It's not at all the same.

This is interesting, and I think a valid POV (note that as I said I am PRO gay unions, just not through the courts, but by law).

Marriage—the word—means a union of man and woman. That's what the word means, and has virtually forever (and in the long history of marriage, "interracial" marriage has in fact been common—I'd argue that laws limiting it by race occupy a shorter time frame than the rest of the history of marriage. That's why I think a new word makes more sense.



My argument was not a slippery slope fallacy. In US Constitutional law, the rationale for the decision matters. If a COURT creates a "right to marry who you LOVE" out of thin air, then the love bit has force of law, which can absolutely lead to a challenge by a brother wishing to marry a sister, etc. Ditto group marriage since having it be just 2 people is similarly arbitrary. That's the trick if it becomes a RIGHT, since arbitrary limits on natural rights make no sense.

In effect the legal system can create slippery slopes where none should exist. To avoid unexpected consequences, AND to protect civil unions from future courts messing with it, it would be better to change the law the right way, through the legislature.

So, wait - we are to avoid any and all discussion of points refutting your own arguments now?

Was it not you that said this:...and despite the fact that you never reasoned why nature should actually be a logical falliacy, considering that nature is the fundament of all logic, we should take that at face value, we should also avoid the logic that changing the natural, species-inherent method of procreation should also be no-win?

What exactly is an argument you feel qualified to argue against without one-liner sarcasm? Science? Nature?

Or are we all supposed to just rely upon your premise as self-supporting and abandon the discussion because the conclusion is predetermined on the basis that you "said so"?

I do apologize for my directness in this matter as I am far closer to your position than you likely think - however, my contrarian, independent nature only allows me to accept actual logic as logic, rather than circular arguments that supposedly justify themselves regardless of independant logic or data.

Man, what a debate.

As if homosexuals suddenly start becoming straight just so that they can marry. And as if straight couples only have children because they can marry. There is an ever growing trend, at least in Germany, for people to stay single anyways, "marriage" certainly did not much to change that.

You want more children? Provide day long day care and enable mothers a better reentry into work afterwards. And get the upper classes to get more children instead of complaining all day for the lower classes to have them.

And if gay couple want to have a children by adoptions, then that's still better then those children being raised in orphanages, with a proven track record of abuse, arguable way more harmful to their psychological development then being raised by a same sex couple. And that comes even more true in a society where men and women become ever more the same in their behavior patterns.

And this "contribute nothing to society" has far too familiar and eerie rings. What's next, sterilizing mentally disabled people because they do not contribute to society? Deporting Hartz IV candidates?

Whatever happened to "Live your life however you want as long you don't hurt others?" attitudes?

This whole debate is more based on prejudices and christian brain washing then facts. The ancient Greeks and Persians had much less Problems with those concepts and yet they quite managed to build up empires.

I support that attitude 100%. But how does that equate to society fiscally and legislatively supporting it?

Hell, do what you want ... just don't ask anyone to support you doing that which I find objectionable.

But what IS objectionable? All I that came out of this debate so far is personal preference on how people have to live their lives. I completly agree on the stance that nature certainly did not plan for living beings to be straight, kinda a contradiction to reproduction. However, homosexuals are homosexuals, they won't just simply change. All you do is making others lifes miserable with such stances with no win whatsoever for anybody but the satisfaction of straights keeping the upper hand. Believe me on the other hand, if homosexuals ever came into a position where they tried to force their lifestyle onto others I'd be as opposed to that as well.

In the US, the impression constantly comes over that people have an utter aversion for the government to meddle in the affair of families and how to raise up children. So why does the same not apply to people themselves as well?

But that is the problem, and it is not just a fincial one. The Elterngeld raised by van der Leyen saw no raise in births, but a further decline, and Gunnar Heihnsohn, professor erimitus, shows by his statistic research on demographics and immigration that there is a growing of the social lower class and a decline in the upper and academic class, for example I referenced him here. As von der Leyen has learned, couples do not get babies becasue the state pays them a bitmore money - at least in the upper class they still get babies becasue of love, and because they want babies - not necessarily the money.

Question is, why those families who could afford to have more children, don'T have them to maintain the size of that social group, not to mention to increase it. And why those not being able to afford it, have so many children.

