That is not my logic, but your caricature of my logic. If you want to advocate a Monty Python “every sperm is sacred” view that every potential chance at conception must be taken, go ahead, but please do not put that argument in my mouth.
I quoted you. You said:
there is a potential child who is denied any existence at all as opposed to a child who has a short life.
By extension of this reasoning, with every sexual act, there is a potential child who may come to be. But through contraception, such potential children are denied existence.
But now you introduce this bit of logic:
However, if two people are willing and able and trying to have a child, you need a very very good reason before trying to stop them.
It seems like you’re implying that a non-existing child’s potential to exist is dependent strictly on the will of those who desire to have one. If this is what you believe, then it is obviously shortsighted. If it is not what you believe, then I wonder why someone’s desire to have a child vetoes the natural mechanisms involved in actually producing a child.
And no. I do not advocate the “every sperm is sacred” position. I was merely commenting on the logic you’re employing here.
Also, I did not say you held this position, I was asking if you did. I put no words in your mouth. I quoted you exactly, and then made a comment on your reasoning, as I have done so here, again.
That is your belief, not mine. As you just admitted, society distinguishes clearly between marriage laws and rights and paternity laws and rights, so it is apparently not the belief of society as a whole either.
You’re probably right about society as a whole… today. But the position I’m putting forward is the historical understanding. Law does not separate marriage and paternity laws, rights and obligations because they are independent of each other, but because there are extenuating circumstances that are common in human life that make it necessary to make the segregation. But they are not independent.
Remove the child variable, and government should have zero interest in the feelings two people have for each other. Why, oh why, does the government care to grant any rights to two people who want to live together? Why doesn’t the government grant rights to roommates, for example? The reason government has any interest in marriage
to begin with is because marriage produces children.
Further, same sex couples both produce and rear children.
Yes. That’s why we’re having this debate. That people do things is not a justification for doing those things.
Being raised by a same sex couple in no way means that the child will not have regular contact with both biological parents, and if you were advocating that such arrangements be preferred over donors or surrogates who then drop out of the picture I would fully support you.
Contact with biological parents is an immensely different thing that have those biological parents as actual parents.
As far as those adopted by same sex couples or born via surrogacy or donors who then complain, I ask yet again if you argue that they would be better off either not existing or being left in the orphanage?
I would not make such an argument, no. The argument I would make is that it is better that people be born into a natural family than an unnatural one.
For that matter those complaining are very few in number compared to those praising their same sex parents.
Except, those who are complaining say they love their homosexual parents very much. You’re ignoring a major psychological element here. Yes, those who are vocal in this way are very few compared to those who praise their parents. But
not necessarily because those who are not complaining are completely satisfied. An article I read by such a “complainer” explained this very well. People like her do not normally speak out because they are afraid of hurting their homosexual parents. They praise them instead because they love them.
Nevertheless, they do live with a sense of deprivation, regardless of whether they talk about it or not.
Indeed study after study has shown that same sex couples do at least as well at parenting as opposite sex ones. If you want to play that game, there are plenty of reports of abusive upbringing in the Catholic community (nuns forcing children to eat their own vomit and so on) not to mention the oft-debated high incidence of Catholics in prison. Would you use those isolated examples and one statistic to argue that Catholics were intrinsically bad parents and should not be allowed to marry?:ehh:
I have never said that homosexuals make bad parents, and I never would say such a thing. Bad parenting is not an inherent trait to anyone. Neither is good parenting. The point being made here is not that homosexuals make bad parents. Indeed, many make good parents and many make bad parents, just like everyone else. The point is that, by the fact that there is only one parental sex present in such families (male/male or female/female), there is something missing that the child has a right to. There is a natural difference in the way men and women think and act, and that difference is lost in such families.
Finally, you have yet to show how same sex
marriage would deprive a child of anything, as opposed to giving them a more stable family situation.
By institutionalizing same sex marriage, you validate homosexual parenting as natural and normal. This
will deprive many children of their natural right to a male/female parental unit, and more specifically, their natural parents.
