Same sex marriage and the slippery slope.

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Do you have a link we can actually read?


Oh, hey! If that's what happens with NO fathers, then having TWO fathers must be the solution to all our crime problems!


That's an argument against early marriage and divorce, not against gay marriage.


see above.


As a native and Current Californian, I feel compelled to set the record straight. Both of those laws were passed by the people with massive infusions of out-of-state money (particularly from the mormon church). Both of the anti-marriage ballot measures were advertised with out-and-out lies, including (for example) adds that implicated that without the law adult, heterosexual male pedophiles would be legally protected if they followed little girls into women's bathrooms, and that churches would be forced by the state to perform gay unions unless the law passed. The court (not just one judge) that overturned the first law did not do so because 'society's position had changed,' they did so because the law violated the equal protection requirements of the California constitution. That's why the second ballot measure was an amendment to the California constitution. The judge that sided with the plaintiff in the first challenge of the amendment did so because the defendants of the amendment could not demonstrate that heterosexual marriage was harmed or invalidated in any way by the inclusion of gays in the franchise. If you read his conclusion, he basically says that the defendants have demonstrated that they have no reason for pressing their case besides religion and prejudice.
The defendants then took the amendment to the appelate court, which punted to the California Supreme Court to ask whether the defendants really even have the right to defend the amendment in lieu of the Governor or the Attourney General.


That's a little bit like the sometimes-argued claim that carnivores make against vegetarians: you can't prove that wheat doesn't feel pain in some other pathway than animals feel it...!
As a biologist who has dissected more than my fair share of vertebrates, I can tell you again: A zef does not have the wiring to feel pain before the 3rd trimester. I would feel worse about the pain I cause by accidentally pulling the tail off of a lizard than the pain that an embryo aborted in the first trimester supposedly feels.

I didn't read that, but I have no such requirement. All I require to accept that 'pain' exists is that the sensory nerves be hooked up to the brain and that the brain is wired thoroughly enough to have some organized processing and recognition of pain. All I require is a brain that functions at least as well as that of a fish. A second trimester fetus does not have that, much less a first trimester embryo.


Oh, goody, you're pulling an Inuyashya and discarding sources for being biased! That means that we get to discard anything that you post which comes from a religious site or anything with 'family' or 'child' in the title.

edited to include the following post:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFkeKKszXTw[/youtube]

My apologies or this long post. I finally got some temporary access to a computer with a keyboard (they are so underrated when it comes to typing large passages.

@ LKL

The issue with posting sessions that go on as long as this one is that eventually one ends having to offer the original statements again. The discussion tends to travel in circles. In one of my original posts the court’s decision was cited stating precisely that 'society's position had changed’, it is in the video by ‘what you ought to know’. They have links to the full text of the judges opinions on their site.



Sorry no, I cannot find it online.



Ha, this is funny, most of the studies about homosexual parenting draws direct comparison between gay parent families and single parent households. So far, the heavily biased studies have been hesitant to perform direct studies between traditional families and gay families. This is remarkably dishonest because as AG pointed out it draws conclusions from two totally different socio-economic backgrounds and then miraculously reaches the conclusion that richer parents can provide more for their children and credits fully the same-sex couple involved.

It seems that no matter what I tell you, you cannot accept that gay marriage is about more than the rights of the parents. The right to marry is a compound right, it involves both rights for the parents and for the children involved. The claim that gay couples should get legal recognition through legislation is a total clash of rights. Of course homosexual people are entitled to societal recognition, pointing out that there is more involved in marriage than the parents, does not make one a homophobe.

Margaret Somerville one of my favorite ethicists has repeatedly made the legitimate case that children have a right, through the nature of their birth to be raised by both a mother and a father and to know who their parents are. 40% of anonymous reproductive services in the UK are used by lesbian mothers, this is a total violation of the child’s right to know the identity of their biological parents. If you want to see the result of children who have had this basic right taken away from them, please visit the website ‘tangled webs’ you will see an entire generation of adults who are now quite angry at having had this right taken away from them. Donor conceived children almost universally support the right of children to know the biological identity of their parents. People have a fundamental desire and right to know the identity of parents. However under international law, article 16 of the UDHR, every married couple has the right to form a family, this is an absolute right that under almost every legal definition includes access to reproductive medicine. Establishing gay marriage would fundamentally alter the rights of the child in relation to their biological parents. This is proof positive of the slippery slope.

