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Nation-States life is tied to babies and for now only Heteros make babies, even the gay babies. So, there is inherent interest for any Nation state to promote h
by sremani 10y ago
Nation-States life is tied to babies and for now only Heteros make babies, even the gay babies. So, there is inherent interest for any Nation state to promote hetero sex and by its extension hetero-marriages (without relying on government funding for childcare).
- mikeash 10y agoModern medical technology, or even just extramarital sex, make this bad reasoning.
- sremani 10y agoWhat about modern medical technology? how many people of the 3,978,497 of people born in US in year 2015 were born out of this modern technology ? Now if we extend that to world, that is hundreds of millions of babies. My comment was neutral about gay marriage. I was trying to tie the relationship between demographics and Nation-States and why hetero-sex is mostly overlook but important ingredient. May be in the future each of us get to have clone armies and designer babies, I do not know. But to pretend Sexuality and its outcomes have no bearing in Life and Destiny of a Nation to me is laughable.
- mikeash 10y agoDid you miss the middle part of my reply? The only technology you fundamentally need is enough alcohol for the involved parties to have sex against their preference.
- sremani 10y agoNo, apparently you need to read and understand my first post, esp. taking off those "ideological" glasses.
- randomdata 10y agoHow does raping someone – at least I take that to be what you mean by drugging someone into having sex against their preference – relate to a subsidy designed to incentivize couples to willingly have (and care for) children?
- mikeash 10y agoUh.... "Against their preference" does not mean "against their will." I'm referring to gay people consensually having heterosexual sex in order to procreate.
- randomdata 10y agoThanks for the clarification. Now, if they are already willing to do it without government incentive, what does expanding the subsidy to include them add? To be clear, I'm not sure it is an effective subsidy to begin with, but that's a moot point as far as this discussion goes.
- mikeash 10y agoIt seems to make them happy.
- randomdata 10y agoWell sure, who doesn't like getting subsidies? That doesn't mean it is effective for a government to invent subsidies for everyone. There has to be a desired outcome, even if in the real world it falls short or brings many unintended consequences. And I think there are lots of good reasons to eliminate this subsidy entirely, but that's a whole other discussion.
- mikeash 10y agoWhat's the goal? If it's to promote having children, then you should just subsidize having children. If for some reason you really want to subsidize children through marriage, then you should stop subsidizing marriages involving people who can't or won't have children. If there's some perceived benefit in legal recognition of a romantic union, then there's no reason to exclude same-sex unions. Basically, there are a few consistent positions: 1. Children are important. Outcome: either incentivize children, or incentivize fertile couples. 2. Romantic unions are important. Outcome: legally recognize all of them, including same-sex couples. 3. Freedom and small government is important. Outcome: stop recognizing marriage and let people handle it privately. 4. Religion is important. Outcome: legally recognize marriage under something like the rules of your religion. We can argue for and against the merits of these individual possibilities, but what I can't understand is when someone uses an argument for #1 (as the other commenter here is) or #2 (as the site being discussed is) but somehow ends up with the outcome from #4.
- ionised 10y agoWhy are you repeatedly capitalising those three words (Life, Destiny and Nation)?
- rsynnott 10y agoIf you want to incentivise increased reproductive rates, offer appropriate social welfare and/or tax incentives, and improve availability of childcare, education, family-appropriate accommodation, etc. Some countries, notably Singapore, do this. Legalising same-sex marriage is unlikely to affect reproduction one way or another. This article is US-centric, and the US does not have a problematic low reproductive rate (total fertility rate of 1.9), so I fail to see the relevance.
- liveoneggs 10y agothat's funny because I happen to personally know two gay couples (men) who both have two children. Funny ol' world, eh?
- jordanlev 10y agoHow does banning same-sex marriage adversely impact the rate of birth amongst heterosexuals? And if banning marriages that can't result in babies were a way to increase birthrate, then why are heterosexual people who cannot have babies (post-menopausal women, men who've had vasectomies) allowed to get married?
- nommm-nommm 10y agoBy that logic it should be illegal to marry if you are post-menopausal, infertile, a carrier of a genetic disease, or openly express an interest to remain child-free. Gay families can and do raise children. Being unable to naturally produce children doesn't preclude raising children. My mother-in-law is gay. When she was a young adult, before she came out, she got married and had children because "that's what you did" and she didn't have the courage to go against what was expected of her. She, however, was incredibly miserable. Her distress with being gay and married to a man was a huge contributor to her drug and alcohol addition at that time. As a result her children didn't have a good family life. Finally she was distressed enough to divorce my father-in-law and come out. She's now married to a woman, totally sober, much healthier (she dropped over 100 pounds), and very happy.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ionised 10y agoGay couples aren't suddenly going to start outnumbering heterosexual couples.