Obama: Court must end California gay marriage ban

[Cybermat47]

Originally Posted by Skybird

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?

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Skybird

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]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

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.

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Platapus

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

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

[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

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

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]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

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]

Originally Posted by Skybird

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]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

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.

Originally Posted by 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. . 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]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

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.

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]

Originally Posted by Cybermat47

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?

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.