From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Wed Mar 12 2003 - 15:20:03 GMT
Hi Rick:
> PLATT
> I'm not in favor of gay marriages....
>
> ...To survive a society needs to encourage the bonding of bisexual
> couples and require them to provide for the welfare of their offspring.
> Allowing gay marriages would serve to weaken this basic social value. I do
> not see homosexuality to be immoral so long as the sexual behavior involved
> is between consenting adults and violates no obscenity laws.
>
> RICK
> Okay, I'm going to assume that when you wrote "bisexual couples" you
> meant to write "heterosexual couples" ('bisexuals' are people who are
> sexually attracted to both men and women; a couple with both a man and
> woman in it is 'heterosexual').
Yes, I meant heterosexual. Thanks for the correction.
> That being said, I'm wondering why you
> chose to qualify the term 'couples' at all and why you chose the term
> 'offspring' instead of 'children'?
I chose "couples" because normally it takes two, a man and a woman,
to create another human being. I chose "offspring" to suggest that
there's a socially beneficial bond between a father, mother and their
young that is otherwise lacking between adults and children.
>What I'm asking is....Why couldn't your
> sentence have read, "To survive, a society needs to encourage the bonding
> of couples and require them to provide for the welfare of their children."
> Why is it that the members of the relevant couple have to be a man and
> woman? Why does the relevant child have to be their "offspring"?
Absent cloning, artificial insemination and other man-made methods
of life creation (I'm not up on all the latest techniques for creating life in
man or beast) it takes intercourse between a man and woman to create
the new members of society that society obviously needs to survive.
These new members require years of care and education, again to
enable a society's survival. That this responsibility fall upon parents of
their natural born children has proven its value over millennia in nearly
every society I can think of. Some static patterns are very worthwhile.
Maybe there has been a successful society of amazon women
somewhere, but probably only in male adolescent dreams.
> Why shouldn't society encourage homosexual couples to marry and provide
> for the welfare of adopted children? As far as I know, there is no
> shortage of children that need adopting. Most of these children are
> currently living in foster care, on the taxpayers tab. Wouldn't society's
> survival interests be better served by letting homosexual couples marry,
> adopt children and the provide for their welfare? Or is there some reason
> to believe that the child is better off growing up in government-sponsored
> foster home than growing up with homosexual parents? Or should we allow
> gay couples to adopt and raise children, but just not get married?
I have no objection to allowing responsible gay couples to adopt and
raise abandoned children. This would be better for the children than
some of the alternatives.
> And what about homosexuals who may be raising their own natural
> children
> (for example, from a previous heterosexual marriage or relationship)? Is
> there some reason they should only be encouraged to remarry a member of the
> opposite sex in order to raise their offspring in a family? Is there some
> legitimate sociological or intellectual reason to believe that heterosexual
> couples make better parents than homosexual couples?
Is there evidence to show that homosexual couples make as good
parents as heterosexual couples? I don't know about any studies along
these lines, either pro or con. I suspect, though, that anthropological
studies of many cultures over many years will show that marriages
between a man and woman are widely sanctioned for good reasons, not
the least of which are the benefits for children.
> Finally, I would ask you to elaborate on your views in light of the
> following Pirsig quote...
>
> PIRSIG (LILA ch13 p185)
> When the United States drafted troops for the Civil War everyone knew that
> innocent people would be murdered. The North could have permitted the
> slave states to become independent and saved hundreds of thousands of
> lives. But an evolutionary morality argues that the North was right in
> pursuing that war because a nation is a higher form of evolution than a
> human body, and the principle of human equality is an even higher form than
> a nation.
>
> RICK
> In this passage, Pirsig tells us that the reason the North was
> justified
> in preventing the slave states from becoming their own independent country
> is because the independent country contemplated by the seceding slave
> states did not plan to respect the principle of human equality, a form of
> evolution that is higher than even a nation.
> Applied to the topic at hand, I wonder why it is that you don't think
> treating people differently under the law based on their sexual preference
> doesn't also violate the same principle of human equality? Pirsig tells us
> that the principle of human equality is so important, and at such a high
> level of evolution, that we are morally justified in killing men and
> destroying nations in order to preserve it. Do you believe that he meant
> to exempt discrimination against homosexuals from this principle?
The context for Pirsig's statement about equality was slavery. I have no
idea if he meant to exempt homosexuals, senior citizens, aliens,
intellectuals, whatever. Do you think, for example, that the principle of
human equality demands that everyone in the world should have the
same income?
In the brave new world when children are created in test tubes and
brought up on government farms the question of marriage, gay or
otherwise, will become mute. Then the Giant will have truly won.
Fortunately, I won't be around to see that day. :-)
Platt
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