>> ^yourhydra:
anti-abortionists have no argument untill they each adopt five unwanted children.


That is a purely emotional hot-word statement. If you are an activist against climate change, can you say that you have powered your home entirely by wind and sun? I've got $100 that says no. Have you stopped your entire use of non-stick cookware on account of its heavy metals? I've got $100 that says no. How much paper do you use in a day at work and at home... that includes paper-towels and toilet paper? ...

There is as I understand it a waiting list for people in the US to adopt newborn babies who are up for adoption. Think about it. If you were wanting a child and you could not have one for some unfortunate genetic or other reason, you'd want still to raise a child from infancy wouldn't you? Basically most completely infertile couples who wish to raise a child want an infant. And I don't doubt that if you told them "if you don't take this child it will be aborted," most of them would jump to and do many things to get the child. Most Americans (at least) by statistics don't like the idea of abortion and would like to raise an infant who would otherwise be so aborted.

I had a roommate who was adopted as an infant and there is no doubt in his mind that he appreciates his adopters to the alternative.

There ARE people who adopt many many "unwanted children" and in my eyes they are saints given that they can give them what they need... as many do. They often make great sacrifices in order to do so.

That's kind of a straw man argument. There are all kinds of fertility treatments, and new ones come along all the time, and we're almost at a point where a completely infertile couple could produce a genetic offspring (through surrogates, but genetically theirs). A more valid argument is that since women can produce children simply by going to a sperm bank, why is Pat Buchanan against homosexual women getting married? With sperm easily available, they're even more fertile than a heterosexual couple.

In California, where domestic partnerships by law grant all the same rights as marriages, the gay marriage debate is simply a culture war over a word. Both sides of the argument seem petty to me, one for having couple's rights but wanting a different name for it, and the other for exaggerating the effects of redefining a word.

I grew up with 12 years of Catholic education. The Catholic Church teaches that marriage is an institution created for the main purpose of having children. Now, I understand Pat isn't Catholic, but he uses the same reasoning - that marriage, under God's law, is defined as being between a man and a woman for the purpose of humans being able to procreate.

Going along with that "logic," people who are infertile should not be able to get married (which Catholicism also teaches) because they are incapable of having children - no matter how much the couple loves each other. They must accept that it's "God's plan" for them.

Now, if Pat wants to stick by God's law, he should also be supporting laws to stop infertile people from marrying each other. Gee, I wonder how well that would go over. I doubt he would do that, but if he didn't, what religious reasoning could he use for their marriage being legitimate? Only that they love each other - but admitting that as a basis for marriage would make his lame argument against gay marriage crumble.

He also says "I believe that the unity we had is gone. The United States, as a community, is dissolving." Is he saying that marriage is what unites us as Americans? First of all, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Second of all, if it were true, I guess the fact that 50% of marriages in the U.S. end in divorce means our "unity" as Americans was pretty shitty to begin with.

From M.I.T.'s The Tech publication:



THE SECULAR CASE AGAINST GAY MARRIAGE

Adam Kolasinksi

Homosexual relationships do nothing to serve the state interest of propagating society, so there is no reason to grant them the costly benefits of marriage.

The Tech, Volume 124, Number 5
Tuesday, February 17, 2004

The debate over whether the state ought to recognize gay marriages has thus far focused on the issue as one of civil rights. Such a treatment is erroneous because state recognition of marriage is not a universal right. States regulate marriage in many ways besides denying men the right to marry men, and women the right to marry women. Roughly half of all states prohibit first cousins from marrying, and all prohibit marriage of closer blood relatives, even if the individuals being married are sterile. In all states, it is illegal to attempt to marry more than one person, or even to pass off more than one person as one's spouse. Some states restrict the marriage of people suffering from syphilis or other venereal diseases. Homosexuals, therefore, are not the only people to be denied the right to marry the person of their choosing.

I do not claim that all of these other types of couples restricted from marrying are equivalent to homosexual couples. I only bring them up to illustrate that marriage is heavily regulated, and for good reason. When a state recognizes a marriage, it bestows upon the couple certain benefits which are costly to both the state and other individuals. Collecting a deceased spouse's social security, claiming an extra tax exemption for a spouse, and having the right to be covered under a spouse's health insurance policy are just a few examples of the costly benefits associated with marriage. In a sense, a married couple receives a subsidy. Why? Because a marriage between to unrelated heterosexuals is likely to result in a family with children, and propagation of society is a compelling state interest. For this reason, states have, in varying degrees, restricted from marriage couples unlikely to produce children.

