The reference is to a translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, a fifteenth century manual on prosecuting witches. The most relevant passage I could find with the minimal effort I bothered to expend is this:
Wanting has nothing to do with consequences. Consequences occur whether you want them to or not as a natural result of action.
Yes, worse for the newborn but not as low cost as RU-486 or shiving it in the first trimester. Carrying a baby to term and then killing it requires a good bit of callousness that we are hardwired against.
Well, of course wanting *alone[/I doesn’t lead to consequences. Wanting plus action does. And people have been taking actions to avoid pregnancies for thousands of years.
Well, anyone who believes that greatly underestimates the callousness humans are capable of.
Anyway, until some kind of link between gay marriage and birth rates is established (or even plausibly argued), this whole line of discussion is a waste of time.
That’s not the way the human mind (or hormones) works. Since pregnancy is not an inevitable consequence of sex, the heat of the moment overwhelms the connection. And I assure you, even 40 years ago with contraception there was some fear of pregnancy.
Yes, but 150 years ago, the chance of pregnancy was pretty much on par with the natural cycles of the human body. Sheep’s intestine condoms and herbal abortifacents putting a miniscule dent into the chance of pregnancy as compared with today’s birth control.
This is really all beside the point… the larger question here is whether it’s moral to force sex to be coupled to fertility when that is contrary to what many want for themselves and their lives. In nations with a falling birthrate, what’s the moral thing to do with respect to the human rights of the citizens? Force them to couple sexual relations to reproduction, or concentrate on building a society where people feel like they feel sufficient desire and optimism to create a family?
In other words, if you’re thinking it’s moral to keep gay marriage unlawful (or prevent people from divorcing, or from using birth control, or from having abortions) just because some countries need more babies, that’s just wrong. It’s not right to mess with someone’s individual fertility choices just because you deem that society needs a higher birthrate. I’m not sure if that’s what the argument is here… seems like everyone is ringing the doorbell and running away w/r/t that particular argument. But if so, it’s wrong just on principle, and particularly wrong because we can’t even say whether gay marriage might affect fertility.
It’s not beside the point to me. I am interested in the tangent about impacts on demography not so much as to what people’s opinions are about what is moral and what isn’t. Not to say that your argument isn’t an interesting one, only at this point I am somewhat exhausted by the main thrust of the thread and have found the tangents more interesting.
There is no effective means by which you can force people to breed, so the point is moot.
Sure, if Germans don’t want to fuck to save their own people who am I to argue? I hope those Europeans change their views regarding immigration policies because they certainly are not going to have enough children of their own to change their bedpans in 40 years. It doesn’t help that their Eastern European labor pool has the same demographic problems that the wealthier western employer nations do. Ultimately what I see coming a demographic crisis that will correct itself after the true scope of the tragedy that is unfolding is understood by about mid-century. What I see going on in this thread is a dismissal of the relevance of decoupling sex from procreation in general. I agree that there is no reason to focus on homosexuals in that regard as heterosexuals are behaving in the same way. Sex and the City culture is all pervasive whether you are buggering young boys or buggering young girls.
I’d be interested to see a curve representing birthrates over time in affluent first world countries, I suspect you see a precipitous nose-dive with the advent of birth control.
Don’t feel bad - that’s pretty much all that’s going on at this point. A couple of people keep raising the issue of fertility, either of the couple or of society, and when when pressed as to how (or if) this relates to the the legalization of same-sex marriage, they go silent. For example:
I’m more interested in the process outlined by Canny Dan:
Posters who claim to speak for (I say “speak for”, not “agree with”, since at least one is explicitly playing devil’s advocate in this thread) the anti-SSM contingent have been asked to enlighten us on the details of step 2 above, but that hasn’t happened yet. I’ve been hoping one of them would step up to the plate and do so, but no such luck.
If someone would like to offer a serious explanation of how step 2 works, I’m sure that Canny Dan’s question is still open*.
*And if, instead, someone provides a low-word-count response that relies on the words “silliness,” “LOL you’re silly,” or some variation on the “silly” theme, I will flag down a mod, OK?
You’d have to separate out the more important consequence of contraception - greater participation by women in the work force, leading to more equal rights leading to postponement of first children and few children. Contraception is available all over the world, but birth rates vary wildly.
If you are worried about birthrates, rolling back equal employment opportunity would do a lot more than banning SSM.
I am not sure how relevant those things are considering that working women have sex pretty regularly. Without birth control (and I am including better contraceptives here) advances women probably wouldn’t have been so prevalent in the work force, and if they were they might have been more likely to be celebate as a result. As it is with the advances of modern science a woman can go to work and fuck whomever she wants without worrying (as much) about a baby ruining her career.
Like I said above I think that has little to do with it, I think birth control is much more relevant, otherwise fucking your boss on top of the copier is just as likely to get you pregnant as making love to your Chasidim husband through the hole in the sheet.
Full disclosure, I dropped the devil’s advocate role quite a while back and am now just discussing the tangents I’m interested in. As I’ve said normalization of homosexual marriage is just the final nail in the coffin of procreation/sexual coupling. It’s not indicative of anything except the end of the sexual revolution.
One thousand two hundred seventy six posts later, and yes, the question (“Explain the mode of action of #2”) is still open.
This diversion into (or back to) fecundity provides zero elucidation of it. But it does keep the thread going without anyone having to provide that answer.
As for heritability-- If we are asking “Is sexual identification imposed by one’s surroundings post-partum, in other words can one ‘catch teh gay’?”, then the answer is clearly NO. Gay people virtually without exception describe their own struggle to overcome the sexual orientation imposed upon them by society, and their inability to ‘catch the straight’. Their testimony demonstrates that sexual identification is not acquired, but something they themselves recognize from early in life. So on some basic level, sexual identification is clearly heritable.
If though we are asking “Is it inherited as a single simple allele, like Mendel’s peas were either smooth or wrinkled?”, then the answer is also NO.
Like most complicated behavior suites of humans, there are many elements controlling, suppressing, enhancing, and/or triggering the behavior, all of which are themselves inherited as a complex of alleles.
Actually, it is not even a nail in the coffin. It is a piece of ornamental trim glued to a desk in another building, entirely. It has nothing to do with decoupling procreation and sexuality in terms of marriage.
That decoupling has already been completed without any reference to homosexuality. SSM simply seeks to take advantage of a situation that has already been completed.
It seems to me that there’s a lot of “ZOMG! NO! Heterosexual marriage will fall apart into smithereens if gay marriage happens!” The truth is, you’re all just trying to deflect as much blame for the devaluation of “traditional marriage” onto a set of people who’ve had very little to do with that devaluation or destruction.
It’s heterosexual folks who’ve devalued and destroyed “traditional marriage” if it’s anyone. Why don’t you all get to work outlawing no-fault divorce if you’re so concerned for the state of marriage? Or re-criminalizing adultery? Generally, it’s not gay folk who are going out and cheating on their non-existent husbands and wives. It’s not gay folk who are putting more divorce lawyers into Mercedes every year.
We want to share in the institution of marriage. We’re not interested in destroying it. We want to perpetuate it. Frankly, except for extreme closet cases, homosexuals aren’t doing crap to marriage, because at the moment, in most places, we aren’t a part of it.