'Mother,' 'Father' Changing to 'Parent One,' 'Parent Two' on Passport Applications

[Gammelpreusse]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Since never. It isn't. You can be emotionally attached as much as you want. Even without being "institutionally formalised".


Rest assured, yes.


No, I must not, because the point you raise I did not even touch and am not intersted in. I am about an institution called "!family" and teh social, vital function it serves for the community, the state, and the secruing of the future for that community. Plus the fact that for this reason, and the reason that children are the most defenseless part in this chain, this insiution is under explcit special protection of the state, according to the German constitution. And I said that this special status is realtivised if it suddenly is being granted to singles like me or gay and lesbian couples, or colleagues at work. This special recognition serves a purpose that neither singles nor gay couple fulfill.

Since it is hetero couples producing babies, their treaming up deserves special support, and since a fundamental orientation of law must base on general principles, this does not differ between young couples having babies and couples that are old or couples whose children already have left home or couples that do n ot plan to have children. It is the general principle that counts. However, you know as well as I do, that additional financial reliefs for children (Kinbdergeld) are only payed out if indeed there are children.

Both things have been systemtically erdoded over the past 20, 30 years. Now the gay movement relativises it even more.

And marriage, you asked me. When she still was alive, we planned to stay together, we were soul mates from the very first minute on, and I mean that: we recognized each other in the very first minute we met, immediately. But we did not plan to marry, since we did not wish to give the church a word in our private issues (we both were anti-church) and did not feel we need formal recognition by state authority, and at that time, financial benefits also were pointless for us.

It's a long time ago.

Sorry, then we have completely opposite definitions of "family". For me, family is the natural byproduct of a relationship and consequent offspring, based on instinct and mutual bonding, support for each other being a result of that. For you it appears to be a state institution with a formal functionality within this state, only workable under special protection of the law. More or less a state approved concept bar any personal attitude involved.

This definition, in my mind, sounds scary. Even more so as this so called "special support" by the state for families is rather young in historic terms, nevertheless worked for centuries before that. In fact, this country saw more offspring and population growth long before any official support for children was even ever thought about. As such the connection between state sponsored family support and the institution of family and population growth is far fetched, if not completely illusionary to begin with. Once again, it is an attempt to root our modern symptoms instead of root causes to be found in entirely different areas (some of which I already laid out in former posting, though you tended to ignore these)

As we are at it, I wonder how animals do it, after all they do not have state sponsorship and protection for family, either. This smells much more of an ideological POV based on culture and historic convenience then actual common sense and practical thinking, combined with an actual search for causes. It's more witch hunt based on phenomena incomprehensible for the common man on the street, a scapegoat hunting. Besides, Germany and many other European countries faced a shrinking population for a couple decades now, long before any talks about gay marriage came into being in the first place. So the intellectual deduction in this area is sorely missing from your points and reminds me more of Bush's obsession with WMDs in Iraq then reality.

If you want to protect an institution invented by the christian church with centuries of tradition in Europe and Germany or the philosophical/bürgerliche concept of "family", which in it's modern form is only a 100 years old, , say so, but do not abuse the children argument for that.