Obama: Court must end California gay marriage ban

[Gerald]

A California ban on gay marriages should be overturned by the US Supreme Court, the Obama administration says.

http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/12-144tsacUnitedStates.pdf filed ahead of arguments scheduled for late March, the justice department says the ban - known as Proposition 8 - is unconstitutional.Outlawing same-sex marriage while offering marriage-like rights under law contravenes the right to equal protection under law, the brief says.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on two same-sex marriage issues.

As well as Proposition 8, the nine justices will consider the Defense of Marriage Act, a Clinton-era piece of US federal legislation that defines marriage as solely being between a man and a woman.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21629876

Obama,have a lot of work on his desk now, budget and gay marriage etc.etc.

Note: 1 March 2013 Last updated at 12:23 GMT

[vienna]

What was particularly galling for GOP ultraconservatives was Clint Eastwood once again making a very public display of his more Libertarian sentiments by signing a Supreme Court brief filled in opposition to the gay marriage ban in California. He was one of about 100 GOP members to sign the brief filled in conjuction with the Obama administration brief. But, hey, what could the GOP far right expect from Clint? After all, he is known for talking to empty chairs...

<O>

[GoldenRivet]

1. What respect does BO have for "the law"?

2. Can we just let the Gays get married already? Jesus



and yes... im a big bad, money hungry, racist bigot, kitten killing republican

[vienna]

2. Can we just let the Gays get married already? Jesus


Amen to that. As Clint put it in an interview, the country's got better and more important matters to attend to than who marries who. If the GLBT want to indulge in the miseries of marriage and divorce, more power to them...

and yes... im a big bad, money hungry, racist bigot, kitten killing republican

..and from Texas on top of it all... :D

<O>

[GoldenRivet]

..and from Texas on top of it all... :D

<O>

most importantly :smug:

[HunterICX]

and yes... im a big bad, money hungry, racist bigot, kitten killing republican

You forgot Communist hating

HunterICX

[Schroeder]

You forgot Communist hating

HunterICX
And weapon hoarding. :yep:

[Ducimus]

I can't say I think much of California, but, shouldn't this be a state's right issue that Obama should be staying out of? I find the meddling of Obama's administration into individual state issues way overbearing.

[Armistead]

I am totally against gay marriage, why I never married a gay, but I don't care what other people do.

[Ducimus]

I am totally against gay marriage, why I never married a gay, but I don't care what other people do.

If you don't care what other people do, then why are you totally against it?

Personally, i think its ok for gays to have civil unions. But formal marriage? I don't see how that is possible. Marriage in and of itself is a religious ceremony, ususally conducted by a member of a church of some kind. I think most (if not all) religions have a negative view of gay marriage. Legislating gay marrage in this capacity, is a asking people to change the views of their religion just to accommodate few select individuals, via legislation from the state, and to me that's the rub.

[Takeda Shingen]

If you don't care what other people do, then why are you totally against it?

Personally, i think its ok for gays to have civil unions. But formal marriage? I don't see how that is possible. Marriage in and of itself is a religious ceremony, ususally conducted by a member of a church of some kind. I think most (if not all) religions have a negative view of gay marriage. Legislating gay marrage in this capacity, is a asking people to change the views of their religion just to accommodate few select individuals, via legislation from the state, and to me that's the rub.

The religion argument is a red herring. No one is going to force churches to perform same-sex marriages. However, if a straight couple can go to the court house and have their union called marriage, then why can't a gay couple do the same thing? We tried the whole seperate but equal thing before, and it wasn't equal.

[Ducimus]

I don't see how the involvement of religion is a red herring. Personally, I don't appreciate anyone forcing their religous views upon me. Likewise, I can appreciate how one might take similar offense by having someone elses views being forced upon their faith. Marriage in and of itself, I fail to see how you can separate religion from it. On the other hand, i think that's already been done, and is called a civil union, which as i already stated, think they should be able to have.

[Sailor Steve]

But formal marriage? I don't see how that is possible. Marriage in and of itself is a religious ceremony, ususally conducted by a member of a church of some kind.
Does that mean that people who go to a Justice Of The Peace aren't really married? The reality is that for the ancient Greeks true love could only be had between members of the same sex, and marriage was to guarantee lineage. In fact, even early Christians married by declaring that they were so. The Chuch got involved early on, but very late when compared with the whole of history. The idea of marrying for love is fairly recent, and the definition of "marriage" has changed many times. One more won't hurt a thing.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200505/marriage-history
http://theweek.com/article/index/228541/how-marriage-has-changed-over-centuries

[Sailor Steve]

Personally, I don't appreciate anyone forcing their religous views upon me. Likewise, I can appreciate how one might take similar offense by having someone elses views being forced upon their faith.
How exactly does making same-sex marriages legal force anything on you? Will you be forced to marry another man? Will churches be forced to perform gay marriages? In both cases the answer is "no".

Marriage in and of itself, I fail to see how you can separate religion from it. On the other hand, i think that's already been done, and is called a civil union, which as i already stated, think they should be able to have.
As I said, going to a JP removes religion from the equation. The point of marriage is twofold. First is to guarantee that the children will have two parents, one of each sex. In that context it can be argued that marriage, and sex, need to be between a man and a woman. But no one marries for that reason anymore, just as no one has ever had sex just to make a baby. The main benefit of marriage today is to guarantee inheritance. If you die your wife inherites everything, and doesn't have to pay an inheritance tax. That benefit does not apply to "civil unions" as far as I know.

The point is that the definition of "marriage" has never been just religious, and tha definition has changed many times over the millenia. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, why should you care if a man marries another man? It neither picks your pocket nor breaks your leg.

[Platapus]

No one has yet made the point that allowing gays to marry will, in any way, adversely affect heterosexual marriages.

Will married heterosexuals somehow feel "less" married once gays are allowed to marry?:nope:

If gays are allowed to marry, will the heterosexual marriage divorce rate skyrocket to 40-50%? (http://www.divorcerate.org)

If gays are allowed to marry, will the average length of heterosexual plummet down to 8 years? (http://www.families.com/blog/average-length-of-marriages)

Hmmm seems to already be happening in heterosexual marriages.

So how exactly is gay marriage going to adversely affect the "sanctity" of heterosexual marriage? :hmmm:

[Armistead]

I don't see how the involvement of religion is a red herring. Personally, I don't appreciate anyone forcing their religous views upon me. Likewise, I can appreciate how one might take similar offense by having someone elses views being forced upon their faith. Marriage in and of itself, I fail to see how you can separate religion from it. On the other hand, i think that's already been done, and is called a civil union, which as i already stated, think they should be able to have.

Many gays are religious and go to church and many mainstream churches have no problem marrying gays. Why should gays not be allowed a religious marriage if that is what they choose based on their faith? Could it be your religious bias that would deny gays a religious marriage? Marriage hasn't been a religious institution since the govt. got involved with it's many laws.

I'm against gay marriage for myself.

[Armistead]

No one has yet made the point that allowing gays to marry will, in any way, adversely affect heterosexual marriages.

Will married heterosexuals somehow feel "less" married once gays are allowed to marry?:nope:

If gays are allowed to marry, will the heterosexual marriage divorce rate skyrocket to 40-50%? (http://www.divorcerate.org)

If gays are allowed to marry, will the average length of heterosexual plummet down to 8 years? (http://www.families.com/blog/average-length-of-marriages)

Hmmm seems to already be happening in heterosexual marriages.

So how exactly is gay marriage going to adversely affect the "sanctity" of heterosexual marriage? :hmmm:

Good points, afterall, it was the first marriage "cough cough" between Adam and Eve that screwed humanity in the first place.

[Takeda Shingen]

I don't see how the involvement of religion is a red herring. Personally, I don't appreciate anyone forcing their religous views upon me. Likewise, I can appreciate how one might take similar offense by having someone elses views being forced upon their faith. Marriage in and of itself, I fail to see how you can separate religion from it. On the other hand, i think that's already been done, and is called a civil union, which as i already stated, think they should be able to have.

It, as others have said, is a red herring because no entity can force churches to perform this ceremony. Some churches willingly perform gay marriage ceremonies in states where it is legal. No one it attempting to institute a belief system, rather doing away with the seperate but equal that currently exists.

[Platapus]

Good points, afterall, it was the first marriage "cough cough" between Adam and Eve that screwed humanity in the first place.

And that was an incestuous one to boot! :o

Gay marriage is bad, but porking a woman who was made out of one of your body parts (a rib) is allowed. :D

[GoldenRivet]

No one has yet made the point that allowing gays to marry will, in any way, adversely affect heterosexual marriages.

Will married heterosexuals somehow feel "less" married once gays are allowed to marry?:nope:

If gays are allowed to marry, will the heterosexual marriage divorce rate skyrocket to 40-50%? (http://www.divorcerate.org)

If gays are allowed to marry, will the average length of heterosexual plummet down to 8 years? (http://www.families.com/blog/average-length-of-marriages)

Hmmm seems to already be happening in heterosexual marriages.

So how exactly is gay marriage going to adversely affect the "sanctity" of heterosexual marriage? :hmmm:

Two things will happen if Gays are allowed to marry

1. children will ask their parents interesting questions about why those two men (or women) are holding hands and kissing.

2. There will be an increase in business for Gay divorce lawyers

[Platapus]

It will be interesting in the next 50 years or so to compare the heterosexual divorce rate with the homosexual divorce rate.

Unfortunately, I fear they will both be high. :nope:

[Armistead]

Two things will happen if Gays are allowed to marry

1. children will ask their parents interesting questions about why those two men (or women) are holding hands and kissing.

2. There will be an increase in business for Gay divorce lawyers

Gays do walk around holding hands and kissing in public without marriage.

[Betonov]

So the general opinion in GT about gay mariage is: civil union yes, marriage only if the church is for it and some of them even are while the rest may be bribed.

Then what the hell are the politicians still complicating. Too dumb to handle something important like the economy ??

[Ducimus]

Ill reiterate my position in as clear and simple terms as i can make, according to my own understanding of the subject.

Marriage, has two aspects.
- Spiritual and religious. I see this as a matter of Church.
- Legal "stuff" (one legal entity, certificate, etc etc). I see this as a matter of State.

Two separate issue. As should be patently obvious, I am a firm believer in the separation between church and state. I am firmly against, the state enacting changes to religion via legislation or more importantly, vice versa. The state should stay out of matters of faith, and the Church should stay out of matters of the state.

Now, If a church decides that within it's own strictures, dogma, rules, what have you, that gay marriage is permissible, then that is that church's decision. Likewise, if a church decides that gay marriage is not permissible to that faith, then that too, is that church's decision. If a gay couple want to get married, and their religion isn't permissible to it; then that is a spiritual and religious matter between that gay couple, their faith, and their church leadership. I think It is wrong to go to the government, and try and get the state to intervene on this matter. This is not a matter of the state. It is a matter of church.


To sum, I am not for or against Gay marriage. In fact, i honestly do not care what gays do or don't do. My view is simply a pragmatic one.

- On the legal aspects of marriage, i think gay couples should be afforded all the benefits and perks that are afforded to anyone else. This is a matter of state, and as such should be impartial , unbiased and fair.

- On the spiritual aspect of marriage, I think that is a Church matter. Being a member of any church is voluntary, and is privy to belief and faith, as such, should not be legislated.


As it happens, most faiths don't see gay marriage in a favorable light. But that is not my problem as I am neither a member of a church, nor gay. I would be equally indifferent if most faiths were permissible of gay marriage. What others want to do in their pursuit of life, liberty and happiness is none of my concern.

[Platapus]

This is why I really like the way Germany handles it (according to The Frau)

Everyone goes through a civil ceremony that establishes the legal state of marriage. After that, the couple has the option of going through a church service that will establish the spiritual state of marriage.

Nice and clean. What the United States did wrong was combine the legal and spiritual ceremonies of marriage.

[Wolferz]

is what is being pushed by the gay community. Naturally, you get the religious fanatics within the structures of government who push back. It's more a question of intolerance on both sides.
All people are created equal and there shouldn't be anyone to say otherwise. I'm not for or against either side of the debate because it smacks of prejudice and/or hypocrisy. The governments should be focusing their efforts on more important matters than this one. As should the leaders of the church organizations.

Is homosexuality a side effect built into nature to precipitate population control? It happens in the fauna as well as in humans.

[Takeda Shingen]

Now, If a church decides that within it's own strictures, dogma, rules, what have you, that gay marriage is permissible, then that is that church's decision. Likewise, if a church decides that gay marriage is not permissible to that faith, then that too, is that church's decision. If a gay couple want to get married, and their religion isn't permissible to it; then that is a spiritual and religious matter between that gay couple, their faith, and their church leadership. I think It is wrong to go to the government, and try and get the state to intervene on this matter. This is not a matter of the state. It is a matter of church.

Same-sex marriage is legal in 9 states and no one is forcing churches to participate in or recognize them. What is happening is that in 41 states churches that wish to exercise their faith and permit same-sex marriage are prohibited from doing so by the state.

What I found peculiar was your statement in an earlier post about Obama involving himself in the matter, when his stated view is that DOMA should be repealled. It would seem that he is in favor of getting the government out of the marriage business, which I would think you would be in favor of.

[Skybird]

For a change now to a really earth-moving and important issue. We must want to get more unisex toilets in the public sphere. I agree that gay marriages add a lot of highly valuable, appreciated contribution to the project of improving the world and fight and social communities could not live without increasing the numbers of homo marriages - but what we really need to win the battle against the militant followers of Jerry Lewis and their moronic agenda is more genderism and more unisex toilets.

Vote for unisex toilets - because people have the right not to be stigmatized as male or female: hermaphrodites and cross-dressers are voters, too. :yeah:

[Takeda Shingen]

For a change now to a really earth-moving and important issue. We must want to get more unisex toilets in the public sphere. I agree that gay marriages add a lot of highly valuable, appreciated contribution to the project of improving the world and fight and social communities could not live without increasing the numbers of homo marriages - but what we really need to win the battle against the militant followers of Jerry Lewis and their moronic agenda is more genderism and more unisex toilets.

Vote for unisex toilets - because people have the right not to be stigmatized as male or female: hermaphrodites and cross-dressers are voters, too. :yeah:

So, you are for total and inviolable rights so long as it suits you. When it doesn't, well then rights be damned.

[Skybird]

is what is being pushed by the gay community. Naturally, you get the religious fanatics within the structures of government who push back. It's more a question of intolerance on both sides.

No. It is about tax reliefs for married couples, in plain English, and it is about pushing collectivism by destroying traditional - and well-serving - sexual role models like "mother" and "father", "man" and "woman" , "male values" and "female values", and of course "family". "Mothers should not be mothers, but workers to create tax income for the state. Boys and girls are no boys and girls, ut gender-neutral entities that are to be exposed to the collectivistic training of Kindergarden and KITA as early as possible - although the evidence that this medically and psychologically does enormous damage to their later personality development and physical health is overwhelming. Its not by chance that all this mess is pushed by the left, the socialists and communists, not by liberals, libertarians or conservatives, originally.

But then , it is also not chance that Western democracy today have more in common with former socialist dictatorships in the Warsaw Pact than 25 years ago most would have believed to ever become possible.

Mostm if not all, of you guys here still have not caught the full bigger context of what is going on, and still treat the issue of homo marriages as a singular, isolated question. It is not. It is embedded in something much much greater, and it touches, if consequently thinking it to the end, on the very basis of liberty and freedom, and reveals some very unpleasant truths about our misconceptions of what "democracy" really is.

Ironically, gay marriages are one of the utmost unimportant details in that bigger story. A footnote at best, one of many symptoms only. You guys better start checking the general status and moving direction of this thing called "democracy".

Also, still nobody has explained what merit and benefits homo couples have collected over singles so that they should deserve tax reliefs and financial and legal benefits from which singles are excluded, at their cost.

[Tribesman]

in plain English, and it is about pushing collectivism by destroying traditional - and well-serving - sexual role models like "mother" and "father", "man" and "woman" , "male values" and "female values", and of course "family".
So gay marriage is an assault on a "traditional" family like that of Fred West and his devoted wife Rosemary.

