.

are you just angry with the world?

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

I'm reminded of Buggs Bunny's reverse psychology bit. I think he just got the ball rolling in that sort of way. I think.

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

If you're refering to Sarcasmo's posts, I didn't take what he wrote as saying "Christians who vote down gay marriage are hateful, ignorant, fearful people that beat their wives and molest their children". Especially when he clearly stated that he himself is a religious married man, and I doubt he categorizes himself as the above. I just understood it as pointing out the glaring faults in viewing same sex marriage as a threat to the institution of marriage when there are already plenty of straight people out there as we speak who are trashing marriage, and that we ought to be worrying about instead. Basically, why is a same sex couple considered a threat when there ARE so many straight folks out there (religious or not) adding to the incredibly high divorce rates of today, being abusive to their spouses or children, etc. If opponents really want to "defend marriage", then perhaps that's where they should focus their attention.

I don't really see this point as being too relevant. If I want to propose something that makes it easier to get funding for college, you couldn't argue against it by saying "so what, the graduation rate is only 70%, the whole system's going to hell". I don't think the people who don't support gay marriage do support spousal abuse. Also I doubt it's as easy to solve the high divorce rate as it would be this issue.

Okay, I'm going to ask you to justify this stunning leap in logic before I reply to it - especially since it's a comment that's already been addressed in my past few posts.
Okay, you said that the individual issues of each possibility would have to be addressed. Let's say you want to be a polygamist. What are the health, consent, or common species arguments against that? Or if you wanted to marry your sister? (you know, provided you wouldn't be having kids). As for the other argument, it depends on what you're looking for as 'in common'. You say a gay couple has more in common with a straight couple than a man/beast one? That's true, but I could argue that a brother/sister relationship has more in common with a straight couple than the gay one does.

You seem to have a different definition of civil rights than I do. Part of the generally accepted definition includes "the rights to full legal, social, and economic equality" - primarily for blacks when first instituted, but it applies to many groups (excluding goat fuckers of course, because among other things, that's an issue of beastiality and being in a relationship with a party that's unable to express it's thoughts and desires).
And the simple fact is that the rights regarding marriage do exist, which is why those who penned, backed, and voted for prop 8 in California felt it necessary to actually create a constitutional amendment that specifically prohibited same sex couples from being able to marry. So they were very literally and actively stripped of their constitutionally guaranteed right to "social equality".
Since we're at the point where you're actually asking me to defend my position against goat fuckers - which I did in my parenthetical above incidentally - I'd like to ask you a question, and I'd really appreciate a serious answer. Keeping in mind what we've already discussed, what are the good, logically sound, non-discriminatory arguments against same sex marriage in your opinion, and why?

I do have a different definition than you. Because I don't really consider marriage a civil right any more than getting a hunting license is. Again, I'm not really seeing it as an equality issue; I can't marry another guy either. Do you think that it's a civil rights violation that not everyone can run for President? I'm not making point of beastiality to equate the two issues. I'm saying that in both cases, they are essentially arguing to change the rules of marriage as they exist now. I'm not going to argue against gay marriage because I don't really believe the reasons that there are against it, but I would say one of the best arguments against it would be to say it's not necessary. The law allows me to smoke tobacco, but not marijuana; do I feel like I have the right to smoke marijuana if that's my preference? The point is I don't feel like there's a right that a gay person doesn't have right now. They are trying to legislate the rights of "couples", which I think itself would need to be defined before going further. I think the idea of a "couple" is too abstract right now and can lead to some of the issues I related above.

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

One other thing I think should be addressed is that marriage is a religious institution, not a state one or civil one or federal one or whatever. The reason why we have marriage benefits was primarily to protect the mother and child who traditionally didn't work and therefore have their own benefits. Of course, roles are changing, and I don't think the marriage benefits are really as necessary anymore; the point is, let's not forget where these ideas came from...

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

One other thing I think should be addressed is that marriage is a religious institution,


It used to be. And in the beginning of the marriage cycle, for couples who are allowed to marry, it still is. Then, in most every case, it becomes a capitalist business program of some sort. I know that sounds harsh. Sad, but quite true.

