Bill Snedden

What the hell. I'm bored.

I win by economy. I was able to deliver no substance with only 11 syllables where it's taken you pages and pages...

Oops! Sorry, but you must have confused me with someone else to whom you failed to respond in substance. You asked me for no clarifications, you merely provided a few comments and some non sequiturs.

My points were, and are:

1) Modern societies do not operate on the "nuclear family" (NF) model. The NF is autocratic, whereas modern societies are democratic. The foundation of your argument is invalid.

You presented some comments that seemed an attempt to address this, but they were unclear. For example, in your comments you claimed that "modern society" contained "primitive and savage elements", but didn't define what these were or why they matter to the argument. You also wrote that the NF was an "element" of civilization or society (it was difficult to determine which) when previously you've been claiming it was the foundation. Which is it?

You also tried to work in some comments about "artificial persons" but what bearing that might have I was unable to discern. The argument from "single welfare moms" fails as well and you yourself note why: "These xfamilies are the byproduct of a failed Federal Welfare program." Of course, the "xfamilies" are not the byproduct, but rather the failure of these single parent families to make a go of it. Given unlimited resources, do you really believe that a single parent family would be any worse than one with two parents, or one where both parents were of the same sex? This is essentially your argument, but there's just no support for it.

2) Your argument assumes that the building blocks of societies or civilizations are incapable either of withstanding change or of change themselves, neither of which appear intuitively probable.

3) Your argument assumes that, regardless of the building blocks, human societies and civilizations are immalleable and cannot sustain change. Also intuitively improbable and empirically false.

4) You yourself noted previously that "The nuclear family to varying degrees throughout the history of Western Civilization to some degree has been corrupt. Murder, incest, violence, envy, cruelty, oppression, infidelity, adultery, and betrayal have been part of all human family, and the nuclear family from time immortal..." With all of that true, how much of a difference can same-sex marriages (SSM) possibly make? And if the basis of civilization & society is the NF, how has civilization lasted so long with such a rotten foundation?

5) Your argument necessarily assumes that the NF must have a biological foundation, but this assumption ignores the very real evidence that the primary element of importance in parenting relationships is not biological at all. Millions of adoptive parents and children testify to this as do millions of children of abusive parents.

6) The "safeness" of a sexual act is unsound as a moral principle by which to determine sexual morality as it would necessarily militate against virtually all forms of sexual contact (and against many non-sexual forms of contact). Further, it would lead to apparent absurdities such as "lesbian sex is the only truly moral sex" and "married couples who refrain from sex are more moral than those that have sex." You have also attempted to address this by arguing that "more safe" is "more moral", but this fails for the same reasons: "lesbian sex is more moral than heterosexual sex." Further, if medical science were to develop completely effective methods of preventing STDs (100% effective), would your moral objections to MSM cease?

7) The actions of "gay leadership" are irrelevant to the question of whether or not SSM should be legal.

8) Your definition of "degenerate" apparently hinges upon an unsound moral principle and thus your contention that "gay culture spills degeneratively..." can be disregarded.

And, I didn't mention it before, but here's another thought. You decry the "culture of promiscuity" that you claim is prevalent in the gay lifestyle, but seem oblivious to the possibility that such behavior may be caused in part by the necessarily "underground" nature of gay relationships. Perhaps if gay relationships were considered more "mainstream", then gay people might behave in a more "mainstream" manner.

Of course, you also necessarily ignore that such "promiscuity" is likely not a factor of homosexuality, per se, but rather more likely due to the fact that men are more naturally inclined toward multiple sexual partners. It is no less an issue with heterosexual men, but when you put one man with another...

A non-sequitur and a patently offensive one at that.

The point over which you so blatantly skip is not that tradition or time validate Swift's approach. It is that "hyperbole" and "satire" are recognized and respected rhetorical devices.

I should note also that if you truly consider Swift's remarks to be "hate speech" then you must also consider that you yourself have engaged in that exact same tactic as evidenced by your offensive slur, above.

Another non sequitur. How surprising.