[Takeda Shingen]

No. It is about tax reliefs for married couples, in plain English, and it is about pushing collectivism by destroying traditional - and well-serving - sexual role models like "mother" and "father", "man" and "woman" , "male values" and "female values", and of course "family". "Mothers should not be mothers, but workers to create tax income for the state. Boys and girls are no boys and girls, ut gender-neutral entities that are to be exposed to the collectivistic training of Kindergarden and KITA as early as possible - although the evidence that this medically and psychologically does enormous damage to their later personality development and physical health is overwhelming. Its not by chance that all this mess is pushed by the left, the socialists and communists, not by liberals, libertarians or conservatives, originally.

You read it here first, everyone. Homosexuality is a communist plot to destroy western democracy. :k_confused:

[Skybird]

On the fallacy of liberty and freedom of being oh so wonderful in demicracies:

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362324528&sr=8-1&keywords=hoppe+democracy

I say dmeiocracy is the dictatorship of the mob. It does not create welath and freedom, but rteduces both, and ultimately turns into a socialistic collective were everybody is forced to fit into the collective, and ultimately the inevtiable total breakdown due to the mismanagem,ent of fiance and economy. And this is what we see taking plac ein Europe and America, on all levels, advancing at full speed. Democracy is totlaitarianism of a very xpecial kind. It's opposite is not dictaotrship, but freedom.

For readers capable to read German, I hint to these more compact books, because Hoppe is not always easy to read and the above book is 600 pages. The first is a very well-written, witty and ironic pamphlet of 90 pages by an Ausrtian, the second is a compact busting of the most popular myths about democracy in a more sober format, 180 pages, by two authors from the Netherlands.

http://www.amazon.de/Prolokratie-Demokratisch-Pleite-Christian-Ortner/dp/3990010476/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1362324988&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.de/Wenn-die-Demokratie-zusammenbricht-demokratische/dp/3898797120/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362324967&sr=8-1

So much for "liberty" and "justice" in democracies. :down: There is a solid reason why it all breaks down for us and turns against us. Bankers and capitalism are just two reasons - and not even the most important ones. And many thinkers and philosphers in the West, back to the times of the ancient Greek, knew about the rotten nature of democracy all too well. To gloss over it and glorify it like we do today is a relatively modern turn in history only. And it holds no solid grounds.


Being busy with these themes and issues since around one and a half year now, as a consequence of the EU having turned that nasty, and observing so much antisocial policies implemented under the infame label of "rights" and "social justice". It all is anything but that. Took me quite some time to see through that. It all looks and tastes and smells too much like GDR-2.0 as if i would be tempted to call this "freedom" anymore. And the material side of it, the so-called "wealth" - gets mismanaged by demand of the mob and falls apart, too. So much for future outlooks.

But we think gay marriage is oh so important an issue, and that family and mother and father means nothing and is purely arbitrary.

We have completely lost our sanity and any reasonable standards. The rest of the world that all so rightfully refuses to follow our self-deconstructing example, will eat us alive.

[Sailor Steve]

It's good to criticize, but what exactly do you propose in its place? Enlightened Dictatorship? By whom?

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
-Winston Churchill (from a House of Commons speech on Nov. 11, 1947)

[Tchocky]

I'm starting to think that Skybird really believes this stuff.

No. It is about tax reliefs for married couples, in plain English, and it is about pushing collectivism by destroying traditional - and well-serving - sexual role models like "mother" and "father", "man" and "woman" , "male values" and "female values", and of course "family". "Mothers should not be mothers, but workers to create tax income for the state. Boys and girls are no boys and girls, ut gender-neutral entities that are to be exposed to the collectivistic training of Kindergarden and KITA as early as possible - although the evidence that this medically and psychologically does enormous damage to their later personality development and physical health is overwhelming. Its not by chance that all this mess is pushed by the left, the socialists and communists, not by liberals, libertarians or conservatives, originally.

Seriously? Deciding that we might be better off as a species if we treat each other with more decency is instead a massive leftwing conspiracy to degenderise our children because we know it hurts them. HA HA HA, that'll teach those damn kids to be so happy all the time...

And this is not about democracy, it's about treating decent people decently.

[Skybird]

Steve,

the opposite of democracy is not, as often claimed, dictatorship. The opposite of democracy - is freedom.

The mechanism by which democracy installs the power of governing and administration, is the majority decision. Issues get decided by holding a referendum - directly or indirectly via a parliament, and the majority vote decides (not counting the decisive influence of lobbyism). Or so we think. Heck, you and me have clashed about this very detail in the past! ;) You said that the majority then imposes a supressive regime, a dictating of decisions on the minority, and therefore, in that discussion, you defended the filibuster, which I then attacked as the minority being able to impose its minority opinions on the will of the majority. You remember? I am 90% sure that it was you I had this debate with, mainly on filibustering.

Well, I implied democracy is the opposite of freedom (and vice versa). When the majority decides on the policies of a community (ignoring for now that when you vote for a party every four years, 99,9 of the decisions this party makes in the coming 4 years you do not get asked on), then it is naive to assume that the majority of people does vote anything different than for the way in which to benefit best from other people'S or future generation'S money. Democrats often say „We – the people - want this, we – the people - want to achcieve that“, but what it really means is „I want you to do like I say, and you have to pay for the costs, and your children have to pay for the debts.“ People vote those parties and politicians that make them the biggest promises, and politicians make big problems because they must not finance them but pay them with other people'S money - the tax payers' - and becasue they want to get relected and know they have no chance if they make necessary but unpopular claism aboitu what needs to be done. Populism and corruptions thus are inherent inbuilt features of democracies.

And the question of this „right to vote“. Ortner asks: isn't it strange that for flying an airplane, you need to pass qualification, and for driving a car you need to earn a license – but for casting some influence on the state'S fate, its finances of dozens of trillions, economic policies, highly complicated matters that even experts stuggle to understand, you do not need any intellectual or educaitonal license at all? Every debile retard is allowed to vote, and that is why Ortner calls demicracies prolocracies, a very derogatory term. The tyranny by the mob, the canaille – that is what democracy is. You quoted Churchill (and I thuinbk you do not fully get the meaning of it, btw, it is anything but an ironic defence of democracy).Churchill also said: the best argument against democracy is a 5 minute talk with just any ordinary voter. I assume the strange design of the American election system stems from a founding time when the founding fathers wanted to deal with this problem. I honestely say: not only do I recommend people to boycott elections – I have even reached ground now where I do not support the idea of a general right to vote anymore. It should be banned, and people should need to qualify in intellect and education and information for beign allowed to vote, and they should not be allowed to vote if they only claim benefits from the community, but do not contribute to its wealth. As I think either John Adams or Benjamin Franklin said, quoted by memory: when people find out they can vote for getting money, this will ruin the republic soon.

The majority directly or indirectly votes for, in general, redistribution of wealth. Which is a violation of the protection of private property, leads to tremendous and ever increasing state regulations, taxes growing (they did that in all Westenr states since a hundred years, from below 10% to now 48-55% of ordinary people'S incomes being grabbed by the state), and a state-directed economy. Because people direct more and more demands at the state, and politicians say they meet these demands if only being given more money which then they throw at issues, and making new regulations, and founding a new gremium to oversee the following of these regulations, and so, it all jujst gets worse and worse and costs are ever exploding. Bureaucracy is growing. Taxes are growing, Demands by the people to get nursed are growing, Redistribution of wealth is growing. State regulation of all and everything is growing. ItS' a vicous circle, the canaille is chasing the politicians and gives its vote for getting nannied, and the politicians invite oligarchies and plutocracies and lobbyists, and them alltogether lure the masses by making them more promises – in exchange for giving up more own responsibility and more civil freedoms. We see that loss of freedoms and growth of state control on every social, public and private level in Western countries.

And we do run that race on tick, and have more and more and more debts, and more and more and more printers printing more and more and more FIAT money. To measure the diamter of thew snowball you now need to climb into orbit. Don'T know how wide it is, but I know this snowball has almost reached the peak with a big wall on top.

All this leads to a purely socialist state-run economy and society,, uniformistic, totalitarian, and collectivistic. We see that very strongly in the EU, and in what we call poltiical correctness and poltiical social engineering and genderism as well. The final goal of this developement is a non-sexual, gender-neutral society in communistic hibernism.

It leads to growing collectivism, and in principle one must realise that democracy is a form of cleverly deceived totalitarianism from all beginning on: The majority by the above described things democratically votes for redistribution and growing regulation of the shrinking number of netto payers. That means the shrinking number of netto payers gets forced to accept getting expropüriated more and mroe for the growing numbers of the „canaille“. The European wellfare state is the prime example. But you can also ask on how many things you arte forced to do and how many rules you are forced to follow and how many things is beign done by your state in the name of the people, without you or the people ever having been asked about them.

In establishing and enforcing this collective, where everything and all is only allowed to be just average, grey and featureless, and being and doing better gets punished by getting expropriated by taxes and growing inflation and low interests eating your savings (to pay for the spending excesses of the canaille), the destruction of the social core insitution of „family“ is key. Thus its relativisation in meaning, the eroding of its constitutionally guaranteed protected special status and privileges.

Also, we have a massive demographic problem, our societies are overaging. That means less tax payers who have to paye ever growing burdens. The financial snowballing system is in the process of collapsing, and what desperately is needed to continue with the snowballing a bit longer, are future tax payers: so, women must be returned to tax-generating jobs as fast as possible, and so the work and importance of being a mother gets ridiculed, marginalsied, and over here they now have started to call the term „mother“ a sexual discrimination with polans to even criminalise it (!!!), All this aims at discrediting family, family environment and mothers, to make room for mothers becoming tax-generators and throwing babies into the colletivising machinery as early as possible to train them to become good collective drones, with the wanted party ideology injected into their heads from first birthday on. Big Brother is nursing you. You should know that our union for educational professions is by far the most left-leaning union we have over here.

But we have so much evidence from medical and psychological studies, since the 50s and earlier, that show that it makes a difference, a significant, vital difference to young peoples' personality developement and health whether they have a male and a female role model at home, and get educated in and experience a protected family environment with one father and one mother at home, or get thrown into the stressing situation of a Kindergarden from – as they want it here – first birthday on. There are tremendous changes in the hormones' homoestasis, leading to health problems like asthma and neurodermithis, multiplying risks for later personality disorders or developing psychological symptoms like depressions, and younger studies, so I learned, show growing evidence for significant links with school problems, violence-related problems and concentration deficits at school. Plus, and this is also important, these chnages for several hormones playing a role here have been shown to be hereditary from first generation on. It must not even be stress due to noise, hectic or chaos, but exposition to a too feminised environment (where boys are not allowed to play in boys' way and must obey gentlier and softer according to more „female“ values) already is enough to transport e genetic dispiosiution for testosterone deficits to the direct offsprings one generaiton later.


What should be instead of a democracy? I do not know for sure, but slowly move forward in my views and thinking, especially in the past 1-2 years. Back to regional autonomy is key, away from centralization and superstate structures. Global trading of items that are present in the given local region, must be brought to a stop, such kind of trade is pretty much pointless, but does a lot of damage. As little state as possible there should be. I often have said in the past that imo democracies can only work in the very smallest of small community sizes. What I have read in the past two years, has given me strong support in these views. I refer not only to Hoppe or Ortner, I could also refer to Leopold Kohr or E.F. Schumacher.

For the coordination on higher levels, some sort of feudalism (my words) or monarchy (Hoppe) seems to be the more promsiing model. The canaille today does not care to ruin the states and finances by its demands, because nobody feels responsible for it and nobody owns the material possession of the others for which he claims the right to consume them and live at their cost. If you have nothing at stake, you tend to not care for wasting it. The money spend most pleasantly is the money that is not yours, but theirs. But if you own something, you have an interest to treat it well and manage it so that it is healthy and stable, will blossom and live on, and can be given from generation to generation. Democratic elections breed populism and liars, corrupted leaders and fraudsters. They do not foster and keep and save, they consume, eat it up, and then go into debts. Democracy in no way guarantees that those beign elected are competent or have moral integrity. The claimed superiority of democracy of monarchy here is – non-existent. But the disadvantages are massive: democracies in principle in all the West today are ochlocracies with some capitalistic predators picking some rosins for themselves. We all feel the price coming down on us in these times, we all can see the disaster reaching us that we all have voted to allow unfolding.

Within the democratic framework, There obviously is no chance that we survive this crash heading for us. The democratic framework is what has brought us here.

You know the American history quite well, I got the impression. I must not tell you that the foundign fathers for the most had anything but a positive opion of democracy, and nthat they feared and/or dispised the canaille. And throughout the past 2000 years there have been many thinkers thinking bad of it, and i have come around to finally see the reasons so very clear. Even the ancient Greeks already had immense problems with it, and Plato and Aristotle spoke out against it. In Athens they were so desperate at some time that they replaced democratic elections for offices and posts with a lottery where every male citizen had to participate, in order to battle corruption (which did not function either).

You also may think that I share some ground with the founding fathers. You are right. In fact, I more and more realise that I share very much common ground with their self-understanding, their doubt about the state, and their dislike for democracy. But the US is not like in the early days anymore, it now is more a democracy than a republic basing on the founding principles. Its also a very different kind of population now. And in europe, we turn democratically into a socialist state-directed economy drownming in debts like yours, with growing economic collapse, turning into totalitarian collective being enforced by the left and the EU. I often said there is a democracy-deficit in the EU. That is not really precise. There is a freedom-deficit in the EU, and it becomes worse and worse. Our lives get more and more regulated even on more and more private details. The costs for that become higher and higher, the reason becomes more and more absent, it all turns out to be more and more insane.

I recommend to you the book by Hoppe. He is easily the most uncompromised and merciless attacker and critic of the state in German language, and I understand that he has that reputation in America, too, where he lives. This is a well-founded overkill-callibred frontal attack on the false god of democracy. I share his criticism full-heartly since I learned about Hoppe early last year. With his diagnosis and reasons why he gives it this way and not any other way, I agree. However, his own idea of how to solve the issues, in parts is a bit naive, where he does not hide the typical naivety of the economical liberals who always trust in the self-healing power of the totally unregulated free market (ignoring that the free market seeks monopoles, fsavours greed and selfishness, and seeks said monopoles at the price of consumer-friendly competition). Hoppe has a very optmistic image of man there, I think – and that optimism about mankind I do not share when realising the cold I feel from shadow'S history. Hoppe calls his solution the the private-law society and recommends sezession of small regions to become autark and independant communities with as little superior state regulation as possible. I agree with parts of that too, obviously especially regarding the importance of focussing on local regions instead of states and supra-national govenrment bodies like the EU. All in all, this total economic liberalism is what I have a problem with. Where this has raised its head in our nations of today, it ended in abuse, almost allways, and tax payers needing to pay the bill.

This is just a draft of an idea, I know. You wanted to know what to place in place of democracy. I have no ready-to-use solution, but general ideas, that even ignore chnaging economic cvariables in global markets and demographic problems. But you may get my general direction I look at. But full details I still cannot deliver. Can anyone? I doubt that.

[Cybermat47]

^^^

Anti-democracy, anti-religion and anti-LGBT! You never cease to amaze, Skybird! :dead:

[Sailor Steve]

the opposite of democracy is not, as often claimed, dictatorship. The opposite of democracy - is freedom. .
Okay. Remove my suggestion. The question still stands - what form of government would you put in its place?
What should be instead of a democracy? I do not know for sure, but slowly move forward in my views and thinking, especially in the past 1-2 years. Back to regional autonomy is key, away from centralization and superstate structures.
Okay. Now we're getting somewhere. I agree to a point, that point being what I actually understand. I think Jefferson agreed with you on that.

"The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the states are independent as to everything within themselves, and united as to everything respecting foreign nations."
-Thomas Jefferson; letter to Gideon Granger, August 13, 1800

This is just a draft of an idea, I know. You wanted to know what to place in place of democracy. I have no ready-to-use solution, but general ideas, that even ignore chnaging economic cvariables in global markets and demographic problems. But you may get my general direction I look at. But full details I still cannot deliver. Can anyone? I doubt that.
I know I can't. Thanks for an honest answer. :sunny:

[Skybird]

Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide. - John Adams.