[Sean]

I don't really see this point as being too relevant. If I want to propose something that makes it easier to get funding for college, you couldn't argue against it by saying "so what, the graduation rate is only 70%, the whole system's going to hell". I don't think the people who don't support gay marriage do support spousal abuse. Also I doubt it's as easy to solve the high divorce rate as it would be this issue.The relevance is glaring. If people who oppose same sex marriage frame their stance as a "defense of marriage" - as the name of the federal act passed under the Clinton administration states - then clearly they're framing their concern as being the defense of the sacred institution of marriage, yes? So what seems to be a bigger threat to the institution of marriage? A same sex couple entering into a loving, life-long partnership that will contribute to society in the same way that studies across the board have shown the vast majority of married couples do (http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/10/us/studies-find-big-benefits-in-marriage.html)? Or would it be the alarming rise in divorce rates that currently stands at a bit over 40%, or maybe the flippant attitudes toward marriage that lead to things like drunken shotgun weddings in Vegas, or maybe spousal abuse which looks to affect around 10% of the entire U.S. population right now? Clearly, the interest isn't actually in defending the institution of marriage, because if it was, then these people would be focused on legitimate threats, not gay people who are in love and simply want to be able to get married.

As for your college analogy, I can't seem to make heads or tails of it. But I can say that I never claimed anti-same sex marriage people "support spousal abuse" - no one said anything of the sort. But for people who are so adamant about "defending marriage", it is odd that they're so much more vocal and active about stopping same sex marriage than they are about dealing with issues like abuse.

It all adds up to further evidence that this issue really boils down to ignorance, homophobia, and bigotry for a large portion of people who oppose it.

How that can be irrelevant to you is beyond me.


Okay, you said that the individual issues of each possibility would have to be addressed. Let's say you want to be a polygamist. What are the health, consent, or common species arguments against that? Or if you wanted to marry your sister? (you know, provided you wouldn't be having kids). As for the other argument, it depends on what you're looking for as 'in common'. You say a gay couple has more in common with a straight couple than a man/beast one? That's true, but I could argue that a brother/sister relationship has more in common with a straight couple than the gay one does.So then argue that point, please. Don't just say you could while failing to directly address the specific points I've raised, or the specific answers I've provided to your many questions,

I do have a different definition than you. Because I don't really consider marriage a civil right any more than getting a hunting license is. Not just a different definition than me, but a different definition than what the actual definition is. You've made up your own definition of what civil rights are to the point that you've claimed legalizing interracial marriage was not a civil rights issue. That's pretty amazing to me. And frankly, if you approach issues so loosely that you redefine things on that level, then it's impossible to have any meaningful dialogue about it.

Let me try to explain it this way. Marriage is not technically, in and of itself, a civil right. Getting a hunting license is not technically, in and of itself a civil right. But denying someone the right to get married or acquire a hunting license because they're a member of a minority group makes these civil rights issues. So it's not about the rights themselves as much as the denial of basic rights for minorities that are enjoyed by the overwhelming majority. It's about equality.

Again, I'm not really seeing it as an equality issue; I can't marry another guy either.You're focusing on a very narrow and convenient aspect of the issue to suit your argument. Sure you can't marry another guy, but do you want to? If you fall in love with someone and decide you want to make a life-long commitment to them, legally and publicly accepting them into your life as a new family member, I assume that person would be a woman for you, and you can do that. So sure, you can't marry another dude and that means nothing to you because you would never want to. But if someone who is genetically predisposed to loving someone of the same sex (as a little under 10% of the population is) wants to make that same commitment to their partner, they can't, and it means a lot to them.

Do you think that it's a civil rights violation that not everyone can run for President? No, because I actually understand what civil rights are.

I'm not making point of beastiality to equate the two issues. I'm saying that in both cases, they are essentially arguing to change the rules of marriage as they exist now.Aside from the Defense of Marriage act, where are these "rules" written that you've raised a few times now? And why would they be exempt from being amended as all "rules" throughout history have been to address contemporary reality? It used to be a generally accepted "rule" that the Earth was at the center of creation, with the sun, planets, and the infinite universe orbiting the all-important human species. Or that hard labor was done by slaves. Or that interracial marriages aren't allowed. But all of those "rules" were found to be seriously flawed, and were changed. What's different about this one?