What does that possibly have to do with the patently untrue and offensive lies the Christian Right promotes about what GLBTA men and women want from society? This seems a subtle confirmation of Swift's actual argument...

How true. And how sad that you found it necessary to engage in hate speech yourself...

Do you seriously expect your opponents to believe that you are too ignorant to understand exactly what Swift intended? I suggest that the reality is that you first learned of his remarks from some right-wing periodical or website, accepted their disingenuous interpretation of his meaning, came here and learned the truth, but were too deeply in to admit your error. Therefore, you're desparately trying to find some way to save face with this risible "hate speech" approach. Regardless, the suggestion is patently absurd and the louder you yell, the worse it makes you look...

Civilization has withstood wars, famine, pestilence, plague, natural disasters, changes in economic systems, changes in governmental systems, and, so far anyway, rapid technological and social change. I hardly think legal sanction of same-sex relationships will be successful where even these seem to have failed.

Throughout human history there have been men and women who, for one reason or another, believed it necessary to shout at the rain. So far at least, you don't appear to be any different. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but the sky just doesn't seem to be falling.

Regards,

Bill Snedden

yguy

As I pointed out in my last response to you, the dichotomy between the "autocracy" of the traditional NF and demococracies is illusory - therefore your objection is invalid.

Why would we want to find out?

The foundation isn't intrinsically rotten - it's been corrupted by misuse.

If that were the case, it seems one would expect that promiscuity among homosexuals would have decreased since the 70's, when the move to tolerate the lifestyle began. You have evidence for this?

OK, so promiscuity is only a factor of male homosexuality per se. Feel better now?

There never was a civilization which withstood moral decay, and corruption of marriage to any degree is surely evidence of that.

Bill Snedden

This has got to be the longest argumentum ad verbosum ever constructed...

No, you spouted some inanities about how a wife "elects" her husband to rule over her, betraying a shockingly (to the modern mind) outdated and necessarily repressive view of what marriage means today.

My wife did not "elect" me to rule over her nor does she defer to my judgement on all occasions. Modern marriage is founded on equality. Strange that this fundamental change to the NF model didn't spell doom for civilization as your thesis would necessarily entail...

That's not the point. The point is, why should we even expect such a result? It simply doesn't follow.

Who cares why or how long? The salient issue is that even with all this corruption, civilization endures. This is contrary to your thesis and suggests that your thesis is false.

No, greater tolerance does not equal mainstream acceptance. There are still extremely strong disincentives for homosexuals to be themselves in the public square. I should not expect to see such "underground" behaviors substantially reduce until such time as homosexual relationships are viewed in essentially the same fashion as heterosexual ones.

Uh, no, that's not what I said. I said that promiscuity among homosexual men was more a factor of being a man than it is of being a "gay man". I think homosexual identity has less to do with promiscuous behavior than biology.

Ah, the sweet smell of petitio principii in the morning...

You assume that for which you attempt to argue. The assertion that homosexual marriage necessarily equates with "corruption of marriage" and that this in turn necessarily equals moral decay is essentially what we're arguing here. I disagree that it does and have yet to see any evidence or even good arguments to the contrary.

Regards,

Bill Snedden

yguy

I don't care about "modern marriage". I care about the kind of marriage which was an integral component of the country that became an uncontested superpower in 1945 and, having all that power, used it for good, not evil.

So after 30 measely years - not even two generations, for crying out loud - the concept is tried and true? What are you, an idiot?

I'm afraid it is.

Why should Pat Moynihan have expected disastrous consequences when social welfare advocates effectively turned the inner city black family into a matriarchy? Somehow, the fact that it SHOULDN'T have happened is pretty sorry consolation for the fact that it DID happen.

Not you, obviously.

Civilization may endure, but civilizations never do. They inevitably crumble under the weight of moral decay - and the price to the generations who come afterwards is hideous.

And just why should that continue to be the case? They weren't aping sodomy in parades 30 years ago, so why should they not be doing it for real 30 years from now?

