Debate help: Contraception mentality leads to divorce, homosexuality, murder

  • Thread starter Thread starter ahs
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
A

ahs

Guest
I am having a debate with a friend and he has said he’ll give no more consideration to my points without objective, impartial evidence…stats.

Can someone (multiple someones) please help me find data for my argument that, since the dawning of the contraception mentality (free-love, hippie-days) there has been a correlation in the rise of:

-Divorce
-Homosexuality
-Abortion (I called it “murder, in as much as innocent babies are killed in the womb”)

Thanks,
ahs
 
Thanks Arizona Mike!

Any more that seem the least bit relevant are welcome…I’d like to prepare for this guy a solid showing tomorrow…
 
Morwenna said:
This is a famous lecture given by Janet Smith … great reading … including Pope Paul VI’s predictions in Humanae Vitae and how they have come to pass in the decades since:

catholiceducation.org/articles/sexuality/se0002.html

I’m searching for more, will post as I find them.
Click to expand...
Full talks by Janet Smith here:

blog.ancient-future.net/2008/03/21/contraception-why-not-mp3s-by-dr-janet-smith/

Also:

steve.onemoresoul.com/in-my-opinion/does-use-of-contraception-lead-to-divorce.html
 
@ahs
What you really need to hit this home is stats from multiple countries showing the same trends. This can get confusing because you really can’t just compare contraception use to divorce rate. The divorce rate will appear lower in countries when they don’t have as many marriages and will skew you data. You really need to compare contraception use vs divorce rate/marriage rate.

Here’s a start on getting data:

nationmaster.com/graph/peo_mar_rat-people-marriage-rate

nationmaster.com/graph/peo_div_rat-people-divorce-rate
 
Sri Lanka would be your best counter example in my opinion. 50% of married women are using no contraception or some form on of NFP.
searo.who.int/LinkFiles/Family_Planning_Fact_Sheets_srilanka.pdf

Marriage rate is 9.3 per 1000 - wisc-online.com/objects/ViewObject.aspx?ID=CAS2401b

Divorce Rate is 0.15 per 1000 - nationmaster.com/country/ce-sri-lanka/peo-people

The marriage rate/divorce = 62 then with a 50% contraception/sterilization rate in Sri Lanka among married couples.

The United States would compare with 9.8/1000 marriage rate and a 4.95/1000 divorce rate.

The marriage rate/divorce rate = 1.98 then with a 72% contraception/sterilization rate in the U.S among married couples.
(cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5928a5.htm).

This link also has good contraception use stats for married women for 4 other countries:

cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5928a5.htm
 
I went through Spain, France, Netherlands and the UK and the best marriage/divorce rate out of those is Spain with around an 8. I’m sure its strong Catholic background has something to do with that though haha. The U.S, Spain, France, and the Netherlands all have similar usage of contraceptives/sterilization among married women. I’m getting that the U.K is significantly higher than the 70% that the others are and it might be good to search for another source for contraceptive use among married women in these countries.
 
I would caution you not to draw your conclusions that the rise in divorce and homosexuality are in themselves derived from the availability and general acceptance of contraception, rather that rise in each can be viewed separately as the result of a more permissive society.

I don’t necessarily think that the apparent rise of homosexuality can be linked to contraception in a causative way, for example. I’m not remotely convinced that homosexuality has become more prevalent, rather that people with this inclination would have kept quiet about it before society in general changed its views.

Where you would have a very definite link though would be that acceptance of contraception essentially devalues the sexual act itself. It becomes ‘disposable’ and the consequences are, as a result, entirely emotional and not (or very little) practical in as much as there isn’t a physical result (i.e. a baby). Hence that results in more people treating sex as a commodity, using it selfishly for their own pleasure and then when they disconnect from their own responsibility because they perceive it to be risk free and forget or ignore the choice to use contraception, ‘unwanted’ pregnancies occur and with such lack of inculcated morals, abortion seems expedient because those who engage in such practises see the unborn baby only as an inconvenient obstruction to their selfish desires.
 
Thanks so much guys adn gals. Yeah, I have to stick to statistics for now with this guy. It was gettign to be a jumbled mess trying to show correlations, prove natural ends of our faculties, and the Christian perspective was going no where (the person is not a Christian).

