Hugo

If you tell me that a fetus e.g. 21 days from conception (and virtually all mothers-to-be still have no idea they are pregnant at that stage) is now a human and cannot be killed, I fail to see any reason why a fetus only 20 days old can be legally killed. The only point at which such a drastic change occurs in the life of a human that his life can be said to have started is at conception. At no other time can you pinpoint anything that gives an indication that the individual is more "alive" than before. Apart from anything else, every pregnancy is different and fetuses, like born children, develop at different rates. What if the child killed at 20 days gestation was actually more advanced than most were at 25? You think they'd prefer to have been murdered before they were even born?

No, but my wife was. Thankfully she made the right decision. Our eldest son is now 7 - a thriving, intelligent boy with a great sense of humour who leaves adults in stitches, and not in a landfill somewhere. Sadly, about 200,000 Canadians and 1,600,000 Americans each year are not so lucky. The problem is that an adolescent girl who gets pregnant is going to make an innocent party pay with his or her life for her mistake. Is that fair? If I live outside my means, is it fair for me to kill and rob you to pay off my debts - your life in exchange for my convenience? Yes, actually they are. I've spoken to the receptionist at an abortion clinic who told me that the fetuses are put into a dumpster around the back that smells absolutely appalling - it's full of rotting human flesh. If you want a concrete example, try the Jacksonville (FL) Womens' Center for Reproductive Health. Director Rev. Marvin Lutz explained that the practice of leaving the remains out in the trash was perfectly legal and approved by the National Abortion Federation and the Florida Abortion Council. Dr. Jeronimo Dominguez of New York claims that "on any Monday you can see about 30 garbage bags with fetal material in them along the sidewalks of several abortion clinics in New York." The new abortifacent pill RU-486 will allow a woman to abort her child in the "comfort of her own home" at up to 9 weeks (http://www.abortbypill.com). Here's a description of the fetus at 8 weeks: "The unborn child, called a fetus at this stage, is about half an inch long. The tiny person is protected by the amnionic sac, filled with fluid. Inside, the child swims and moves gracefully. The arms and legs have lengthened, and fingers can be seen. The toes will develop in the next few days. Brain waves can be measured." The child has a beating heart, a blood type of his own from a functioning liver, facial features, and a tongue (http://www.w-cpc.org/fetal1.html). You can see photos there too. When a mother 9 weeks pregnant takes an RU-486 pill, this is what she'll pass into her toilet bowl. Is it fair to tell women that this is a great option? After all, I'm sure you can imagine the shock and horror a woman would feel after cramping for hours, finally passing something and then seeing a human face staring back at her from the pool of blood in her toilet. This might sound like hyperbole and hysterics, but this is genocide we are talking about here. The Holocaust pales beside the number of babies killed thus far since 1973.

The oil argument has been repeatedly debunked. French oil interests were well served by Saddam's regime, hence their fear of his overthrow, and the US will have to wait decades for the cost of the war and investment in Iraqi rebuilding to pay off... if they were even set out to exploit Iraq, which they aren't. It's also interesting to note that on the day the war began, the number of Iraqi citizens being killed each day (on average) dropped by between 50 and 75%, and continued at that lower level throughout the war. The conclusion was obvious: even with the fighting at it's heaviest, even with Iraqi civilians being caught in the crossfire, less Iraqis were being killed. It's a sorry situation for the Ba'athists when war and invasion actually improve the life expectancy of Iraqis. Tweak/LiberalDem, whichever one you choose to call yourself, your arguments are naive and uninformed. I suggest you spend some time perusing this forum as I've already spent a lot of effort citing facts, figures and expert opinion debunking precisely the sort of lefist twaddle you're coming up with again. Oh, BTW, "America acting selfishly"... please go find a decent history book, go to the index and look up the "Marshall Plan." Then go and look up "Comecon." I already know what you're going to find but it's important that you discover this information yourself. Then you can allow the light of reason to dispel the darkness of your leftist ignorance. Liberia? First you are angry that the US intervenes overseas, then you are angry that it doesn't? Make up your mind what your point is before you post it, please.

What are you, split-personality?

I would reply to you, except that that was possibly the most incoherent and nonsensical post I've read in a long time, with absolutely no justification or evidence.