So how does any of this counter the idea that promiscuity is reasonably associated with the male homosexual population at large?

keyser_soze

dk

1. Bill Snedden: Modern societies do not operate on the "nuclear family" (NF) model. The NF is autocratic, whereas modern societies are democratic. The foundation of your argument is invalid.
   dk: The US is a Constitutional Republic governed by a triad system of executive, legislative and judicial branches bound by a system of checks and balances. While the US espouses the merits of democracy, it is more representative than democratic. All the judges on the constitutional courts are appointed for life terms by the President. W. Bush was selected president by the Supreme Court, even though he lost the popular vote i.e. the President is elected by an Electoral College controlled by state legislatures. A two party system of donkey and elephant have been institutionalized by legislative enactments at every level of government, and the US two party system runs against the grain of democratic principles. The US is at best a representative form of government. Will you now argue the US is not a modern nation?
   
   Bill Snedden: You presented some comments that seemed an attempt to address this, but they were unclear. For example, in your comments you claimed that "modern society" contained "primitive and savage elements", but didn't define what these were or why they matter to the argument. You also wrote that the NF was an "element" of civilization or society (it was difficult to determine which) when previously you've been claiming it was the foundation. Which is it?
   dk: No, I pointed out that “modern civilization” and “modern society” is not the same thing.
   *) Civilization: “a stage of social development” / The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, © http://www.xrefer.com
   *) Society: “A set of individuals and/or institutions in relations governed by practical interdependence, convention, and perhaps law - which relations may vary from the local to the international. / ibid
   Modern Civilization” runs from the 17th Century to the present, and the nuclear family transcends the Dark Ages, Middle Ages, and Renaissance that became Modern Civilization. On the other hand 16th Century Naples would correctly be considered a modern society, and so could ancient Rome and Athens at their apex.
   
   Bill Snedden: You also tried to work in some comments about "artificial persons" but what bearing that might have I was unable to discern. The argument from "single welfare moms" fails as well and you yourself note why: "These xfamilies are the byproduct of a failed Federal Welfare program." Of course, the "xfamilies" are not the byproduct, but rather the failure of these single parent families to make a go of it. Given unlimited resources, do you really believe that a single parent family would be any worse than one with two parents, or one where both parents were of the same sex? This is essentially your argument, but there's just no support for it.
   dk: Not me, but the recorded historical facts… http://www.dol.gov/asp/programs/hist...ynchapter4.htm
   Robin M. Williams, Jr. in a study of Elmira, New York: found
   Williams' account of Negro youth growing up with little knowledge of their fathers, less of their fathers' occupations, still less of family occupational traditions, is in sharp contrast to the experience of the white child. The white family, despite many variants, remains a powerful agency not only for transmitting property from one generation to the next, but also for transmitting no less valuable contracts with the world of education and work. In an earlier age, the Carpenters, Wainwrights, Weavers, Mercers, Farmers, Smiths acquired their names as well as their trades from their fathers and grandfathers. Children today still learn the patterns of work from their fathers even though they may no longer go into the same jobs.
   -- White children without fathers at least perceive all about them the pattern of men working.
   -- Negro children without fathers flounder -- and fail.
   You are free to speculate that gay and lesbian marriages will go against the grain of history, but to do so disregards the welfare of children.
2. Bill Snedden: Your argument assumes that the building blocks of societies or civilizations are incapable either of withstanding change or of change themselves, neither of which appear intuitively probable.
   dk: I said Civilization and nations grow and prosper by solving problems that arise from time to time with life affirming solutions. AIDs, stds, and mdr microbes as social diseases are such a social problem spread by promiscuous anonymous sex, especially anal sex. The promiscuous values promulgated by gay culture amplify the magnitude of teh problem arithmetically, perhaps even exponentially.
3. Your argument assumes that, regardless of the building blocks, human societies and civilizations are immalleable and cannot sustain change. Also intuitively improbable and empirically false.
   dk: I don’t assume anything. The nuclear family is non-reducible, resilient, self sufficient and self replicating from one generation to the next. It’s the nuclear family that gives modern civilization the elasticity and flexibility to cope with accelerated technological change. In large part moral law order human live to uphold the nuclear family.
4. Bill Snedden: You yourself noted previously that "The nuclear family to varying degrees throughout the history of Western Civilization to some degree has been corrupt. Murder, incest, violence, envy, cruelty, oppression, infidelity, adultery, and betrayal have been part of all human family, and the nuclear family from time immortal..." With all of that true, how much of a difference can same-sex marriages (SSM) possibly make? And if the basis of civilization & society is the NF, how has civilization lasted so long with such a rotten foundation?
   dk: SSM undermines the nuclear family with the x-family archetype.
5. Bill Snedden: Your argument necessarily assumes that the NF must have a biological foundation, but this assumption ignores the very real evidence that the primary element of importance in parenting relationships is not biological at all. Millions of adoptive parents and children testify to this as do millions of children of abusive parents.
   dk: The sociological and anthropological data gathered in the 20th Century says otherwise.
6. Bill Snedden: The "safeness" of a sexual act is unsound as a moral principle by which to determine sexual morality as it would necessarily militate against virtually all forms of sexual contact (and against many non-sexual forms of contact).
   dk: I don’t follow.
   