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.- Benjamin Franklin

And since above I was not sure whether the quote was by Franklin or Adams, it was Franklin for sure: When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic

Regarding a draft for how to replace democracy, not only the aspect of size of community and a mixture of local autarky and supra-regional feudalism is important, but also not to always repeat the same mistakes from the past - but to learn the lessons, finally. I forgot to refer to Jared Diamond again, whose observations on why societies rationally and sometimes even democratically decide to vote for their own collapse. These lessons must finally be learned, to avoid making these mistakes again. I once had a thread launched where I tried to summarise Diamonds conclusions on some things, Link: How to fail in survival for very rational reasons. (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=159065&highlight=Jared+Diamond). Again, the aspect of community sizes show up there. Democratic voteing prinmciples can only play a positive role in the smallest of community sizes: communites that are only so big that every member can oversee what all others are doiujng and how it affects him, and how his own deeds will and does affect all the others. That sets limits to population sizes in a self-governing community. It also demands that their is strict population control, a dynamically fluctuating but all in all stable balance between young and old and a maximum limit that is not allowed to get overstepped. Control of popultion size is not only wantred from an ecological perspective - politically, it also is a must. The chinese understood that correctly - they just concluded wrong consequences from it. I admit I currently have no idea on how to improve their apporoach (which they now give up). When you control population sizes, you need to find a workaround for the aging problem. Or you need to get rid of the exceeding population when the upper community limit has been reached. In thre past, wars and epidemics worked as a natural counterbalance. But these are options that forbid themselves to become accepted tools of population control, obviously.

If somebody has ideas, make it known.Chances are you get one peace Nobel price per year for the rest of your life.

[Betonov]

I declare myself president of the world with a council of elders with Steve, Jim and Neal and also August as the opposition leader. Plus Tribesman for grounding ideas that are too high flying.

[mookiemookie]

We go from marriage equality to musings on the merits of democracy in just two pages. Wow.

[Catfish]

The thing to allow gay marriage, is just a technical vehicle to help a common law marriage have the same legal rights, as one between male and female persons.
If a married m/f couple has certain rights regarding taxes, why should not m/m or f/f couples living together have that.


OT:
Regarding democracy Skybird is closer than you think, our western 'democracies' are not real ones of course.

How can a common man influence the government, or its executive decisions, if all 'parties' have the same programme and offer no alternative. In the US (and Germany) there is no direct referendum possible.

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

Apart from that you do not need conspiracies to tell that western nations are not really governed by politicians - changing every 4/5 years how do you plan for your country's future. The undeclared drone war is illegal by international and US law, as is the conduct of aggressive wars and killing civilians as an 'unfortunate side effect'.
Secret services do not follow public or international law, and the constitution they claim to work for, often does not even know about their doings.

[Skybird]

98% of decisions a government makes have not been voted on by the people in last general elections. The government creates facts and leaves it to the people to pay for them.

80% of laws in Europe/Germany, are demands by the EU central committee. EU law demands such proposals to be turned into national law, the parliaments have no right to veto them or not to wave them through.

Everyday life is regulated from A to Z and gagged by laws, taxes, and rules, not to mention demands of political correctness and anonymous pressure by the social crowd. With the EU, it is especially bad, deeper and deeper it drills its penetrant nose into the most private business of ordinary citizen and lectures and orders them around. Less salt in bread. Water-saving shower-heads. Accepting policies that you do not want to support, because you get criminalised if you do not embrace them against your opinion. Totalitarianism is absolutely accpetable - if it is on behalf of the left revolution, the Gutmenschentum, the eco-surrogate religion, and so on. Some of the worst verbal excesses and demands for dictatorial supression of people with unwanted vierws, I hear coming from the lips of - not the conservative (if we still have some of them in Germany), but the left and the Green. On behalf of their ideologic goals, every form of dictatorship and supression seems to be acceptable.

And nobody protests against that. They get away with it.

Well. It will collapse, mayb ein ten years, maybe in twenty. The stalelites of the USSR economically were in ruins already in thge early 70s - but then it took another two decades almost to make them fall one by one. So,lk it may take more time then I consider pleasant, but IO am convinced that the EU and the Europe will collapse sooner or later, and necessarily will desintegrate over the clash with reality.

A 3 minute piece with Hoppe on Germany'S fall beginning with the founding of the national state. A nice reminder of what has made German culture, arts and philosophy that great in the world. It was no centralised power. It was - competition between small regions. When that was given up, the decline began.
In English.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gn0cLvkzHU&list=UUsL45MiUqPd4dOSt0GjGvmg&index=4

[Gerald]

^What has this text in common with gay marriage?, :hmmm:

[Takeda Shingen]

Everyday life is regulated from A to Z and gagged by laws, taxes, and rules, not to mention demands of political correctness and anonymous pressure by the social crowd. With the EU, it is especially bad, deeper and deeper it drills its penetrant nose into the most private business of ordinary citizen and lectures and orders them around. Less salt in bread. Water-saving shower-heads. Accepting policies that you do not want to support, because you get criminalised if you do not embrace them against your opinion. Totalitarianism is absolutely accpetable - if it is on behalf of the left revolution, the Gutmenschentum, the eco-surrogate religion, and so on. Some of the worst verbal excesses and demands for dictatorial supression of people with unwanted vierws, I hear coming from the lips of - not the conservative (if we still have some of them in Germany), but the left and the Green. On behalf of their ideologic goals, every form of dictatorship and supression seems to be acceptable.

But aren't you advocating the same thing, albeit at the community as opposed to national level? There is no end to the number of things that you have talked about regulating in the past, and in this thread in particular you have even discussed regulating repoduction, dealing with the 'aging problem', which you left ominously ambiguous, and 'getting rid of the exceeding population'. What you have said is that you want to do away with this (alleged) totalitarianism. What you replace it with is your own brand; a real totalitarianism, but one that suits you.

And all this because you don't like the idea of gay marraige.

[Skybird]

^What has this text in common with gay marriage?, :hmmm:
I put it into a wider context, while most prefer to deal with it as an isolated, singular thing that is disconnected from any wider social contexts. The interludium with Steve strayed off a bit much, okay - but that happens all the time in GT. Still, the gay marriage issue is related to the relativization of "family", and that again is linked to left ideology trying to organise society in one big, socialistially-oriented collective. You cannot have a rule by a strong socialistical Big Brother if oyu have strong family ties, you must weaken these family ties and fill the vacuum with collectivism. In modenr times, it is socialism trying this. But in the past, the same has been tried by fascist and nazi regimes, and communist dictatorship as well. Family ties also were tried to break open and left vulnerable for political ideology during the culture revolution in China.

Intact families - are the most natural and basic resistence to any form of rulership by states, no matter their regimes. Nothing can give better immunity to chidlkren against ideologic propaganda, despair, bad fate, then the experienc eof a protected childhood in intact families. Nothing creates bigger damages in children's soul and exposes them more vulonerable to radical propaganda and hate and ideoloigy, than families/parents failing in giving them this experience of love and protection. - what the hell is so difficult in understanding and seeing that???

It'S all such an old story... People just have forgotten, that's why it appears as something new, or when considering reactions to myself: as something that is just tin foil conspiracy.

Feminism, genderism, family deconstruction, gay marriage, women quota - nothing of that is a singular, isolated event. It all is linked to all others, it all is symptoms of not several but just one big ideologically motivated social engineering experiment.

I predict that the damages from this international reeducation and brainwashing project will be more costly and will last longer and will be more difficult to repair and will be far more devastating and destructive inside the heads of people, than the human and economic costs of WWII.

Since I rate it as that much more dangerous and damaging, I am so unforgiving about it. The evil in WWII was easy to see and to identify, and then to be shot at. The evil today - smiles friendly right into your face. Bombing and shooting it seems to be no option. But I will not rule out that when the collapse has advanced far enough, we nevertheless get to the bombing and shooting stage once again.

And then everybody will yell how innocent he is and everybody will claim that he could not have known. Well, if people like me could have forseen these things coming, why couldn't have you. You better find a good lame excuse for the time your grown-up children start asking questions.

[MH]

So much for "liberty" and "justice" in democracies. :down: There is a solid reason why it all breaks down for us and turns against us. Bankers and capitalism are just two reasons - and not even the most important ones. And many thinkers and philosphers in the West, back to the times of the ancient Greek, knew about the rotten nature of democracy all too well. To gloss over it and glorify it like we do today is a relatively modern turn in history only. And it holds no solid grounds. So you are all for the rule of the worthy voters....those with the adequate intellect right?
I wander what criteria would have to be :-?
(sort of recall some article you have posted?

I pass that and prefer the current mess...that looks more like more freedom to me.:haha:o

BW
yes you contradict your self a lot .

....and what is your issue with gays that you have to go to all this mind gymnastics about them.:-?
I believe you spend too much time thinking about those issues and it is having bad effect on you.

[Takeda Shingen]

It'S all such an old story... People just have forgotten, that's why it appears as something new, or when considering reactions to myself: as something that is just tin foil conspiracy.

Ironic given that what you follow with is four paragraphs of tin foil conspiracy. Emphasis mine:

Feminism, genderism, family deconstruction, gay marriage, women quota - nothing of that is a singular, isolated event. It all is linked to all others, it all is symptoms of not several but just one big ideologically motivated social engineering experiment.

I predict that the damages from this international reeducation and brainwashing project will be more costly and will last longer and will be more difficult to repair and will be far more devastating and destructive inside the heads of people, than the human and economic costs of WWII.

Since I rate it as that much more dangerous and damaging, I am so unforgiving about it. The evil in WWII was easy to see and to identify, and then to be shot at. The evil today - smiles friendly right into your face. Bombing and shooting it seems to be no option. But I will not rule out that when the collapse has advanced far enough, we nevertheless get to the bombing and shooting stage once again.

And then everybody will yell how innocent he is and everybody will claim that he could not have known. Well, if people like me could have forseen these things coming, why couldn't have you. You better find a good lame excuse for the time your grown-up children start asking questions.

For someone who who claims he is not a conspiracy theorist, you sure talk like one.

[Sailor Steve]

"Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic."
-Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Skybird, I find it interesting that you have openly attacked me several times in the past for my feelings about freedom and liberty, and yet here you are proclaiming that freedom is more important than democracy. That's fine. What I don't see as fine is that you are proclaiming freedom in a thread where you are also preaching just the opposite. If you truly believed in liberty you would be hailing gay marriage, not opposing it. There is only one true liberty - the freedom of the individual to choose for himself.

[mookiemookie]

words

You harp on the definition of "family" but will only recognize the definition that has come about fairly recently in human history. What about polygamy? That was common in biblical times. Does a man and his concubines make up a family? People sure thought so then. The Romans considered slaves as part of the family. Were they?

You ignore the fact that the idea of what constitutes a "family" has changed over the millennia.

[Hottentot]

You harp on the definition of "family" but will only recognize the definition that has come about fairly recently in human history. What about polygamy? That was common in biblical times. Does a man and his concubines make up a family? People sure thought so then. The Romans considered slaves as part of the family. Were they?

You ignore the fact that the idea of what constitutes a "family" has changed over the millennia.

Good points in that post. Made me think how the whole word "family" itself is a very culture and language specific thing. When I talk about "family" in Finnish, I have two different words. One to describe my immediate family (the people I'm living with: spouse, parents or in my case the dog) and one for describing the whole thing including cousins, grandparents etc., but in English I would (as far as I know) use the word "family" to describe both of those.

[Sailor Steve]

...and one for describing the whole thing including cousins, grandparents etc., but in English I would (as far as I know) use the word "family" to describe both of those.
In America at least we call that our "extended" family.

[Hottentot]

In America at least we call that our "extended" family.

I suppose you'd need to have some sort of definition and was pretty sure when writing that post that I either didn't know it or didn't use it frequently enough to remember it. Thanks for clarifying that one, Steve. :)

I still see it includes the word "family", though. Whereas in Finnish we use two words that don't even resemble one another ("perhe" for immediate family and "suku" for extended family. "Kin" might be a close equivalent in English to the latter, methinks.)

Edited to add anecdote I remembered about this. I was once working with two Ethiopians that didn't seem to know each other very well and was quite surprised when one of them told me that the other was "her family". It took a while for my brain to start thinking in English and understand she meant that he was her cousin, not someone she had lived with.

[Tribesman]

I was going to comment on Skybirds posts, but he appears to have done all my work for me:03:

[Skybird]

Steve,

"Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic."
-Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Skybird, I find it interesting that you have openly attacked me several times in the past for my feelings about freedom and liberty, and yet here you are proclaiming that freedom is more important than democracy. That's fine. What I don't see as fine is that you are proclaiming freedom in a thread where you are also preaching just the opposite. If you truly believed in liberty you would be hailing gay marriage, not opposing it. There is only one true liberty - the freedom of the individual to choose for himself.

I recall those debates, namely the one on the filibustering. And of course the tolerance paradoxon thing.

My criticism of the practice of filibustering I still hold up. However, where we maybe went beyond that (I admit I have no complete and detailed memory on it anymore) and you said - at least I recall it that way - the US were not found as a democracy but a republic, and I said the Us is a democracy, obviously you were right on the historic part indeed, while I was right that now the US is more a democracy like any other, than the republic of the past. That'S how I have it in memory, and if that memory is correct, then maybe we both failed in making clear we were referring do different eras in history. But I admit that I was not aware that much of the founding fathers attitude indeed - as I said some postings earlier, I got busy with examining democracy more closely in books just around 2 years ago. In these 2 years I was forced to make some dramatic changes on my former views and opinions. Like once I was a defender of the EU and now am a bitter enemy. Or 12 years ago I was tolerant on Islam and tried to gloss over it, now I am an uncompromised opponent to it, and to any theistic organised religion. However, on America not founded as a democracy, you probably was more ight in that part of the debate than I was. I recognise that with the input I had since then.

So, different to what peopems ometimes claim abiout me, I am capable of and do chnage my views and opinions sometimes. But I need good reasons to do so.

On the paradox of tolerance, I still score you as a technical K.O., sorry. It is a dilemma that to defend tolerance you cannot afford to show unlimited tolerance, but need to accept a certain limitation to it in order to save the better part of it. Same for freedom. Unlimited freedom there cannot be as long as you are not living alone on a planet. The question is what an acceptable relation is between duties and rights, rules and freedoms. ThatS what it is about. even in any ideal society of the future. Any form of social interaction between humans needs to obey a certain minimum of rules, you cannot avoid that.

I take it that we both can agree that the limitations of national and supranational entities of today are limiting freedom too much. I somewhat doubt that you would follow me in my ideas of how small communities indeed should be to be "ideal" in the meaning of what I have outlined earlier, I think in much smaller scales there than the foundign fathers or than you give me the impression that you do. Well, with some good will people like us maybe still would find a balance setting that is a compromise we both could live with and that kost would find beneficial.

Still, what I said about family relations and gay marriage, in principle remains true in social communities of big and small sizes alike . The thing with discrimination it means for singles, remains the same. The importance of families as the utmost vital social core cell of a social communities as we know them in most of the world, remains the same. And thew realities of the ideological battlefields of the present in this global conflict about power, also stay the same. - I am aware that total freedom is only an abstraction, an ideal and utopia, something that gives us direction at which to look - but realities need some more pragmatism in practical implementation. He who tries to defend absolutes, will loose absolutely, if I may lend nd slightly change that quote by Sun Tzu. I am not willing to help compromising the institution of "family", and I also stick with my criticism of genderism and feminist quota regulations. Because how big or small a community is, is unimportant to assessing the importance of these questions. In the Muslim world, we have a massive failing of family, instead we have patriarchalic tyranny by fathers and subordinated mother-slaves, which leaves young men in deep inner crisis and vulnerability for religious ideology: Islam and patriachalic structures both play hand in hand in making the Muslim sphere that biog problem to the world that it is, I always have said that. In Japan, you can observe social distortions and psychohygienic consequences from derailed family structures ainsce after WWII as well, it would lead to far to start a detailed discussion on that now, I just cut iot short and say: they have biog problems too, due to overaging - and family-related probolems that leave young people in deep inner conflicts and a state of social isolation and loneliness - medical ndices on psychohygienic variables show that. - But when we destroy the family in the West and replace it with a socialist'S wet dream of collectivism, we seriously expect no consequences from that? We expect that in todays difficult world couples will suddenly choose to get more babies again so that the pool of future tax payers to pay for our financial sins of the present will fill up? Do you mean to be serious?

