WIP

It is following the trail of evidence of what's happened with every polygamous community studied so far. As long as males and females are born in equal numbers, setting up family structures where some men have more than one woman is going to mean some guy has to go without....it's not rocket science, it's simple arithmetic! Take a look at the growing concerns that policy makers are having in China, India and a few other countries that favour male babies, where there is growing concern over a surplus of boys, and worries about instability and unrest resulting, and tell me why any society would allow or encourage social structures that mess with maintaining an equal balance? A polygamous society is patriarchal by its very definition! Most patriarchal societies are unofficially polygamous when we consider how the rich men have mistresses and girlfriends for a diversion. Polygamy is only the legal sanctification of such arrangements, so if a billionaire decided to make his mistresses 2nd and 3rd wives etc., there would be nothing his first wife could do about it. Allowing polygamy...which is small and irrelevant at the present time...would turn into a destabilizing force as soon as enough of the rich and powerful were able to legally take as many young women as they like. Such arrangements would increase the social stratification, and end any semblance of democratic society. And, as noted previously, we could expect a lot more social unrest from young men from low class families, unless the leaders could find more foreign wars to send them off to die for.

Well, actually that is not my point! Polygamy and same-sex marriage should be evaluated based on their social values or possible negative impacts, not outlawed because of the New Testament. I'm a consequentialist or a utilitarian, not a subscriber to divine command ethics. When it comes to same-sex marriage, from my pov there seems to be a lot more potential value than any negative aspects. The anti-gay crusaders have railed for years about the immorality of gay men; so why not allow those who are inclined to want a stable relationship the opportunity for marriage, and the benefits that accompany marriage? Here in Canada, same-sex marriage has been legalized, and conventional marriages haven't been destroyed....or if they have, it has nothing to do with gays getting married! I have a cousin in Ottawa who has been living with the same partner for over 18 years, and took the opportunity of making it legal a few years ago. I'm surprised all of the family values campaigners aren't supporting gay marriage. You would think that they would be in favour of anything that encouraged or allowed gays to live in long term, stable relationships! That would be an idiot! It is an orientation, but since a pedophiles desires for underage boys or girls cannot be legally consensual, it has to be forbidden and the pedophile has to seek diversions or some forms of treatment. Psychologists say it's very difficult to change the desires of pedophiles, but the best evidence regarding causes indicates that many pedophiles are usually themselves subjected to sexual abuse at a young age, which would make it a deviation that can be spread to future generations. I think the problems with priests start with the crazy demand for celibacy and Catholic fear of sexual desires. In the old days, like during my mother's time, most priests were likely heterosexual men, and stories would be rampant about priests' girlfriends, secret children and families, and priests using opportunities such as confirmation to have a 'private moment' with some young teenage girls. In the old days, nothing was ever done about these scandals which never rose above the rumour and gossip level. When the Church started cracking down on clergy who had women on the side, they also turned a blind eye to growing numbers of gay men entering the seminaries, because no one else was applying for the job! But most of the secretly gay priests in the Catholic Church are not, or were not pedophiles! The scandal is regarding how the Church hierarchy dealt with these abusers and the children and families involved. They were only concerned with the appearance of scandal and just wanted everything hushed up and kept away from the public.

We don't have to accept polygamy in the name of tolerance, if there is clear evidence that allowing plural marriage will lead to harmful social consequences. As soon as there is polygamy, there is a desire to get the girls before they come of age and have time to mess around with the boys. Most Muslim countries that aren't floating on oil, are trying to outlaw or restrict and discourage polygamy because of the negative social effects. Some countries like Yemen for example, have laws against marriage under 16, which are constantly flouted every time a case of an under 13 year old girl in an arranged marriage makes the news. I would say that the problems of so called "lost boys," which I forgot to mention last time, is another one of the big problems. If you have a society where rich old guys can marry lots of women, there are going to be lots of young men who are unable to get married or even have a girlfriend. In the FLDS communities, they find excuses (especially teenage boys trying to get with the girls) to kick them out and banish them from the community....so that they become the problem of the larger society. What happens when you look at a society where polygamy is widespread? Well, if we take Saudi Arabia for example: they spent most of the 80's and 90's encouraging young men to go off to wage jihad in Afghanistan or elsewhere....and hoped most of them wouldn't make it back home! Polygamy was only a sensible family structure in ancient times, when we had warrior societies that were constantly at war and having young men killed in battle with enemies. If there was an actual disparity in male/female ratios, it might make sense; otherwise it's a recipe for disaster...Saudi Arabia again! In the end, the welfare of society has to take precedence over individual wishes and desires.