Another massive issue relating to the rearing of children by homosexual parents is that of genetic imprinting. We now know that certain genes remain dormant if not activated, this results in children not being able to reach the same development outcomes if they are not raised within traditional families. Once again, the decision is being made without regard to the right of the child.

The child’s right to these things is set up by the innate biological connection between the father and mother of the child. The very reason for the creation of adoption laws is so that society can establish a legal connection, because the biological one is missing (hence moving from natural parent to legal parent). Under this biological connection children have the right to be raised by their biological parents as their natural default condition. At present our marriage laws simply recognize this link, they in no way establish it, legalizing same sex marriage would overturn this centuries old biological right of the child and replace it with a primarily legal definition that the child has no right at all to dispute (and in many cases even discover). Yet people continue to insist that gay marriage is a private matter, when clearly it is not.

In General

On the subject of abortion, it too is a compound right. I have clearly established through multiple sources that the child clearly can react to pain and exhibits multiple signs of life. This however is essentially irrelevant to the issue at hand. Some of the people on this forum have patently refused to see the compound nature of the right of access to abortion. The child involved having already been seeded into this world clearly has the right to continue to live. Once the child is on the path to entering into the world, then it requires a conscious action to deprive it of this potential. One is therefore forced into arguing the awful position that such life is not human. How many times has humanity ever been right when it argued this? Yet pro-abortion activists not only make the claim, they defend it to the point of an absolute right, late term abortions, abortion on demand and abortion of convenience are the natural flow on from a position that reflects a hyper-individualism. To get an abortion activist to admit that the child in question has any rights at all is almost as difficult as getting an Neo-Nazi to admit that Jews are not plotting to destroy the world. I find this to be a symptom of a totalitarian mindset, that allows for no rights in relation to the child. My position is and always will be; that the right to life always trumps the right to psychological health, a convenient life or the desire not to tell ones parents that they have made a stupid decision. Unlike the right to choose, the right to life, regardless of justification is an absolute right and I will always naturally incline to this position.

Uh, if there is brainwave activity odds are there is conscious thought developing. I really don't get how liberals can be pro-infantcide (which is what Abortion is) yet be anti-death penalty. Apparently in a liberal's mind criminals deserve more protection and rights than a true innocent.

They're just as confused about Republicans being pro-life and pro-death penalty. I don't understand how that's supposed to be hypocritical or contradictory though because a baby hasn't done anything to deserve death and someone who's being sentenced to death has done something to deserve it.

betty bowers is always awesome.

I don't particularly care who she is.


In seperate news to give an idea of the slippery slope and I wish I was making this up:

Flint said the sex acts incident was one of two separate cases under investigation involving the teacher; both incidents occurred last week in the same classroom but he said they didn’t come to the attention of school officials until Wednesday.

In one case, several students apparently took off their clothes and were naked in the classroom. In the second incident, a boy and girl reportedly engaged in oral sex in front of their classmates.

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/0 ... suspended/

The article is concerning second graders.

Sometimes I wonder if the country would be better off if an Earthquake would cause California to fall into the sea.

FFS, are you really that f*****g dense? That's like saying the carpet must be conscious because it can zap you with static electricity. We can measure the electrical activity of nerves in earthworms. I have done so myself. Electrical activity does not = consciousness. Mammalian (ie, higher) EEG waves are NOT present in the first two trimesters, and are questionable for the first half of the third.

California would certainly be better off.

Again I'm going to err on the side of life, I'm not going to support conveinence for a woman over the life of a child. She can give the child up for adoption if it is that much trouble, but abortion should not be used as birth control.

Also would you care to explain the situation in California?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_m ... California
I don't doubt that the words, 'society's position has changed' appeared in the decision, but that was not the main basis for any of the rulings.
Prop 22 was struck down because it violated the state constitution, quote:
On May 15, 2008, the Supreme Court struck down California's existing statutes limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples in a 4-3 ruling.[47] The judicial ruling overturned the one-man, one-woman marriage law which the California Legislature had passed in 1977 and Proposition 22. After the ruling, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a statement repeating his pledge to oppose Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that would override the ruling.

The opinion, written by Chief Justice Ronald M. George, cited the Court's 1948 decision in Perez v. Sharp where the state's interracial marriage ban was held unconstitutional. It found that "equal respect and dignity" of marriage is a "basic civil right" that cannot be withheld from same-sex couples, that sexual orientation is a protected class like race and gender, and that any classification or discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is subject to strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the California State Constitution.
If you have access to the decison, I suggest you read it.