We need no dysfunctional families that create social wrecks, and we do not a state claiming that it is the state'S priimary duty to care for children ( a statement by a German socialist some weeks ago). We do need functional family environments were it is understood - as it is written black on white in the German Basic Law! - that educaiton of the children is the most important and first duty and right - not of the state, but the natural parents.

We complain about lacking values and misbehavior, violence, and the young being overly aggressive, lazy and what else there is. We complain about a culture of false media idols, of disinhibition, or excesses of street violence. And so iuch more. But we think we must not look at the families when checking for reasons and causes? We cannot be serious!

I have many school teachers in my social circle (Freundeskreis), it just happens to be like that, I cannot help it. Plenty of stories I hear about juveniles having problems, falling into personal crisis, ruining the future. And always "family" is the most important key variable to look at. ALWAYS. The importance of it cannot be overestimated - additionally to what I said earlier about the need for children to have a mother and a father to serve as role models for what is female and what is male. You cannot compensate for that need by letting two gays adopt a foreign children, like you cannot compensate for it by sending little children to Kindergarden at the age of two, even one as the socialists demand to become mandatory over here. It then even causes psychological and medical long term health problems.

Freedom is an ideal, and we both agree on its importance and noblesse. But you think since it is an ideal, it must be realized, or could be realized in an absolute manner. I am aware that this is not possible, and some more pragmatism is needed. Thats' why you entangled yourself in Poppers tolerance paradoxon and could not escape it, and if your thinking prevails in our society, your demand for absolute tolerance/freedom will make sure that both get destroyed. I am aware that Popper is absolutely right in his description, and some rules are necessary nevertheless to defend most of freedom and tolerance - that "most" of it that is the maximum possible to realize in this world .

So you can go on and argue in absolutes about freedom, but it will lead you nowhere. You only help to destroy what you claim you want to defend.

So, to me it is unimportant whether we live in this or that society, my utopia, Hoppe'S one, or yours, or the present society we have. The principle wrongness of eroding family as a social core cell that the community must have utmost interest in to protect and to foster, remains to stay wrong. And that'S why I am against equalising the status and material benefits of homo and hetero marriages and families. The principle injustice that it is a discrimination to not grant the same rights to singles if all others benefit from these privileges, also remains to be that:_ discrimination of singles. You do not contribute anything of merits to a community by being homosexual or live with somebody in one household. You do not deserve any reward therefore. Families deserve our protection and recognition, and a privileged status, because a society where there is no families has no future, where as a society with intact family does have a future. Giving it a specially protected status is in the interest of all, therefore: couples, homos, heteros, singles. Also, raising children is a huge work, and a massive, cost-intensive investement.

Say, if I would say: instead of giving homo couples the same tax reliefs and financial benefits like hetero couples and from which singles are excluded, instead of this then do not give any couple any tax reliefs and financial benefits at all as long as the hetero couple never has risen children of itself - what would you say, would you accept that? It would be the cleaniest solution, imo, I am all for it. No difference made between homos, heteros, and singles, no merits of theirs recognised, none of them gets any relief and benefits at all - only hetero couples who have had babies and raised them over years of their lives and with their money get appreciation and recognition by granting them certain financial and tax privileges, as assistance as well as a recognition of their contribution to the community's most basic interests. Would you accept that? It would render marriage meaningless as far as fiscal policies are involved. And I remind you: I am strictlty against adoption rights for homosexual couples if the child being adopted is not brought into the relationship by one of the partners, from an earlier relationship from which he child stems.

This I would sign immediately, I do not see it as perfect, but as the compromise i cannot avoid: I could accept it. Could you?

On conditions for adoption, I am adamant: intact families/couples only, stable social and economic conditions, one women as mothers, one man as father. No singles. No poor. No social crisis families. No homos. This is non-negotiable for me. Since infertility is spreading in the West, there are more couples who want a child but cannot have one by themselves, then there are orphants. So it is no issue at all to hold up these standards for adoptions. And a homosexual man is no woman, and a lesbian woman is no man. I insist on orphants being given in to families that are intact and where there is surely a mother (female) and a father (male).

[AVGWarhawk]

I was going to comment on Skybirds posts, but he appears to have done all my work for me:03:

Delegation.

[Takeda Shingen]

Still, what I said about family relations and gay marriage, in principle remains true in social communities of big and small sizes alike . The thing with discrimination it means for singles, remains the same.

You say this every time the argument comes around, and then you run away from it when someone asks you how granting the same rights to all individuals discriminates against anyone. Until you can come up with a satisfactory answer for that, the rest of your argument folds, as this is the foundation for your entire point of view.

In terms of you trying to paint a nice face on your ideal society, you need to address the fact that your so-called freedom is actually something more repressive than North Korea.

You try to present yourself as this:

http://rickrozoff.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/voltaire.png

But then you go on in detail and come across like this:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxlj03cGl61r4vcabo1_500.jpg

I don't know if you are being intentionally evasive and inconsistent, or if you are just playing games with us but it is, to say the least, odd.

[MH]

So you wrote all this prophecy of doom and the clean solution is about taxes?
Why don't you start some sort of singels movement and I will go with the divorced one..:yeah:
On second thought maybe this whole wall of text is beyond me.
It can't be for real imust be missing somthing important. :o

[CaptainHaplo]

But aren't you advocating the same thing, albeit at the community as opposed to national level?

Takeda - in this I have to agree with Skybird. Its only appropriate that governance take place closest to those governed. Thus - lets say a "community" - or as is reasonable in the US as it is today - at the state level - gay marraige is banned (as it is in many states). If someone does not like that - or wishes to marry within their gender - no one is stopping them from moving to another state where such actions are legal.

If it were done at the community level - so much the better - people move down the street. Heck - people move for less important things - like to get out the city limits (thus avoiding paying city taxes), or to put their child in a school they prefer.

@ the general thread...

The answer is not to regulate marriage one way or the other.
The answer is to get the Federal Government out of marriage entirely.

[Takeda Shingen]

Takeda - in this I have to agree with Skybird. Its only appropriate that governance take place closest to those governed. Thus - lets say a "community" - or as is reasonable in the US as it is today - at the state level - gay marraige is banned (as it is in many states). If someone does not like that - or wishes to marry within their gender - no one is stopping them from moving to another state where such actions are legal.

If it were done at the community level - so much the better - people move down the street. Heck - people move for less important things - like to get out the city limits (thus avoiding paying city taxes), or to put their child in a school they prefer.

Right. So, instead of rights for all, we have rights for some in some places in the name of preserving institutionalized discrimination. However, since you quoted that particular line of mine, I am curious as to how you agree with Skybird's design of society.

@ the general thread...

The answer is not to regulate marriage one way or the other.
The answer is to get the Federal Government out of marriage entirely.

Maybe we can get all the government out of marriage and avoid said discrimination.

[Cybermat47]

I am an uncompromised opponent to it, and to any theistic organised religion..



What other type of Religion is there? And what did Buddhism do to make you hate it? :hmmm:

[Sailor Steve]

I recall those debates, namely the one on the filibustering. And of course the tolerance paradoxon thing.
I don't recall discussing filibustering with you at all. I said you have freedom or you don't, and you accused me of adhering blindly to an ideal, which I tried to explain wasn't true. And I understand your point about tolerance. Potential threats must be watched closely and prepared for.

However, where we maybe went beyond that (I admit I have no complete and detailed memory on it anymore) and you said - at least I recall it that way - the US were not found as a democracy but a republic, and I said the Us is a democracy, obviously you were right on the historic part indeed, while I was right that now the US is more a democracy like any other, than the republic of the past.
Well, purists and conservatives will argue the point of Republic vs Democracy, and they'll be right, up to the point where a Republic as a subset of the category Democracy. Any time the people rule themselves it is a Democracy. A Republic happens when the population is large enough that all the people can't possibly take direct part in government, so they have to have representatives do it for them. In modern Republics we elect those representatives. In ancient Rome the representatives were family heads, kind of like the Mafia.

That'S how I have it in memory, and if that memory is correct, then maybe we both failed in making clear we were referring do different eras in history. But I admit that I was not aware that much of the founding fathers attitude indeed - as I said some postings earlier, I got busy with examining democracy more closely in books just around 2 years ago. In these 2 years I was forced to make some dramatic changes on my former views and opinions. Like once I was a defender of the EU and now am a bitter enemy. Or 12 years ago I was tolerant on Islam and tried to gloss over it, now I am an uncompromised opponent to it, and to any theistic organised religion. However, on America not founded as a democracy, you probably was more ight in that part of the debate than I was. I recognise that with the input I had since then.
I can't answer any of that without starting a whole new discussion. Suffice it for now to say that I agree with you in large part, disagreeing mainly in details.

So, different to what peopems ometimes claim abiout me, I am capable of and do chnage my views and opinions sometimes. But I need good reasons to do so.
Point taken, and apologies for being overly critical.

On the paradox of tolerance, I still score you as a technical K.O., sorry.
I have to object here on the principle that if it's about winning then the argument is already lost. As my favorite quote by Joseph Joubert goes,
"The aim of argument, or of discussion, should be not victory, but progress."

It is a dilemma that to defend tolerance you cannot afford to show unlimited tolerance, but need to accept a certain limitation to it in order to save the better part of it. Same for freedom. Unlimited freedom there cannot be as long as you are not living alone on a planet. The question is what an acceptable relation is between duties and rights, rules and freedoms. ThatS what it is about. even in any ideal society of the future. Any form of social interaction between humans needs to obey a certain minimum of rules, you cannot avoid that.
Believe it or not, I agree with that, and always have. I've quoted more than once the old saying "Your freedom ends where my nose begins". If you're going to live in any kind of society you have to set limits for yourself. Since so many are unable to do that, we have to set limits externally, in the form of laws.

I see the opposite as being true as well. I think it's possible to go too far, setting rules limiting what individuals can do based on the thought of what evil might happen, rather than limiting what is happening. Do that and I think you cross the line into the trap of attempting to legislate morality.

I am not willing to help compromising the institution of "family", and I also stick with my criticism of genderism and feminist quota regulations.
The problem with that has already been pointed out by others. The definition of what constitutes a "family" has changed over the years. Another principle I believe government needs to adhere to is that of Plato: "Do not forbid that which you lack the power to prohibit."

But when we destroy the family in the West and replace it with a socialist'S wet dream of collectivism, we seriously expect no consequences from that? We expect that in todays difficult world couples will suddenly choose to get more babies again so that the pool of future tax payers to pay for our financial sins of the present will fill up? Do you mean to be serious?
In this case we only have your word for that being what will happen. The basic principle here is equality among adults, and you seem to be the only one who sees that dire end result. I see a changing definition for a changing time, and I think it's a necessary one.

We need no dysfunctional families that create social wrecks, and we do not a state claiming that it is the state'S priimary duty to care for children ( a statement by a German socialist some weeks ago). We do need functional family environments were it is understood - as it is written black on white in the German Basic Law! - that educaiton of the children is the most important and first duty and right - not of the state, but the natural parents.
Well, you can put me into that "social wreck" category, and a lot of others as well. As far as I can see, allowing gays to marry legally won't change my status one bit, and wouldn't change it if I had been happily married for the past 39 years rather than divorced for 28 of those years. As I paraphrased Jefferson earlier on his "twenty gods or no god" writing, it doesn't affect me at all, and I don't see how it affects my children or grandchildren. The biggest boon to the change of status from "Civil Union" to "Marriage" would be in the inheritance tax, and since I think the inheritance tax is wrongful theft by government anyway, I see gay marriage as a good thing socially, just as I see any shortening of government control and legalized theft as a good thing.

We complain about lacking values and misbehavior, violence, and the young being overly aggressive, lazy and what else there is. We complain about a culture of false media idols, of disinhibition, or excesses of street violence. And so iuch more. But we think we must not look at the families when checking for reasons and causes? We cannot be serious!
Of course families should look to themselves before blaming other causes. That said, what do you propose? Do we make it illegal somehow to worship false idols? Do we attempt to create laws forcing inhibition? Violence is already against the law. Yes, we can blame the families, but how do you enforce that? Create laws forcing couples to stay together? Forcing couples to love each other? Not possible.

The importance of it cannot be overestimated - additionally to what I said earlier about the need for children to have a mother and a father to serve as role models for what is female and what is male.
You say the importance cannot be overestimated. Again, how would you enforce that? There used to be laws against divorce. They didn't work. In ancient Rome Caesar Augustus passed a law placing heavy taxes on bachelors, in an attempt to get them to marry. We have similar but more subtle tax laws today. Married couples get a lower "Joint Filing" tax rate, plus extra breaks for each child. Here in Utah that backfires, because couples have always been encouraged to have lots of children. The result is that many couples with large families pay no taxes, and single people end up paying for the education for all those kids.

You cannot compensate for that need by letting two gays adopt a foreign children, like you cannot compensate for it by sending little children to Kindergarden at the age of two, even one as the socialists demand to become mandatory over here. It then even causes psychological and medical long term health problems.
I understand your point here, but what is the alternative? Should children not be adopted? Only adopted by heterosexual couples? Should parents who later turn to a gay lifestyle be forced to give up their natural children? As soon as you start talking about drawing a line you end up having to talk about where to draw it. And the next one. And the next one.

Freedom is an ideal, and we both agree on its importance and noblesse. But you think since it is an ideal, it must be realized, or could be realized in an absolute manner. I am aware that this is not possible, and some more pragmatism is needed.
I've never said otherwise. I said I saw the ideal as a starting point. Everybody has a starting point. Mine was that freedom was an ideal that must be striven for at all costs. Yours was that freedom is an ideal that can be swept aside whenever it gets in the way of what we think "needs to be done". At least that's how I saw the difference between us.

Thats' why you entangled yourself in Poppers tolerance paradoxon and could not escape it, and if your thinking prevails in our society, your demand for absolute tolerance/freedom will make sure that both get destroyed. I am aware that Popper is absolutely right in his description, and some rules are necessary nevertheless to defend most of freedom and tolerance - that "most" of it that is the maximum possible to realize in this world .
No, you believe Popper is absolutely right. This may be because his reasoning appeals to you, or because it agrees with what you already believed. I can see his, and your, point, but I argued that the opposite is also true. I see in both of you the potential to tamper with freedom to the point where you create an absolute tyranny, all for our own good. That's why I said at the time I percieved you as an enemy, intellectually if not physically. It's easy to make that comparison, but as always I have to ask: Where do you draw that line?

So you can go on and argue in absolutes about freedom, but it will lead you nowhere. You only help to destroy what you claim you want to defend.
And we're back to that. I see the opposite that you fail to. You seek to destroy freedom in the name of defending "society". How are you different from the people you seek to defend it from?

So, to me it is unimportant whether we live in this or that society, my utopia, Hoppe'S one, or yours, or the present society we have...
Also, raising children is a huge work, and a massive, cost-intensive investement.
I'm well aware of that. I have two of my own. The problem I see with your whole line of reasoning here is that I see no evidence that allowing this change in the law is going to affect any of that negatively. Homosexual couples currently living together are no more "singles" than heterosexual couples living together. I've seen the whole "children" argument, and have even made it myself in the past. The problem is that many straight couples, while seeing the likelyhood of that possibility, don't get married just to have children, just as no one has sex just to have children, even though that's the whole purpose of its existence.

Say, if I would say: instead of giving homo couples the same tax reliefs and financial benefits like hetero couples and from which singles are excluded, instead of this then do not give any couple any tax reliefs and financial benefits at all as long as the hetero couple never has risen children of itself - what would you say, would you accept that?
And I remind you: I am strictlty against adoption rights for homosexual couples if the child being adopted is not brought into the relationship by one of the partners, from an earlier relationship from which he child stems...This I would sign immediately, I do not see it as perfect, but as the compromise i cannot avoid: I could accept it. Could you?
It's not a bad idea, barring my personal opinion that all income tax is evil anyway.