I am not expecting the return of a bull market ever! The days of big returns on the stock market are gone for good. I think when these assholes started creating derivatives to bet on existing investments, it was a sign that the leeches living off of commissions realized they couldn't get the returns they had come to expect any longer. What really bothers me after spending the last hour surfing around CNN and other news channels talking about the market panic, is that it just doesn't sink in that present system of capitalist economics - dependent on continual, year over year growth, is incompatible with our real world situation -- we live on a finite planet that cannot grow larger or provide more resources to accommodate the wishes and wants of a growing population. Personally, I think we are already at the breaking point, where the reality of overshooting available water sources, available farm land, the inevitable depletion of fossil fuels, has crashed the party where liberal and libertarian economists argue about how to resume economic growth...hate to be a downer, but that's just the way it is.

You're missing the point! Climate change is real, and the current projections for the rest of this century show Earth heading into a situation that looks remarkably similar to a brief, sudden warming period 55 million years ago called the PETM. Atmospheric CO2 levels rose above 450 ppm in less than a thousand years; the Arctic Ocean melted and was even filled with crocodiles, while the Equatorial regions were so hot and dry, paleontologists believe the Tropics were completely devoid of plant and animal life for over a hundred thousand years. So, since we are increasing CO2 levels at least ten times as fast as the PETM, what can we expect future generations to do...besides go extinct as some pessimists like James Lovelock...who predicts the world population will already be less than 10% of present levels by 2100? Well, seems obvious that whenever average daytime temperatures rise above 140 F and can no longer grow any vegetation, whoever's living then will have already moved north. So, where does that leave Canada? Pretty damn crowded with climate refugees at some given point! The migrations could occur long before the tropics are incinerated - the changes that are causing droughts and floods now are decreasing grain yields and driving up world commodity prices. Ten, twenty, fifty years...at some point, all those people who moved into the Southwest after WWII, are going to have to move out because it's impossible to grow much of anything, and there is not enough available fresh water....I'll get started on my border fence!

Sure, as long as you ignore the next point: "but global warming is "increasingly adding to this," the report said." As more carbon is added to the atmosphere, half of that carbon is absorbed by the oceans....which increases the problems of acidification. So the negative effects of increased greenhouse gases is not a static effect on the World's oceans; it's something that will keep growing for the foreseeable future, unlike over-fishing, which could be controlled through quotas or fishing bans. I don't think every oceanographer would agree with the committee in the first place - that overfishing and habitat loss are more serious problems at this moment, especially as new research is showing how the changing ph of the oceans is causing die-offs from messing with the sonar abilities of prey fish. So, if you don't accept their credentials, why are you using part of the report that you think you can fit into your denial strategy?

It will be even a more important issue a few decades from now, when millions of Americans start 'hating' their country and move north and claim ours!

I want to get to this topic later when I have time. Overpopulation is at the heart of all of the other problems we are dealing with today. There are already more people on Earth than the planet can sustain for the indefinite future, and the present situation of "overshoot" keeps growing because of the total inaction in reducing population. Exactly how many people the Earth can support cannot be exactly defined, because it depends crucially on how much of the planet's resources we are using. So, the main problem for the overpopulation in East Africa and Sub-Sahara Africa is over-use of available fresh water; while in the West, we are hoovering out water, metals, rare-earth elements, and stored carbon in the form of oil, coal and natural gas. How many people the planet can support one, two or three centuries from now will depend on what sort of lifestyle the people have, and how much of the resource base they are using....my guess is that it will be far lower than 7 billion...the number we are going to reach in just a few months.

I don't know whether I want to get involved in this issue again...I went all up and down polygamy back when the Bountiful case in B.C. was up for discussion. The one thing that really grinds me when this topic is discussed is that liberals usually stick with moral relativist arguments that are afraid of restricting a personal freedom to marry more than one woman...usually out of fear that it might threaten the legitimacy of same-sex marriage. There's no reason why two issues can't be examined on their own merits or lack of merits, but that's the way it usually is. In brief, what we learn from Bountiful and the other FLDS communities, is that allowing polygamy will inevitably lead to highly stratified patriarchal societies, where a few men - like Warren Jeffs, has dictatorial powers, followed by his right-hand men. Democracy cannot work in a society if polygamy becomes widespread. And this talk of 'pedophilia' completely misses the point of why Jeffs and other Mormon patriarchs are always after young girls - young women become a lucrative commodity, and the elders who have the money and power in the community, buy up the available brides before other, younger men have a chance to defile them. These reasons are why reformers in the Muslim World have worked to chip away at the institution of polygamy, even though they have to work against the acceptance of polygamy of their religion. I just wish we could get past the post-modernist bullshit that makes everything relative and forbids condemnations and restrictions on private behaviour. If there are clear social harms caused by allowing plural marriage, then personal desires should not be allowed to supersede what's best for well functioning society.