Granted, these restrictions are not absolute. A small minority of married couples are infertile. However, excluding sterile couples from marriage, in all but the most obvious cases such as those of blood relatives, would be costly. Few people who are sterile know it, and fertility tests are too expensive and burdensome to mandate. One might argue that the exclusion of blood relatives from marriage is only necessary to prevent the conception of genetically defective children, but blood relatives cannot marry even if they undergo sterilization. Some couples who marry plan not to have children, but without mind-reaching technology, excluding them is impossible. Elderly couples can marry, but such cases are so rare that it is simply not worth the effort to restrict them. The marriage laws, therefore, ensure, albeit imperfectly, that the vast majority of couples who do get the benefits of marriage are those who bear children.

Homosexual relationships do nothing to serve the state interest of propagating society, so there is no reason for the state to grant them the costly benefits of marriage, unless they serve some other state interest. The burden of proof, therefore, is on the advocates of gay marriage to show what state interest these marriages serve. Thus far, this burden has not been met.

One may argue that lesbians are capable of procreating via artificial insemination, so the state does have an interest in recognizing lesbian marriages, but a lesbian's sexual relationship, committed or not, has no bearing on her ability to reproduce. Perhaps it may serve a state interest to recognize gay marriages to make it easier for gay couples to adopt. However, there is ample evidence (see, for example, David Popenoe's Life Without Father) that children need both a male and female parent for proper development. Unfortunately, small sample sizes and other methodological problems make it impossible to draw conclusions from studies that directly examine the effects of gay parenting. However, the empirically verified common wisdom about the importance of a mother and father in a child's development should give advocates of gay adoption pause. The differences between men and women extend beyond anatomy, so it is essential for a child to be nurtured by parents of both sexes if a child is to learn to function in a society made up of both sexes. Is it wise to have a scoial policy that encourages family arrangements that deny children such essentials? Gays are not necessarily bad parents, nor will they necessarily make their children gay, but they cannot provide a set of parents that includes both a male and a female.

Some have compared the prohibition of homosexual marriage to the prohibition of interracial marriage. This analogy fails because fertility does not depend on race, making race irrelevant to the state's interest in marriage. By contrast, homosexuality is highly relevant because it precludes procreation.

Some argue that homosexual marriages serve a state interest because they enable gays to live in committed relationships. However, there is nothing stopping homosexuals from living in such relationships today. Advocates of gay marriage claim gay couples need marriage in order to have hospital visitation and inheritance rights, but they can easily obtain these rights by writing a living will and having each partner designate the other as trustee and heir. There is nothing stopping gay couples from signing a joint lease or owning a house jointly, as many single straight people do with roommates. The only benefits of marriage from which homosexual couples are restricted are those that are costly to the state and society.

Some argue that the link between marriage and procreation is not as strong as it once was, and they are correct. Until recently, the primary purpose of marriage, in every society around the world, has been procreation. In the 20th century, Western societies have downplayed the procreative aspect of marriage, much to our detriment. As a result, the happiness of the parties to the marriage, rather than the good of the children or the social order, has become its primary end, with disastrous consequences. When married persons care more about themselves than their responsibilities to their children and society, they become more willing to abandon these responsibilities, leading to broken homes, a plummeting birthrate, and countless other social pathologies that have become rampant over the last 40 years. Homosexual marriage is not the cause for any of these pathologies, but it will exacerbate them, as the granting of marital benefits to a category of sexual relationships that are necessarily sterile can only widen the separation between marriage and procreation.

The biggest danger homosexual civil marriage presents is the enshrining into law the notion that sexual love, regardless of its fecundity, is the sole criterion for marriage. If the state must recognize a marriage of two men simply because they love one another, upon what basis cant it deny marital recognition to a group of two men and three women, for example, or a sterile brother and sister who claim to love each other? Homosexual activists protest that they only want all couples treated equally. But why is sexual love between two people more worthy of state sanction that love between three, or five? When the purpose of marriage is procreation, the answer is obvious. If sexual love becomes the primary purpose, the restriction of marriage to couples loses its logical basis, leading to marital chaos.

Adam Kolasinski is a doctoral student in financial economics.

I doubt farming is the only reason that made this land arid and infertile. If this site is really that old, it was there even before the end of the last ice age and the beginning of the Holocene. The Younger Dryas before the Holocene was the last cold snap. According to wiki it transformed a lot in the area:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas
"The Younger Dryas is often linked to the adoption of agriculture in the Levant. It is argued that the cold and dry Younger Dryas lowered the carrying capacity of the area and forced the sedentary Early Natufian population into a more mobile subsistence pattern. Further climatic deterioration is thought to have brought about cereal cultivation. While there exists relative consensus regarding the role of the Younger Dryas in the changing subsistence patterns during the Natufian, its connection to the beginning of agriculture at the end of the period is still being debated. See the Neolithic Revolution, when hunter gatherers turned to farming."