On conditions for adoption, I am adamant: intact families/couples only, stable social and economic conditions, one women as mothers, one man as father. No singles. No poor. No social crisis families. No homos. This is non-negotiable for me. Since infertility is spreading in the West, there are more couples who want a child but cannot have one by themselves, then there are orphants. So it is no issue at all to hold up these standards for adoptions. And a homosexual man is no woman, and a lesbian woman is no man. I insist on orphants being given in to families that are intact and where there is surely a mother (female) and a father (male).
I see problems there. First, there are never enough families willing to adopt all the children that need it. If, as you say, infertility is spreading, I haven't seen it in the adoption rolls. There are many more children needing families than there are families to take them in. Maybe this is changing, but not fast enough.

Second, how exactly do you know that gay and lesbian couples make bad parents? I have read more than a few accounts of children raised by the same who say they grew up to be perfectly well-adjust adults, and heterosexual for the most part.

Third, just because you hand an orphan over to a heterosexual couple, what do you do when they get divorced five years later? I think in this case it is you who are setting your ideals too high, and trying to make an impossible dream come true.

[soopaman2]

I am going to use language the ultraconservatives, and Jesus freaks are used to, most the words I will use is used by them frequently, so pardon me.


I am sorry if the "faggots" offend you, but we live in a country where we do not legislate sexuality, move to N korea and fellate kim Jong Un with Dennis Rodman if you want that. They got approved hairstyles, right up some peoples dictatoral alley

I am sorry if you find "queers" immoral, but not all of us are Christians, and the first amendment not only guarantees your right to be a follower of Jesus, as much as my right to not be.

I am so sick of ultraconservatives trying to shove their beliefs up my backside.

I have just as much a right to be free from your dumbass religion, as you do to practice it.

I believe in Jesus, I just think he would treat most of todays so called "religious" people today, like he treated the money changers in the temple.

Alot of Christians in this country oughta be ashamed of themselves with how they treat people who do not believe as they do, it is almost as bad as how Muslims treat their non-believers.

[Platapus]

In America at least we call that our "extended" family.


If we are lucky we can call them our distant family. With emphasis on the distant. :yeah:

[u crank]

If we are lucky we can call them our distant family. With emphasis on the distant. :yeah:

:har:

Could you be any more correct. Well in some cases. :O:

[Skybird]

Oh dear, we end up with a huge amount of open ends again that to master in a dialogue becomes more and more complex and finally probably impossible, like in the past. I therefore answer only to some of your comments


Believe it or not, I agree with that, and always have. I've quoted more than once the old saying "Your freedom ends where my nose begins". If you're going to live in any kind of society you have to set limits for yourself. Since so many are unable to do that, we have to set limits externally, in the form of laws.
And I always understood your claim, from beginning on. But the continuing argument of yours I saw in discrepancy with your claim back then. I saw a man claiming to do one thing, but actually doing something different. I decided to go with what I saw him doing, not what he was claiming to do. That always was the core of the conflict as I have seen it, always.


I see the opposite as being true as well. I think it's possible to go too far, setting rules limiting what individuals can do based on the thought of what evil might happen, rather than limiting what is happening. Do that and I think you cross the line into the trap of attempting to legislate morality.

That fear is justified, and yes, a state craving for more and more control of his people is a threat. Any ideology and its manifestation that claims more and mor e control is dangerous: states, organisation, religions, anything. However, it makes them strong to the outside - the great temptation . Also, such a state is the consequent result of what I criticise: people want to get nannied and vote for the party that promises to nanny them and run a big redistribution program to pay for that. In return the citizens allow the state to implement more and more legislations to nanny them in the right way, which is the politically correct way, since it does not disturb the collective peace and does not question the very system. That way, politically correct tolerance for politically correct things - threatens the very basis of tolerance itself. This kind of misled tolerance necessarily must lead to growing totalitarianism and collectivism. I must not see the bitter end to conclude that is is running that way - the logic of the chain of thoughts as well as what I can already see taking place in our societies is enough. I already try to brake when I see there is a car in my way - I do not wait until I impacted to conclude that it would have been a good idea to brake while maybe there still was time.

What is the reason for science, learning knowledge and education, thinking about things, if not to try plotting a save course through the future instead of just passively waiting to see what will happen by itself? The original argument we had regarding this detail was either about WWII and Nazism, or Islamic radicalism, I do not remember which of that dispute was first. Well, I see the historic precedents and make conclusions on their grounds. I am not willing to let history repeat past mistakes once again, and just hope that this time it will go out better. The evilness of Nazism is beyond question, history has proven it, the totalitarian and inhumane nature of Islam has been demonstrated by history since over 1 thousand years and is fixed in its writings as well - I must not give any of the two the space to unfold and see how it ends. I know - we all can know - how it will end. We have been there before. Why must we go back there?


The problem with that has already been pointed out by others. The definition of what constitutes a "family" has changed over the years. Another principle I believe government needs to adhere to is that of Plato: "Do not forbid that which you lack the power to prohibit."
I see it last but not least from a psychologists and psychohygienic POV, sorry, but that was my profession once. And I question the new understandings of family, from right that perspective. these new definitions of "family" serve economical interest,a dn the serve ideological socialist interests - but they stand in wide violation of much of what development psychology since the 60s knows for sure about childrens' relation to mothers, and phases of early childhood and their importance, and in general children'S psychological development of cognitive and emotional abilities. That so many children live in a world now where these elem,ental insights are being ignored by the living environment, is major part of the reasons why they lack orientation and healthy development. The lack of qualities is the reason why they turn to misleading false idols from the media. Because children and juveniles need and actively seek idols and mentors and things that give the orientation and to test their skills against and to rub their character against to find out where their limits are, and were their strengths and weaknesses are, and where they end and others and society begin. Last but not least feminised pedagogics denies them - especially boys - these opportunities, because it is "too dangeorus", too "rude", too "male". Well, Steve, whole books are published about these psychological things, from babies and mothers to teenagers'S revolt years. I can only point one or two fingers at it and must leave it to that, else I would end up writing all night here.

Well, you can put me into that "social wreck" category, and a lot of others as well. As far as I can see, allowing gays to marry legally won't change my status one bit, and wouldn't change it if I had been happily married for the past 39 years rather than divorced for 28 of those years. As I paraphrased Jefferson earlier on his "twenty gods or no god" writing, it doesn't affect me at all, and I don't see how it affects my children or grandchildren.

It will. They live in that changing culture you accept to change in the way iot does. I question that it is wise to allow all these changes, and I question the value and positive nature of some of these changes. Not every realities we allow to manifest themselves are good ones, sometime sits better if we would try to change them while there still is time, and to prevent some things realising. As Lao Tse said: a wise man tries to tackle problems while they still are small, not when they are grown up.


The biggest boon to the change of status from "Civil Union" to "Marriage" would be in the inheritance tax, and since I think the inheritance tax is wrongful theft by government anyway, I see gay marriage as a good thing socially, just as I see any shortening of government control and legalized theft as a good thing.
Ah, Thoreau, I assume. Well. to me the one has little to do with the other. I can thunk like Thoreau - and still consider family to be important and equal status of gay marriages as wrong. Thoreau's personal reasons and intellectual arguments were completely different ones and did not even imagine for the future issues like those discussed here.


Of course families should look to themselves before blaming other causes. That said, what do you propose? Do we make it illegal somehow to worship false idols? Do we attempt to create laws forcing inhibition? Violence is already against the law. Yes, we can blame the families, but how do you enforce that? Create laws forcing couples to stay together? Forcing couples to love each other? Not possible.
I'm talking about a cultural climate. The 50s felt different than the 70s than the 80s than the 90s. they did due to many things changing. It is not that linear as you make it sound. A child of the present does not become somebody feeling like in the 60s and following the "in"-things of that time and the values of that time - just by letting it listen to rock n'roll and driving a pink Cadillac. It's all more subtle and complex, but still creating more solid outcomes.


You say the importance cannot be overestimated. Again, how would you enforce that? There used to be laws against divorce. They didn't work. In ancient Rome Caesar Augustus passed a law placing heavy taxes on bachelors, in an attempt to get them to marry. We have similar but more subtle tax laws today. Married couples get a lower "Joint Filing" tax rate, plus extra breaks for each child. Here in Utah that backfires, because couples have always been encouraged to have lots of children. The result is that many couples with large families pay no taxes, and single people end up paying for the education for all those kids.
One thing is certain: we will not help it by list letting things slide in fatalism and saying: its all useless anyway to try to change them for the better or referring to some of the better "old" values. Not all values that came later were better. And as I said: much of the crap people today accept as idol an orientation gets accepted for the lack of better quality values and idols, and because the new rubbish ones get implemented because the economy can make a profit from them and can sell stuff. the latest mode, "in" labels and "cool" gadgets, this or that noisy dirtbag being promoted as the coolest thing in the history of music, this or that half-naked bitch being the hottest thing in the history of pop...

To me, the garbage people follow today illustrates one thing more than anything else: a terrible, huge, dark inner void.


I understand your point here, but what is the alternative? Should children not be adopted? Only adopted by heterosexual couples? Should parents who later turn to a gay lifestyle be forced to give up their natural children? As soon as you start talking about drawing a line you end up having to talk about where to draw it. And the next one. And the next one.

I think I made that clear enough before. Adoption only by couples were there is social and economic stability, and a female mother and a male father. Rolemodels that psychology knows to be so very important for the development of psyche and character in young people. It is tragic if one parent dies. Or divorces separate parents. That cannot be an argument to now declare the psychological turmoil that means for children as a normal thing that now also should represent the new statistical norm of natural normality. It is not normal, and not healthy. That there is a father and a mother - that is the natural norm, and that is the healthy environment best suited for children. It is so very very important. Hell, I cannot believe that nowadays I must even explain this, is the modern world already so much beyond hope? Social desintegration we see in the society around us, everyhwhere. Egoism, isolation, fatalism, phlegmatism, predatory selfishness, lacking willingness to claim responsibility for oneself and for others. This does not come just from nowhere. What is "soziale Verwahrlosung" in English? It comes from the way the adults of today got influenced in their younger past, and it feeds back on the way young people today gets educated and experience the early years of their lives. From the wallstreet yuppie putting his kids aside in a oriv ate school in Switzerland, to the brokjen alcoholic grabbing for the whip three times a week - the society we have today is product of the things that were before.

Intact families. Appreciation for the valuable effort parents accomplish. A warm, protective home, giving children and teens a good start into life, from the basis of having experienced love and safety even when failing, and having discovered and unfolded their personality an individual skill in the company of role models of a father and a mother, to which both sons and daughters react differently. Yes, I know that genderists and ideologists try to ignore and destroy the data we have on these realities since decades. Its just that I still have not seen a single scientific study about genderism that has not been shreddered by people knowing this stuff by profession and have a more profound scientific background in research or in eduation. Genderism is not at all that scientifically founded theory as which the left and feminists are promoting it. It is no scientific theory, but an ideological project - this cannot be said often enough and loud enough.


I've never said otherwise. I said I saw the ideal as a starting point. Everybody has a starting point. Mine was that freedom was an ideal that must be striven for at all costs. Yours was that freedom is an ideal that can be swept aside whenever it gets in the way of what we think "needs to be done". At least that's how I saw the difference between us.
That is what I call your absolute approach on it, while you claim at the same time that you have no absolute approach to it. but you argue on the grounds of an understanding of freedom as an absolute. And since always criticise me that I tell you that you argue about it on the basis of freedom being an absolute. I do not sweep aside freedom when it is opportune. Not at all. I just understand that this demand of yours for absolute freedom - of which you claim it is not absolute, I know I know - is unfulfillable and finally necessarily will prevent freedom by allowing those wanting to destroy freedom to be successful. Sun Tzu: he who wants to defend everything, will lose everything. You reminded me on a story by Buddha, a man get struck by a poisonous arrow. He holds back the people trying to help him, wanting to pull out the arrow, cleaning the wound and closing it. He says: no, first I must know who shot at me, and why, and from where, I want to know what poison it is, and how the arrow was crafted and what master build the bow. Said it, and died. I wold propose to you, and Popper would, too, that you just pull out that damn arrow and get yourself treated. If that makes the destroyer of your freedom and right to know, then you cannot be helped.


No, you believe Popper is absolutely right.
Heck, no! That guy is extremely left! I think he got some things right. I know he also got many things wrong. And that his paradoxon indeed is true.

This may be because his reasoning appeals to you, or because it agrees with what you already believed. I can see his, and your, point, but I argued that the opposite is also true. I see in both of you the potential to tamper with freedom to the point where you create an absolute tyranny, all for our own good.
That's why I said at the time I perceived you as an enemy, intellectually if not physically. It's easy to make that comparison, but as always I have to ask: Where do you draw that line?
Individually different, depending on one case at a time. There is no blueprint in one size that fits all. Reality always is bigger, and more diverse. Neither Popper - a left intellectual, btw, so you can take it for granted that my sympathy for much of his stuff is limited - nor me demanded a total tyranny. What he says is that the tolerant ones will spell disaster if they tolerate the intolerant so that the intolerant can proceed until they have secured victory - a victory that means destruction of tolerance, and the tolerant. Tolerance has to end at this challenge, and must claim the right of self defence. And you wonder why I shake my head when listening to you when you continue to tolerate the intolerant? WWII, fascism and Nazism. The evilness is beyond doubt, it is proven, it has costed mankind dearly, without a shadow of a doubt. Why tolerating to give these ideologies the space to unfold again - what do you expect to be different if you let it grow this time? Do you think it will mutate into a new idea of philantrophic humanism? Or Islam? Have 1000 years of violent and racist history and the written dogma that is taken literal by most Muslims worldwide not given enough info to you to assess what you are dealing with?

How much more "evil" must happen before these ideologies are seen to be too dangerous to be tolerated? And is the defender against these by the act of defending against them as evil than they are themselves? I time and again got confronted with this claim, by others. I do not even reply to that nonsense anymore. Its like saying a girl defending herself against a rapist is as criminal as the rapist himself, because she used force to defend herself. Pah. "When you turn violent" against a violent attacker, you are not better than he is. Ha! Logic for headshot Zombies, advanced course.

It seems I am drawing that legendary line in the sand a bit earlier than you do, i think that is the best ground we can hope to meet on.


And we're back to that. I see the opposite that you fail to. You seek to destroy freedom in the name of defending "society". How are you different from the people you seek to defend it from?

Oh my. Feels like having a deja vu. :-?


I'm well aware of that. I have two of my own. The problem I see with your whole line of reasoning here is that I see no evidence that allowing this change in the law is going to affect any of that negatively. Homosexual couples currently living together are no more "singles" than heterosexual couples living together. I've seen the whole "children" argument, and have even made it myself in the past. The problem is that many straight couples, while seeing the likelyhood of that possibility, don't get married just to have children, just as no one has sex just to have children, even though that's the whole purpose of its existence.
Be pragmatic a bit. When I play golf and have a drive from the Tee on a par 3, it could happen that the wind pushes the ball more and more, and it finally rolls towards the hole, where a mouse jumps out and bites the ball and races away, but it doe snot get far, becasue a falcon strikes down and catches the unlucky mouse with the ball between the teeth, and while the falcon flies and passes over the fairway a sudden lightning strikes him in midair and he falls down, dead, and the mouse falls, and the ball falls and the balls drops right into the hole. In a universe as big as ours, that could happen when you play golf, yes. Do we now need a special rule in golf, deciding whether an event like this still is a valid golf score, or is just making fun and the stroke must be repeated?

We do not want to drown in bureaucracy and a thousand laws. So be pragmatic. Man meets women: baby. Partnership. Family. Still is the norm in much of the world. Not always happy marriage, but still. Babies never will be where there is two men or two women. Whether there are two men or two women, means nothing for anyone else than these two. It is uninteresting for the community. It is unimportant for the state. It is in itself uninteresting for the couple whether the world takes note of their private life or not, and they certainly have no right to demand everybody must take note. And Skybirds are known to not give one second of thinking about it either, this private life of theirs. But where there is a boy meets a girl, things look differently. Yes, not all hetero couples have babies, for various reasons. For pragmatic reasons, and to keep the number or regulations about exceptions from the rule as low as possible, so: privileged status for married couples, saves a whole damn lot of complications in bureaucracy. Or would you say we still have not enough laws and rules? Also, it is fair towards singles and homosexuals couples alike, since both are on equal terms. (I find it interesting that in over one year I make this argument now, nobody ever has answered my question why the discrimination of singles by giving financial privileges to homosexuals that singles do not share is considered to be acceptable). But last posting, I met you halfway, I said: okay, lets give privileged status not to hetero marriages, but only to those who have had babies of their own, or soon will have. That givers the protection for families that I demand, and gives no privileges at all to hetero couples without babies, homo couples, and singles. I see that as a compromise becasue I fear that it will be tried to use it as an entry door again some time later to nevertheless enforce the relativising of families by upgrading all marriages nevertheless, but okay, the world is not perfect, I have to play the cards I have.

