Well I feel like you are presenting this as a disagreement, but the only thing you are disagreeing with is the color of the metaphor. Basically what I am saying is it shows the completion of the sexual revolution, it’s the final remnant, the one group that will turn off the lights when they leave traditional society behind.
No it wasn’t – you just had a lot more pulling out. Certainly that’s a less effective method of birth control, especially for women as they just have to trust their partner, but it’s not like it’s a new innovation.
–Cliffy
Straw man
The reason it’s a straw man is that the same subgroup of people fighting gay marriage fought against no-fault divorce back in the day. When divorce at all became a thing, wars were fought over it, there is a hit series on Showtime about that, The Tudors. So this, “If you care so much why aren’t you?”, is a poor argument because the answer would be, “We did, we tried and we lost.”
Agreed.
:rolleyes:
So the hijack has now become the thread, eh? Frankly I’m not interested in whatever you believe to be normal, nor in how steadfastly you wish sex to be linked to procreation, and only procreation.
Also, I doubt that society’s ever-changing sexual attitudes (abbreviated and belittled by you as “the sexual revolution”) have now or ever will actually come to an end. Your “full disclosure” seems to demonstrate your desire for the status quo ante, and your wish that things could be like they were when Moses was roaming the desert, or perhaps in pre-revolutionary Massachussetts Bay Colony. That’s fine for you, and I hope it keeps you happy. The rest of us are still looking for that elusive #2. Pardon me for suspecting that you are not merely “uninterested” in discussing this, but incapable of discussing it.
If human sexual behavior has any great meaning in a biological frame of reference, that meaning has to do with bonding and long term committment, not with the production of offspring. Animals that have long pregnancies and produce relatively undeveloped offspring that require a tremendous amount of care gain an advantage from having two adults performing parental duties.
Thus sex-as-fun has little effect on the rare sexual encounters that would be necessary to keep every female pregnant all the time. A couple of fucks a year with random partners at just the right time would do it. That works great for many species producing large numbers of relatively expendable babies. (I’m thinking of you, rabbits!)
Sex-as-fun does though serve as a powerful bonding tool for some species, including most great apes (including humans). If sex wasn’t fun, if it was not something to be pursued for its own rewards, not just pregnancy, then there would be no need for seductive music, flower purchasing, or female orgasm. But having that bonding tool, sex, available provides a powerful incentive to keep pairs together and keep them attentive to each other. This then helps ensure successful rearing of the few offspring actually produced.
This seems to function equally well regardless of the gender(s) of the sexual partners.
So many of us find it easy to accept making SSM lawful. We still await some stalwart opponent of SSM actually providing a compelling argument against it.
Good because I am not interested in your wild Freudian analyses either. 
And yes, for me the hijack has become the thread. I argued the thread for over a thousand posts, and now I’m bored of it. Let homosexuals get married, let them have as much sex as they want, I don’t particularly care.
I thought you weren’t interested in bargain-basement psycho-analysis? Your lame stereotypes are boring, if they persist I will do us both a favor and scroll past your posts.
Right you THINK you are completely on the other side of the divide that decouples reproduction from sexuality. Of course you’re not, because you talk about bonding with children, which is a reproductive function. So in order for there to be children sex has to have been procreative at least once.
It doesn’t exactly work like that. People have sex and they get pregnant when the conditions are right. Sometimes sex for fun results in an unwanted pregnancy and sometimes sex for pregnancy results in nothing.
Why is bonding important if children do not result? Why are bonded mammals even relevant to anything? Wouldn’t being unbonded be superior? ‘Its own rewards’ is kind of a meaningless term. It’s interesting how you label every aspect of sex EXCEPT reproduction as having value. Reproduction is not a reward of having sex, but everything else is. But then again you switch gears, the value of of sexual coupling allows for bonding which helps in the rearing of offspring. So its value is in how it helps people bring up the offspring. What if both partners are bonded similarly to several other partners when they have a child?