I'm not going to argue against gay marriage because I don't really believe the reasons that there are against it, but I would say one of the best arguments against it would be to say it's not necessary. The law allows me to smoke tobacco, but not marijuana; do I feel like I have the right to smoke marijuana if that's my preference? The point is I don't feel like there's a right that a gay person doesn't have right now. They are trying to legislate the rights of "couples", which I think itself would need to be defined before going further. I think the idea of a "couple" is too abstract right now and can lead to some of the issues I related above.
"It's not necessary"? That's the best argument against it? Well, hetero marriage isn't technically "necessary" either, so why does marriage exist at all? If, after everything that's been raised, that's the best argument against same sex marriage, then I think we've pretty clearly established that there are no good arguments against it. And despite the fact that you "don't feel like there's a right that a gay person doesn't have right now", there is. I base that on simple things called "facts". They don't have the right to legally marry and enjoy all the benefits that come with it, regardless of how you "feel".

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

The relevance is glaring. If people who oppose same sex marriage frame their stance as a "defense of marriage" - as the name of the federal act passed under the Clinton administration states - then clearly they're framing their concern as being the defense of the sacred institution of marriage, yes? So what seems to be a bigger threat to the institution of marriage? A same sex couple entering into a loving, life-long partnership that will contribute to society in the same way that studies across the board have shown the vast majority of married couples do (http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/10/us/studies-find-big-benefits-in-marriage.html)? Or would it be the alarming rise in divorce rates that currently stands at a bit over 40%, or maybe the flippant attitudes toward marriage that lead to things like drunken shotgun weddings in Vegas, or maybe spousal abuse which looks to affect around 10% of the entire U.S. population right now? Clearly, the interest isn't actually in defending the institution of marriage, because if it was, then these people would be focused on legitimate threats, not gay people who are in love and simply want to be able to get married.

As for your college analogy, I can't seem to make heads or tails of it. But I can say that I never claimed anti-same sex marriage people "support spousal abuse" - no one said anything of the sort. But for people who are so adamant about "defending marriage", it is odd that they're so much more vocal and active about stopping same sex marriage than they are about dealing with issues like abuse.

It all adds up to further evidence that this issue really boils down to ignorance, homophobia, and bigotry for a large portion of people who oppose it.

How that can be irrelevant to you is beyond me.

When I say it's irrelevant, that's because it's irrelevant. Okay, here's the difference. We can legislate against same-sex marriage and prevent that from happening, which is why people are vocal about it. We can't prevent spousal abuse. There are a lot of groups dedicated to it, some religion-oriented, some not, but it's not something that can overall be shot. This argument would be like shooting down a law preventing mental patients from getting guns on the grounds of "there is too much gun-related violence anyway, so why wouldn't you be focused on that?" Could I argue: what's the bigger threat; a few people getting the means to defend themselves, or a nation of murderers who kill each other in cold blood? It makes no sense.

You honestly don't think these people care about the divorce rate?


So then argue that point, please. Don't just say you could while failing to directly address the specific points I've raised, or the specific answers I've provided to your many questions,


I think I'm losing track...


Not just a different definition than me, but a different definition than what the actual definition is. You've made up your own definition of what civil rights are to the point that you've claimed legalizing interracial marriage was not a civil rights issue. That's pretty amazing to me. And frankly, if you approach issues so loosely that you redefine things on that level, then it's impossible to have any meaningful dialogue about it.

Let me try to explain it this way. Marriage is not technically, in and of itself, a civil right. Getting a hunting license is not technically, in and of itself a civil right. But denying someone the right to get married or acquire a hunting license because they're a member of a minority group makes these civil rights issues. So it's not about the rights themselves as much as the denial of basic rights for minorities that are enjoyed by the overwhelming majority. It's about equality.


