[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
I haven’t shifted the goalposts.
[/quote]
You have, and I showed exactly how and why. I literally quoted your words and explained how your second response abandoned the substance of your original claim in order to pursue the unrelated and entirely inconsequential non-issue of “who’s supposed to raise children, if not adults?!” You and I both know that that question is not in any way relevant to our discussion, and yet you used it in order to respond to a relatively long and completely on-topic criticism of your original claim.
As for the line that you only think government should “encourage marriage,” I know for a fact that you think it should in fact outlaw sodomy. Either way, that is not really what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about is whether or not you can make the convincing case that homosexuality is immoral.
As for the burden of proof, you have assumed it by being the claim-maker. I am simply showing you that your claims are not remotely persuasive.
As for the “wisdom of the ages,” I am entirely a “conservative” individualist in this regard: I ascribe infinitely greater weight to the conclusions of my own rational faculties than to the so-called “wisdom” of long-dead men whose most fundamental views I’ve studied and, on evidence of which they were unfortunately deprived, concluded to be twaddle and nonsense. I don’t need to close my eyes, accept my own inferiority, and suckle some historical-opinion-teat.[/quote]
You appear to have misunderstood my meaning. When I said:
‘Who should rear children if not adults?’
It was in response to your assertion that child rearing is not the responsibility of adults. I contend that it is the personal responsibility of adults as they are the only ones capable of procreation. I realise we’re delving into the realms of the bleeding obvious but that’s where you took the discussion.[/quote]
Well, I guess I have to be sucked in for one last post.
Please go back and re-follow the progression of our debate. I’ve explained this a couple of times, but I’ll do it a last time: I attacked a particular claim of yours that had to do with an imperative responsibility–individual in scale and universal in scope–to have and raise children. This responsibility is, quite obviously, a premise which your argument requires if it is to persuade anybody that gays are shirking a responsibility and therefore embracing an iniquity. What I did not attack, and would obviously never argue, is the notion that adults are the ones who are fit to have and raise children. If you go back a bit, you will see that I drew the explicit distinction between something that only adults are fit to do, and something that all adults have a personal, imperative moral responsibility to do.
Thus, when you asked the question about who is or is not fit to rear children if not adults, you were–perhaps inadvertently–shifting in the direction of an unrelated non-issue when instead you should have been addressing the substance of the claim, which, again, had to do with an imperative human responsibility–individual in scale and universal in scope–to have and raise children.
To wrap up my thoughts, no such responsibility exists, and any attempt to persuade otherwise has been–and is going to be–riddled with fallacious reasoning.[/quote]
There is a moral imperative, individual in scale and universal in scope, for healthy adults to procreate and rear children. Why? Because they are the only ones capable of ensuring the survival of the human race. Why is it particularly important now? Because Japan has a fertility rate of 1.39 births per woman. Germany is at 1.36. Italy at 1.41. Western Europe is not much better. Why have fertility rates dropped?
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Permissive sexual culture.
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Contraception.
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Feminism.
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The undermining and devaluing of traditional marriage.
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The decline of family values.
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The decline of religion.
These things should be obvious to anyone who has studied the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Romans granted citizenship to barbarians, stopped serving in the military and hired barbarian mercenaries, became decadent and sexually permissive, allowed the Praetorian Guard unlimited power which they used to destabilise the state then eventually succumbed to Goths, Visigoths and Islamic fundamentalists.