   Bill Snedden: Further, it would lead to apparent absurdities such as "lesbian sex is the only truly moral sex" and "married couples who refrain from sex are more moral than those that have sex."
   dk: I never said a safe act or unsafe act was moral, I said morality governed human conduct so people could understand one another. Were the “act of love” to become a deadly threat it would cease to be love because love does no harm. Morality orders the lives of a husband and wife with love, honor and respect for the sake of children. Over 250,000 gays in the USA have died from an incidence of MSM (male sex with male), and over 500,000 wait to die of an incident of MSM. To put this in context there are only about 560,000 married families with children in the US, or about (1.5 gays dying or dead from incidence of MSM) per (nuclear family) in the US. To institutionalize gay marriage would cloak an incidence of death under the auspices of life. Gay marriage mocks marriage.
   
   Bill Snedden: You have also attempted to address this by arguing that "more safe" is "more moral", but this fails for the same reasons: "lesbian sex is more moral than heterosexual sex."
   dk: Not me, you must have me confused with someone else.
   
   Bill Snedden: Further, if medical science were to develop completely effective methods of preventing STDs (100% effective), would your moral objections to MSM cease?
   I don’t understand,
   dk: If pigs had wings they might be able to fly. It’s a very weak argument.
7. Bill Snedden: The actions of "gay leadership" are irrelevant to the question of whether or not SSM should be legal.
   dk: I disagree, gay leadership reflects the values of their constituents. When given a seat at the table to forge public opinion they betrayed both the greater society and their own constituency. They have proven themselves corrupt, unreliable, narcissistic, and unethical. For example teenagers in the US public schools entrusted to gay mentors and associations become HIV+ at a rate of 4% per year. Holy Gay, If the trend continues these youngsters by the time they are 30 will be 50% HIV+. I referenced a gay youth community center earlier where 25% of the kids prostitute themselves. This is a travesty. Gay culture makes the public square unsafe for families and children because they promulgate promiscuous anonymous anal sex. Its like hiring the fox to guard the chicken coop.
8. Bill Snedden:Your definition of "degenerate" apparently hinges upon an unsound moral principle and thus your contention that "gay culture spills degeneratively..." can be disregarded.
   dk: I’ll take that as a dogmatic statement. Most people understand teaching a 16 year old kid how to prostitute themselves is immoral.
   
   Bill Snedden: And, I didn't mention it before, but here's another thought. You decry the "culture of promiscuity" that you claim is prevalent in the gay lifestyle, but seem oblivious to the possibility that such behavior may be caused in part by the necessarily "underground" nature of gay relationships. Perhaps if gay relationships were considered more "mainstream", then gay people might behave in a more "mainstream" manner.
   dk: and If pigs had wings then they could fly.
   