The definition:
The personal rights of the individual citizen to have equal treatment and equal opportunities

How you see that is up to you. A blind person, even one with terrific senses otherwise, it's going to get a hunting license. Now I suppose race is one thing and I probably shouldn't have said that it's not a civil rights issue, but in a way it kinda depends how you define the minority and how you see homosexuality. It's not that gay people can't get married; they just can't get married to the person that they want to. I'm not saying that gay men should marry women; obviously that wouldn't work, but they still have the opportunity to do so. Again I see this more in line with trying to marry your own sister rather than marrying out of your race; I know the interracial thing is relevant, but it's tough to compare since I don't think there was ever even a semi-solid argument against it.


You're focusing on a very narrow and convenient aspect of the issue to suit your argument. Sure you can't marry another guy, but do you want to? If you fall in love with someone and decide you want to make a life-long commitment to them, legally and publicly accepting them into your life as a new family member, I assume that person would be a woman for you, and you can do that. So sure, you can't marry another dude and that means nothing to you because you would never want to. But if someone who is genetically predisposed to loving someone of the same sex (as a little under 10% of the population is) wants to make that same commitment to their partner, they can't, and it means a lot to them.]

Yeah, that's true. The thing is I'm not convinced this is necessarily a discrimination issue because gay people still do have the right to get married, even if they never would. It's the same as telling pot-smokers well, you've always got cigarettes. They wouldn't. But right now, the government doesn't cater to their preferences, and that doesn't make them necessarily discriminated against.



Aside from the Defense of Marriage act, where are these "rules" written that you've raised a few times now? And why would they be exempt from being amended as all "rules" throughout history have been to address contemporary reality? It used to be a generally accepted "rule" that the Earth was at the center of creation, with the sun, planets, and the infinite universe orbiting the all-important human species. Or that hard labor was done by slaves. Or that interracial marriages aren't allowed. But all of those "rules" were found to be seriously flawed, and were changed. What's different about this one?

I'm not saying they shouldn't be changed. I for one support it. I'm just saying thats the way they are now.



"It's not necessary"? That's the best argument against it? Well, hetero marriage isn't technically "necessary" either, so why does marriage exist at all? If, after everything that's been raised, that's the best argument against same sex marriage, then I think we've pretty clearly established that there are no good arguments against it. And despite the fact that you "don't feel like there's a right that a gay person doesn't have right now", there is. I base that on simple things called "facts". They don't have the right to legally marry and enjoy all the benefits that come with it, regardless of how you "feel".

It exists because it's a biblical institute. The laws came in place to protect the mothers who didn't work. If you want to argue about reducing marriage benefits, well I'm on board with that, too. You have to recognize where the argument is. I hear a lot that gays feel like they can't make that lifelong commitment since they can't marry each other; you can commit if you want, you can be in a loving and caring relationship without a piece of paper. The issue is that they don't get the marriage benefits that were introduced mainly to protect women.

Either way, I don't really want to get roped into further debate about this; like I said, I think that gay marriage should be allowed. I merely defended those who think it shouldn't be.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

It exists because it's a biblical institute. The laws came in place to protect the mothers who didn't work. If you want to argue about reducing marriage benefits, well I'm on board with that, too. You have to recognize where the argument is. I hear a lot that gays feel like they can't make that lifelong commitment since they can't marry each other; you can commit if you want, you can be in a loving and caring relationship without a piece of paper. The issue is that they don't get the marriage benefits that were introduced mainly to protect women.

Either way, I don't really want to get roped into further debate about this; like I said, I think that gay marriage should be allowed. I merely defended those who think it shouldn't be.


Thing is, it's not just * the benefits, but also the protection of certain legal issues that protect both parties in the relationship.


*I finally figured out the italics shit now!!!! :eek:

[Strangelet]

my god are we still on about midgets and goat fucking?

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

No, just you.

[Sean]

When I say it's irrelevant, that's because it's irrelevant. Okay, here's the difference. We can legislate against same-sex marriage and prevent that from happening, which is why people are vocal about it. We can't prevent spousal abuse. You're cherry-picking to suit your argument again, as well as skirting the central point. Sure you can't legislate against spousal abuse much more than what's already on the books, but you could legislate against meaningless shotgun weddings that play a role in high divorce rates. And anti-same sex marriage people could put as much public energy into fighting spousal abuse as they seem to put into stopping the gays from getting married. Yet there's an inordinate amount of attention being heaped on same sex marriage as being some kind of "threat" that marriage apparently needs to be defended from. That's where the central point I mentioned really comes in. Spousal abuse, shotgun weddings, and high divorce rates are all actual threats to marriage, while gays marrying is not. Yet the "Defense of Marriage" act, prop 8 and such say nothing about abuse, shotgun weddings, or divorce - they only legally define marriage as being between a man and a woman. In my opinion, this is further evidence of shady motives on the part of the anti-same sex marriage crowd, because all that's really being threatened is the gay-free bubble that many of these people seem to want to live in.