In other words, gay parents are not necessarily bad for the children. You have yet to post any link that demonstrates that children of a secure gay couple will be worse off than children of a secure heterosexual couple of the same socioeconomic background. All you have posted are lots of studies showing that intact families are better for kids - with which I can absolutely agree. I just don't agree that 'intact' necessarily means 'heterosexual.'


My first thought in response to that: I guess that, as an adoptee, my rights have therefore been trampled upon. Funny, though, I don't feel like my parents did too badly by me.
My second thought: being the child of two gay parents does not mean that one will not know who one's parents are. Firstly, many gay couples adopt from the foster system. Those children know their parents; they were generally removed because the parents were not good for them. Those children are also desperate for adoptive parents. Secondly, most other gay parents either use sperm banks or surrogates, meaning that the child has at least one biological parent in the family. The gay writer Dan Savage* for example, adopted a son with his partner; it is an open adoption, and the son sees his mother, a transient woman, apparently whenever she feels like showing up.
*note that this is neither an endorsement nor a denigration of Dan Savage's writing.
Thirdly, where gay parents do adopt a baby in a closed adoption, there is no reason to believe that the child suffers any more relationship strain in being raised by two unrelated homosexual parents than the child would by being raised by two unrelated heterosexual parents.
Fourthly, if adoption is so terrible I guess we should encourage women with unwanted pregnancies to have abortions instead.


How is the orientation of the adoptive parents relevant in whether the sperm donor is anonymous or not? Are you simply arguing against sperm banks?


Ok, but that doesn't have anything to do with lesbian mothers. By your own numbers, 60% of the adults who are so 'angry' and suffering were parented by straight women. I guess you are just arguing against sperm banks (and, for that matter, the selling or donation of eggs) in general.


Please show me a scientific source that demonstrates epigenetic consequences to children being raised in non-traditional families. Frankly, as a biologist, I think you're full of it on this one.


I agree with the beginning of your point here, but not the conclusion. Yes, the natural state is for the child to be raised with its biological parents. Sometimes, however, that breaks down: for one reason or another, the parents are unfit to raise a child, or the parents are incapable of conceiving a child. When that happens, the foster system takes over or reproductive assistance takes over. You have not demonstrated that a gay couple adopting out of the foster system is worse for the child than a heterosexual couple adopting out of the foster system (or, more likely, the child simply remaining in foster care for lack of adoptive parents), nor have you demonstrated that a homosexual couple using reproductive assistance is worse for the child than a heterosexual couple using reproductive assistance.


No. You have not. You have simply made the claim over and over, despite multiple refutations from multiple science-based sources.


A zef has no such right. It has no rights at all. It does not posses even the characteristics that protect kittens from being abused by humans until well into the 3rd trimester.


ffs, do you even read what I write? Of course the zef is human. It is just not a human being. It is a dependant attachment of the mother until it is born.


straw man.


*snort*
You do realize, don't you, that hyper-individualism and totalitarianism are mutually exclusive? I guess you're just throwing out words that sound like bad social organization. Care to throw some communism in there, too?

Your entire final paragraph can be summarized, 'screw the evidence; I'm pro-life because that's what feels right to me.'

@ LKL

'No. You have not. You have simply made the claim over and over, despite multiple refutations from multiple science-based sources. '

Actually you guys have put forward one study (it was a meta-study, so I will give you that). I criticized it as setting the standard for demonstrating pain far too high and showed a flaw in its methodology. I put forward 5 peer-reviewed articles that clearly show the fetus can respond to pain.

As to your statements surrounding the burden of proof, well no, thats on those who want to deprive children of their rights to their biological parents to prove. So far all that has been offered (and not cited here by anyone here on the affirmative side) are loaded studies. I have demonstrated the benefits of traditional marriage, there are very few works dealing with comparisons between traditional marriage and same-sex relationships. Though there most certainly will be more since the negative side has cottoned on to the desire of advocates to avoid such studies.

As to my criticism of how same-sex relationships and marriages would and do interact with reproductive medicine. I have shown how how through international treaty all marriages have a legal claim to access such technologies. I have also shown how this can and does affect the rights of the child, so I consider this to be an argument against gay-marriage.

