Chuck Colson's syndicated column is about the Miller-Jenkins v. Miller-Jenkins case. I won't repeat the details here, though you can find them here; and you can find a broad response to Colson in this Overlawyered.com post by Walter Olson.
Here, though, I wanted to focus narrowly on a specific part of Colson's argument:
The subhead in the Post article says it all: "Janet Jenkins and Lisa Miller got hitched and had a baby together." Together? Anybody who knows anything about biology knows that’s impossible. But that’s just how the courts are looking at it. As a judge in the case told Janet Jenkins’s lawyer, Janet (the lesbian partner) "without question is presumed to be the natural parent ... by the basis of the civil union." So in the court’s eyes, Isabella is the child of two women, something biologically impossible.
"Had a baby together" is impossible to "anybody who knows anything about biology" only if you think "had a baby together" must be a statement about biology. Yet the whole point of a civil union is to make a partnership through which you commit to do things together. And one of the things that people try to do together through a civil union (whether others approve of civil unions or not) is bring into the world -- or, with adoption, into their family -- a child that they commit to support together. In reliance on the mutual promises, they invest time, effort, money, and physical exertion. One is willing to invest some things and another some other things (as with a male-female marriage) precisely because they've committed to this project together.
In fact, this is precisely how a man and a woman can have a baby together even if infertility requires them to use another man's sperm. It surely is an impoverished conception of parenthood to say that it's "impossible" (or wrong) for a husband and wife to have a baby together when they together commit to raising it, and they together arrange for it to be born, but for biological reasons they have to use donated sperm.
Yet it turns out that this is the very conception of parenthood that Colson is pointing to -- later on he condemns the use of donated sperm as well:
How is it possible that laws and court procedures could have become so dangerously fantasy-based? Actually, we should not be surprised. Many modern parents have unwittingly been collaborating with the process for years. The Washington Post tells us how Judge Cohen explained it: "[C]onsider the situation of a heterosexual couple in which an infertile husband agrees for his wife to be artificially inseminated with donor sperm." In such a case, the judge stated, the husband would be presumed to have parental rights even though someone else had actually fathered the child.
It all ties together. Heterosexual couples have tacitly approved this practice of including a silent third partner in a marriage to produce a child. And then it makes it very difficult to cry foul when homosexuals do the same thing.
Isabella’s plight shows us the tragic consequences of rejecting the biblical view of marriage, which provides for one man and one woman in the union to raise the child. Sure, there are extraordinary circumstances, and adoption is possible. But the norm is the norm, and the law has always recognized the natural moral order.
Even adoption seems to be, despite his assurances, outside his vision of "the biblical view": He says it's "possible," and appears to defend it simply on the grounds that it's an "extraordinary circumstance." But surely 120,000 adopted children per year are likely to be no more "extraordinary" than the children of same-sex couples. (If 3% of the U.S. population is gay or lesbian, and if every one of them ended up in a couple and each couple yielded two children over the members' lifetimes, that too would be about 120,000 children per year.)
I strongly suspect adoptions are less "extraordinary" than births using donated sperm. And if a birth of a child who's biologically unrelated to the mother's husband is against the "biblical view of marriage," then it seems that an adoption -- especially an adoption at birth -- would be even further from that biblical view. (I realize that Colson says "the biblical view of marriage ... provides for one man and one woman in the union to raise the child," but from the sentences before and the sentences after, I take it he means for the biological father and the biological mother to raise the child, since otherwise this sentence would be completely unrelated to his faulting of heterosexuals' using donated sperm, or his discussion of adoption.)
How did this supposedly religiously motivated fixation on the child's biological relatedness to both parents come about? Does the Bible indeed somewhere condemn, explicitly or by strong implication, the use of donated sperm? I know the stories of Hagar and Tamar in the Old Testament discuss what some people do when they can't have children naturally with their spouses (because of the wife's infertility, the husband's death, or the husband's refusal to impregnate the wife); but I take it that the moral message of the stories is not necessarily clear.
Is there something elsewhere that takes such a biologically essentialist view, to the point of prohibiting the use of donated sperm, and treating adoption as grudgingly tolerated in "extraordinary" cases? (I'm not speaking just of Catholic natural law reasoning; Colson is a Protestant who, I take it, focuses much more on the words of the Bible.)
"If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love. He must acknowledge the son of his unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of all he has. That son is the first sign of his father's strength. The right of the firstborn belongs to him....
If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband's brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her.The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.
(Deut. 21:15-17 and 25-5,6, if anyone is interested.)
Levirate marriage is for the express purpose of bringing a son into the world; presumably, if girls had been born, the brother would take them into his house - ergo, no adoption issues.
General references to both polygamy and remarriage indicate that marriage and procreation are tied into retention of the family name. Arguably, the requirement for levirate marriage could be to continue the dead husband's genes (via his unwed brother), but the focus on his family name seems to override that concern.
If you can have multiple mothers in a house, why not achieve the same through egg donation or adoption? If Sarai can ask Abrahm to sleep with her maid so she may have children (Gen. 16-2), then it's quite a stretch to prohibit the artificial version of the same - surrogate motherhood and egg donation.
Of course, the prohibitions against adultery (recourse of a married man whose wife has slept with someone else = stoning, forgetting the exact passage) indicate that the wrong is bringing another man's child into the relationship, not just the sexual infidelity.
Ultimately? Egg donation = good, sperm donation = bad.
Oddly, this reflects the latest in biotechnology: we can clone females without any male material (genetic or otherwise), but need the ovum to clone males (i.e. egg donation necessary either way).
I’m actually thinking more along the lines of inherited personality traits. We know from the work of Stephen Pinker (The Blank Slate) that most major traits have a high degree of heritability. If you want children that are compatible with you then it helps to have a mate that is compatible. For example if you don’t want shy children, then don’t choose a shy mate. Of course we have no guarantees, but it helps to improve the odds. The information we have about sperm donors is limited when it comes to personality.