So you’re not going to tell us what that "they hate ‘Breeders’ " stuff you wrote was all about? :dubious:
I’m not sure what you mean by sexual revolution, or how it would be completed. SSM would reduce the number of partners gay people have by having a formal commitment. It looks to me that AIDS has made things a lot less free than they were when I was in college, pre-AIDS.
I think the sexual revolution has been complete for some time now. 20 years at least, and maybe 30.
If that’s what your own marriage means to you, frankly that’s pretty sad.
I’ve not one single time in this thread or any other used the words “psycho-analysis” whether Freudian, bargain basement, or otherwise. You are confused. Feel free to scroll your confusion away. Otherwise, it sure is great to have your wholehearted and sincere support for SSM!
You remain confused. There is no “divide”. Sexuality serves multiple roles, procreation being one of them. The “fun” aspect of sexuality helps to strengthen a pair bonding. Having frequent sex, even when that sex is not necessary to procreation, helps to keep the pair together. This makes them more successful at raising offspring than a single parent might be.
Well, yes, actually it does work like that. Most animals are not sexually receptive outside of very limited breeding seasons. That amount of sex is enough to keep all females pregnant all the time. (Not ‘all’ strictly, but ‘to an overwhelming degree’ surely. Mice screw a couple of times, are pregnant for 28 days, lactate for another 28 days, then screw a couple more times and repeat the cycle.) Humans screw, and enjoy screwing, damn near all the time, pregnant or not. It’s the screwing that keeps the pair together, not the kid.
Because when a pregnancy DOES result, as it almost inevitably will given frequent sex (and unless there is some interfering factor) the pair is already together, and will in likelyhood remain together during pregnancy, and be a pair still during the childhood of that offspring.
Because we are mammals?
I’ve explained several times why it would not. Are you still confused?
Well, maybe to you…
I have not assigned a value to anything. I have described the biological functions. Sex, like most human behaviors, is complex and serves multiple ends. Reproduction, the production of a baby, is only one such end. Successful rearing of that baby is another end, which is facilitated by the multiple partners approach, which itself is enhanced by bonding through sexual enjoyment. Get it now?
Your final sentence seems to be suggesting that bonded groups larger than a pair are possible, as indeed they are. Your own historical references to biblical multiple marriage would seem to follow along those lines. So it is probably, on balance, a good thing. And beyond that, these multiple partner relationships are also inextricably woven into a tribe, providing additional support structures. Again, arguably a good thing.
If instead you were going to call these out and cast some aspersion on them as evil (or abnormal) promiscuous relationships, or as perhaps homosexual relationships, or both, well then, you are still confused.
And we remain no closer to an explanation of #2.
What exactly did I say about my own marriage, please clarify your personal attack because I didn’t understand it.
That’s ludicrous. If they can’t commit without the piece of paper why would they commit with the piece of paper? The monogamous homosexuals are already monogamous, or they will be if they find someone who they want to be monogamous with. I doubt anyone is saying, “Well society won’t let us get married, I might as well cheat on you.”
I don’t know about that, college dorms are meat markets today.
Then why didn’t we have gay marriage then?
Right, because you have to say ‘psychoanalysis’ to give some hokey assessment of my character. :rolleyes: I’m not confused one bit, you are trying to make it personal about me and some character deficiency because you want to cajole me into arguing what you want me to argue. It’s simple, it’s transparent and it’s not a clever tactic, neither is the silly denial you’re pulling here.
I am not confused you are just a terrible writer. Go back and re-read what you wrote. All sorts of bits where one second procreation is secondary to the pair bond, and then justifying a need for the pair bond by how it will help raise the offspring of procreation. I know precisely what you’re trying to say, I just want you to tune up your rhetoric so that you are less self-contradictory.
It’s the screwing that keeps the pair together? Well then I must have like 30 wives out there! I screwed em, but where are they?
But there is no guarantee that they would have stayed together without the child either. Why is bonded pairing even needed? I know people who love their freedom to just go out and screw a lot of people.