"Inconvenient" is the word, all right. I know childbirth is painful, but after one's irresponsibility has created a new human being, the least one should expect would be for that mother to bear the child and have it adopted by a family that wants a child and will give one a good home. To kill another human (or order one to be killed) in a terribly painful way, and to have their corpse dismembered or just tossed in the trash or flushed down the toilet, simply because you don't feel like bearing the consequences of your actions, is the height of selfish immorality. It's no wonder that so many women who have abortions wind up with post-traumatic stress disorder. Of course, Planned Parenthood will tell you none of this.

Scotch, all your points have already been refuted. I invite you to read over the "Beyond Satire" thread where myself and others have posted mountains of evidence and expert testimony to prove what we say. I also find it laughable that you are drawing different conclusions from the twins study, when the head of genetic research at Harvard and the director of the largest genetic research facility in the US draw the exact opposite conclusion. Furthermore, I always find it vastly amusing when "enlightened" and "compassionate" leftists start slinging insults and attempting to suppress true freedom of speech... truly priceless. What other oratory gems does Scotch have in store, I wonder? Maybe his dad can beat up Neal's dad?

I've heard from a few people now (Lost in Manitoba, Blackdog, Pellaken), in various threads, that homosexuality is innate, genetic and therefore inviolate. Therefore, I would just like to bring these facts to everybody's attention. Dr. Dean Hamer, a homosexual male geneticist, conducted a very comprehensive search for a gay gene back in 1993. He was specifically looking for a genetic link to prove his hypothesis that homosexuality was genetic. However, he failed. He was able to show some evidence that homosexuality ran in families, for instance, if one of identical twins was gay, the other had about a 47% chance of also being gay. The problem was that he could not find a single genetic reason for this, which left only the argument that it was environmental. This would explain the family connections, after all, twins have near-identical genes but also near-identical upbringings. This was confirmed by two other researchers, one head of the largest genetics departments in the country, the other at Harvard, saying, "we think that the data in fact provide strong evidence for the influence of the environment." Dr. Hamer himself concluded that homosexuality was heritable but not inherited. This is a crucial distinction. Here's how it works. A heritable characteristic is one that tends to run in families but has no grounding in genetics. For example, if your father, your uncles and older brothers all served in the submarine service, odds are you will too. However, there's no "submarine service" gene. You might also find that, upon dissection of the corpses of submariners, that they all had growth in a certain area of the brain. This, too, proves nothing but the already-known fact that parts of the brain grow with use and atrophy with disuse, like muscles. An inherited characteristic is one that only has genetic determinants, such as eye or hair colour. This cannot be environmental, and if both your parents have blue eyes, you absolutely must have blue eyes also. Dr. Hamer, when asked by Scientific American if homosexuality was rooted in genetics, replied: "Absolutely not. From twin studies, we already know that half or more of the variability in sexual orientation is not inherited. Our studies try to pinpoint the genetic factors...not negate the psychosocial factors." Unfortunately, the lay press was not nearly so precise. National Public Radio, followed by Newsweek, Ann Landers, and the Wall Street Journal all ran stories that confused the terms "heritable" and "inherited" and, exactly counter to what Dr. Hamer had said in Scientific American, announced that homosexuality was genetic and inherited. Just goes to show that you should always check your sources. After these fallacious stories, gay advocacy groups jumped on the "gay gene" myth and, backed by the Wall Street Journal and other "creditable" sources, proceeded to spread it around. Hence the wrongful belief of many today that homosexuality is genetic and a natural variation - it is not.

You have to find a way to talk to these people in their own language. So many third-world inhabitants are so hateful of the West and of America that anything exported from them, especially cultural values, will be treated with scorn and derision. This is why, for instance, I believe that the Middle Eastern solution is an Islamic Reformation. You can't say to Arabs, "do as America does", because they hate America. You may, however, be able to say "embrace democracy and capitalism, because if you read here and here, the Quran tells you to." That way, it makes sense to them, and it's from a source they respect and trust. They may also believe that they are still following their own way, and in a sense they may. Democracy in the Middle East may well be very different from what it looks like in the West, hopefully as effective and as politically just, but with an Arab flavour. The same thing applies to Africa. Most of the problems there stem from tribalism and tribal hatreds, and trying to export a wishy-washy Canadian-style multiculturalism just isn't going to work. What is needed, is to tap into something in African culture that will allow tolerance and dispel tribal hatred. You cannot simply divide the continent along tribal lines, because this will firstly just change the warfare from civil to national, and secondly, some tribes are just too small to form a nation and will have to be integrated into a larger state where they run the risk of oppression.