Michael Crichton’s latest novel Next explores the possibility that a sperm donor might be liable for passing on a genetic predisposition to drug addiction or alcoholism. Then there is the possibility that a sperm donor could end up with a paternity suit on his hands. While California law provides pretty much ironclad protection for sperm donors, Pennsylvania does not. The veil of anonymity has been pierced there, and the next step is to hold the donor liable for support under the theory that a child is an innocent party.
My personal advice to men: don’t donate sperm-- ever. Especially to someone you know. There are guys who donate sperm to lesbian friends, and later find themselves liable for child support.
If I adopt a kid that my hypothetical significicant other had with someone else, as in the case of the lesbian couple, I call it just that, and not "having a baby together.
First of all, Pinker doesn't do empirical research in personality psychology, so we don't know from his actual work. You know from reading his book. Second, while studies have shown the big five to be heritable at about .5, other traits rarely top .3 (which isn't "high"). Since the big five represent very broad but unspecific personality tendencies, and since the specifics are likely to be much less heritable, it's not really clear whether "most major traits have a high degree of heritability" is true. That said, even with the Big Five, the influence of the environment is equal or greater than the heritability. So the odds are on your side in the gamble.
Anytime the link is severed between biology and love, the human person is cheapened by being reduced to a product to which the parents are somehow "entitled." Thus, when sperm donation occurs, the biological link between parents and child is severed-- the child is not the child of one of the raising parents, as Colson unremarkably notes.
Only a view that children are commodoties and that parents have an absolute "right" to obtain them by other than the natural process, can approve of sperm donation IVF. Not surprisingly, the same "commodity theory" is at play with homosexual adoption: the notion that any "committed couple" has a right children, regardless of the methods used to obtain them. Very little is mentioned of the foundational right of the child to have two biological parents raising him, a socially optimal outcome, by the way, which should not be derogated from except by extraordinary circumstance, such as the death of one or both parents. Anything less is to rob a child of his or her birthright.
This is just another step in the modern utilitarian reduction of the human person to a means to another's good, not as a good in se. On a broader level, this "commodification" has led to such pleasant practices as at-will abortion and even creeping infanticide (cf., partial birth abortion).
I'd suggest that pretending adoption is no different than biology is disrespectful to adoption and the thousands of parents who adopt. We have to be careful not to allow folks like Colson to define our modes of discourse.
"In a number of famous (some say infamous) responsa from the late 1950's and early 1960's, the Orthodox Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (one of the foremost halakhic arbiters of the twentieth century, 1895-1986) ruled that artificial insemination from an anonymous donor is permitted (at least in the case brought before him where the couple's desire for children was great). He reasoned that such insemination is not adultery (no forbidden intercourse occurred) and that in America, the donors are likely to be non-Jewish (and therefore there would be no problem of sibling marriage, for reasons too complicated to discuss here). 3 This decision was fiercely attacked because of considerations cited above, for instance, that there is a difference between involuntary bath and sheet impregnation and voluntary artificial insemination. Some critics maintained that the purposeful introduction of donor sperm into a married woman is adultery. Others argued that in the places where Jews live and at the hospitals which they frequent, the donors are likely to be Jews, and, therefore, sibling marriage is a problem. Still others argued that if the donor were non-Jewish, artificial insemination would introduce "defective" elements into the Jewish people. Because of the outcry, Rabbi Feinstein eventually withdrew his permission, but he did not back away from his legal reasoning. 4 While there is no unanimity today among Orthodox rabbis, I would say that the consensus is to allow husband artificial insemination under certain circumstances with certain guidelines, but to prohibit donor insemination."
We don't have hereditary kings. Not only are women not property, they can own and inherit equally to men.
If you're comfortable with those elements of American life (especially if you're going to take credit for them as enlightened Christian progress), you're going to have to get over all the anti-biblical artifacts of those changes in society.
The point is that the Bible encapsulates great wisdom about the importance of children being raised in a home with a mother and a father. Trying to reinvent all the rules is going to lead to unintended consequences and is highly unwise.
That is the point.
Colson's reasoning is not hard to fathom. Like so many in the Christian right he dislikes homosexuals, and he couches his distaste in "family" terms to avoid accusations of homophobia. He seeks refuge in the Bible, cherry-picking passages from, say, Leviticus to justify his beliefs. He says nothing about those other passages in scripture that tell him who he may lawfully enslave, or which would keep him from enjoying a shrimp cocktail. There's a word for this: hypocrisy.
That's actually the funniest line here. Of course, there are no children as a result of one-night stands!
Total misunderstanding of Colson's argument and worldview.
IF there were true, then the non-biological mother wouldn't love her child as much as the biological one. Any evidence to support that? In fact, the non-bio mother is the one suing for at least partial custody!
ARe you arguing that all adoptions 'cheapen' the human person, since the biological link is severed? If so, then of course Moses' life was cheapened, as he was not raised by his natural parents. But just try telling any family that has adopted kids that that their family has cheapened things for everyone else.
This whole argument by Colson &Co. has arisen as a response to gay marriage. It never existed before. Desparate to find some way to condemn gay marriage, this is the only one they can come up with, and it's been championed by Maggie Gallagher. Tom explains it well: That only natural children of both parents constituties a real 'family.' Anything else severs the biological relationship between parents, and somehow that's bad. They never explain HOW that is bad, but they just say it's unBiblical and hope that you will stop asking questions. If pressed, they will try to blame all of societies ills on this supposed severed link.
When you point to happy families that don't fit this mold, they simply ignore, or say that they don't count.
The legal problems raised by these grotesque social experiments are likely to be dwarfed by the human and social toll they will impose. My expectation is that these experiments will be self-limiting in the sense that they will tend to produce offspring so deeply disturbed as to be incapable of perpetuating the subculture that produced them. However, in the short term I expect that the children of these unions are going to impose extraordinary burdens on society at large.