   Bill Snedden: Of course, you also necessarily ignore that such "promiscuity" is likely not a factor of homosexuality, per se, but rather more likely due to the fact that men are more naturally inclined toward multiple sexual partners. It is no less an issue with heterosexual men, but when you put one man with another...
   dk: I think you just agreed with me. Gay marriage won’t help gay men. It will
   First: Dissolve the bonds of the nuclear family as the archetype of civilization with the x-family.
   Second: Institutionalize anal sex.
   Third: Secure and Protect a prominent place in the public square for Gay Culture, despite the promiscuous values and pornographic landscapes it promulgates disrespecting the welfare of children, families and good citizens. This clearly betrays the public trust.

Jinto

As I said, unless you could formulate a response without relying on logical fallacies, I really don't see the point in continuing to argue. Therefore, I will simply list the fallacies that you have committed.

IWoWI (Invincible Wall of Willful Ignorance)

Strawman.

Lie: you demonstrated no such thing. Strawman: PP does not claim that condoms are 100% save against STDs. Red Herring: PP and HPV infection rates are not related to gay marriage.

Actually, a non-fallacy: there are indeed social scientists that agree with you, although they are not in the majority. And no, I can't understand why they do that either, any more than I can understand why there are PhD.'s that accept biblical creation.

Concession: you have admitted that one of your emotional terms is in fact meaningless. Nonsensical: Your assertation that Gays can't get enough of a meaningless term.

Equivication: Gay Rights Movement != Gay culture.

Begging the question: You first have to establish that the Gay Rights Movement does in fact market their agenda through SS, SE, and MCE; then the question will make sense. Equivication (implied): Your entire argument has been about marketing "gay culture." Gay culture != gay rights. IWoWI: You are again refusing to pay attention to what I am arguing here. And frankly, your "challenge" is a red herring, and I suspect a setup for an ad hominem against gay leaders. (Your argument (anticipated): PP is involved in some scandals (most national organizations are), gay leaders tend to support PP, therefore gay leaders support these scandals (non sequitur), therefore gay leaders are wrong (ad hominem)).

IWoWI.

Ad hominem/lie: I am quite aware of the existence of my nose. Irrelevant conclusion: the fact that they teach classes about gay culture has nothing to do with its existence. IWoWI: You fail to understand a clear argument from analogy, (the actions of the "representative few" cannot be generalized to the many).

I doubt it.

Well I was half right: you did ignore the point. IWoWI.

And dk: for something to be taken in context, it has to be relevant context. If we allow irrelevant context, then I could easily disprove the validity of, say, abstinence-only sex education by pointing out that it is supported by the catholic church which has been involved in more scandals than I can count. Clearly, for context to be meaningful, you must show relevance.

Failure to answer the question: which part of "There are more kids in need of adoption than there are families to adopt them do you not understand?" You have never even approached this fact.

BTW: it is precisely because I DO understand what a mess the foster care system is that i feel getting kids OUT of it via adoption is better than leaving them there to rot.

Ad hominem.

Lie, ad hominem, and you still have failed to show how I misrepresented you.

You're right! This is what you said:

"if the supreme court tells state legislators to stop violating the 14th amendment, then I'll start a civil war over the alleged threat to my family." Thank you for pointing out this most grevious error.

Too bad you never DO it, but I digress: if you really cannot see why telling me that gay promiscuity is a reason to prevent legal recognition of gay monogamy is an invalid argument, then no amount of explanation is going to get you to recognize your own fallacies. And unsurprisingly, no amount of explanation ever has.

the part that includes residence and sharing of familial responsibilities with the parents of the youngest working generation. More to the point though, I can prove that it is archetypical simply through general chronology: The extended family existed in Japan long before the nuclear family, and therefore the nuclear family is a derivitive of the extended family, and not the other way around. Please.

What? Illicit major is an agrument of the form "All P are Q, no X is P, therefore no X is Q." What I said didn't even resemble that. This is what happened:

dk: P --> Q, R, S, T, U, V...
~(P --> Q, R, S, T, U, V...)
Are you denying P --> Q? Absurd.
No, I'm denying P --> R, S, T, U, V...
Fallacy Illicit Major (non sequitur)

That doesn't even resemble illicit major. Before crying "fallacy," there must first actually BE a fallacy.