You haven’t explained anything. All of your statements are contradictory. Reproduction is irrelevant but bonded pairing is useful in reproduction. Your biological analysis is conflicting with your ideological agenda.
Oh, it thinks it’s sly again with the veiled personal attacks. No, the point is you are picking and choosing which aspects suit your argument and there is no internal consistency to your argument.
Yes, but sex is decoupled from bonding as well. As I pointed out, I have had far more sexual partners than I have had people I bonded to. I have had two relationships where the bonding aspect came into play, but they are not my only consistent relationships. I’ve had several that lasted for months or up to a year where when the bonding issue came up they dissolved, and we had LOTS of sex. So clearly sex and bonding have nothing to do with one another.
No, I am talking about where bonding is not uniform. Like I am bonded to four people, and those four people are bonded to other people in varying amounts, like a big Venn diagram. And your superficial analysis of polygamy shows you’ve done very little research into how it actually works. Polygamy leads to a system of elders with lots of wives and groups of young men with no prospects in those tribal scenarios.
:rolleyes:
I am uninterested in your little three parter.
I take it, then, that we will see no more interruptions of what has, in effect, become the current central issue of the thread?
TWEEEEET!!!
There will be no more projections on or speculations about any poster’s personal life, sexuality, or relationships.
Such nonsense is not relevant to the thread and is little more than attempts to insult others while staying (barely) within the rules of the forum.
[ /Moderating ]
Really? The number of partners a heterosexual has is not affected by marriage? Not that there is perfect monogamy, but the social and legal commitments of a marriage have some impact, and no doubt remove potential mates from the pool.
I’m sure co-ed dorms have some effect. However I was talking about the worries about disease which we didn’t have.
Because gay marriage has nothing to do with the sexual revolution, and everything to do with the removal of the stigma that society put on being gay and everything to do with equality. I doubt my class was much better at respecting gays than the class five years before us, pre-sexual revolution. Some of us got better, though.
I made no speculations about another poster (since more than a week ago), although I have speculated about the thrust of a poster’s argument.
Nor was I pleased to see a hijack become the main topic, and I tried to return to the OP’s intent.
Is it all right to note that the plural of anecdote is not evidence?
Otherwise I’m sure readers can judge for themselves the cogency of the arguments presented here.
CannyDan, you doth protest too much, methinks.
I noted conditions for all posters for future participation in this thread. If you want to stand up, glare in my direction, and mutter “Are you talkin’ to ME?” you are liable to garner more attention than is really needful.
Hey, you were more than willing to take the digressions too. I have said I am uninterested in the central theme any longer, but find the side issues more interesting. Your post about the Witches Hammer and the Inquisition was the most interesting post here in more than a week. I am only responding to insults being hurled my direction by people who are upset I won’t answer a particular question. I was having a nice conversation with Voyager about birth rates, and anyone else who wants to join in is welcome.
If you want to say my tangent about birthrates is irrelevant to the discussion, please let me know and I will close this topic and never reopen it.
No, I don’t think so, I am not ‘legally’ married, but I am monogamous. I am monogamous because I said I would be. For a while when we were dating I said under no uncertain terms I would not be monogamous, and then I wasn’t. Now I have said I would be and I am. What does the piece of paper have to do with it? The social and legal commitments of having a kid do as well, the social and legal commitments of being financially dependent upon one another like the joint ownership of a house do as well. And people who are married cheat constantly. If someone is going to be monogamous they will be monogamous, if they aren’t they won’t. I am sure that for some people it has an impact, but I’d say for the most part it’s irrelevant.
That’s true, but at the same time everyone is fucking like rabbits now. They worry about the disease but I don’t see people fucking less because of it. It’s just taken on a less whimsical tone. No longer are people engaging in love-ins with the open wide-eyed naivete they once did.
How does that have nothing to do with the sexual revolution? The sexual revolution was about removing stigma from sex.