I'm not sure that's true. A similar argument arose (albeit in different fashion) in Michael H. v. Gerald D., 491 U.S. 110 (U.S. 1989). The court held that the biological father had no parental rights because the legal doctrine of the putatiative father gave the mother's husband parental rights. It's interesting that in both of these cases--as Colson says-- the courts choose legal fictions over biolgoical reality.
I don't draw the same conclusion that Colson does, however. People have always used the law to arrange things in ways that are not possible in the natural world. Adoption is one example. To some extent, private property is another example. I couldn't "own" a house if there was no law because a stronger person could always push me out of it. With law, a frail old lady can evict a biker gang--a result that would not happen in the natural world.
As an adoptive parent (though mine was a more classical "step-parent adoption") married to someone adopted as an infant, I find the distinction some people make between biological and adoptive children repugnant. In my mind, it is the love and the willingness to accept the responsibilities of parenthood that counts.
I am not biologically related to my son or my grandsons--and my response is, "So what?"
I don't know enough about the relevant statutes or case law to make a determination on the other issues (except if the donor lied about a [family] history of alcoholism or drug abuse, in which case there is certainly a possibility of liability).
Tom: You equate love with biological relation, somewhat absurdly. Do you deny that adoptive parents can love their children? Or, conversely, that all biological parents can be indifferent to their children? This would be news to thousands of happy adoptive families and thousands of deadbeat, neglectful and abusive biological parents.
As I noted above, children do not have the right to raised in ideal circumstances; that would be impossible. Even if you deny an inherent right to have children, surely a couple that wants a child enough to jump through the hoops required for adoption or sperm donation will be better able to raise a child than the idiots who forgot to use a condom.
Elliot: Having generally means "possessing" or being associated with or something similar. While a couple who adopt or use a sperm donor certainly don't conceive a child together, they could be said to have a child together on the grounds of shared responsibility for and association with said child. To use accuracy and precision in language.
It's fascinating to see someone using the bible to actually condemn adoption.
Adopting children is one of the most moral acts one can commit. Particularly when the adoption is done for no other reason than the parents' desire to care for an orphan rather than a substitute for a reproductive problem. But either way, I have nothing but a ton of respect for those who choose to adopt.
Just as it's better to adopt a shelter dog rather than pay a breeder to produce more puppies, I think it's morally preferable to adopt rather than procreate given that the world is vastly overpopulated and millions of children are w/o homes. Indeed, the decision to procreate is a bit narcissistic.
I'll probably get slammed for these comments. I do not mean to state that all biological parents are immoral, so please don't misunderstand. Reproduction is a universal human desire, and I don't knock it. But it's hard to say that it is the morally superior choice.
From what I understand, sperm donors are in a legal limbo and any man whose wife gets impregnated by a sperm donor may also be in legal limbo. Many states have repealed their laws deeming the husband to be the father of his wife's children born during the marriage. Some husbands only find out during divorce proceedings that the child is not bioligically theirs. This fact will affect custody.
Meanwhile marriage continues to decline in the poorer social classes where it is needed the most.
lmao
Reminds me of Dawkins' comment that 'Of course religious claims are scientifically testable. If we found the tomb of Jesus, presumably he would have no Y chromosome.'
Well, I've been bemused by the Anna Nicole Smith stuff to the degree that all these potential "fathers" have been crawling out of the woodwork to get their hands on the 400 million dollar baby. The argument that seems to be accepted without a question is that whoever's sperm was involved in the creation of the child is the "real" father, and that the decision of Smith and her husband-like-entity to claim the child is irrelevant.
In the Smith case, it seems that this "biologically essentialist" view is accepted without question. If not, it would not matter who the biological father was.
billo
Others have taken issue with your claim that non-biological parents are somehow worse or something that denies that child essential rights. I agree but I want to take issue with the way in which you are commodifying the production of children.
I agree that the way many people seem to view children as an accessory to their lifestyle is troublesome. The attitude of far too many people seems to be that they are entitled to be mothers or fathers just because they have the biological ability. If people thought more of the welfare of the child and less of their own parental aspirations we wouldn't have couples who are aware of serious genetic risks their child will bear (retardation/deformity not increased cancer risk) would not have children, at least in the natural fashion. The huge number of children born to parents without the money or time to raise them in the fashion they deserve is a result of the same attitude.
So yes, commodification of children is a problem but it is natural reproduction that is the problem not adoption or sperm donation. People who have children in non-traditional ways tend to do a lot of soul searching to see if it is right for the child as well as them. But for some reason people assume that just because they want a child and are married it's their prerogative to pop one out. So if anyone needs to be stopped from commodifying children it is the people who believe naturally conceived children are a right (or even duty) of every married couple.
If the potential for abuse was not far too high I would support a mandatory program to give all baby boys reversible vasectomies at birth (and offer free clinics where people could have it reversed). Given that such approaches are far too likely to be used to oppress unfavored groups I think instead we need to simply change attitudes. You don't get to have a baby just because you want one and your body will make one.
To be fair to biological essentialist's (like Tom I imagine) they should be perfectly fine with adoption. After all the problem is that you are denying the child the right to be raised by his biological parents when you use sperm donation. When adopting someone else has denied the child this right and you are just mitigating the harm.
Only, of course, if we allow Dawkins to define what Christians believe. There is, in fact, a wide variation in belief, and has been so historically. One of the most silly things about fundamentalist evangelical atheists like Dawkins is that they have to misrepresent faith in order to promulgate their bigoted statements about it. It's no different than fundamentalist Islamofascists who justify the persecution of Christians in Moslem-dominated areas on the grounds that the people are not "real" Christians because they do not accept the view of Jesus as represented in the Koran -- and since they are not "real" Christians, they are infidels and deserve persecution.
I'd take the deference argument a bit more seriously when it comes from someone who supports the death penalty for women who have sex before marriage and for people who work on the Sabbath, just 2 among many Biblical injunctions that no one today will admit to believing.