From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:

gay (adj.) - 1. Of, relating to, or having a sexual orientation to persons of the same sex

All lesbians are gays.

And I never said you did.

From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:

marriage (n) - 1.

1. The legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife.
2. The state of being married; wedlock.
3. A common-law marriage
4. A union between two persons having the customary but usually not the legal force of marriage: a same-sex marriage

As I said, you're DEFINING marriages as being required to have a man and a woman, which does not constitute an argument against them being between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman.

Argumentum ad antiquitatem.

Another slippery slope argument too.

Strawman. I never stated that.

Red Herring: communism has nothing to do with gay marriage. Ad hominem: the gay rights movement stands on the validity of their arguments, not their "accomplishments" or lack thereof.

Was that intentional?

Bald assertation: why can't the nuclear family tolerate gay couples? Circulus in demonstrando: You assert that gay's have a problem that marriage can't fix to prove that gay marriage will not fix gay problems.

Ad hominem.

Get it straight: Argumentum ad antiquitatem is a FALLACY. It is also (as my argument showed) empirically inaccurate. Yet you insist on using it. Other fallacies: Argumentum ad logicam (you state that because I give you an argument that if used to prove that gay marriage is okay would be false, therefore that conclusion is false), and Strawman (I used that argument to show you why argumentum ad antiquatem is a fallacy, not to say that gay marriage is okay).

And never supported it. In fact, it HONORS marriage: do you not think it praise that people like your concept of marriage so much that that they want to participate in it?

You state P --> Q.
I state P and ~Q, --> ~(P --> Q)
You deploy your IWoWI and state that ~(P --> Q) is (~X or ~y)
I say: huh?

As I said, you cannot imagine a legitimate gay marriage.

IWoWI - you again failed to respond to my demand that you show a causal connection between gay marriage and the dissolution of your family.

What "replacement?" Again, no one is even suggesting that the nuclear family be outlawed, so at best you argument is a slippery slope.

It is LANGUAGE that allows people to understand one another. Morality governs the behavior of people so that they can get along with one another.

It is indeed impossible for me to communicate with someone (namely you) suffering from paranoid delsuional disorder.

Before you can state that P --> oblivion, you must first show a causal connection between P and oblivion. Non sequitur.

In other words, you do view "gay culture" as a cancer, and would have it removed if you could.

And without empathy, you are in no position to judge the motives of others, since you would be incapable of truly understanding their situation.

No, morality orders society, "moral law" is a contradiction in terms (morality != law), I can understand immoral people, you do not have to be one to understand one (due, again, to empathy), and again you ignore the anaolgy that YOU made. In fact, there are quite a few other ad hominems I'm waiting for you to retract. And if you cannot understand homosexuals, then you do not have the nessecary logical qualificatoins to discuss them, since you must first understand your subject before discussing it.

And again, you did not refute my point about homosexual marriage NOT being purely hypothetical.

And you only escaped ad hominem by virtue of the fact that the Netherlands is a country, not a person... wait, you do lambast Fortuyn... never mind. Your post is also an ad hominem.

Strawman/ad hominem. You're really good at fallacies.

You know, coming from someone who has not made a logically valid argument, repeatedly lies, denies their own errors in logic, refuses to respond to basically all of my points, is unable to grasp the concept of relevance, and relies on ad hominem, strawman, red herring, and simple willful ignorance, I'm really not surprised that you would end your post with such a remarkable piece of idiocy. I will not continue debate: you have shown yourself incapable of it.

Kimpatsu

This demonstrates a lack of knowledge of the etymology of the word "homosexual".
"Homosexual" is not dereived from the Latin homo, "man" (in which case, it would be plausible to argue that lesbians are not gay), but from the Greek homos, "same". As "gay" is a colloquial term for "homosexual", all lesbians are indeed gay.

Gurdur

Has anyone mentioned the Atkins Diet yet ?

18 pages, and still no controversy over the Atkins Diet ?

Kimpatsu

What's the Atkins Diet?
Is it anything like the Japanese Diet?
Look, ma, I'm a Yakuza.