There is also an other trend, that you correctly pointed out, and that is that more and more kids get raised by just the mother (for the most) or the father. Obviously the parents got a baby unprepared I (no excuse for that, sorry), or at a stage of their relatioinship where they still could not be sure whether they would last with each other, or split again. To much bed-adventures going on too easily, and everybody jumps into the bed with everybody else too fast.

But it is also both a cause and a consequence of the further erosion of the institution of an intact family.

We do not need babies per se in Germany. We need more babies fro t he highly educated socail classes, and we need less babies from the less educated social classes. Only then there will be a future population that even can hjpope to have a slim chance to shoulder the tax burdens of the near futurte that are needed to maintain even basic, minimal sociual security. Having babies and more babies that will not contribute to the tax income once they have grown up, but that will cost the state becasue they will not make it in a job with solid payment because due to their social class they had no chance to raise to higher education (there is a strong link between social class and future job perspectives, and some other factors), will make things worth for all of us. So we do not need an undiscrimionatory increase in our population again to counter overaging, not by a baby-.boom and not by immigration. We need babies from the "right" social backgrounds. Every mother getting a baby while being young, maybe without job or in a low-payed job, and husband left her, costs us money, and easily more money than the baby will give back to the state once it has grown up, in taxes.

This is - beside the immense interest service of the state for its existing debts, and possibly in the near future the Euro collapse - the one thing that ruins Germany's finances more than anything else, and leading the nation to the brink of collapse.

I say we make everyone have equal rights, if you won't let Gays marry then Hetero Couples shouldn't be able to marry... if you won't let Gays have children then you shouldn't let Hetero couples have children. :yep:

So far agreed.

Also agreed.

Here we part in cause and effect. More next.

We need, more babies, period. It does not really matter where they come from.

A couple points to that.

First of all, the lower clases "always" had lots of children, even in the times before social securities and Kindergeld. Children always have been the safe keepers of a couple's future, so to say their life insurance. The more children, the more security later on. Actually, with all that financial security nowadays it would be logical for lower classes to get "less" children.

Second, we have a huge problem with class penetrability. It really does not matter so much where children come from, as long they do not get better education it won't achieve to much. I do not buy the argument that lower classes are inherently more stupid and thus less capable, that is 19th century thinking long disproved. I also personally met enough "lower" class folks with a high degree of intelligence but the inability to make any proper use of it because they never really learned how to move within German business and upper class society. And look at German society, where especially higher class parents try to get their children away from public schools and to private ones. And no wonder, given the sorry states of many schools and the lax attitudes of many teachers. We need all day schools where the children get away from their social environment and teachers taking their profession serious.

Third, I especially lay the blame at the higher classes, which have enough ressources to get children going and ensure their education. However, in this class children have become a status symbol like a dog. You have them, you show them around and you brag with their achievements. The few children available to this class are under 24/7 surveillance, have to fill their days with all kind of activities like music, riding, going abroad and so on, with hardly time for themselves. The result are artificial beings without social competence and a serious lack of character, tweaked solely for performance and no idea what the real world looks like. That these folks also lack a serious feeling for family does not wonder me much.

All these complains by higher class folks are a distractions for problems caused by themselves in most parts and their unwillingness to give up their status and influence in society. This is also reflected in the abandonment of the "Humboldtsche Bildungsideal" for the sake of economic performance in universities.

There we agree again, but as I said, under completely different preconditions.

But this is worth a new thread, I think this goes too much off topic now.

You said we need mor babies, period. But that is wrong. You must make the destinction between later net-payers and net-receivers. Net-payers will be those getting good education and get well-payed jobs so that they produce tax revenues (as long as they are stupid eniough to stay in Germany). Net-receivers will be those that are raised in social wellfare conditions, will have Hauptschule as school diploma only, and have good chances to end up as unemployed social wellfare receivers. Our society is overaging, pensions will rocket through the ceiling. In this situation you currently have the circumstance that more social "loser" babies get born than social "winner" babies, that is demographical fact. That means the ratio n between payers and receivers is shifting towards the reciever. Few and fewer peopled need to pay for more and more peoplke - those being old and those being in social wellfare circumstances.

We need more babies. But the right ones. "Right" means: having access to b etter eudcation, thus better jobs, thus better poayment when they had grown up, and so: tax incomes for the state instead of ripping off the state.