I don't think Tom is a fundie. Reads more like a Catholic to me.
As for Chuck:
"In 1974 Colson pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in the Ellsberg case." He did 7 months in Maxwell.
I don't believe that obstruction of justice is punished in Leviticus. Not malum in se. You won't have to burn in Hell for all eternity for it (as you may have to for sodomy). In fact since it is not a Common Law crime, it is not binding on those who have not consented to being bound by Unnatural (legislated) Law.
As for Eugene's general question, religious law doesn't really disfavor adoption and adoption was much more common in eras with higher death rates. Chuck could have said that the law should not reckognize meretricious relationships and custody should be distributed as if the relationship didn't exist. As with same sex marriage, conservatives have tended to fall back on 'biological' and 'natural' arguments instead of straightforward religious ones (which had always been incorporated into Western dom rel law) because they feel that a purely tradition-based argument won't work.
If they would just adopt a solid libertarian anarchist voluntary law position (under which you choose the law that will bind you) they would avoid all those problems (and of course, encounter new ones).
This is not the forum for it, so I will only respond by saying that it is impossible to describe faith in any meaningful way because you all believe different things. (As you seem to admit.) Even inside of one religion, there is such a wide variety of belief that as soon as you say something definite, half the people will say that's not what they believe.
When you believe in nonsense, you can define it anyway you want. It's impossible to come close to any sort of consensus when you try to intricately describe a figment of your imagination.
This is, of course, a complete non-sequitur since Colson and those Christians like him explicitly do not accept the Old Testament laws because of the new covenant described by Paul. Your criticism might be valid if directed against a fundamentalist Jew, but it is nonsensical when directed against a New Testament Christian with generally orthodox views.
Numerically, maybe. But I think the point is that adopted children already exist, and through unfortunate circumstance (not deliberate action) do not have their own parents to raise them - so adoption makes the best of a sad situation by bringing these children into homes where they'll have parents to raise them. Still, it is (or ought to be) an extraordinary circumstance when a child loses its parents through death, abuse, abandonment, desperate poverty or other terrible situations.
It's more "extraordinary" to deliberately create children who will never, by design, have even the chance of being raised by their own natural mother and father (which, as of now, every single human being created must have) - which is the situation with same-sex couples who use sperm or egg donors or surrogates. (It's also the case, fwiw, with single women who use sperm donation, and I'm sure Colson is against that choice too.) In any event, it just makes no sense to many people to say a same-sex couple "had a child" - they didn't, and they can't, in a biological or natural sense. It may be just a semantic thing, but in this debate semantics often matter a great deal. Newspapers that use this "had a baby" language are normalizing an abnormal process.
The Bible teaches, when read as a whole and in light of authoritative tradition, that marriage between a man and a woman is the natural order of things. Catholic theology teaches that sex within marriage has two inseparable aspects, the unitive and the procreative. Artificial contraception denies the procreative aspect; sex or conception outside of marriage denies the unitive aspect. (Btw, the Catholic Church is consistent against artificial reproductive technologies, which certainly predates the SSM movement.) I know EV just asked about the Protestant view of things, which I can't answer, but that's part of the Catholic answer.
Of course it's not impossible. You just have to be specific. You simply can't be so lazy as to try to describe all people of faith with one broad brush. I know it's inconvenient, but there you have it. You could, for instance, say specific things about Baptists or Methodists or Lutherans or orthodox Roman Catholics, or whatever. Different groups are very explicit about what they believe. That's why they are different groups. Don't pretend that you can't find that out.
Instead, evangelical atheists insist on arguing against this one monolithic nonexistent Christianity that they create from their prejudices to use as their straw man.
Next on the Discovery Channel....
The couple that has courted may have "some idea of what their offspring will be like," but that increase in knowledge may well be completely insignificant. A number of devastating and poorly understood hereditary conditions simply cannot be predicted by doctors or geneticists, much less laypeople, ahead of time. For example, I doubt very much that there would be a statistically significant difference in autism prevalence between children born to "courted" parents vs. sperm donors and donees.
The fact is that we are ALL playing genetic roulette when we have kids. This is not something they tend to teach you in "prepared childbirth" class. It is, however, something that can be learned through experience. :)
I'd take the deference argument a bit more seriously when it comes from someone who supports the death penalty for women who have sex before marriage and for people who work on the Sabbath, just 2 among many Biblical injunctions that no one today will admit to believing."
and William Oliver....
Deference does not mean complete, unthinking submission. Critical difference.
Also, Paul's point was that the old juridical laws were outdated for non-Jewish contexts, but not moral underpinnings for the law. Homosexual conduct is reasserted in the New Testament. There are good reasons to foster a man and a woman as the preferred mode of childraising and for sexual and spiritual health.
Denying that it is important for children to have fathers in the home is dangerous and deeply troubling.
As I said, this is not the forum. If you want to email me, we can talk further. I still argue that your definitions are ever-changing-nonsense, even inside of any specific religious subgroup.
"The Catholic faith is both simple and complex." ~ Catholic Statement
"God is Simple, without composition of parts, such as body and soul." ~ St. Aquinas
"God made Adam in his image" ~ Genesis
"[God] is infinitely beyond all that we can conceive in human measure." ~ Pope John Paul VI
Adding an assistant mom isn't a replacement for a father.
Ah, I see, only Jews should be put to death for working on the Sabbath and only Jewish women should be put to death for having sex before marriage.
Take the stuff in the Bible that you don't like and call it outdated, and I'll do the same with the stuff I don't like and things should work out fine.
And what do you mean by "reasserted" in the New Testament?
- The absence of a father in the home,
- The possible presence of a step-father,
- The economic insecurity of only one wage-earner,
- Possible low social class, even with that person's income,
- Mental stress due to divorce,
- Mental stress due to death in the family,
- Mental stress due to disruption (moving, changing schools),
- Stress on a lone care-giver causing stress for children,
- Effects of immaturity or inexperience if the mother is very young,
- Social stigma... and so on.
