I can’t find a transcript of the show, but Bill O’Reilly stated that when looking a moral issues especially in regard to pregnancy we should look to nature. He used this to argue that maybe Mary Cheney should not have choosen to have a baby because nature had decided ( :rolleyes: ) that parents should be female and male and you don’t do against Mother Nature.
OK, if we are going to look to nature, does that mean I can rape females to get them pregnant? That is something that happens all the time in nature so I guess it must be the right thing to do according to O’Reilly. Is it just permissible for me to rape females or do I have a moral obligation to do it? Should I also commit batteries against my rivals for these females?
I’m under the impression, possibly incorrect, that rates of rape are highest in urban areas. During my summers working in the national parks, I can’t recall hearing about a single rape case.
With that said, asking what happens “under Bill O’Reilly’s logic” is somewhat like asking what happens under a cow’s wings.
Social conservatives like to cite nature to validate their beliefs - until nature is shown to act in the opposite way. I recall when I was a child in church in the 70’s the pastor railing against homosexuals, saying that that stuff never happened in nature. Nobody told him that it’s practically like freaking Fire Island out there in nature.
Bill is absolutely right (so to speak). Two women having a child is unnatural. So are sewers, antibiotics, dentistry, polio vaccines and heavier-than-air flying machines. Let’s get back to the good ol’ days. No more of this liberal thwarting of God’s will!
Personally, I’d like to hear the prescient Mr. O’Reilly explain 1) just how he can look forward with such laser-like accuracy into the somehow inadequate future life of Ms. Cheney’s child and 2) what specific factors will cause its life to be so inferior to that of other children that it never should have been born.
Or rather, I’d like someone who actually watches his show hear him explain this and maybe post it here, since I can’t be bothered to waste my time with his sanctimonious ranting.
What’s his attitude on abortion, by the way? Does he feel so strongly about this issue that he advocates that would-be lesbian mothers get abortions?
Er, I imagine it would be for them not to get pregnant in the first place, it being relatively hard for a lesbian couple to accidentally become pregnant. Not that i’m defending O’Reilly.
Actually, I was just wondering how far Mr. O’Reilly would take his concern for the disadvantaged state of a child of gay parents. My parents gave me the talk on the birds and bees last week, however ('bout damn time, considering I turned 52 in Septmeber), so I’m up to speed on the other stuff you kindly explained for me.
If nature should be your guide, consider the female praying mantis, who kills the male after mating, or several kinds of fish, who eat their own children. Then there’s the sea turtle mother, who buries her progeny in the sand, walks away, and never sees them again.
That sort of “natural” behavior would bring a lot of trouble for any human who tried those things.
Arguments from “nature” are about as vacant as it gets. The word doesn’t mean anything and even if it did, it would still have to be shown that going “against nature” has to be “wrong.”
Is it “natural” to wear clothes? Drive cars? Host talk shows? Get married?
The idea that there can be “natural” or “unnatural” cultural norms for child rearing (and that’s what child rearing is. O’Reilly is confusing child rearing with sexual reproduction) is fallacious from the start.
Incidentally, I wonder how Billo feels about fertility treatments, in vitro fertilization, sperm banks and the like when they are used by heterosexual couples.