Thilo Sarrazin aimed at the same direction with his disputed statement that our society by average becomes more stupid in a natural way. He was about the discrepancy between the raise in low educated population groups both due to migration and births, and the decline in well-educated population groups. People may not like his provocative style, but by content he get things right.

Gunnar Heihnsohn is specialised on these issues of demographic developement and the consequences for our societies in the West, I urge you to read some of his books, they are science-statistic fact-bombs. His other "hobby" is the so-called "youth bulge" theory by him, showing that there is a link between the outside-bound, expansive aggressiveness of a society and the ratio of young adult men in its population. The more there are, the more aggressive and expansive that society is. Main focus here is on Islamic societies, of course. Heihnsohn therefore predicts that our current confrontation with Islamic challenges will continue for the next two generations, or 50-70 years. Not before thenh their socieites will be as overaged as ours are topday, and the ambitious expansive energy of them will decline.

Political very incorrect he is, and so he has many enemies and critics. But it is hard to argue with his numbers and demographic and financial statistics. He knows his stuff, and very well.

A correction on your claim that there is the claim that social class is linked to intelliegence. At least that is not what I am after. What can be shown is that there is a link between social class, success chnaces in the edeucation system, and later job chances. That is no claim, it is a statistical link that has been shown so reliably that most sociologists do not deny it. Whether or not this effects intelligence, depends on your understanmding of the term (and as a former psychologist I can tell you that if you ask 10 differfent psychologists what intelliogence is, you will get at least 6 or 7 different definitions). But intellectual activity trains or "degenerates" intellectual capacities. So a class where people do hard labour or live oin wellfare, are dealing with depression, unemployment, boredom and do not get challenged intellectually, is very prpone indeed to score lower IQ value on avwerage. Hell, we even have been shown that there is a highly significant link between social class and eating and food habits. The higher your education level and social class, the lesser meat you eat. The lower your social cvlass, the worse is your food and the more meat you eat! Which may also be the reason why the lower the social class, the more fat people you seem to see on average

Statistics are about trends, mean scores and generalised average statements about groups, so do not cite the individual case you happen to know, that is pointless when dealing with statistics.

You already wrote so, just elaborated on that, and I already wrote why I disagree with this kind of analyzsis. Right and wrong babies, in all seriousness, the mere notion of that is utter bollocks. There are neither right or wrong, their are only prepared and not prepared children. And I also wrote what can be done about those conditions. Your argumentation is based on the believe that ppl that are born into certain classes will also stay in those classes, you take that as a fact without even attempting to try to figure out "why" that is and what can be done about it.

Another example? the boss of the company I just left is the son of an ex Bundesbank Vorstand. In an interview, even available on youtube, he stated he was too lazy to look for a job and thus founded this company. This company now exists for 8 years and yet has to see black numbers.

It is a typical example of a rich boy that runs a company for the sole reason of societies standing, to present something to his friends and to be cool. He is the last to come in and the first to go in that company each day. This is the very same company that sees a couple turkish immigrants work their asses of to achieve something.


Thilo Sarrazin is an idiot, who by his own words never met lower class member or immigrants in person. It is a frustatrated old man who wrote a book to adress the over the top political correctness in Germany, ranting and whining without presenting solutions or ways to get out of that problematic situation. His book is as helpful to the debate as was were the Nazis graphs that made out the very same statistics for the future of Germany, completely neglecting the fact that Germany always had and always will have immigrants and lower classes. As if that is an issue that only appeared in the last 30 years, instead of the last 3000 years.

You also may want to read this:

http://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeit...arrazin-studie

The problem with political correctness is that both sides of the argument use it as a weapon. The one side to stop discussion, the other side by making themselves heroes by claiming that being anti PC is somewhat closer to the truth. Both is bollocks. There are problems and problems have to be solved, and you do not solve problems by swinging from one extreme to the other and back and claim one fact to be true just because the other said the opposite.

Btw, the situation is as serious as ever.


Now here I agree. But the obvious conclusion is that we have to bring those with lesser chances up to specs for better chances later on.

But a big point also is...you "need" the lower classes. We do not only have high management or academics jobs here. All the smaller stuff has to be done as well, it is not as prestigious, but just as important. We need folks collecting the garbage, we also need folks cleaning streets, toilets and so on. These people are a fundamentally important part of this society, though are only looked down onto. No wonder such people develop depressions and aggressions, I'd say that plays as much a role in their psychological development as their finances, which in return are a direct result of that attitude. I would, too, if my work were to be discredited all the time.