Not all children of single parents experience all these things, but people often talk about single parenthood as if it came as a unified package. It doesn't. In particular, I think that voluntary single parenthood by financially secure women is very different from single parenthood that comes about because a man abandoned a dependent wife and their children. The trauma and disruption in the latter case is obviously worse, even if the mother rises to the occasion and makes a good life for her family.
When you start making these distinctions, it seems obvious that the most important one is whether people are acting responsibly or irresponsibly. Efforts to reduce that distinction to "married/natural conception" versus "everthing else" seem to be overbroad, as they stigmatize people who are doing everything possible to be responsible given the circumstances they find themselves in. Isn't hassling irresponsible teens and deadbeat dads work enough, without going after people who want to care for a child and are capable of doing so?
Jesus was a teenager, and heading out for a night on the town. Joseph said "Make sure you are home by midnight". Jesus shot back "You can't tell me what to do, you aren't my real father"
Christians have a long history of tolerating families where the father is not the biological father.
“First of all, Pinker doesn't do empirical research in personality psychology, so we don't know from his actual work.”
Go to Pinker’s website and you will see that he does do empirical research in personality. While he focuses on language and cognition, those subjects do strongly relate to personality. But we don’t need Pinker to learn that a lot of a person’s personality comes from his genetic inheritance. Many other researchers come to similar conclusions.
“That said, even with the Big Five, the influence of the environment is equal or greater than the heritability. So the odds are on your side in the gamble …”
Only with one biological parent—adoption is another matter. But you still do better with a mate whose personality you know. If you want a smart child pick a smart mate.
“That's actually the funniest line here. Of course, there are no children as a result of one-night stands!”
Your concept on “intimate knowledge” needs broadening.
Since when are infertility treatments that involve donor sperm their own subculture? An are you implying that these proceedures would be carried out primarily by people who were born from such proceedures in the first place? That's what the above seems to say and it's pretty doubtful.
People have children for the same reasons all other living things reproduce: to pass on their genes. No amount of sanctimonious moralizing is going to change that. Of course we can and should help couples avoid birth defects with genetic testing. We can encourage people to be responsible about becoming parents, but as we all know, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Like it or not, people think they have a right to reproduce, and they’re going to go ahead and do just that absent the iron fist of the state.
Adding an assistant mom isn't a replacement for a father.
To some extent, using this argument involves assuming what you are trying to prove: that two parents of the same sex will not parent as well as two opposite sex parents. You assume that such a situation is necessarily parallel to a situation involving only a single parent. It could just as easily be argued that the situation is more parallel to a hetero couple raising a kid, that the key determinants of child welfare are in fact having multiple loving parents and the added resources they bring to a household.
Until we start seeing studies showing that committed gay parents tend to have children who are worse off than the kids of straight couples, this sort of argument really won't get you very far. There are two many variables that this sort of analogy fails to control for.
Paul basically said that Gentiles don't have to follow the Jewish law, but that the moral underpinnings of the law remain important.
I am no Biblical literalist of any stripe. I am an Episcopalian. I am not defending that viewpoint. What I am saying is that Biblical moral teachings, which have been refined and sanctified over thousands of years, are due great deference. Just because there are some things we don't follow in the Bible anymore does not mean the whole thing is just an interesting novel. There is great wisdom in it, often far beyond what we can comprehend, and that is not even a viewpoint that requires a belief that it is all written from the hand of God.
It's not unlike Chevron deference, for legal weenies. A district court should not go around second-guessing the interpretations and regs of an agency, because the agency has great institutional wisdom and experience. This is quite similar. But it's not like the district court has no choice but to follow the agency, it's just that the agency is due great deference.
This is why many Christians hold the Bible with such esteem. Now, I could discuss with you for days about why I think it is important to place exceedingly high value on mothers and fathers together as the best way to raise children, and why consecrating homosexual practices is unwise. Likewise, I could say why the EPA has much greater wisdom with respect to environmental matters than the DC Circuit, even though it would take days of discussion.
This has little to do with whether Jews should still follow the Levitical laws, even if Christians do not follow them. If anything, the Christian view (if one can homogenize that) is that the Talmudic law should be transformed into understanding the moral purposes of it for all people, including Jews. That's a specious argument, and you're not engaging with my point sufficiently.
In the context of this thread, that is a gross distortion. Couples that adopt together from the get-go and couples that use artificial means to produce a child together provide equal or superior care for their children. The problems you are referring to arise in cases of step-parentage.
Adding an assistant mom isn't a replacement for a father.
To some extent, using this argument involves assuming what you are trying to prove: that two parents of the same sex will not parent as well as two opposite sex parents. You assume that such a situation is necessarily parallel to a situation involving only a single parent. It could just as easily be argued that the situation is more parallel to a hetero couple raising a kid, that the key determinants of child welfare are in fact having multiple loving parents and the added resources they bring to a household.
Until we start seeing studies showing that committed gay parents tend to have children who are worse off than the kids of straight couples, this sort of argument really won't get you very far. There are two many variables that this sort of analogy fails to control for.
But neither are there studies that show that two moms are as good as a mom and a dad, either.
Direct question: Is a dad important, or is a dad freely exchangeable with a second mom?
"As I said, this is not the forum. If you want to email me, we can talk further. I still argue that your definitions are ever-changing-nonsense, even inside of any specific religious subgroup."
Yet you continue to flog it in this forum. As long as folk decide to make ignorant bigoted statements about my faith in public, I'll continue to address it in public. The fact that you decide you can't be bothered to learn enough about Christianity to comprehend and address the basic premises of different traditions doesn't mean they're unknowable.