And yes there was a pretty clear change in public morality in New Testament times that is supported in the texts. I'm not sure what the point is of those questioning the NT Jesus's negative attitude regarding polygamy, but supporting historical evidence of 1st century Judea indicates that the practice of polygamy was extremely rare, even among wealthy Pharisees - it was something that was falling into social disfavour even if there hadn't been any religious rules forbidding plural marriage. When it comes to slavery, nothing in the NT will directly condemn slavery because it was still widely used and practiced, and the concept of personhood and personal rights and freedoms had to wait till the Renaissance and the philosophy of humanism started to become popular. Christian church leaders took in some of these concepts and were at the forefront of the fight to abolish slavery. In the U.S., the anti-slavery advocates could use the spirit of Christian philosophy - that all are created equal, to make a case that slavery was immoral and unChristian; while the pro-slavery church leaders where the institution was still part of the economy, could use a strict reading of biblical texts to support their case. But, the mostly Southern ministers could not support slavery with cultural notions that some races are superior and some are inferior, and as America became an industrialized nation, slavery was less important economically...and that may have been the crucial factor in the end.

When I want to learn some actual information about something, I'll go to Op-Ed News, Truthdig, DemocracyNow, or Alternet, before I'd consider taking the word of one of your favourite sources!

The U.S. will have to raise the debt ceiling to pay for current obligations; the question then might be are they going to actually be able to do the actual borrowing, or will money have to be created magically and risk fueling inflation if U.S. bond holders start selling out. The silver lining in this story may be that it just have to get serious about taking the axe to the Pentagon and the rest of the military-industrial complex that is no longer affordable. And, the bullshit meme that low taxes on the rich stimulates economic growth can be deep-sixed for good. The public may start paying attention and be a lot more supportive of raising tax rates on the highest income earners - especially low taxes on investment income, making corporations pay and stop allowing U.S. corporations to hide the bulk of their profits by creating fake HQ's in the Cayman Islands and other tax scam shelters, and they can even start by taxing corporate jets...that one which all of the fiscally conservative Republicans balked on for obvious reasons, is a no-brainer that would easily have wide public support.

And why should that be surprising to you? Or is it really surprising, any more than it's surprising to bushcheney...who has nothing else to talk about? We've been over the main reasons why Canadians keep plugged in to American culture and politics many times (many of us live close to the U.S. border, so it's impossible to ignore), and the size of the U.S. economy, and the way our governments have increasingly allowed our economy to be set up for U.S. branch plant operations, makes whatever happens in the U.S. of great economic importance to Canada. And when it comes to culture - likely the second most lucrative U.S. export, just after weapons of war - when the era of instant worldwide communications began in the 1960's, with the advent of TV and more importantly - satellite uplinks, TV programming, music and movies became hugely lucrative commercial properties that could be sold worldwide...even to non-English-speaking audiences; so Canada, along with most other nations protectionist steps to preserve their own arts and culture, which are threatened by "free trade" rules. Most of my news channels on my sat TV package are U.S., so when they decide that the murder case of ONE white girl is THE STORY, it's almost impossible to ignore the damn sideshow even if you're living in Canada! But, economics and culture are too easy and obvious - I'll give you a reason why a small farsighted few are looking on what's happening to the U.S. with great trepidation - climate change is real and it's already having economic consequences. This may be a news story to rightwing fools in denial, who have their heads buried in the sand, but the consequences of the overheating of the tropics is already causing migrations and famines in Africa, and will reverberate around the world to the more prosperous regions also. In the U.S., the longterm prognosis for U.S. agriculture is cataclysmic! That may sound alarmist, but there's no other way to say it. The Southwest is drying out and will turn to desert under current longterm trends, and there is not enough rivers or groundwater to sustain current levels of grain production. So, what does this mean for Canada? Well, Canada just happens to have the good fortune of being one of the regions of the world where fresh water is abundant and plentiful; and climate projections so far show most of Canada will not be as adversely affected by areas to our south. Connecting the dots means that a large, underpopulated, resource-rich nation like Canada can look forward to American and possibly Chinese and other invasions....so where's our border fence? I don't think most Canadians will think about the prospects of mass refugee invasions until it's too late! Well, back to normal politics - I don't know what Obama's poll rating are right now here in Canada, or Europe, Latin America, or Asia and Africa, but I'll go out on a limb and predict that he's already in George Bush territory. Obama's poll ratings are likely higher in the U.S. than they are anywhere except for a few stooge regimes that are dependent on U.S. aid. When it comes to issues, most Americans aren't aware of what the most important issues are even inside their own country because U.S. MSM is in the pocket of a few corporations and won't let their people talk about them! What passes for journalism in commercial U.S. media is crap, pure and simple. They present conservative message that's designed to reinforce the 'no taxes on billionaires', 'unions are bad', 'gut all non-military infrastructure spending' - and for an opposing viewpoint, they have a corporate liberal who invariably calls for tolerance and moderation of the right's gangster capitalism approach, but doesn't challenge the basic framework that is constantly reinforced by big-business rightwing spokesmen. Here's what the rest of the world knows about Obama, that the average American doesn't know - Candidate Obama received the vast bulk of his campaign donations from major corporate donors including the major Wall Street investment banks like Goldman Sachs - is it any surprise that Goldman alumni are in the top economic cabinet positions, or that Lloyd Blankfein was reportedly at the table when the discussions about securities reforms were going on? President Obama has ramped up the war on drugs policies and incarcerated more people than Bush; he's even given ICE a more aggressive policy of arrests and deportations than Bush; he has more aggressively pursued "free trade" agreements than Bush; he supported the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Honduras by the military that installed a more U.S. friendly regime; he is even worse than Bush when it comes to illegal surveillance, secret prisons, charging a Pentagon whistleblower with espionage etc. - most journalists covering civil liberties issues from Glenn Greenwald to Jeremy Scahill conclude that Obama's administration is worse on these issues than the Bush Administration....and then there are all the wars, and the undeclared wars - Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, which either have direct U.S. involvement or covert support of brutal mid-east dictators facing uprisings. So, most of the world knows alot more about President Obama and the way the U.S. system of government actually works than the average American does. And many issues are completely off the table, and off the radar for the average America, and I'll give you one current example - ALEC - the secretive organization where big business lobbyists and politicians, most of whom are at state and local level, all get together to discuss strategy and campaign donations and other perks I presume. This has apparently been around for years, and it's where 'the sausage is made' as they say about the U.S. legislative process. It's something every American should know about, but few are aware of because of deliberate omission by MSM. I just did a quick search on both google and yahoo to see what comes up, and after wikipedia, the links go to ALEC watchdog groups, ALEC stealth propaganda sites designed to minimize the negatives of what they do, and then to the progressive blogosphere and alternative media: thinkprogress, alternet, the nation, firedoglake, sourcewatch, daily kos, common dreams, democracynow, and after the first three pages of useful links they start going screwy and linking to Alec Baldwin or some other stupid topic. Fox News hasn't reported on this issue for some reason!