Also after the Younger Dryas, the end of the last ice age would have coincided with a ~100m rise in sea level, maybe prompting stories of a great flood, later morphing into Noah's story.

I seem to be mostly outside the mainstream of the sift, so I submit a lot of things that get few or even no votes, and others that languish until someone notices them and then they become kinda popular.

This is one of the ones that meant a lot to me and not to others: http://www.videosift.com/video/Somebodys-Mom (my guess is that most sifters haven't been through infertility anxiety).

For the sifted, this one made me soar: http://www.videosift.com/video/Music-as-a-Roller-Coaster-Zurich-Chamber-Orchestra .

Nice idea, AC. I've enjoyed looking at the other submissions--only some of which I had noted before.

dystopianfuturetoday,

there is no reason that all three cannot be married to each other. e.g. the man married to both women, and each woman married to both the other man and other woman. then, you would have 3 marriages between three people. complicated? maybe. but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be illegal.

what if someone meets their soul mate, and they are happily married. something tragic happens and one of them is paralyzed. rather than divorce them and find someone else as some would, the disabled partner, out of their undying love of their partner tells them to remarry. out of his own undying love, he doesn't want to divorce his soul mate so he finds another wife but remains married to his soul mate. the new wife is understanding and not jealous. she had a husband too, but he was wrongly accused of murder and ended up in jail so she can be with him mentally but not physically. for this reason, she stays married to him but takes the new relationship on the urging of her husband in jail. etc. etc.

or theres a man who is married to his wife for 40 years before he realizes hes actually gay. he loves his wife so he doesn't want to divorce her. the wife realizes that she likes two guys at the same time, so they decided look for a third partner to kill two birds with one stone. kinky as hell, ya. but why would you want to take that away from them if thats what makes them happy?

or theres a couple who is infertile. they want to have a baby together more than anything. one of their close friends is a single mother. the mother goes on vacation for a year and they babysit the kid. they grow attached and ask the mother to raise it together. all three love the baby deeply, and all three decide to be its parents under one house to help it get the best life it can. they were already good friends and physically attracted to each other, and eventually fall in love. the married couple eventually proposes to the single mother.

theres a million ways it could make sense. i'm not into it just like i'm not into gay marriage but i would die before i oppress someone and tell them who to marry and who not to marry.

Doesn't she know marijuana causes infertility?

Okay, apparently this has to be baby-step explained for everyone here.

Reason 1: People are not against using objects to improve themselves, turning oil into a synthetic fibre for clothing, or taking medication to prevent pregnancy. All of these things are unnatural, yet accepted by society. Air conditioning could be considered one of them. How many of you want to give up air conditioning/central heating, or for that matter, the internet?

Reason 2: The will of God is not viewed as a valid reason to ban homosexuality. I believe if it exists, God willed it to exist, and since there are homosexuals, God willed them to exist. Anyone who quotes Leviticus at me is an idiot. Also, other religions believe in other gods who may pardon or support homosexuals. Banning what their religion deems appropriate in favor of another religion is indeed theocratic.

Reason 3: The consumation of a marriage and resulting pregnancy is no longer viewed as a requirement of matrimony. There are 2.5 million infertile couples in the United States, and are incapible of producing children. Millions more have menopausal females and are unable to produce children. The people who fit in those two categories clearly outweigh the number of gays.

Reason 4: This may occur, but it is merely an optical illusion of statistics. More people seem to be getting cancer because people are more willing to talk about themselves and others who have the often terminal disease. If gay marriage and homosexual relations were allowed in society, more gays would identify themselves as homosexual because they don't fear public torture and death. In fact, straight people will not turn gay because it is legal.

The only scientific evidince connected to homosexuality is that it is genetic. Genetic "diseases" or "abnormalities" are not contagious by external contact, or internal contact for that matter.

Reason 5: This is a paradox. Children are born to a man and a woman. This is a fact. However, gays are born to straight men and women, meaning that it is impossible for straight parents to only raise straight children, because gays have been born and are being born as we speak. Tough break.

Reason 6: The reference to interracial marriages refers to periods of time in the 50s, 60s, and earlier, when interracial couples were deemed distasteful or wrong. Parents feared their children coming home with a 'colored' significant other, or thier lovely darling baby choosing a white for a spouse. Those lines have finally begun to blur, and interracial marriages have mostly been left alone, because a new scapegoat has appeared: gay marriages.

Reason 7: I assume many of you support single working parents. They're appallingly common in the United States, with divorce rates so high. The children of such parents don't have two role models. I grew up with mostly just my mother; my father spent a lot of time away on business. I don't consider myself 'deprived' or 'poorly raised' because I didn't know what men were 'supposed to act like', which is what a role model teaches.