KrustyKidd, Perhaps you misunderstood me - I don't believe that America should or would play world policeman, however, I was simply stating that if America was forced into that role somehow, it would be self-defeating as the act of fulfilling that role would render America increasingly incapable of fulfilling it. Relative American power now is no greater than that of Britain in 1870, and yet that empire crumbled through exactly that kind of over-extension. I fully agree that America's best interests are not served by neo-colonialism and excessive involvement in world affairs. America should not be made to sacrifice her money, her resources and her sons for other nations interests, and as you said, no other empire or colonial power has ever done so. They went overseas with gunboats for their own gain. The probability is that American power will shrink naturally of its own accord in time. Right now, America has maybe 30-40% of world economic and military power, and that is likely to fall back to around 12-15%, which more closely reflects America's population and resources. America will still be a world power, but not the dominant one. If forced to guess, I would say that Japan or a pacific-rim economic coalition including Japan will become the next dominant power - Japan is already the world's greatest creditor nation, which was the situation that heralded America's own rise to power. The truth is that American power was "artifically" (if such a term is not outright ridiculous in the field of grand strategy) inflated by WWII, which basically resulted in the older powers being crippled while America grew exponentially stronger. As the economic, social and military memories of WWII fade, that situation will change. Who knows when - some empires have taken centuries to fade.

Just one point here: America is the world's richest and most powerful nation. However, if you use that to force it to be world's policeman, it will no longer be the world's richest and most powerful. Nations have always had to balance guns and butter. If you weaken your economy by increasing militarisation, you make yourself strong today, but weak tomorrow. This is one reason for the Japanese and West German economic miracles: they have had no military needs to worry about until relatively late in the economic explosion. Japan still pays only lip service to self-defence. If America plays world policeman, they will find themselves with the same problem that was faced by the crumbling Habsburg, British, Ottoman or any other Empire: strategical over-extension. They will be forced to devote increasing resources to maintaining strategical commitments, basically, running to stand still. As they do so, they will weaken, as other nations grow stronger. After a few decades of that, Japan will probably be the dominant world power anyway.

SirRiff, I could debunk all of your half-baked claims, however, there's a good reason I won't: I already did, along with others, in at least 4 separate threads. Maybe more, I can't remember. Every time you have your theories shot down and are unable to defend yourself with either fact or logic. You simply desert the thread when it's obvious that you are looking foolish, only to make exactly the same original contentions in another, as though it never happened. Well, Riff, it did happen. You have proven yourself unable to defend this viewpoint time and time again, and unless you can come up with something new (which I doubt), I will have to ask you to either put up or shut up.

Not at all - it's speculation, and I posted it as such. Here are the facts that lead me to my conclusions: Canada's interests are best served by maintaining good relations with the US, on which a large portion of the Canadian economy depends. Canada has little to do with France, except family ties with Chretien himself, of course. And Albertan oil. Bearing this in mind, Chretien takes it upon himself to condemn US foreign policy, allow his ministers to make the most crass of insults towards Americans and their politicians without repercussion, and lets Canada get the shaft in trade disputes with the US, while he cozies up to France. It seems to me that Chretien is not terribly interested in what is good for Canada, and is more interested in forging closer ties with France - with whom, it should be noted, he has family connections. UNLESS you take into account Chretien's family interests, his policy makes little rational sense. I especially find the idea that he is a "man of principle" laughable - what would you call a "devout Catholic" who is pro-gay-marriage and pro-abortion, other than a self-deceiving liar whose ethics are as elastic as his French counterpart's?

Oh, it's a fantasy now? What evidence do you have that disproves it? Oh, that's right, none, because all that I said is backed up by documents from the very people involved - except that which was obviously speculation. It just seems suspect to me how keen Chretien is to damage Canadian relations with its most important trading partner, when his personal interests are well served by doing so. The fact is that those accusing the US of self-interest and corruption were the most guilty of those traits themselves.