I feel like if I can just get him to look at the stats and acknowledge that they are unbiased and that I didnt’ just make this up, that will be a victory in itself. There’s nothing I can do (my own shortfall right now) to show him that sex is ordered to procreation…at least not right now where we are debating. I’ll have to save that topic for another time, or hope he decides to do some follow-up research on my ‘outlandish’ claim. 😊
 
-Homosexuality
Click to expand...
How on earth has no one addressed this? Are there any studies demonstrating this? What does it even matter if people are gay so long as they live a moral lifestyle? What do you even mean by this?
 
I suggest a different approach, one I’m learning from GK Chesterton.

Suggest to your friend that there is more to life than dry statistics and experimental evidence. By such standards, it is actually impossible to convince an insane man that he is NOT the Emperor Napolean unjustly deprived of his throne by a global conspiracy. Every evidence that you could give he merely dismisses as a product of the conspiracy. The same is true for someone who holds an insane view of human sexuality.

The insane view of human sexuality is one that says that marriage, intercourse and children are separate topics only tangentially related through the accidents of biology and culture. From this worldview, the human body is merely the container of the intellect and the will and is incidental to the person. Modern scientific and economic achievements have allowed these things to finally be separated cleanly and we need no more worry about them being entangled. Those holding this view usually obstinately refuse to consider the fairly obvious causes of our cultural deterioration over the last 90 years. It doesn’t take an objective observer very long to see the direct correlation between cultural acceptance of contraception in America to the rise in promiscuity rates, STD rates, divorce, unwed parenthood and ultimately abortion. It takes a serious obstinacy to refuse to see how attempting to uncouple these three aspects of human sexuality have lead to this cultural unraveling.

Our culture has for the last 90 years operated on the unexamined assumption that the three major aspects of human sexuality are distinct and separable blocks, like Legos. But this is a false assumption. The reality is that human sexuality is like a crystal goblet. If you try to intentionally separate the base, stem and bowl, you only shatter the whole thing in the process of trying.
 
Baelor said:
How on earth has no one addressed this? Are there any studies demonstrating this? What does it even matter if people are gay so long as they live a moral lifestyle? What do you even mean by this?
Click to expand...
I’m sure strong data exists to support it. The rationale is best described by the link between sexuality and it’s divorce from procreation. Commenting upon Pope Paul VI’s Humane Vitae in 1993, Bishop Joseph Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston wrote:

"Pope Paul VI saw clearly, when few others did, that the two purposes of marital intercourse, the unitive and the procreative, must be linked inseparably, and that to treat them as separate and distinct purposes would lead to the use of sexual intimacy as primarily self-gratification, and would open the door for every type of sexual expression and perversion. When the meaning of the marital act is divorced from transmitting life, then adultery, sex outside of marriage, homosexual genital acts, and pornography can be justified or condoned."
 
Baelor said:
How on earth has no one addressed this? Are there any studies demonstrating this? What does it even matter if people are gay so long as they live a moral lifestyle? What do you even mean by this?
Click to expand...
People on both sides err by demanding a homogenous, one size fits all answer on this issue. There isn’t one. People are messy, not binary. We’ve flopped over from a culture in which every man was presumed to be straight except for a few standouts (for which there were many nasty names) to a culture in which anyone who ever experiences sexual confusion is labeled for life as “bisexual” at minimum or “closet homosexual” at the extreme.

But life doesn’t really work that way. Some people most likely have a deap rooted same sex attraction (SSA) that won’t ever go away. Others have transitory SSA from experiences and family problems that can be resolved. One size doesn’t fit all. Humans are complex and fragile. Today and in the past, we’ve failed to recognize this. And the issue is so emotional that nobody can or will do impartial studies on the matter. It appears that only those with axes to grind get published.
 
Arizona_Mike said:
Info on marriage rates:

crisismagazine.com/2012/marriages-vanishing-act

Probably not part of your debate, but oral contraceptives make women choose less masculine “girly men” as sexual partners, and make women less attractive to men:

clevelandleader.com/node/11553
Click to expand...
With your second source if you read the article, you’ll see the doctor that is quoted goes on to say :
“It is a possibility - but there is no evidence of this yet,’ she said. 'We need a lot more research in this area.”
so I would consider not using that if you’re getting into a serious debate - just a thought - but if it’s serious, I bet your sources will be checked.
God Bless
Rye
 