"What is popular is right" Let's all jump off bridges. It'll be totally cool. What? We'll all die? No biggie, at least we'll all die together. And why don't we ban gay marriage while we're at it, and drill in Tennessee, because clearly there is oil in Tennessee. Right under Graceland.

If you didn't get anything before that, you won't get the end.

Final points:
- Just because it was said before doesn't mean we can't say it again. Hearing it out loud gave it a larger impact for me.
- America has a reputation for tolerance and freedom. Our direct policy is "The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". A consensual marriage is an inalienable right under those terms.
- This is the ultimate sarcastic slam. When listening to these 'reasons' to disallow gay marriage, you sit there, stop the video, and think; "something's not quite right about that logic..." and you know why. Because there is no logic.

Call me a fag, call me a prick, call me whatever string of meaningless letters pops into your head. But lay off of alien_concept. Because she's in support of gay rights, and she's absolutely right.

If reproduction is the point, then why not ban infertile couples from getting married?

I agree with Raven, there are plenty of children who need a loving family. Maybe if infertile couples could see themselves as visionary kinds of people, people whose circumstances have offered them the opportunity to do something really big for the sake of humanity. Anyone can breed. But to adopt and to do that well, now that takes courage and patience and a person willing to fill a big pair of shoes.

By choosing to care for the children of others first is taking one big step toward reducing the suffering that arises from institutionalized care, which can only be a good thing for all concerned.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

>> You hope for that, dag, but it doesn't mean it will happen.

I guess I'm just a glass half-full type.

>> A small percentage of people are already born infertile naturally, but reversing that in most cases is difficult if not impossible.

Again, you're thinking of the present. I don't think we have any idea what will be possible in that area 100 years from now. Would someone from 1897 have envisioned the Pill or Norplant?

I don't know what's going to be possible 100 years from now either- but I think it's going to be great.

The future is my religion. I get kind of glassy-eyed in the same way that a Christian talking about the rapture does. Mea culpa - probably a real imperfection in my personality. But I don't want to be cured. Everyone has their faith ...

You hope for that, dag, but it doesn't mean it will happen. We've put men on the moon but we haven't cured the common cold. We've sequenced the human genome but we don't fully understand energy and matter (dark energy and dark matter being prime examples). Technology doesn't advance equally across all scientific disciplines, unfortunately.

A small percentage of people are already born infertile naturally, but reversing that in most cases is difficult if not impossible. I can't see how everyone would be born naturally infertile. Evolutionary pressure would never push in that direction.

This isn't just a morality concern; it's a survival concern. If our species fails to reproduce at a certain rate then we will most likely become a genetic dead end. Just ask an evolutionary biologist. That's my biggest concern.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

CaptWillard, I think your morality concerns are based in problems of the present. A humanity that has mastered the tricky art of cryonics would have licked our population problem already.

Perhaps humans will be born infertile naturally - with a pill required to induce temporary fertility.

I believe in a future that will mourn the tragic death of countless generations before - that succumbed to primitive problems like disease and old-age.

A serval is not domesticatable. They are real wild animals, and just like lions and tigers, while they can be very sociable when they are in the right mood, they can hurt you badly. I suspect there are things in the nature channel at least as inappropriate as this totally wild animal that is failing to hurt anyone this minute as it is in a house (I checked and there are zoo animals, and of all things, pigeons in the nature channel--this cat being on a bed is equivalent to a bear being on that bed). Not that I care about the channels you put this video in, but that it seems you are thinking that Serval is a pet. No matter what that woman thinks, it is not a pet. When I went to college there was a guy who brought his "pet" lion to class. Seriously. Equivalent situation.

Servals can behave well for short periods, and on the african continent, keeping an orphaned kitten serval was easy--for a while. A bit like how easy and cute baby racoons are in the US--until they get a bit older and gut your furniture for you. All of the smaller cats can interbreed with domestic cats, and the resulting hybrids have certain personality traits and instincts, and they vary with how sociable they are. Serval hybrids become "diluted" very quickly and are very sociable and box-trainable even at the earliest generation. Other felid hybrids come from Asian Leopard Cats, Margays Jungle Cats, Indian Desert Cats, Geoffroy's Cats, and European WIld cats. All those cats are wild, wild, wild. They can just breed with domestic cats (producing infertile males and fertile females) the same way wolves can breed with dogs.

I have cats that are part-serval, but they are not servals--not at all. My cats are very gentle and behave like domestic cats that got a bit of a brain transplant from a terrier (dog). If I were to have a serval, I would need a license, a cage, and all the other stuff you need for keeping a wild animal of any kind.

Don't let the cuteness of the serval fool you: it's a wild animal. Period.