If the potential for abuse was not far too high I would support a mandatory program to give
Give! Mandatorily.
all baby boys reversible vasectomies at birth (and offer free clinics where people
People of the Y-chromosome persuasion
could have it reversed). Given that such approaches are far too likely to be used to oppress unfavored groups I think instead we need to simply change attitudes. You don't get to have a baby just because you want one and your body will make one.
Hey, cool! Mandatory genital surgery for half the population! And if you want it undone, you can always come to one of our free clinics and have some more genital surgery, on the house! The only bummer, apparently, is that the mandatoriness would be unequally enforced. So scrap that, and move on to "changing attitudes." Unfortunately we don't have the ability to make that mandatory yet. People go around thinking wrong stuff all the time. But when we have the technology, we can really get down to business, yes?
I really hope your post was meant as especially dry humor.
You provide a correct defnition for the word "have." However, usage is also important in meaning, and the usage of "having a baby" has meant using biology. Likewise, adopting a baby uses custom or law. I agree that after either event the couple does have a baby. There is no reason to do away with the distinctions in meaning.
It is an important question. According to the scientific method, we would make a hypothesis, test it, and see if the testing helps confirm our inital hypothesis or if the hypothesis proves the hypothesis is wrong (note you can't prove a positive but you can prove your hypothesis is wrong.)
It is the question, anybody pretends they know the answer is fooling themselves.
We do not have sufficient information to answer that question at this time. And, of course, the situation for a same sex couple may be somewhere in between that of a single mother and a male/female parent couple. However, a growing body of evidence supports the idea that, same-sex pairs do just as well as male/female pairs. (Note)
Given the evidence that same-sex couples don't significantly harm children compared to male/female couples, I am disinclined to accept the contrary merely on deference to religiocultural traditions.
Elliot: True. But trying to use language precisely in a legal (or scientific) context based on common usage is fraught with problems. As others have noted, the legal meaning of having a child can have quite a different meaning than it's common use meaning. And the root meaning is something else entirely.
Well, that's how I'd read it. I think it's pretty odd to use "had a baby together" to refer either to adoption or to artificial insemination with a third party's sperm. It's like saying that in Waugh's Sword of Honor trilogy, Guy Crouchback and Virginia Troy, pregnant by her former lover Trimmer, are "having a baby together" when he marries (actually, remarries) her and undertakes to help her raise the child.
“But the point logicnazi is making is traditional sexual child creation is at least as likely to lead create a non-ideal situation as adoption and sperm/ovum donation, eliminating those doesn't improve the general situation of children.”
Since children are in general robust creatures who can survive and even prosper with bad parents, I doubt whether we will ever be able to prove that the standard family provides a superior experience for children. Nevertheless I suspect most people believe that. After all men and women have different personalities, and a child should be able to benefit from the diversity of viewpoints. The very people who extol the virtues of diversity seem to make an exception when it comes to family. You are going to have a hard time convincing most people that having a mother and a father is not superior to having two parents of the same sex.
Not true.
"Direct question: Is a dad important, or is a dad freely exchangeable with a second mom?"
No, not freely exchangeable. But neither are any of the other various family arrangements that produce healthy, happy children. Nor is the presence of a dad, per se, any guarantee of a child's happiness and well-being.
Not true.
"Direct question: Is a dad important, or is a dad freely exchangeable with a second mom?"
No, not freely exchangeable. But neither are any of the other various family arrangements that produce healthy, happy children. Nor is the presence of a dad, per se, any guarantee of a child's happiness and well-being.
One thing I seen is people argue, that you need both sexes for how else can a child learn to be a man/be a women. Well one thing all the studies that have compared same sex parenting to traditional parenting, noticed was that parents who are same sex parents search vigorously and procure mentors and role models of the opposite sex. It wasn't naturally there in the family, thus they tried to find a similar subsitute good (to apply an economic term, and yes I know I caused bile to appear in some peoples mouths by saying children can be viewed as a good, even if they are not).
Whether these subsitute good be enough? Is there a harm for children in same sex parents households will be more illuminated years down the road with more research. Current evidence though suggest no harm. It may be similar to how people compare formula to breast milk, sure there are some differences in the short term, but in the long term the kids are the same.
Okay: but of course, roulette might be a good gamble. Knowing what your own biological offspring will be like might make you MORE likely to risk using other people's genetic material, if you know, for example, that you carry the gene for some unpleasant genetic disease, or that you and all your blood relatives are mean, stupid and crazy. Predictable isn't the same as desirable. And that applies even if it's just a question of whether to get genetic material from a mate or an anonymous donor: of course you can choose a mate, but your choices are limited: you have to find someone willing to have a baby with you, and you might not be able to get a date with the Olympian-rocket scientist-philanthropist you'd prefer. Also, of course, even if you're just thinking of potential children's welfare (and in fact there are always other considerations), it's rational to take into account characteristics that aren't necessarily heritable -- wealth, social status, and life expectancy, to name a few.
AppSocRes: a lot of people have jumped on this, but a correlation between not being raised by biological parents and violence leaves out a lot: not only the specific situations and characteristics of step-parents, but the kinds of experience kids have often had before they end up with those non-biological parents -- foster homes or single parent homes, depending on which kind of non-biological relationship we're talking about. So there's a lot to control for, and it doesn't sound like your study even tried to control for it (or did they? Feel free to add more information to correct this.).
Finally, and I realize this isn't the biggest issue: that Dawkins quote. . . am I missing something? If we found Jesus' tomb, the big question would be "is there a body in it?", right? If his body is there at all, it would be small comfort to Christians to find that he had weird chromosomes.
Well Jesus's body could be in the tomb, or it could not. If we did find his tomb we can still view his dna even if he isn't there, due to hair, blood, skin cells, etc all giving the possibility of testing his dna.
Now would Jesus have a Y chromosone?
Now what would Jesus Y chromosone look like?
would be some intersting things if we could find such a tomb.