Statistics, most of all, are scientific attempts of categorisation. This is very helpful in desciribing obvious circumstances, but the more complex an issue becomes, the less suited statistics are to describe them. And this is especially true in the case of humans, even more so given the fact that science yet has to truly understand how humans actually work in their emotions, expiriences, genetics, biological chemicals and drives and motivations. That's like trying to describe the performance of a car based on their number of accident statistics, without taking into account how powerful the car is, what road it used, what the weather conditions were and so on. In my book this approach is utterly flawed and even worse, they base humanity solely on economic performance and worse of all, an economic model that is not sustainable in the future anyways.

All in all this debate is another chapter in the age old herrenrasse symptons in a new disguise. Once it was royalty, then it was the bourgeoise, then back to the royals, then the nazis, then back to the bourgoise. Every generation makes up it's own definition of people that are worthy and who are not it appears, some in more, some in less radical manners. No offense, but if suddenly humans are not treated as humans anymore, and some kind of people consider themlselves, or by others, as better for society then other humans, then this society has a major problem. And as a reponse we will have enother kind of communism trying to counter that with their own senses of extremes. Ppl obviously never learn. I am not saying this in polemics, but what I observe in society day in day out on a "real" life basis, not pictures created by medias and stomach feelings.

So, let me repeat. We need all day schools, to get ppl out of their environment, rich and poor alike, and make sure they get a good foundation of values and education. After that nobody can complain about a lacking starting field. What they make out of it in later life then really becomes a question of personal capability. But to differ between people to this degree and make their fate and perception based on their parents is nothing short of reactionary, with hardly any potential for a betterment in the future and not a single example in the past of such a concept working in the long run.

All in all this whole debate, in my personal opinion, is an attempt to find an easy explanation and solutions to a serious problem that is too complex and multi aspected for a most individuals to grasp in all it's extend due to lack of time, intellect or motivation.

I observe a statistic correlation between social class and , life expectancy, food habits, education grade, job chances. Or better, other observed and calclated that, and I just take note of it and refer to it.

A correlation is nothing you either beliueve or not. It is the result of a statistical calculation process. Formally, it is being done in a clearly defined methdological manner, it is neither random, nor totally arbitrary. It is not the result of believing something, nor do beliefs change it.

When a factor analysis gives you a highly significant result, for example, showing certain matches of features being interlinked, then that is so: there is a link. No matter what you believe. ;) Whether or not the one causally effects the other or another, third intermittend vartiable is envolved , is something different.

Again , we are not talking about opinion polls and hear-say or beliefs and ideas, but correlations, variance anylsis, factor analysis and the like. We are talking statistical methodology. Wanting to clean that off the table by just saying "I don'T buy it, I simply believe spomethign different", is a bit thin.

You better never take no drugs and medical substances the doctor had prescribed for you, because - ignoring betrayal and data forging for the moment - their licensing and permission for the market all have been determined by such statistical methods, criterions and analysis. ;)

Anyhow, I said what I have to say on the issue of links between social status and certain life parameters. I again refer to Gunnar Heihnsohn if you want scientific literature on demographic developement and its consequences, he is really no unknown name in this academic branch.

That's very interesting. I always thought the courts would use Loving vs. Virginia as the basis for a gay marriage case. I don't agree with their rationale as I think it does fall into the "appeal to tradition" fallacy, but it's very interesting nonetheless.

And they're wrong anyways - gay marriage existed in the Roman empire.

Nothing to add to this, in doubt let's agree to disagree

LOL
Parent 1: egg donor
Parent 2: sperm donor
or
Parent 1: petri dish
Parent 2: fertility doctor
:down:
Parent 1: orphanage
Parent 2: My Lawyer

:cool:
Feel free to 'mix and match' above.

Man, this thread is better than the funny pictures one!

2 substitute words in a passport to conform with the reality of today is a destruction of the traditional family? :har:
I call this nostalgia for a time that never existed. Sure, some 50 years ago the divorce rate was lower than today. Is it better to be raised by one loving single parent or by two who stay together "for the kid's sake", who have nothing in common anymore except for arguing. Still better than to be raised by fags, or what? :damn:

To the german baby discussion I only have to say that any system which is based on unlimited growth is a sick one.