SteveGC said:
I’m sure strong data exists to support it. The rationale is best described by the link between sexuality and it’s divorce from procreation. Commenting upon Pope Paul VI’s Humane Vitae in 1993, Bishop Joseph Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston wrote:
Click to expand...
That is not a scientific study. I would even accept a study that involves only numbers but no actual scientific evidence (i.e., statistical proof). But this is a quantitative/empirical issue, not a rational one.
But life doesn’t really work that way. Some people most likely have a deap rooted same sex attraction (SSA) that won’t ever go away. Others have transitory SSA from experiences and family problems that can be resolved. One size doesn’t fit all. Humans are complex and fragile. Today and in the past, we’ve failed to recognize this. And the issue is so emotional that nobody can or will do impartial studies on the matter. It appears that only those with axes to grind get published.
Click to expand...
But there is still an answer – either contraception causes homosexuality, or it does not. I have not even heard anything before this thread suggesting a connection, so I am wondering why no one else mentioned it. Am I missing some seminal survey or paper?
 
Baelor said:
But there is still an answer – either contraception causes homosexuality, or it does not. I have not even heard anything before this thread suggesting a connection, so I am wondering why no one else mentioned it. Am I missing some seminal survey or paper?
Click to expand...
Contraception leads to acceptance of homosexual acts because it would be contradictory to accept one and not the the other.

If you allow contraception then your saying its ok to split the unitive and procreative purposes of sex. If so then it is contradictory to apply this to heterosexual couples but not to homosexual couples. This misunderstanding behind why contraception is wrong leads to a misunderstanding of why homosexual acts are wrong. Of course people can always fall back on “but the Bible says specifically that homosexual acts are wrong” and that is all fine and dandy except your then standing on the principle that God is irrational and unreasonable in his commands.

Acceptance of contraception = not understanding natural law (human reason) = eventual acceptance of homosexual acts because you have rejected the broad philosophy that brought it all together. The root of all these troubles is the inability to understand human reason and why it matters.
 
Baelor said:
How on earth has no one addressed this? Are there any studies demonstrating this? What does it even matter if people are gay so long as they live a moral lifestyle? What do you even mean by this?
Click to expand...
Hi, I’m not sure if any study has been done on this. Also, it extrememly important to note that I am not drawing a parallel between “gay” and “homosexuality”. First of all, I prefer “same sex attraction” when describing people who have a same sex attraction. And havinog that attraction does not make one an active homosexual. Homosexuality, the way I mean it, describes the active sex-having between two persons of the same sex, and the support for those actions and acceptance of those actions by people…for the purpose of that debate I’m having.

In that debate (informal by the way) I’m just pointing out that the major action we see today with “gay rights”, GLBT organizations, “Gay Pride Parades”, public expressions of homosexuality…have come about after contraceptives became a popularly approved item…the contraceptive mentality has led a “free-love” mentality. As Nate13 pointed out, it would not make sense to accept one and reject the other. It’s the same mentality that I believe has also led to increased divorce rates and infanticide, decreased birth rates, and decreased marriage.

Of coarse, this thread is not intended to debate the topic, I’m just trying to find any source that has some data that I can show to my friend. If you happen across anything, please do share it. 🙂
 
Nate13 said:
Contraception leads to acceptance of homosexual acts because it would be contradictory to accept one and not the the other.
Click to expand...
Then I retract my statement – the way the OP phrased it meant that contraception leads to homosexuality (q.v. the title).
ahs said:
Homosexuality, the way I mean it, describes the active sex-having between two persons of the same sex, and the support for those actions and acceptance of those actions by people…for the purpose of that debate I’m having.
Click to expand...
Homosexual: “sexually attracted to people of one’s own sex.”
Homosexuality: “sexual desire or behavior directed toward a person or persons of one’s own sex,” “an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions” primarily or exclusively to people of the same sex," "of, relating to, or characterized by a tendency to direct sexual desire toward another of the same sex "

All from different dictionaries. If you are going to posit an arbitrary definition that is totally at odds with the common definition, you have a responsibility to your interlocutors to explain this, otherwise people are just operating on different definitions and bases.

I now understand, however, and I fully agree with you.
 
Baelor said:
Homosexual: “sexually attracted to people of one’s own sex.”
Homosexuality: “sexual desire or behavior directed toward a person or persons of one’s own sex,” “an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions” primarily or exclusively to people of the same sex," "of, relating to, or characterized by a tendency to direct sexual desire toward another of the same sex "

All from different dictionaries. If you are going to posit an arbitrary definition that is totally at odds with the common definition, you have a responsibility to your interlocutors to explain this, otherwise people are just operating on different definitions and bases.
Click to expand...
Ah, very good point. Thanks for pointing this out to me…and sorry for the confusion.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top