Is there no idea so outlandish that it won’t be mentioned? Perhaps they don’t have that right for the same reason they aren’t allowed to vote.
It is silly. And, sad. But, it appears this is the era when people are allowed to make very silly and sad choices. This guy thinks he is a cat and he has been allowed to alter his appearance to make himself appear catlike.Well, if they can choose their gender, as the lesbian couple in California let their son do, then why not let a child choose his parents?
Hey, I have an idea…why not let a child chose his species? Maybe he’d rather be a cat or a horse than a human. Why not let a child choose his age? If he doesn’t want to be five, let him pretend to be 12.
It’s all equally silly.
Surely.
No. Under our legal system children have legal rights, but cannot assert most of them (human rights they do have to care, nutrition, water, etc. but most human rights are not codified) – the legal rights are held in trust by the parents. That does not mean that we don’t report child abuse. It means that children cannot assert the same rights as an adult – the parents do it for them or hold them in trust. Children to do not have legal autonomy for the most part.
Who’s going to make that determination? How it be made? And the biggest question - who’d be foolhardy enough to become the new mom and dad?
You do not need a religious take to show that the parents have authority over their children. Children have always been considered property of the parents, only recently we have been talking about their rights as individuals.
You just asserted that you don’t need religious authority to show that parents have authority over their children. You have not shown me how this can be demonstrated without self evident objective moral values and religion. That people have always done something in the past has no relevance to how it will be done in the future. So while moral society is crumbling around you, posters might want to take this thread seriously.
So? There are a lot of parentless youngsters in our society now. People don’t seem to mind.
If you were to think about what I said you would understand that children like animals have been considered and could be considered property of the parents. Giving physical birth and keeping the individual alive is ownership. Just use an utilitarian point of view and you can see how making and supporting something for your own use is automatically your property.
Tut, tut, now. We mustn’t be judgmental. Everyone’s beliefs are equal, and none are better than another’s. If a man thinks he’s a cat, who are we to judge? When you make a judgment, one based strictly on facts, you are a bigot, for rational and moral thought is an act of bigotry, because no matter how sincerely you may seek to gather the facts, no matter how earnestly you may look at the evidence, no matter how disciplined you may try to be in your reasoning, your conclusion is going to be so tainted by your personal bigotries, by your upbringing, by your religion, by the color of your skin, by the nation of your great-great-great-great-great grandfather’s birth; that no matter what your conclusion, it is useless. It is nothing other than the reflection of your bigotries, and the only way to eliminate bigotry is to eliminate rational thought. Ultimately, we are told by the intelligencia, we cannot really know anything.
That doesn’t tell me why a child shouldn’t have the legal right to choose their parents. It only tells me that people view children as property.
You have an uncanny ability to take things out of context and present them in a light that is most fruitful to you. Strawmen will only make you appear dishonest. In reality, the onus is on you to show me why the past is relevant to the context of this particular discussion, given that it is about whether or not there is any good reason to deny a child the legal right to choose their parents if there is no self-evident objective moral law or religious authority to the contrary.
Then you can demonstrate that fact instead of merely asserting it.
Far from being an appeal to emotion, it is a statement of the facts that would be evident to any Catholic that hasn’t been living in a cave.
The burden of proof is on the advocate. Period.
I am not advocating. I am asking why, given a true split between church and state, children should not have the legal right to choose their parents.
The state clearly thinks that it is in the child’s best interest (and therefore society’s best interest) for it to to stay with the people who - in the majority of cases - care for it more than other adults do. And given the child’s lack of maturity and life experience, it is likely that the average child lacks the capability to make such a huge decision rationally. There are many things that children are deemed too immature to do, either for their good or for the good of society. This is one of those things.
First property does not have rights, and so children would not have rights.
Put on your thinking cap.