I don't think it makes a significant difference. Frankly, I'm kind of puzzled as to why this would be a problem. But, I freely confess that I don't buy into the kind of socialization agenda that tells boys they shouldn't cry and tells girls they shouldn't strive to be engineers.
I agree trying to use common usage for legal or scientific ends can be difficult and sometimes very misleading. But, I'd say the broader social dialoge on the subject is based on the common usage. That simply means be have to be aware of the usage base.
The most interesting usage I have read on the Colson subject was Colson's quote of the judge in the case: "without question is presumed to be the natural parent . . . by the basis of the civil union."
I haven't read the opinion, acknowledge this lacks context, and don't trust elision. But, for fun, suppose the judge actualy said a natural parent was a function of the law? Would the woman in question be a natural parent in the absence of a civil union? This would set up two very different meanings for the term "natural parent." One meaning would be the common meaning that the natural parent is the biologcal parent. The other would be a legal meaning that the natural parent is a function of marriage or civil union.
So, I suggest EV is going a bit far by saying anyone who doesn't conform to one usage of the phrase, "have a baby," has an "impoverished conception of parenthood."
It is an important question. According to the scientific method, we would make a hypothesis, test it, and see if the testing helps confirm our inital hypothesis or if the hypothesis proves the hypothesis is wrong (note you can't prove a positive but you can prove your hypothesis is wrong.)
It is the question, anybody pretends they know the answer is fooling themselves.
First, I did not ask you whether there was a conclusion with scientific trappings that you could point to. I asked you based on your personal experience whether fathers are important. You are dodging the question.
Second, the idea that we should be experimenting with children is ethically highly questionable if not downright disturbing. Children are not lab rats, and it doesn’t take a genius to know that men and women are very, very different, and have different needs all through life that sometimes require some sex-specific understanding.
Girls need fathers to look up to and to see what is good in a man. Boys need men to follow, given their unique needs.
It is beyond scientific cavil that boys and girls are biologically different at the most basic psychological as well as physiological levels. Until one can even give a plausible basis for how a nonbiological second mom can act like and lead as a man and give the unique male perspective on life, experimenting with children should be flatly rejected as deeply unethical as well as breathtakingly unwise in the furtherance of a political agenda.
My mistake I though you were refering from a societal perspective.
Well speaking as a kid raised by a single mom (divorced, Dad didn't have a relationship with me till adulthood) I would answer important, but not neccessary. But hey that is my personal opinion based off experience.
Experimenting? You make it sounds like a game, it isn't its called life. Having a child via adoption, artifical insemination, or the old fashion way with penis, vaiginal, and ovolation isn't a game. People don't just wake up and 3 minutes later while brushing their teeth say. Honey I want a baby.
I can say from personal experience that I feel my father was very important to my development as a child; I can also say I feel that my younger sister was important, and that my dog probably played a role, too. My younger sister was deprived of the experience of having a younger sister, but she gained the experience of an older brother, which I lacked. Different people have different experiences. Without growing up in an unusual family unit, I can't say from personal experience what it would be like. Nor, frankly, am I qualified to judge the role of various influences on my own life.
Even if you assume that children need (or benefit from) a good male role model in their lives, that doesn't need to be a father. As Ramza pointed out, the family can seek out other possible male role models. And, given that the average father is far from perfect, and a few are downright despicable, the automatic conflation of father with role model may not be particularly healthy.
Not really. There are plenty of kids who have never known their own natural mother or father, either because they died, left, or whatever. And many of them have turned out just fine.
Furthermore, every study that has been done on this subject has shown that children of same-sex parents do just as well, sometimes just a little bit better, than children of opposite sex parents, as measured by performance in schools, ability to get along with others, therapy and so on.
James Dobson has intentionally misquoted these studies and tried to twist them into saying that children of same-sex parents do badly. However, author Wayne Besen follows this, and he notifies the researchers who then contact Dobson and ask him to stop twist their findings. He refuses to do so.
But this plausible basis could never be found because we should never experiment with children according to you. So, your preconceived notions about what girls and boys "need" would remain forever safe and unsullied by facts; a convenient outcome--for you, anyway.
My point is that a father who does his job plays a uniquely beneficial role, that's more important than a sister or a dog or going to Disneyland. This is important, and saying that it is no longer important is messing with fire.
The question is not whether we should legally bar women who choose the lesbian lifestyle from having kids. It's their legal right, just as it's a single woman's legal right to inseminate herself. There are a lot of things that are legal but very unwise.
Colson's whole point here is whether we should be putting the imprimatur of state approval on lesbians thinking that fathers are no longer important.
Well heck, why not just have women just get inseminated by the best looking male out there and then use their voting majority to highly tax all the highly paid nerdy guys for social services and welfare and everything? That would be a female utopia, right? If men don't need to be in the home, might as well just do that! We already have the high taxation and welfare. Now all that's needed is lesbian marriage and there's no longer any need to settle for a homely guy at all.
No one is saying that fathers are "unimportant." It's just that for some families they are not part of the immediate picture. This doesn't mean a child need be deprived of masculine influences or role models.
Speaking of absurdities, you come up with an example that ignores the fact that I'm still talking about raising children in stable, loving (in every sense of the word) relationships. Meaning 2 heterosexuals of different genders, or 2 homosexuals of the same gender. So unless you're afraid that a controlling majority of the population is going to turn homosexual, or heterosexuals will suddenly lose interest in raising children, plenty of children will be raised in heterosexual couples. In fact, since both heterosexual partners can pass on their genes as well as their memes and heterosexual couples have a leg up at making babies, the current state of affairs is probably fairly stable.
If you're worried about the collapse of society into a welfare state for breeders, single mothers should be rather more of a concern for you. This has the added bonus of targeting family units that are actually (apparently) bad for children.
And therein lies the crux of this argument. People who are against gays or gays adopting assume that we 'choose' to be gay. It is pure ignorance upon their part: I never choose to be gay, and none of my gay friends have ever said that they have. Indeed. all the medical research shows that sexual orientation is set at least as early at age 7, probably earlier (it's difficult to assess of the sexual orientation of babies).