Honestly, I used to think that bigotry was less of a problem than I do now, but I've had numerous rude awakenings throughout my life that have shown me just how alive and well it is in this country.

This argument would be like shooting down a law preventing mental patients from getting guns on the grounds of "there is too much gun-related violence anyway, so why wouldn't you be focused on that?" Could I argue: what's the bigger threat; a few people getting the means to defend themselves, or a nation of murderers who kill each other in cold blood? It makes no sense.Gays getting married are not analogous in any way to mental patients getting guns, and I think most gay folks would take issue with you on it. As for your analogy's counter-argument, it's confusing and irrelevant since the analogy is fundamentally flawed.

Are you really in support of same sex marriage? I find it increasingly hard to believe when you make a comparison like the gay/mental patient one above, or to marrying a goat, or many of the other statements and analogies you've made along the way.

You honestly don't think these people care about the divorce rate? I never said that. Not sure what led you to believe I did. But to answer, I'm sure they care about the divorce rates, but I don't know exactly how much because all I ever hear them talking about is why gays shouldn't be allowed to marry. That's the point. What's so scary about same sex marriage that all these other marriage issues seem to be secondary to it?

The definition:
The personal rights of the individual citizen to have equal treatment and equal opportunities

How you see that is up to you. A blind person, even one with terrific senses otherwise, it's going to get a hunting license. Now I suppose race is one thing and I probably shouldn't have said that it's not a civil rights issue, but in a way it kinda depends how you define the minority and how you see homosexuality. It's not that gay people can't get married; they just can't get married to the person that they want to. I'm not saying that gay men should marry women; obviously that wouldn't work, but they still have the opportunity to do so. Again I see this more in line with trying to marry your own sister rather than marrying out of your race; I know the interracial thing is relevant, but it's tough to compare since I don't think there was ever even a semi-solid argument against it.Well clearly, on this aspect of things, you're just going to shape definitions and concepts into what they need to be to suit your arguments, so there's not much I can say. I mean really, "it kinda depends how you define the minority and how you see homosexuality"? If we can't even be on the same page about what a clear-cut term like "minority" means, or whatever you're saying about homosexuality here, then how can anyone understand where you're coming from enough to respond?

As for the siblings argument you keep coming back to, that in large part comes down to my personal belief that homosexuality is a genetic trait. Of course that has yet to be indisputably proven, but frankly, I believe the evidence points pretty solidly in that direction. So accepting that as my personal stance, I'd go on to say that people aren't born genetically predisposed to only be sexually attracted to their sister or brother. People who want to hook up with siblings probably just need to get out and meet some new folks. Gays don't have the choice to just un-gay themselves and hook up with girls instead of guys and vice versa.

And the fact that there was never a semi-solid argument against interracial marriage actually gives it even more in common with the idea of same sex marriage, because there are no good arguments against it either....or at least none I've ever heard.

Yeah, that's true. The thing is I'm not convinced this is necessarily a discrimination issue because gay people still do have the right to get married, even if they never would. It's the same as telling pot-smokers well, you've always got cigarettes. They wouldn't. But right now, the government doesn't cater to their preferences, and that doesn't make them necessarily discriminated against.Again, we may differ on the issue of genetics versus choice, so in my opinion, the cigarette/weed analogy is irrelevant. It's not about catering to "preferences" to me, it's about acknowledging the rights of a minority group. I mean technically, you could say that legalizing interracial marriages was just "catering to the preferences" of the interracial couples who wanted to marry, but that severely short-changes the discriminatory aspect of the issue. Hell, ending slavery could be called "catering to the preferences" of slaves and those who opposed slavery, but is that an adequate representation of the situation?