What might be able to shed some light on this is: The Ba'athist regime and prominent French companies such as Alcatel, Peugot and Renault have a very close relationship. Since the oil-for-food programme was initiated, France has become the world's largest exporter of goods to Iraq. TotalFinaElf, a French oil company, had struck a deal with Saddam shortly before the war. They were to open a new oilfield in Iraq, that would be bigger, more productive and more profitable than any before. They had development rights to 25% of Iraqi oil in total. TotalFinaElf's biggest shareholder is Paul Desmarais, whose son Andre is married to Jean Chretien's daughter. Desmarais' son Paul Jr., brother of Chretien’s son-in-law Andre, sits on Total’s Board of Directors. Andre also sits on the board of the Peoples’ Republic of China’s China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC), reportedly described by some as "the investment arm of the Chinese military." Coincidence? TotalFinaElf also has substantial stakes in Albertan oil - and you can bet that Chretien will squash any Albertan separatist movement for the same reasons. Chretien doesn't give a crap about Canada. He is interested in his family's money, and he has and will continue to sell Canada down the river for his personal prosperity, undermining trade links and diplomatic relations with Canada's biggest trading partner so that his relatives can get rich. And yet, it's funny that President Bush is the one being accused of being interested only in oil, of corruption and of powermongering.

I'd go a little further and draw attention to political meetings in the Soviet Union, held in the armed forces and industry, to "educate" people about the evils of capitalism and the overwhelming good of Marxism. It's one thing to try and equip people to think for themselves. It's another when you start telling them what to think. I'd also say that if you have to educate, inform and argue so much to justify your own point of view, it's obviously not self-evident. We have no need for education on why murder is wrong - it's pretty obvious, even to a moron. The very act of endless argument and justification proves that the object of it is questionable.

Anybody who actually attacks a specific homosexual person, physically or verbally, obviously has a complex and a problem of their own, and I won't dispute that. As I said, I myself have homosexual friends and I don't have a problem with them, nor will I preach to them about their condition. That's tolerance. However, social conservatives aren't really neo-Nazis or the KKK looking to beat and lynch gays. They are people such as Neal and myself, who see the obvious facts about homosexuality and object to the promotion of such a dangerous lifestyle - much as you object to America invading Iraq, but you do not wish harm to any specific US soldier or policymaker. I think it's clear that, right now, gays have all the psychological angst, as witnessed by the fact that 3% of the population is attempting to force their will on the other 97% by court action, protests, political lobbying or whatever means, fair or foul, will work. Is that not bullying? As regards your analogy, children all generally have self-esteem problems to a lesser extent simply because as children, they are inferior to adults in every way. As they mature and improve, they get over this. The fact that gays haven't and are attempting to flaunt their behaviour in everybody's face and overturn majority will in favour of their own, just further proves their psychological issues - of which their homosexuality is just one more symptom.

A constant and driving need to assert yourself against others in a way that's detrimental to them is also a sign of low self-esteem and an inferiority complex. What you've said is just another way to reach the same conclusion: homosexuality is a psychological scar.

As Neal has said, some of the problems are caused by the actual acts that homosexuals indulge in. However, I concede that the majority of them are caused by promiscuity - a monogamous and uninfected couple have absolutely no reason to fear AIDS. Promiscuity, though, is generally a sign of psychological problems, especially with self-esteem and self-worth or, rather, lack thereof. Excessively promiscuous people usually have an inferiority complex that they are subconsciously attempting to salve with sexual gratification, hoping that the sexual encounters will give them some affirmation of their worth as a person. Sadly, the effect is usually the opposite of that, since multiple, meaningless sexual encounters just build the image of self-worthlessness. The behaviour a disease encourages is often contrary to that required to cure or even to perpetuate life (e.g. rabies/hydrophobia). That, combined with the staggeringly high number of homosexuals who suffered sexual abuse as children, excessive bullying, or had difficulty fitting into their peer groups, shows me that homosexuality and promiscuity are both symptoms of psychological trauma. I have heard people say that low self-esteem in homosexuals is due to social stigma, ridicule and so forth. This is plainly clap-trap, as we can see by the fact that homosexual behaviour is becoming progressively more outrageous and promiscuous as we progressively relax stigma attached to the condition. If it were the case that social stigma caused this low self-esteem, we would see a homosexual trend towards monogamous and sexually conservative behaviour as society grew more tolerant. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that homosexuality is a mental disorder that usually has underlying causes needing treatment. It's a self-destructive behaviour symptomatic of real problems. Anorexics are not encouraged to see themselves as fat and to diet excessively, in fact, many are treated and force-fed against their will to save their lives. That's no reason to pelt anorexics with stones, though, and this is much the same attitude we should adopt with homosexuality: to respect the sufferer as the human being that they are, but to acknowledge that they have a disorder that needs treatment.