It is beyond scientific cavil that boys and girls are biologically different at the most basic psychological as well as physiological levels. Until one can even give a plausible basis for how a nonbiological second mom can act like and lead as a man and give the unique male perspective on life, experimenting with children should be flatly rejected as deeply unethical as well as breathtakingly unwise in the furtherance of a political agenda.
Sorry, I don't buy it. What are the "unique needs" of boys that won't be satisfied by being raised by two women? Please be specific. What exactly do you think will be the impact on girls raised by two women?
And I'm not sure I understand what the "unique male perspective on life" is. Can you help me out with that one? What is it that a male knows that a female necessarily does not?
Finally, I'd just like to note in passing that if it's a sort of standard cultural masculinity you are looking for in this male role model, plenty of lesbian women are far tougher, better with tools, more physically courageous, etc, than a number of straight guys raising kids. And plenty are not. But you are talking about characteristics descriptive of the median or even the extreme of each sex as if such characteristics defined the group as a whole, which is simply untrue. Shold highly effeminate men, or very masculine women, be forbidden to procreate as well? For that matter, if a woman is macho enough, can she then serve as a father substitute in your schema?
I'm just having trouble understanding what it is you find so different between male and female caregivers here.
The Supreme Court in MICHAEL H V GERALD D didn't exactly bless the venerable but obsolete husband as putative father doctrine: rather, in a Scalia plurality opinion they ruled that in their view at the time nothing in the US Constitution protects an undisputed biological father from a state that would hand over his child to another man, on the basis of the latter's particular relationship to the mother.
But this plausible basis could never be found because we should never experiment with children according to you. So, your preconceived notions about what girls and boys "need" would remain forever safe and unsullied by facts; a convenient outcome--for you, anyway.
It has nothing to do with me, but with children. Like I said before, it's not a question of banning lesbians from having kids and therefore depriving the evidentiary pool. If lesbians want to have kids, it's their legal right, and if they prove that they can stand in the male role, then we can start to look further.
However, there are things my father taught me that are very important and that no woman I have ever met could come close to teaching. That is very important.
Regarding the studies of gay parents, the linked study is remarkable in that it candidly states that most of the gay/lesbian parents that were studied had conceived kids in heterosexual relationships and then split off into a homosexual lifestyle (again, often in the same city or nearby, so the other parent is around). This is quite different from lesbians having kids, where the heterosexual father is likely never to have any role at all.
Also, for the record, that linked study was written in a way that strongly suggests that the scientists had very gay/lesbian-friendly personal attitudes. The ability to skew such psychological studies should be well-known to anyone who has worked in the social sciences (as I have).
I actually had a kid in my cabin years ago when I was a camp counselor who had a lesbian family. I didn't make the connection at the time, but the kid had almost no ability to "act like a guy" and to interact in a naturally male way with the other kids. He required special help the whole time. I remember that quite distinctly. One item of evidence does not a trend make, but his overmothering was unmistakeable.
I have yet to see any linked studies that two women can raise a boy from birth with the same upbringing ability that a man and a woman of the same socioeconomic class and otherwise equal. That is at issue here.
Likewise with girls. Girls need fathers. Can they live without them? Yes. But are fathers important? Yes. And not just some guy next door or down the street.
“Given that we have been able to prove that children of single mothers, and children of teenage mothers, and poor children, and deaf children of hearing parents, and so on do worse in a variety of areas than normal children, your claim that it will "never be proven" strikes me as a cop-out.”
How do you prove something like that with observational data? At best you can show correlations, and correlation is not causation.
“And appeals to authority of majority opinion don't carry much weight either, especially since the entire purpose of debate is to change opinions.”
Do you think most people are going to accept the idea that the standard family is not the best way to raise children? How do you propose to convince people to reject an idea they find intuitive?
And I'm not sure I understand what the "unique male perspective on life" is. Can you help me out with that one? What is it that a male knows that a female necessarily does not?
1. How do you ask a girl out.
2. How does a guy deal with rejection.
3. How does a guy learn how to "take it like a man" and keep ticking on the playground, on the sports field, among the guys, and so on.
4. How does a guy learn how to stare another guy down, play fair at the same time, and then be friends afterwards.
All of that kind of stuff, plus much, much more. Women are different than men. There is essentially no doubt about that. There are reasons for that and implications for that.
I know a lot of lesbian women, some of them well. Not a single one of them could come close to teaching a boy those things. And it ain't just oppressive, horrible cultural tradition. I know lesbian women who try to be like men and do power tools and whatnot. Sure, they can drive a nail and change their oil, but they are no more able to understand the male psyche than the most girly sorority sister--and probably much less. In fact, a lesbian who has not dated and married a man is probably far less able to understand the male psyche than a heterosexual woman who has done that. And often they have come into lesbianism, whether consciously or unconsciously, because of fear of men or dislike of men. That drives them even further from understanding the male psyche.
What is interesting is that folks out there in the real world understand the differences between men and women than some people who profess to spend a lifetime in academia trying to attain superior knowledge to the foolish Joe Six Packs!
As you say, the current evidence for the strict case is somewhat thin. And the possibility of researcher bias is quite important (note that the study I linked is an example, not the sole study).
But I am unaware of any non anecdotal evidence that homosexual couples do worse than heterosexual couples at raising children. So, I'm not terribly concerned about it.
As for the anecdote, I'll point out 2 things.
1) "Over-mothered" children can arise from heterosexual parents, too.
2) Without more details, it's possible that he would be fine if it weren't for the confines of stereotypical cultural gender roles.
2. How does a guy deal with rejection.
3. How does a guy learn how to "take it like a man" and keep ticking on the playground, on the sports field, among the guys, and so on.
4. How does a guy learn how to stare another guy down, play fair at the same time, and then be friends afterwa