What makes same sex couples discriminated against is that they, as a minority group, aren't allowed basic rights enjoyed by straight people through no fault of their own, and they are at a financial, social, and even health-related disadvantage as a result. That is classic discrimination in every sense of the word.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be changed. I for one support it. I'm just saying thats the way they are now.But you didn't answer my central question. Where can I see these "rules" about what marriage is that you keep referring to?

It exists because it's a biblical institute. The laws came in place to protect the mothers who didn't work. If you want to argue about reducing marriage benefits, well I'm on board with that, too. You have to recognize where the argument is. I hear a lot that gays feel like they can't make that lifelong commitment since they can't marry each other; you can commit if you want, you can be in a loving and caring relationship without a piece of paper. The issue is that they don't get the marriage benefits that were introduced mainly to protect women.No, marriage is a social institution that exists in different forms throughout virtually all groups, religious or not. And the legal benefits that accompany marriage have been shaped over the years to support the unique needs of all married couples, not just those with a stay-at-home wife and/or mother.

As for your argument about "a piece of paper", all I can say is that I'm beginning to think that maybe you're not married? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think anyone who's experienced marriage would pretty plainly see the differences between even a committed unmarried relationship and one in which you make the public, legal commitment of transforming a girlfriend/boyfriend into a family member. It's a whole other level of commitment - one that has even proven to have inherent financial, social and health benefits outside of those that are legally granted to hetero couples. Just check out the article I previously linked (http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/10/us/studies-find-big-benefits-in-marriage.html) to see more details on that.

Either way, I don't really want to get roped into further debate about this; like I said, I think that gay marriage should be allowed. I merely defended those who think it shouldn't be.Look, I'm always thrilled to hear opposing viewpoints, especially if they explain reasonable motives I wasn't previously aware of. But in defending those who oppose same sex marriage, in my opinion at least, you've primarily succeeded in highlighting just how thin their arguments against it are. The "slippery slope" argument, or "marriage is for procreation", or "it's not necessary", or "gay people can legally marry, just not with people of the same sex" - these are all so flawed as to imply unspoken, underlying motivations, or as already stated, ignorance at the very least.

And for the record, no one's trying to rope you into anything I don't think. You chose to defend a certain point of view and some of us chose to take it on. I'm happy to continue discussing it if you'd like, but I'm not trying to force anyone to do anything.

[Strangelet]

I'm happy to continue discussing it if you'd like

you have the patience of job, my man.

[Strangelet]

One other thing I think should be addressed is that marriage is a religious institution, not a state one or civil one or federal one or whatever.

I'm calling bullshit on this. what is your source? What have you read and can cite that can support this claim? You're conveniently forgetting the massive economic and political vectors that have shaped the institution of marriage. Ever read a jane austin novel?

I've never once heard about marriage as a way of getting helpless women out of harm, and i've heard lots of stories about marriage being power strategies between families. And sometimes even love.



but I would say one of the best arguments against it would be to say it's not necessary


You're the one not reading posts, mate.

Gay marriage is the holy grail, no, the emancipation proclamation for gay people. Nothing else will give them an equal status.

Spelled out.

1. marriage is a public ceremony. A covenant is created between the couple and society. The couple accepts certain expectations of behavior from society (IE not fucking other people's spouses), and the couple is given certain privileges from society.

2. homosexuality lacks social acceptance as a form of coupling.

3. gay marriage therefore is the public acceptance of their coupling and therefore of being gay categorically.

QED

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

Needless to say I disagree with a lot of that, but I'm not going to post anymore in this thread since you people are obviously trying to get me to debate against something that I do support, so I'll just leave it at that.

[Sarcasmo]

Hey, we never asked you to play devil's advocate on this topic. You're the one who popped off at the mouth and then got reamed by half the members of the forum. If you're butt-hurt and want to take your ball and go home, that's fine, but don't blame it on us, bro.;)

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

Hey, we never asked you to play devil's advocate on this topic. You're the one who popped off at the mouth and then got reamed by half the members of the forum. If you're butt-hurt and want to take your ball and go home, that's fine, but don't blame it on us, bro.;)

Yikes, all I was doing was showing how you can be against gay marriage and not be a hateful person who beats their wife...the fact that nobody challenges that is worrying to me. I don't exactly call it a reaming because I actually agreed with most everything that was being said, but whatever. No need to be a total prick about it, is there? Seriously, get over yourself.