Hmmm. Will the judge who sentenced Jeffrey Dahmer go to hell, for causing him "pain" by forcing him to desist from killing and eating people, from which he derived pleasure? Or you do actually have a concept of the greater good - in which case, is it not better to sacrifice the feelings of 3% of the population in order to preserve those of the other 97%?

The Church, even the Roman Catholic, is not completely closed to new ideas and reform, and was not even in the Middle Ages, as the Catholic Reformation and the Council of Trento (1545-1563) bear witness. The Catholic Church is, however, cautious about carelessly embracing new ideas simply because they are said to be new and progressive, and you would be wise to do the same. Marxism was once a new and progressive idea, too, as was trephining with neolithic tools, radium facial hair removal and the will to power. Just because an idea is new and progressive does not make it great, and just because something is traditional and time-honoured does not make it irrelevant or useless. Each idea has to be considered on its own merit. Taking into account the scientific, moral, medical and sociological windows on homosexuality I can't see how embracing it could be considered a good idea at all. It's also incorrect to assume that anybody opposing homosexual endorsement is either religious, or simply being mindlessly dictated to by scripture and clergy. People on this very forum have disproven both points. We have had atheist views on why homosexual marriage is not a good idea, as we have had scientific, sociological and medical evidence to reach the same conclusion. To say that those opposed are blind and unthinking simply illustrates those characteristics in you.

Neal, I absolutely agree with you. For those who don't think it's possible, I'd remind them that history is replete with examples of states leaning on and oppressing organised religion, from Romans throwing Christians to the lions, through the Avignon Papacy, to the Third Reich's oppression of both Christianity and especially Judaism, Serbian persecution of Muslims, and so on. It will happen again unless a change is made. I can see the PC-police turning this nation into another late Roman Empire, praising hedonism and self-indulgement above all else, despising virtue and oppressing sincerely-held religion. You can already see the seeds of this, now turned saplings.

Lost, I originally posted all this in the "Beyond Satire" thread, but I will repeat it for your benefit: From "Public Education Against America” by Marlin Maddoux: In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently 20 years of age will not reach their 65th birthday. A Bell and Weinberg study found that 43 percent of the gay men surveyed estimated having sex with 500 or more different partners. 75 percent estimated 100 or more partners. 28 percent estimated more than 1,000 partners. In this same study it was revealed that 79 percent said that more than half of their partners were anonymous, and 70 percent said that more than half of their partners were men with whom they had sex only once. A later study by these two researchers estimated that only 2 percent of homosexuals could be considered monogamous or even semi-monogamous (having ten or less lifetime partners). One study found that 38 percent of lesbians surveyed had between 11 and 300 sexual partners. Another revealed that 41 percent of lesbians admitted to having between 10 and 500 lifetime partners. From the Center for Disease Control: Homosexuals account for 80 percent of America’s most serious sexually transmitted diseases even though they constitute a mere 3% of the population. Youths engaging in homosexual behavior are 23 times more likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease than strictly heterosexual youths. Lesbians are 19 times more likely than heterosexual women to have had syphilis, twice as likely to suffer from genital warts, four times as likely to have scabies. Male homosexuals are 14 times more likely to have syphilis than male heterosexuals. They are also thousands of times more likely to have AIDS. In 1991 and 1992 the Family Research Institute surveyed 5,371 obituaries from sixteen American homosexual newspapers. It was found that across the United States, the median age of death for a homosexual male not having AIDS was only 42 years, with a mere 9 percent living to old age. Of 106 lesbians surveyed, the median lifespan was only 45 years, with 26 percent living to old age. Homosexuality is bad for you. That's all there is to it.

Right, but you see my point, which is that both those institutions "discriminate" against groups of people and not on practical grounds. Is this unconstitutional and a violation of the rights of those discriminated against, or is it the right of the organisation or religion to exclude anyone they see fit? Your story about alcoholism is bang-on. I think also, a telling story is that of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Jesus accepted her and tolerated her even though she was a prostitute, but he certainly did not encourage it, or aid her in prostituting herself. This is the difference between tolerance and endorsement, and what we are doing is not tolerating homosexuals, but actively endorsing them.

The Supreme Court already ruled on this issue less than a decade ago, and found in favour of the traditional definition of marriage. I believe this is why it's going to be put to a vote in Parliament, since the politicians know that the Supreme Court isn't stupid or forgetful enough to overturn that which they themselves decided just a short time ago. I could be wrong, but I think the Supreme Court is against the liberals on this one, and they know it.