We both now that it will not happen. No politician dares to tell voters that something is being taken away from them, and no activist will accept that his crusade only leads to others being valued down, not himself being valued up. What it all comes down to, is this: everybody wants the money. And I accept that to be thrown only after families, regarding the discussion here. Not gay or lesbian couples. Not singles. Privileges I only accept and demand for families, becasue they are important, More important than gays. More important than singles. More important that lesbians.

On a sidenote, the German constitutional high court, or to name it precisely: the carricature of it, recently has demanded that homo and hetero marriages must be put on equal status. That is highly interesting because it represents an open violation of the constitution. And the court even admitted that indirectly. The judges opened with declaring clear and beyond doubt that the authors of Germany'S basic law were basing on an understanding of 1 man + 1 woman when the BL talks of marriage, and that homosexual couples are explicitly not falling under this term of marriage. Formally there is no doubt on that in German jurisdiction. But in the next minute, the court ruled that homosexual couples must fall under the BL's terminology of marriage. that means the court has ordered what it is not legitimised to order, and it has broken the constitution and actually has rewritten it. The violation lies in the fact that the court itself is not legitimized at all to rewrite the constitution - its job is just to protect and hold up the constitution as it is. Adding articles to it, changing them, deleeting, is only possible by the parliament - not the Constitutional High Court. But this carricature of a court has a longer record to betray the constitution, its record of waving through violations of the BL decided by the parliamant that has voted to disempower itself for the sake of the EU and the Euro, is quite long now. The court is no longer the guardian of the BL, but helps to dig its grave.

I see problems there. First, there are never enough families willing to adopt all the children that need it. If, as you say, infertility is spreading, I haven't seen it in the adoption rolls. There are many more children needing families than there are families to take them in. Maybe this is changing, but not fast enough.

Hm. Some people also advocate that we should open prison doors when there are too many prisoners and the costs for prisons run too high. Lets turn from pragmatism to opportunism. We could also send children to other countries, or into factories. Or educate them and send them into the army when they are old enough.

Do you know how big the number of adoptions is in Germany for foreign orphants from other countries outside Germany? I recall one detail for 2008. In that year Germans wanted to adopt more children from foreign continents, than German orphants. Maybe it is a good idea to prohibit foreign orphants as long as there are national orphants...

Also, it may be a possibility to make it legally more difficult to get an artificial insemination. One cannot ban it, I think, that would be too authoritarian indeed, but one could rearrange the legal context in a way that makes it more attractive for couples to adopt, by encouraging them in some ways, and making insemination not impossible, but more difficult.


Second, how exactly do you know that gay and lesbian couples make bad parents? I have read more than a few accounts of children raised by the same who say they grew up to be perfectly well-adjust adults, and heterosexual for the most part.
Where have I said that - "bad parents"? You could as well say a dead father is a bad father. He is not. He is a missing father. two lesbian women are a missing father, too. I talked about the psychological need for gender role models, and we know from data about children that are risen by one parent only that they have raised vulnerability scores for certain personality disorders and social abberations as well as psychological diseases. It's what I say all the time: a missing father or mother cannot be completely compensated that easily, it leaves a lack in the child'S inner structure.


Third, just because you hand an orphan over to a heterosexual couple, what do you do when they get divorced five years later? I think in this case it is you who are setting your ideals too high, and trying to make an impossible dream come true.

That is tragedy. Like one parent getting killed. Should we base our education models now to mainly base on the scenario that children'S parents, one of them, get always killed?

Divorce has negative consequences for the development of children and teenagers, no doubt. Why that should be an argument to allow adoption into such settings (homo couples or singles) from all beginning on, escapes me. That tragedies do happen, does make neither them nor their consequences desirable circumstances. I recommend we still focus on the dominant model that has brought us to where we are. And in the end, we are a heterosexual design, and our biology as well as your psyche is designed to reflect and support that. Exeptions from the basic rules exist, yes. But they are exceptions, both functionally and numerically - not the base design. Some people have pigment disorders. They too are humans, and exceptions. Pigment disorders of theirs are not the main line of human design.

[CaptainHaplo]

However, since you quoted that particular line of mine, I am curious as to how you agree with Skybird's design of society.

Skybird was lamenting how, for example, the EU dictates to the member nations what the laws must be.

80% of laws in Europe/Germany, are demands by the EU central committee. EU law demands such proposals to be turned into national law, the parliaments have no right to veto them or not to wave them through.

You talked about regulation from either a national or community level. My agreement is with you both - a government should be as close to the governed as possible.

Maybe we can get all the government out of marriage and avoid said discrimination.

That would be ideal. That way you wouldn't have the issue of marital discrimination as some huge national issue - whether its 2 guys, 2 gals, or 12 people that want to be one huge family. What business of the government is that in the first place, after all.

[Sailor Steve]

And I always understood your claim, from beginning on. But the continuing argument of yours I saw in discrepancy with your claim back then. I saw a man claiming to do one thing, but actually doing something different. I decided to go with what I saw him doing, not what he was claiming to do. That always was the core of the conflict as I have seen it, always.
And I said many times that you chose to condemn rather than discuss. What exactly was it that you saw me actually doing? I still contend that you saw only what you wanted to see, and judged everything after by that light.

Ah, Thoreau, I assume. Well. to me the one has little to do with the other. I can thunk like Thoreau - and still consider family to be important and equal status of gay marriages as wrong. Thoreau's personal reasons and intellectual arguments were completely different ones and did not even imagine for the future issues like those discussed here.
I've never read Thoreau.

To me, the garbage people follow today illustrates one thing more than anything else: a terrible, huge, dark inner void.
That's nice, but it sounds very much like your own version of religious morality, i.e. exactly what you claim to stand against the most.

I think I made that clear enough before. Adoption only by couples were there is social and economic stability, and a female mother and a male father.
So, society run by your personal moral rules.

Rolemodels that psychology knows to be so very important for the development of psyche and character in young people. It is tragic if one parent dies. Or divorces separate parents. That cannot be an argument to now declare the psychological turmoil that means for children as a normal thing that now also should represent the new statistical norm of natural normality. It is not normal, and not healthy.
Yet children survive and thrive in all those situations, and so far have seemed to do alright in ever other "abnormal" situation, barring ones of domestic violence.

That there is a father and a mother - that is the natural norm, and that is the healthy environment best suited for children. It is so very very important.
So you claim, but so far the evidence indicates that you are wrong.

Hell, I cannot believe that nowadays I must even explain this, is the modern world already so much beyond hope?
You can't even show that you are right, or that this is anything more than your own moral belief.

Social desintegration we see in the society around us, everyhwhere. Egoism, isolation, fatalism, phlegmatism, predatory selfishness, lacking willingness to claim responsibility for oneself and for others.
Those are not new problems. Yes, they need to be addressed, but we don't even know that your answers are the correct ones. You can't force families to be functional, yet you want to condemn certain people based on your own moral judgement. I can understand what you're saying, but you have yet to prove your case to anyone but yourself.

This does not come just from nowhere. What is "soziale Verwahrlosung" in English? It comes from the way the adults of today got influenced in their younger past, and it feeds back on the way young people today gets educated and experience the early years of their lives. From the wallstreet yuppie putting his kids aside in a oriv ate school in Switzerland, to the brokjen alcoholic grabbing for the whip three times a week - the society we have today is product of the things that were before.
And you have a group of people, some of them with their own set of problems but many who are perfectly fine people, except for that one thing that makes them less equal than everybody else, and you want to make them suffer for society's ills.

Its just that I still have not seen a single scientific study about genderism that has not been shreddered by people knowing this stuff by profession and have a more profound scientific background in research or in eduation.[/quote]
I know nothing of "genderists", nor do I care about their theories, founded or not. I look at the people around me and I see a segment of society excluded for a variety of excuses but no real reason. Honestly, it looks to me like you and yours are the ones guilty of social engineering.

...this cannot be said often enough and loud enough.
And the longer and louder you say it, the more it looks like moralistic posturing.

That is what I call your absolute approach on it, while you claim at the same time that you have no absolute approach to it. but you argue on the grounds of an understanding of freedom as an absolute.
You argue for page after page that yours is the only possible solution, then you turn around and accuse me of absolutism? I don't even pretend to know that I'm right, and for this particular discussion I've tried to stay away from that, yet you fall back on this line of attack again. Why is that?

I'll repeat it for what I hope is the last time: Freedom is an absolute only in theory. In practice there has to be give and take. My attitude is to use absolute freedom as a starting point, working toward the consensus. You seem to take the opposite starting point, that freedom is something to be toyed with as you please and absolute control is the way to go.

And since always criticise me that I tell you that you argue about it on the basis of freedom being an absolute.
Criticize you for that? Where?

I do not sweep aside freedom when it is opportune. Not at all. I just understand that this demand of yours for absolute freedom - of which you claim it is not absolute, I know I know - is unfulfillable and finally necessarily will prevent freedom by allowing those wanting to destroy freedom to be successful.
You're trying to use my words against me, but you're not actually saying anything real. Most importantly, you're not showing anything in that last sentence.

Sun Tzu: he who wants to defend everything, will lose everything. You reminded me on a story by Buddha, a man get struck by a poisonous arrow. He holds back the people trying to help him, wanting to pull out the arrow, cleaning the wound and closing it. He says: no, first I must know who shot at me, and why, and from where, I want to know what poison it is, and how the arrow was crafted and what master build the bow. Said it, and died. I wold propose to you, and Popper would, too, that you just pull out that damn arrow and get yourself treated. If that makes the destroyer of your freedom and right to know, then you cannot be helped.
When you stoop to telling me what I remind you of, you stop arguing and start criticizing; something which I have tried not to do in this conversation. Sooner or later you always come back to these ham-fisted insults. You stop the arguments and begin the attacks again. As soon as you do this all your arguments fly out the window, along any crediblility and respect.

Heck, no! That guy is extremely left! I think he got some things right. I know he also got many things wrong. And that his paradoxon indeed is true.
No, you don't know that at all. You believe it, which is fine, but as soon as you claim to know a truth you show your lack of understanding. You call me an absolutist, and yet I've never claimed to "know" anything.

What he says is that the tolerant ones will spell disaster if they tolerate the intolerant so that the intolerant can proceed until they have secured victory - a victory that means destruction of tolerance, and the tolerant.
Yes, and I keep saying that the opposite is also true. If you use intolerance as a weapon you risk destroying the very thing you try to save. But Popper is published and respected teacher, and I'm just a child who won't take reproof the way he should. At least that's the way you argue it.

Tolerance has to end at this challenge, and must claim the right of self defence. And you wonder why I shake my head when listening to you when you continue to tolerate the intolerant? WWII, fascism and Nazism.
Tolerate Nazism? It's legal here in the US, but we keep a very close eye on it. Radical Islam? Same thing. Just because we don't squash every potential thread like a bug doesn't mean we're blindly trusting. You would be wrong to make that mistake.

The evilness is beyond doubt, it is proven, it has costed mankind dearly, without a shadow of a doubt. Why tolerating to give these ideologies the space to unfold again - what do you expect to be different if you let it grow this time? Do you think it will mutate into a new idea of philantrophic humanism? Or Islam? Have 1000 years of violent and racist history and the written dogma that is taken literal by most Muslims worldwide not given enough info to you to assess what you are dealing with?
What does any of that have to do with gay marriage. You can talk about evidence for political or religious evils all you want, but you have given no real evidence for your take on the subject of this topic.

Oh my. Feels like having a deja vu. :-?
You're the one who insisted on bringing it up.


Be pragmatic a bit.
You ask me to be pragmatic, then launch into a long-winded fantasy? Your not that good a story teller.

It is uninteresting for the community. It is unimportant for the state. It is in itself uninteresting for the couple whether the world takes note of their private life or not, and they certainly have no right to demand everybody must take note.
If it's so uninteresting, why are you so hell-bent on preventing it? It's only uninteresting when it suits your argument that it be so. Otherwise it's worth dozens of posts and thousands of words of argument. That doesn't exactly sound "uninteresting" to me.

And Skybirds are known to not give one second of thinking about it either, this private life of theirs.
Thinking about it? No. Writing about it seemingly forever? Sure.

We both now that it will not happen. No politician dares to tell voters that something is being taken away from them, and no activist will accept that his crusade only leads to others being valued down, not himself being valued up. What it all comes down to, is this: everybody wants the money. And I accept that to be thrown only after families, regarding the discussion here. Not gay or lesbian couples. Not singles. Privileges I only accept and demand for families, becasue they are important, More important than gays. More important than singles. More important that lesbians.
And I say do away with income taxes altogether. Since that's not likely to happen either, your argument isn't too bad. But since neither one is very likely, telling gays they can't get the inheritance tax benefit is indeed discrimination.

Hm. Some people also advocate that we should open prison doors when there are too many prisoners and the costs for prisons run too high. Lets turn from pragmatism to opportunism. We could also send children to other countries, or into factories. Or educate them and send them into the army when they are old enough.
None of the above has anything to do with the topic at hand. I'm sure there's a name for that.

Also, it may be a possibility to make it legally more difficult to get an artificial insemination. One cannot ban it, I think, that would be too authoritarian indeed, but one could rearrange the legal context in a way that makes it more attractive for couples to adopt, by encouraging them in some ways, and making insemination not impossible, but more difficult.
But you want to make it illegal for gay couples to adopt. Should it also be illegal for them to use artificial insemination? What about natural insemination? Surrogate fathers have been used by lesbian couples more than once.

Where have I said that - "bad parents"?
You don't want them to adopt. There must be a reason. And if they can be good parents, why don't you want them to adopt?

You could as well say a dead father is a bad father. He is not. He is a missing father. two lesbian women are a missing father, too. I talked about the psychological need for gender role models, and we know from data about children that are risen by one parent only that they have raised vulnerability scores for certain personality disorders and social abberations as well as psychological diseases. It's what I say all the time: a missing father or mother cannot be completely compensated that easily, it leaves a lack in the child'S inner structure.
But a missing parent is worse than no parents at all? These people want to provide a loving home for children but must be prevented because they're not the "right sort" of people? Again, it sounds like blatant discrimination to me.

Divorce has negative consequences for the development of children and teenagers, no doubt. Why that should be an argument to allow adoption into such settings (homo couples or singles) from all beginning on, escapes me.
It also seems to escape you that it is not your job to say what individuals may not do. You again wish to impose your moral judgement on all. This is part of the reason that I shout "freedom" at you. Despite your protests when the chips are down you seem to want to control everything and everybody. Maybe you don't really feel that way, but that's how it comes out.

Some people have pigment disorders. They too are humans, and exceptions. Pigment disorders of theirs are not the main line of human design.
So should they not be allowed to marry either? Not be allowed to adopt? Not be allowed to live?

[Takeda Shingen]

Skybird was lamenting how, for example, the EU dictates to the member nations what the laws must be.



You talked about regulation from either a national or community level. My agreement is with you both - a government should be as close to the governed as possible.

I figured that you didn't actually read what he wrote. Here's to what I was referring.

Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide. - John Adams.