[dubman]

hahahahaha.


you people are obviously trying to get me to debate against something that I do support

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

[Sarcasmo]

Yikes, all I was doing was showing how you can be against gay marriage and not be a hateful person who beats their wife...the fact that nobody challenges that is worrying to me. I don't exactly call it a reaming because I actually agreed with most everything that was being said, but whatever. No need to be a total prick about it, is there? Seriously, get over yourself.

Dude, you missed the mark completely, and you're so in denial you don't even know it.:p

[Sean]

Yikes, all I was doing was showing how you can be against gay marriage and not be a hateful person who beats their wife...the fact that nobody challenges that is worrying to me.I don't recall anyone saying that everyone who's against same sex marriage is a "hateful person who beats their wife". The point about abuse was simply raised as something that's actually a threat to marriage yet relatively ignored by those who pretend to be protecting the institution's sanctity, unlike same-sex marriage which has been vanquished through such nobel legislation as the "Defense of Marriage Act".

I think the predominant feelings on the part of people 'round these parts is that a significant percentage* of those who oppose same sex marriage do so out of some level of homophobia and/or flat out bigotry - and frankly, as this thread has shown, I think it's difficult to prove otherwise.

* note - that's "significant percentage", not "all". Just seemed like it might be necessary to reiterate that detail.

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

Dude, you missed the mark completely, and you're so in denial you don't even know it.:p

explain? what exactly are you accusing me of?

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32405543/ns/us_news-life/


See guys, THIS would have been soo much more acceptable. You dumb gay people. Man! I'm having fun talking shit about everyone!!!

[Sarcasmo]

explain? what exactly are you accusing me of?

The fact that you're still trying to focus on my tongue-in-cheek description of a marriage means you're totally missing the point. Yes, I made up a fake marriage wherein the father is abusive and, though I never said it, also against gay marriage. The point was NOT that anyone against gay marriage is a hateful person who beats their wife. The point was that there's so much wrong with the "traditional" institution of marriage, that no one has the right to now claim it as sacrosanct and off limits to someone else. I mean, we let people get married by Elvis impersonators, for fuck's sake, so again, what right do we have to deny marriage to anyone? We cannot, on one hand, treat marriage like a joke, and then turn around and say that gays getting married will somehow tarnish this most holy of institutions. This "Fags Not Allowed" policy is motivated by fear and prejudicial opinion. Period. The fact that we tie in so many State benefits to marriage makes the denial of gay marriage unconstitutional.

You say that you agree with gay marriage, but all of your arguments are against it. If you were just playing Devil's Advocate, you did a crap job of it and we can just leave it at that. However, I suspect that you DON'T actually agree with gay marriage, and you're simply not very good at articulating your points.

And, yes; I'm a grumpy prick. Sean is the polite one. I'm more of the hot-head. If you want someone to pat you on the head and tell you it's going to be alright, Sean's your man. I got over myself many many moons ago, and I got over other people earlier than that. I call 'em like I see 'em, and I'm not going to walk on eggshells around someone that I've never met in my life. It's called "Tough Love," and if it stings a little, well...

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

Again, you're missing the point - is it really that hard to see how this may be argued as being NOT a civil rights issue? I keep waiting for all the ownage you're promising to happen but all I'm getting is self-congratulatory BS. I don't like Vegas weddings any more than you do. Maybe you're putting forward a good argument for stopping that, but it's not an argument for gay marriage. I guess I'll go cry now :confused:

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

O.K., but, make like a big production about it and run to your room shouting, "I hate all of you." and then, jump on your bed and bury your face in the pillows!

That would be, like, sooo Brady Bunch or something.

[Deckard]

349 - do you consider straight marriage a civil right?

[Sean]

349 - do you consider straight marriage a civil right?Based on his (her?) previous posts in this thread, my impression is that no, marriage is not a civil rights issue to 349.... And honestly, I'd say that the ball is in your court 349....to effectively explain how marriage isn't a civil right since it seems you're the only person here who's floated that idea in the first place. Clearly, it is hard for the majority of us to grasp how it could be viewed as anything but, so it could be helpful for you to clarify.