LKL, I agree with you that the use of "society's position has changed" is disingenuous, as the words only referred to a discussion on the nature of marriage, not on a lot of other factors though. The basis of the decision was generally the 14th Amendment, and a relatively valid use of it.

Honestly, I don't even think equality of parentage is actually that big of a deal. Let's say gays are worse, so what? Does this mean that every gay couple will be worse than every straight couple? No. Is it likely that a significant portion of the gay couples would actually be good parents? Unless the quality impact is MASSIVE(which would likely be obvious even without the studies), then yes. Given that it is important to get children into suitable and loving households, I don't see how one can be reasonable in formulating an objection to increasing the possible number of loving households that can adopt.



Um.... what? Not only is that an assertion, but, I've already shown that notions of "personhood at conception" are incoherent and absurd, but to call it a child at conception, requires some notions of personhood at that point. Unless you have another marker that you know how to defend, you still have to answer criticisms about identical twins and chimeras against the notion that a person/child exists at conception. On top of this, you have to show how "clearly" you are right on this. (Your use of "clearly" is a clear example of irony, as it is very unclear on this point)


Many times. Have you ever argued with a deep ecology advocate? Their major position is that most living things are persons, but most of us here reject that view. Heck, also just look at reincarnation views. Do you think that cows are your ancestors? No. Neither do I. I think we're both correct on that. I also think that we are often correct when assessing the brain dead as well, as if there is not a functioning brain, it is not a person, even though many people might hold out beyond all reason.


Why not also throw in theocratic as well?



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GC_ylRHtZs&feature=related[/youtube]

How is it disingenuous, the judges clearly thought they knew better than the majority of California's voters. This was not the only basis of the decision, I never claimed that it was. This comment however fits the very definition of judicial activism and overreach.



You are creating a straw man of my argument by only engaging with the concept of life at conception as the basis for personhood. I have claimed that due to the subjective nature of the criteria of personhood that setting conception as the basis is the best logical position. However, by only discussing conception you are sidestepping the much broader issue that you do not seem to oppose aborting a fetus at 8-22 weeks. The Child at this point has a heartbeat, brain activity and can respond to pain. If you were in a coma and were exhibiting these signs you would most likely not be able to have your life support turned off (never without prior consent), the child however can be terminated without any legal issues despite the fact at within a matter of weeks will fully become a member of society (every person who I have met who survived an abortion and went on to become a functioning member of society has clearly indicated that they would never consent to being aborted).



No they are not mutually exclusive, one can be absolutely selfish.

Hunh??? The judges thought that the majority of California's voters were being inconsistent in a manner to discriminate against homosexuals. That's not "knowing better". This isn't to say that the judgment is a great judgment, but it was made on 14th Amendment grounds, and some variation of that decision is even respectable enough that it is not unforeseeable that it could pass through a court.


No, I am not. That was your original position. Not only that, but how do you EXPECT I interpret the statement "child seeded into this world" without you holding to some idea on when it is actually a child?

91, nobody has really accepted what you've stated on the matter.
LKL has rebutted your point on brainwaves at sufficient length.
"Respond to pain" isn't so much the issue as "experience pain", as reflexes are not a sign of personhood, but rather some of these can exist in beings otherwise functionally brain-dead.
Finally, a "working heart" isn't actually relevant because it has nothing to do with any quality we consider part of a person.

Even further, a person can be in a persistent vegetative state and have these qualities, but also be subject to a legal request to cease life-support, and thus terminate such an individual. Which means that beings with the qualities mentioned are not persons already by some existing laws! So your case is pretty weak.


Not really, as hyper-individualistic ideologies tend to be libertarian, while totalitarian ideologies tend to be the opposite. A person can be selfish, BUT, selfishness isn't "hyper-individualism" it is just selfishness, as "hyper-individualism" really has to refer to a view of mankind/society/social organization, etc.

I dont "wonder" I KNOW for DAMN CERTAIN! can we get rid of massachusetts and vermont too? maybe sell them to iran so they can see the REAL meaning of intolerance.

No, when judgement are made they are made on multiple grounds. The judges cited that society's views had changed as on of the grounds for the decision. The people clearly did not hold the views the judges were saying that they did.

In all other respects you are not engaging with my arguments, you are simply asserting rebuttals as if they are valid. You have not disputed my arguments relating to the rights of the child, on either matter and are not really attempting to discuss the matter, you are just being argumentative for the sake of it, mostly because I dared to hold an opinion other than your own.