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.- Benjamin Franklin

And since above I was not sure whether the quote was by Franklin or Adams, it was Franklin for sure: When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic

Regarding a draft for how to replace democracy, not only the aspect of size of community and a mixture of local autarky and supra-regional feudalism is important, but also not to always repeat the same mistakes from the past - but to learn the lessons, finally. I forgot to refer to Jared Diamond again, whose observations on why societies rationally and sometimes even democratically decide to vote for their own collapse. These lessons must finally be learned, to avoid making these mistakes again. I once had a thread launched where I tried to summarise Diamonds conclusions on some things, Link: How to fail in survival for very rational reasons. (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=159065&highlight=Jared+Diamond). Again, the aspect of community sizes show up there. Democratic voteing prinmciples can only play a positive role in the smallest of community sizes: communites that are only so big that every member can oversee what all others are doiujng and how it affects him, and how his own deeds will and does affect all the others. That sets limits to population sizes in a self-governing community. It also demands that their is strict population control, a dynamically fluctuating but all in all stable balance between young and old and a maximum limit that is not allowed to get overstepped. Control of popultion size is not only wantred from an ecological perspective - politically, it also is a must. The chinese understood that correctly - they just concluded wrong consequences from it. I admit I currently have no idea on how to improve their apporoach (which they now give up). When you control population sizes, you need to find a workaround for the aging problem. Or you need to get rid of the exceeding population when the upper community limit has been reached. In thre past, wars and epidemics worked as a natural counterbalance. But these are options that forbid themselves to become accepted tools of population control, obviously.

If somebody has ideas, make it known.Chances are you get one peace Nobel price per year for the rest of your life.

I'll be very impressed if you can defend that.


[/QUOTE]That would be ideal. That way you wouldn't have the issue of marital discrimination as some huge national issue - whether its 2 guys, 2 gals, or 12 people that want to be one huge family. What business of the government is that in the first place, after all.[/QUOTE]

Well then we are in agreement.

[MH]

Hell, I cannot believe that nowadays I must even explain this, is the modern world already so much beyond hope?



Don't try to because you seem to have no clue about the issues and some. other stuff you overdramatise .
I give you that you have good writing skill though and it can make wrong impression to some readers.
I admit I agree with you on some issues but that is because you have lot of them.

I find it funny that you chose gays as some sort of symbol of decay in family values.

[CaptainHaplo]

Here's to what I was referring.
I'll be very impressed if you can defend that.

I won't even try, but then again I don't think it needs defending. He admits that population control is not an option, and that without it no system will work indefinitely without it.

I suspect he was not being a proponent of such actions, but rather taking a theoretical view. It would help if that was made clear, because often it comes across wrong when Sky tries to take that kind of overview.

[Skybird]

Now we have lines that answer to answers to answers to original statements. In other words, we now have reached the stage where it really becomes complicated to have a reasonable discussion in writing were spoken word would serve a better purpose. Since I frankly admit that I start to lose oversight now, I just choose some things to reply to.

And I said many times that you chose to condemn rather than discuss. What exactly was it that you saw me actually doing? I still contend that you saw only what you wanted to see, and judged everything after by that light.

The problem I have with you there is that you refuse to decide nevertheless even when not being in the full and total knowledge of all possible future's outcome. You want total, absolute certainty nailed down in the granite of time'S record before you – maybe – can push yourself to get it decided for you whether you now consider that the intolerant indeed will no longer be tolerated by you. You want absolute certainty. You therefore allow a demand of total freedom deadlocking you in place, paralysing you in your decision making on your attitude towards the intolerant. But the principle, general truth in the logic of Popper'S reasoning remains what it is: a general truth that you just try ty avoid to get confronted by. That you do so in the name of freedom as you see it, is what gives your understanding of freedom the face of an absolute, no matter that you claim it to not be that.

We never have total certainty on anything, or almost never. But our whole life, every day, we nevertheless must make decisions, and make them on the basis of incomplete information about futures possible. We rarely now the consequences in full. Still, we must decide things, and we do that either empirically: we base on past experiences, or we make logical conclusions about the probabilities of a future. But in this specific case you refuse to do both. And that is the problem I have weith you, this indifferentiation of yours, this undecided attitude that you excuse with that "you do not know", and you think that you make it sound more complimentary when saying "you know that you do not know". I would recommend to keep one of the key issues of ontologic philosphy and pragmatic reality we live in, a bit more separate. Becasue the tea in my cup still tates like tea, even when I know that I cannot know for sure that what I label as tea indeed is tea. Infact I know it is just a dance of electrons in my brain, still I enjoy my tea tremendously, and still call it "tea". I know that about myself, too, I "know that I do not know", but still I understand that there comes a time when nevertheless a decision becomes inevitable. I follow the simple logic in Poppers paradoxon, because it it convincing to me, fully. You just sit and wait, and will conclude that you should have stopped tolerating the intolerant after they have overthrown you – becasue when they are already working on it, you shy away from a reaction of yours by saying: let's see first that they really succeed, let'S first see that they really mean it serious, let'S wait first that they really bring to an end what they claim the want to achieve. To me that is sounding extremely indifferentiated. In case of Quran, because that was the original discussion back then, I think, I can only recommend to you: take it by its own word, and take it by its own proven history.

So, society run by your personal moral rules.
Society run by what has been running and proven its value since a very very very long time, and in most parts of ther world. And since I also base on psychology and medicine, that show since long time that mother-child-bonding is extremely important and that the availability of a father and a mother as gender role models is important and that the psychological development of children is influenced by that, too (we know from socalled patchwork families for exmaple that the stress indicators in children statistically are significantly increased, which could be linked to psychosomatic issues, neurotic issues, and general negative developments in psyche and intellect), since all this influences my opinion forming, I say it is plain common sense by which I want it to be run. Moral rules have little to do with it. Children need fathers and mothers. That simple. That is the idea. Of course children can still survive and grow up without the one or the other, or without both. But that comes at a cost. A cost that all you guys ignore or claim to be non-existent or irrelevant becasue some tv programs told you so, politically most correct. In some time you will even buy what the genderists try to sell you, scientifically totally unfounded and already proven to be wrong: that there is no psychological and other differences between boys and girls, and that being male and female is only a condensate of the social environment. Well, that is coming from the ultra feminist camp of the very first hours, this poor band of hopelessly misled human carricatures. But the agenda already has been turned into valid policy in the EU, fixed in ink on paper. And it is haunting America increasingly, too. - Well, denying the human nature of female women and male men, I tell you how I call that: a crime against the very basis of humanity itself. And an intellectual declaration of bankruptcy it is anyway.

Those are not new problems. Yes, they need to be addressed, but we don't even know that your answers are the correct ones.
The link offers itself, and gets confirmed by so many experiences from for exampe school teachers, but also by clinical statistiscs showing suspicious correlations between certain social constellations in families, and growing psychological instabilities and anti-social behaviour in teeneagers. It'S like statistcially analysing links between alcoholism, social class and city districts and its crime and violence rates.


You can't force families to be functional,
I never claimed I can. I claim to differ ebtween a fucntional and a dysfunctional family. Common terminology in sociological and psychological literature.

want to condemn certain people based on your own moral judgement
Condemn...? Man, take some fresh air and come back to your senses. You overshoot into a dead end. My moral judgement? You really need to start trying to understand what I say. The religious gang goes against gays with moral judgements. I don't, as long as I do not get confronted by public nudity on a CSD, which I find indeed highly offensive and take as an aggression. But CSD is not what is being talked about here, so lets leave that out. We are talking about family, and marriage.

I have told you or in some thread before that once there was a girl in my life, half my life ago, and that she had to go due to a car accident. We planned for a shared life for sure, we knew on our first meeting, within the first 60 seconds, that we had met each other's soul mate. We even felt as if we had shared time before, it is hard to explain, what I mean is this: we were extremely close from first sight on. We also did not rule out children, but agree that for that we would move away from Europe first, and would need to secure the economic basis. But we also ruled out that we would ever formally marry. We did not want to have the state or any organisation having any word on our relation. If we would have had children, fine, that would have been a benefit for the community, still, we did not want that to be an excuse to become an issue of public interest ourselves. And no, we did not feel as if we were „condemning ourselves“ because we refused public appreciation of our private stuff.

When I nevertheless defend the community's principle interest in couples having babies, this is for me an academic argument. Babies mean future tax income, thus funding the future of the community when today'S parents have turned old and grey. Babies mean vulnerable little humans that need to be safeguarded more than adults who can take care of themselves. Where parents fail, it is a moral obligation and the vital selfinterest of the community to intervene on behalf of child'S interest.

Whether I meet with friends on Sunday, is of no interest for the community. Whether two women live together is of no interest for the community. The party gang contributes nothing to the communities vital interest. A lesbian couple contributes nothing to communities interest by just being lesbian. There is no merit that needs to be appreciated by the community in having a private life. Being homosexual does not ennoble you in some way. Having red hair also does not. What is of interest for the community, and where it intervenes in certain cases and signals its appreciation (at least it should...), is hetero couples raising children of their own. That is work. That is a financial investment. That contributions to the community, and its future. It is something mopther and father can be proud of, if they get it right and give their children a good home, at least do their best in trying to make it as close to that as possible in their social reality.

I fail to see why homosexual couples should be met with the same appreciation. They homosexual relation means nothing to anybody expect themselves. In other wordS: it is private stuff. I demand of them the same that a long time ago I and my girl voluntarily decided for ourselves, too.

And I still wait for somebody answering my demand to justify why gays and lesbians in relations should be given tax reliefs and special rights that singles are excluded from. It is discrimination of singles. What merits do you gain by being homosexual that deserve you a privileged treatment, compared to ordinary singles, homo or hetero alike?

And you have a group of people, some of them with their own set of problems but many who are perfectly fine people, except for that one thing that makes them less equal than everybody else, and you want to make them suffer for society's ills.
The drama queen on stage. I will shed a tear when I have some free time later this day.

I know nothing of "genderists", nor do I care about their theories, founded or not. I look at the people around me and I see a segment of society excluded for a variety of excuses but no real reason. Honestly, it looks to me like you and yours are the ones guilty of social engineering.
Very interesting. And totally unconnected to the discussions theme: family and gay marriage.

'll repeat it for what I hope is the last time: Freedom is an absolute only in theory. In practice there has to be give and take. My attitude is to use absolute freedom as a starting point, working toward the consensus. You seem to take the opposite starting point, that freedom is something to be toyed with as you please and absolute control is the way to go.
The one carelessly trying it away, is you. I explained above how you do it. By allowing to stay passive and indifferentiated when decisions are overdue, because of your demand for total and absolute certainty, else any acting would kill freedom. Which makes your freedom you defend a truly absolute freedom, whether you see that or not.

Criticize you for that? Where?
You just had did it again.

You're trying to use my words against me, but you're not actually saying anything real. Most importantly, you're not showing anything in that last sentence.
Then read again. It is important, that „last sentence“ is the very key to it all.

This thing, „knowing not to know“, that is all fine and well, and as a basic truth of ontology I am with you on it. But it is like I say: you crucify yourself over it, resulting in a state of inactivity, passivity, a denial to make decisions as long as the penultimate truth has not found you. That truth that you claim to know of that you cannot have it. And there you get yourself into a deadlock. I see that since this old ugly debate began. And I was not the only one. Steve, you are not so much wrong. You got yourself stuck.

Thinking about it? No. Writing about it seemingly forever? Sure.
Their private life? No. And any relation is their private issue, and nobody should be needed to take note of that, it is PRIVATE LIFE. Its just that it is not good enough. Activists want the world to take note of it. And they want the money. I do not give a dan about all this where they keep their private life private and families remain untouched, and their is no privileging of homosexuals over singles. But where this happens, my interests and communal interests get touched upon, and then it is not just private stuff anymore. Like with that neighbour playing his radio loud. If all neighbourhood must listen to his tune, then it is not his private issue anymore.

And I say do away with income taxes altogether. Since that's not likely to happen either, your argument isn't too bad. But since neither one is very likely, telling gays they can't get the inheritance tax benefit is indeed discrimination.
I miss your view on singles again. Tax privileges for gays, but not for singles – that is no discrim ination?

Next, close friendships. I mean really good buddies from work. iosters the social climate in a society. I think that is contribution enough to justify some sort or privileged taxing. Or a yearly bonus payment. Something like that.

But you want to make it illegal for gay couples to adopt. Should it also be illegal for them to use artificial insemination? What about natural insemination? Surrogate fathers have been used by lesbian couples more than once.

I am against making it an accepted norm to pout children into social contexts like those being discussed here that strip them of their natural right to have one father and one mother, the man and women that created them. Of course lesbians can get artificial insemination. But then damn hell should the women live with the father, so that the child actually grows up with a father.

BTW, as far as I know there is neither any legal nor biological right for adults to raise children or to be given a baby. Not having children is not only possible, but even legal.


But has it ever come to your mind that children may have a right to have one mother and one father – because that is the way mother nature has arranged it to bring babies into the world and protect them in their first years? I hear a lot about special interests and rights for this lobby and rights for that lobby. But I hear nothing mentioning the rights and interests of children. They just get rolled over. That they pay the price as I have repeatedly explained now, simply gets ignored. But homo couples want it , and adoption „ I want“, and more „I want“.

Somebody, a gay btw, told me this long time ago: "Some homosexuals act like Michael Jackson." He explained and what he meant was that Jackson was trying to hide his african look and lightening his skin tan and operating his african looking nose, to appear more like a White or Hispanic at least. But he remained to be what he was by his nature and origin. A black with a african looking wider nose. It would have been less hilarious if he would have simply stayed that way, then there would have been much less mocking about him. His fans had no problem with it. The only one having a problem with him, was himself.

There is far too much „I want“ in this world already. And too little „I should“. „I should act with modesty“. „I should not put my egoism above other's interest.“ „I should not only insist on my right, but also understand my obligations to serve and the rights of the other.“ „I should step back a bit and leave room for the other“.

Tell that a lobby group activist. He turns red immediately, yelling „I want!“ again.

Or tell that a hedge fond manager. :D

Well, when greed and envy are seen as virtues to drive a capitalistic order, and selfishness are a consumer's primary duty – what else do we expect then than to get the world we live in. Everybody creates his own hell.

But a missing parent is worse than no parents at all? These people want to provide a loving home for children but must be prevented because they're not the "right sort" of people? Again, it sounds like blatant discrimination to me.

Setting it as an equal norm, I oppose it, yes. It'S better to broker an orphant into a real family than into a half family, a family in critical social conditions, a poor family that is economic despair, or to a single. A mother, a father, a safe home. This should be a norm that serves as orientation. There might be exceptions. If one homosexual partner has a child from an earlier hetero relationship, for example. But I do not want exceptions being understood as a new and equal norm.


It also seems to escape you that it is not your job to say what individuals may not do. You again wish to impose your moral judgment on all. This is part of the reason that I shout "freedom" at you. Despite your protests when the chips are down you seem to want to control everything and everybody. Maybe you don't really feel that way, but that's how it comes out.
You could as well tell me it is not my job to say that robbing somebody is a crime, or that you shall not kill. Steve, that quote you gave as a reply to me saying „Divorce has negative consequences for the development of children and teenagers, no doubt. Why that should be an argument to allow adoption into such settings (homo couples or singles) from all beginning on, escapes me.“ Take a minute or two to contemplate on why I just shook my head when reading you. If you still cannot get it then, then indeed any further talking is totally useless.

So should they not be allowed to marry either? Not be allowed to adopt? Not be allowed to live?

That was your reply to me:; „Some people have pigment disorders. They too are humans, and exceptions. Pigment disorders of theirs are not the main line of human design.“ - All I indicated is that there is no need to make a big deal of a pigment disorder, it is of little or no interest, and that it is not the main line of human genetic design – it is an aberration. You can now make a big issue of it by giving albinos special rights and privileges, but surprise surprise – I would oppose you on that. Or you let them simply live their lives like everybody else, without and privileges for them, in normality. That'S what I am for.

And jo, albinos should not be privileged in rights for adoption too. Since an albino is something different than a homosexual, and does not interfere by his sexual identity and gender role modelling with the psychological factors affecting the child'S development, I see no reason why a hetero couple where one is an albino should not be allowed to adopt, if the relation is stable, the socia context is safe, the economic situation is solid. I am confident that a pigment disorder makes no difference.


It's moving in circles now, I think. I have nothing else to say and nothing new to add, and if you have not anything new either, I propose we leave it here.

[Skybird]

What other type of Religion is there?
Poly- and non-theistic ones, and natural religions.

And what did Buddhism do to make you hate it? :hmmm:
Where did I mention Buddhism in all this? And where did I talk of "hate"?