And 349..., the point isn't whether or not there should be Elvis weddings, it's that there are Elvis weddings, not to mention a laundry list of other issues out there that legitimately undercut the "sanctity" of marriage far, far more than same sex marriage ever could. And yet the people who are most vocally opposed to same sex marriage seem conspicuously silent about those other issues - presumably simply because they're issues between straight couples, so it's okay. They can stomach two drunk people who just met getting married by Elvis in a chapel attached to a casino, but a gay couple that's been together for years who are looking to legally and socially declare their lifelong commitment to each other is going to tear this institution apart! It's illogical, it's irrational, and it highlights exactly how this crusade against same sex marriage is primarily motivated by some measure of homophobia and/or bigotry.

When it gets right down to it, I just don't see what the big fear is about gay people. Okay, so they're sexually attracted to their own gender while the majority of us are sexually attracted to the opposite gender. So what? Do we ask straight couples to justify what they do in the bedroom, or strip them of their rights because they happen to enjoy a little booty lovin' from time to time? Of course not. Or at least not any more. So why does homosexual activity justify such draconian methods?

Or is it maybe because gay people are in the minority? Well, less than 10% of the U.S. population is left-handed, a similar percentage to the number of people who are gay in this country, so should we strip rights away from left-handed people? Are they damaging the sanctity of writing by using their left hands to do it? Or the sanctity of baseball by stepping up to the left side of the plate instead of the right? I mean, obviously they're genetically wired to be different than the rest of us, just like gay people, so why not stop those damn lefties from destroying all that's precious to us? The only difference I can see is that we haven't been socially conditioned to discriminate against left-handed folks like we have with homosexuals - although, I have heard from numerous lefties over a certain age that back in school, their teachers used to force them to write with their right hands. Anyway, this discrimination against gays truly disgusts me.

And at the heart of the issue, I still have yet to hear a single reasonably and logically sound argument against same sex marriage from anyone.

[Deckard]

And yet the people who are most vocally opposed to same sex marriage seem conspicuously silent about those other issues
That for me is the clincher for what does and does not appear to motivate those most vocal opponents of gay marriage.

I accept that it's not the clincher as an argument against gay marriage per se, but what it does do is hold up the underlying principles of those particular opponents to question.

And in the absence of more convincing reasons, you have to wonder...

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

..., you have to wonder...

Oh don't leave us on the edge of our seats like that.

"tell me more, tell me more
like, does he have friend?" Or something.

[Deckard]

There's a storm gathering.

The clouds are dark.

It can only mean one thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp76ly2_NoI

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

I don't know about you lot, but I think someone's telling the self-righteous holier-than-thou type to kiss his ass:

[Deckard]

Is that the crack of dawn, jOHN?

Btw, the response to that earlier vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGYEDzOVsxA)

(Hey it's holiday time. Serious can wait.)

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

OMG! "They" got a horse already!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bicsqqg5qaE

[stimpee]

Or is it maybe because gay people are in the minority? Well, less than 10% of the U.S. population is left-handed, a similar percentage to the number of people who are gay in this country, so should we strip rights away from left-handed people? Are they damaging the sanctity of writing by using their left hands to do it? Or the sanctity of baseball by stepping up to the left side of the plate instead of the right? I mean, obviously they're genetically wired to be different than the rest of us, just like gay people, so why not stop those damn lefties from destroying all that's precious to us? Sean, its those gay lefties that scare me ;)

[Deckard]

I'm guessing some of you may have caught NYS Senator Diane Savino speaking on the Marriage Equality bill (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCFFxidhcy0)?

[Sean]

I'm guessing some of you may have caught NYS Senator Diane Savino speaking on the Marriage Equality bill (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCFFxidhcy0)?Well said, Savino! Unfortunately, the bill to legally recognize same sex marriage in New York was shot down (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/nyregion/03marriage.html) anyway.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

I don't know if anyone remembers my saying, "Rich people are just kinda stupid."?

Hence:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35014696/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/