[MH]

Society run by what has been running and proven its value since a very very very long time, and in most parts of ther world. And since I also base on psychology and medicine, that show since long time that mother-child-bonding is extremely important and that the availability of a father and a mother as gender role models is important and that the psychological development of children is influenced by that, too (we know from socalled patchwork families for exmaple that the stress indicators in children statistically are significantly increased, which could be linked to psychosomatic issues, neurotic issues, and general negative developments in psyche and intellect), since all this influences my opinion forming, I say it is plain common sense by which I want it to be run. Moral rules have little to do with it. Children need fathers and mothers. That simple. That is the idea. Of course children can still survive and grow up without the one or the other, or without both. But that comes at a cost. A cost that all you guys ignore or claim to be non-existent or irrelevant becasue some tv programs told you so, politically most correct. In some time you will even buy what the genderists try to sell you, scientifically totally unfounded and already proven to be wrong: that there is no psychological and other differences between boys and girls, and that being male and female is only a condensate of the social environment. Well, that is coming from the ultra feminist camp of the very first hours, this poor band of hopelessly misled human carricatures. But the agenda already has been turned into valid policy in the EU, fixed in ink on paper. And it is haunting America increasingly, too. - Well, denying the human nature of female women and male men, I tell you how I call that: a crime against the very basis of humanity itself. And an intellectual declaration of bankruptcy it is anyway.
Yes children need parents and that is it.
So what studies show about gay couples who do their job as such?
What studies show about divorced couples who do their job or dysfunctional parents who stay togheder.
Also if we agree that sex and the behaviour it is connected with is hard-wired then what is the issue?
Possibly the psychological trauma might come from the environment due to lack of tolerance of such couples.
You try to portrait your self as mr Spock and you come out as mister spook by capitulating to some basic fears.

[Tchocky]

Any evidence of these disastrous effects upon children of being raised by same-sex parents, Skybird?

EDIT - Ah, MH, didn't see your post. Good one.

[Sailor Steve]

The problem I have with you there is that you refuse to decide nevertheless even when not being in the full and total knowledge of all possible future's outcome. You want total, absolute certainty nailed down in the granite of time'S record before you – maybe – can push yourself to get it decided for you whether you now consider that the intolerant indeed will no longer be tolerated by you.
That's not even remotely true. You can claim to know my thoughts better than I do, but know nothing about me at all. I don't want total, absolute certainty. I also don't want to follow you off a cliff because you claim to have the answers.

You want absolute certainty. You therefore allow a demand of total freedom deadlocking you in place, paralysing you in your decision making on your attitude towards the intolerant. But the principle, general truth in the logic of Popper'S reasoning remains what it is: a general truth that you just try ty avoid to get confronted by. That you do so in the name of freedom as you see it, is what gives your understanding of freedom the face of an absolute, no matter that you claim it to not be that.
Putting words in my mouth again. All I did was point out the fact that Popper's statement works both ways. Are you so convinced of the rightness of your arguments that you can't even discuss them rationally? Can you not concieve of the concept that you might be wrong? All I did was challenge those arguments. This forces you into attack mode. If I dare to disagree, it's not because I see a fallacy there, but because I'm locked into my version of things. Do you deny that you do the same?

In case of Quran, because that was the original discussion back then, I think, I can only recommend to you: take it by its own word, and take it by its own proven history.
No, the original discussion was about whether a Muslim group should be allowed to build a mosque near Ground Zero. Nothing else. Once again you try to turn this around to what you want, and try to hide what really is.

Society run by what has been running and proven its value since a very very very long time, and in most parts of ther world.
And you miss my point entirely, which is that it's not proven. Society was not better when all this was swept under the rug.

And since I also base on psychology and medicine
Another failed debate tactic. Subtly mention that you have experience, therefore know more than the other person.

A cost that all you guys ignore or claim to be non-existent or irrelevant becasue some tv programs told you so, politically most correct.[/quote]
And again, try to dismiss an argument by saying it comes from a false source. If you read any of my posts you would know that I don't even own a television. My arguments are based on my own observations, and those of others I talk to. And yes, I can actually read.

In some time you will even buy what the genderists try to sell you, scientifically totally unfounded and already proven to be wrong: that there is no psychological and other differences between boys and girls, and that being male and female is only a condensate of the social environment.
And again you never read what I say. First, nobody has sold me anything. I've said many times that I agree with this. It's obvious to anybody who takes the time to look that there are vast differences between the way the sexes are wired up. But you won't believe me when I say that, because it doesn't suit your image of me. My sole claim here is that you haven't made your case. You've danced all over the boards with a variety of claims, but none of them have successfully shown why gays should not be allowed to marry.

I never claimed I can. I claim to differ ebtween a fucntional and a dysfunctional family. Common terminology in sociological and psychological literature.
You never claimed you can. And yet you want to control people's lives based on that.

Condemn...?
Yes. Condemn them to accepting second-class status.

Man, take some fresh air and come back to your senses.
Yep, fall back into the insults.

You overshoot into a dead end. My moral judgement? You really need to start trying to understand what I say. The religious gang goes against gays with moral judgements. I don't, as long as I do not get confronted by public nudity on a CSD, which I find indeed highly offensive and take as an aggression. But CSD is not what is being talked about here, so lets leave that out. We are talking about family, and marriage.
And yet the way you go about it looks very much like the same moral judgement you claim to condemn. You try to couch it in fancy terms, but the bottom line is that you don't want gays to have the same social benefits as "normal" people. You may not mean it that way, and unlike you I don't claim to know what you're really thinking, but that's the way you come across, at least to me.

When I nevertheless defend the community's principle interest in couples having babies, this is for me an academic argument. Babies mean future tax income, thus funding the future of the community when today'S parents have turned old and grey. Babies mean vulnerable little humans that need to be safeguarded more than adults who can take care of themselves. Where parents fail, it is a moral obligation and the vital selfinterest of the community to intervene on behalf of child'S interest.
But people with love in their heart should not be allowed to adopt because their orientation doesn't fit the social "norm"? You still haven't proven that, at least to the point where I'm willing to follow you blindly.

Whether I meet with friends on Sunday, is of no interest for the community. Whether two women live together is of no interest for the community. The party gang contributes nothing to the communities vital interest. A lesbian couple contributes nothing to communities interest by just being lesbian. There is no merit that needs to be appreciated by the community in having a private life. Being homosexual does not ennoble you in some way. Having red hair also does not.
All that is true. It also isn't a reason to single them out for denial of certain benefits reserved for people who aren't "different". Again, it really looks like the only reason for this is bias on your part, disguised as "reason".

What is of interest for the community, and where it intervenes in certain cases and signals its appreciation (at least it should...), is hetero couples raising children of their own. That is work. That is a financial investment. That contributions to the community, and its future. It is something mopther and father can be proud of, if they get it right and give their children a good home, at least do their best in trying to make it as close to that as possible in their social reality.
And yet again some children won't get that, because the people who could give them a loving home don't fit the proper description. There is more than one form of "correctness", this one being social rather than political.

I fail to see why homosexual couples should be met with the same appreciation. They homosexual relation means nothing to anybody expect themselves. In other wordS: it is private stuff. I demand of them the same that a long time ago I and my girl voluntarily decided for ourselves, too.
If it means nothing then why the desire to deny them the benefits everyone else gets? That's all they're asking.

And I still wait for somebody answering my demand to justify why gays and lesbians in relations should be given tax reliefs and special rights that singles are excluded from. It is discrimination of singles. What merits do you gain by being homosexual that deserve you a privileged treatment, compared to ordinary singles, homo or hetero alike?
I did answer it, but you had your fingers in your ears. So again: Single gays and lesbians are single. They're not asking for those rights. "Civil Union" couples don't qualify for inheritance tax benifits. Personally I don't think there should be an inheritance tax, or an income tax. But there are. I understand the argument that income tax breaks are there to help struggling families, meaning families with children. I understand that you see "gay marriage" as an attempt to get extra benefits that they don't deserve. I think what you fail to see is that most people don't think that way. They aren't that devious. In the vast majority of these case you have two people who love each other and want to show it in the way others do, by getting married. Because some people are bothered by that they aren't allowed to do that. It's pretty simple, really; at least to them.

The drama queen on stage. I will shed a tear when I have some free time later this day.
Same old thing. When all else fails, turn to insults.

Very interesting. And totally unconnected to the discussions theme: family and gay marriage.
So it's okay for you bring up that side subject and spend several paragraphs talking about it, but if I answer you I'm straying off-topic? Why the double standard?

The one carelessly trying it away, is you. I explained above how you do it. By allowing to stay passive and indifferentiated when decisions are overdue, because of your demand for total and absolute certainty, else any acting would kill freedom. Which makes your freedom you defend a truly absolute freedom, whether you see that or not.
I'm so glad you know me so much better than I know myself. You can't actually address what I say, so I must be either blind to my own nature or just lying about it. If what I say doesn't fit your perceptions, then I must be hiding something. Yet again you can't believe what I say, so you have to address what you want me to be saying rather than what I'm really saying. I'm grateful to have someone like you to tell me who I really am.

You just had did it again.
What? Asking you to show where I've criticized you is criticizing you? That makes no sense.

Then read again. It is important, that „last sentence“ is the very key to it all.
No. It shows what you believe. You saying it does not make it so. It says something, but it shows nothing other than what you believe.

You got yourself stuck.
Again, saying it doesn't make it so. You only see me as "stuck" because you base your arguments not on what I say but on what you read into it. If I try to explain myself you just say I don't know myself and then tell my why I'm wrong about my own feelings. It's impossible for me to explain myself if you refuse to take me at my word, and it's impossible for you to understand my point of view when you try to judge it on your opinion of me and not what I say.

Their private life? No. And any relation is their private issue, and nobody should be needed to take note of that, it is PRIVATE LIFE.
I thought we were talking about marriage. If marriage is PRIVATE LIFE then maybe we should outlaw marriage altogether. You accuse me of changing the subject, but here you are talking about two different things.

I miss your view on singles again. Tax privileges for gays, but not for singles – that is no discrim ination?
Not for singles, for couples. Couples who love each other and want the same options as other couples. That is the discrimination.

Next, close friendships. I mean really good buddies from work. iosters the social climate in a society. I think that is contribution enough to justify some sort or privileged taxing. Or a yearly bonus payment. Something like that.
You're trying to divert the point with and unrelated "what if", concerning something that may or may not happen. That can be discussed in its own time and place.

I am against making it an accepted norm to pout children into social contexts like those being discussed here that strip them of their natural right to have one father and one mother, the man and women that created them.
So it's better for them to have no mother or father at all than to have an "unnatural" one? I accused you of your own brand of social engineering earlier, and this only reenforces that opinion.

Of course lesbians can get artificial insemination. But then damn hell should the women live with the father, so that the child actually grows up with a father.
So it is a moral issue. At least that statement looks like moralistic judgement based on your opinion.

BTW, as far as I know there is neither any legal nor biological right for adults to raise children or to be given a baby. Not having children is not only possible, but even legal.
So the state should decide whether couples can even get pregnant naturally? Now I know I don't want you in charge of things.

But has it ever come to your mind that children may have a right to have one mother and one father – because that is the way mother nature has arranged it to bring babies into the world and protect them in their first years?
Of course it has come to my mind. But what do you want to do with all the children who don't have that? Deny them any family at all because there will never be enough of those "perfect" families to go around? If a loving couple wants to raise a child who will otherwise have no parents at all, who are you to say they can't?

I hear a lot about special interests and rights for this lobby and rights for that lobby. But I hear nothing mentioning the rights and interests of children. They just get rolled over. That they pay the price as I have repeatedly explained now, simply gets ignored. But homo couples want it , and adoption „ I want“, and more „I want“.
Again this sounds like moral indignation, and not the logic you boast about. What about the rights of children who will otherwise never have a family at all? And again, who are you to make that judgement?

Somebody, a gay btw etc
Nice story, but a diversion. Wasting time and space with cute stories subtracts from honest discussion of the subject.

There is far too much „I want“ in this world already. And too little „I should“. „I should act with modesty“. „I should not put my egoism above other's interest.“ „I should not only insist on my right, but also understand my obligations to serve and the rights of the other.“ „I should step back a bit and leave room for the other“.
Again, moral posturing. That diatribe is nothing but you ranting about your feelings.

Tell that a lobby group activist. He turns red immediately, yelling „I want!“ again.

Or tell that a hedge fond manager. :D

Well, when greed and envy are seen as virtues to drive a capitalistic order, and selfishness are a consumer's primary duty – what else do we expect then than to get the world we live in. Everybody creates his own hell.
And you earlier accused me of straying from the topic. All of that has exactly nothing to do with the question of gay marriage.

Setting it as an equal norm, I oppose it, yes. It'S better to broker an orphant into a real family than into a half family, a family in critical social conditions, a poor family that is economic despair, or to a single. A mother, a father, a safe home. This should be a norm that serves as orientation. There might be exceptions. If one homosexual partner has a child from an earlier hetero relationship, for example. But I do not want exceptions being understood as a new and equal norm.
Okay, I get it. It's better that children should slip through the cracks and have no home at all, if the only other option is to be put into a home you find "unacceptable".

You could as well tell me it is not my job to say that robbing somebody is a crime, or that you shall not kill.
You once again try to change the subject by bringing up unrelated "what ifs". It can be easily shown why robbery and murder are bad things. This subject is much more vague, and subject to opinion. The very existence of threads like this one show that. You want to make it an absolute, and base law on your own opinions. In this case, I am the same. I also want law to be based on my own opinion. I don't deny that. The difference as I see it is that I don't see any harm in this. You do. I disagree because while you have brought up a lot of arguments to support your position, I don't see any of them as strong enough to keep a segment of society in second-class status.

Take a minute or two to contemplate on why I just shook my head when reading you.
Because I don't kowtow to your perfect knowledge and admit that you are right about everything. Simple, isn't it?

If you still cannot get it then, then indeed any further talking is totally useless.
Meaning that if I don't cave in and admit that you are absolutely right, then you can't handle it anymore.


And jo, albinos should not be privileged in rights for adoption too.

Since an albino is something different than a homosexual, and does not interfere by his sexual identity and gender role modelling with the psychological factors affecting the child'S development, I see no reason why a hetero couple where one is an albino should not be allowed to adopt, if the relation is stable, the socia context is safe, the economic situation is solid. I am confident that a pigment disorder makes no difference.
Nobody has said that albinos can't marry. Therefore the comparison is invalid. Albinos can marry. That's the difference.

It's moving in circles now, I think. I have nothing else to say and nothing new to add, and if you have not anything new either, I propose we leave it here.
Fine. An impasse is sometimes what debate is all about.

Just don't come back here a year from now boasting about how you handed me my head and showed to everybody just how wrong I was.

[Skybird]

How comes that I get accused over "walls of texts" when I post such postings, but Steve never? Maybe I print the above listing and make a wallpaper of it, it has so nice a graphical symmetry of some kind.


Just don't come back here a year from now boasting about how you handed me my head and showed to everybody just how wrong I was.

I honestly do not care whether your carry your head in your left or right hand. That you cannot understand your self-contradiction on that certain issue I already have understood a long time ago. ;)

Okay, to come to an ending here, a unique one time offer for last word fetishists: copy and paste this into your post:


My last word is >> INSERT HERE <<

O I mean my last word to be personally aggressive


Do not forget to tick the circled option as desired. Later corrections of already entered forms unfortunately cannot be processed.

[Takeda Shingen]

How comes that I get accused over "walls of texts" when I post such postings, but Steve never?

Because Steve is forced to reply in that fashion, as you chastise people for not responding to your message in it's entirety.

Maybe I print the above listing and make a wallpaper of it, it has so nice a graphical symmetry of some kind.

Oh good, take some cheap shots on your way out the door to show your contempt.

Okay, to come to an ending here, a one time offer for last word fetishists: copy and paste this in your post:



Do not forget to tick the circled option as desired. Later corrections of already entered forms unfortunately cannot be processed.

And then there's that. Again with the exit kick to the shins. And all of this because Steve has the audacity to question your views. Shame on him.

[Tribesman]

Did I hear the sound of toys being thrown out of the pram?