If anyone has picked up their newspaper this morning and noticed at least one editorial proclaiming the demise of the NDP, or that the NDP may not recover from this debacle....and then happened to notice the same bullshit in newspapers left around at work; it starts to fill out a picture that Canada's mainstream media is taking this opportunity of the phony Quebec crisis to cripple the NDP and bring back what they prefer for opposition and/or government - the goddamed Liberals! The most obvious attack come from - no surprise - Sun Media: Choice of former separatist may be death knell for NDP. Leave it to the Sun to emote horror at the thought of the NDP having a separatist at the helm....while failing to mention all of the rightwing separatists the Tories have courted over the years in their efforts to establish a Quebec base! I still remember the mess that Mulroney created when he courted Lucien Bouchard and some other separatists, and then watched them blow up the old PC Party when they used Meech Lake to launch the federalist wing of the PQ. What it all boils down to is a tempest in a teapot. I don't know whether this woman is much of a leader, but she wasn't selected to be Party leader in the first place. The most obvious reason for her posting is because of the rivalry between the two most obvious choices for future NDP leader. And when it comes to Quebec separation: I don't know if it is even a real issue anymore in this age of globalization. There is always going to be a challenge to figure out how to balance Quebec's identity with a federal framework. But the same can be said for how to deal with first nations issues. The overall picture I see from scanning today's papers is an agreement in principle from the rightwing to moderate corporate plutocrats that they want to tell us what we can have as a "party on the left," similar to the false choice that Americans are stuck with right now, that has left real progressives struggling to figure out how to create a real political party that represents the desires of average working people.

Yes, the problem with the new atheist dogma that science and new knowledge will banish religion and supernatural beliefs is that they are almost certainly unscientific in the first place. Richard Dawkins has lost most of his supporters that tried to develop a theory of memes to explain the propagation of these ideas, and the research by cognitive psychologists like and Deborah Kelemen on how supernatural beliefs likely form in childhood, and stay with many people through adulthood, would indicate that any movement trying to stamp out supernatural thinking, or anything similar that is viewed as erroneous is futile, and doomed to failure.

Good. Now tell me what those people are feeling when they describe their relationship with God or some sort of creator? And this should serve as a reason why an analytical approach to religious belief is stupid and has no value. This is a whole different language that some people feel they need, while some of us don't see a use for it; but one thing it doesn't do is translate into nuts and bolts terminology to be analyzed. Defensible for what? This is about how people make sense of the world, and a lot of people...the vast majority...go with their instincts or subjective feelings that the Universe is a purposeful creation, which has a creator that is either separate from, or is an immanent part of the creation itself.

I was wondering when you would get around to the 'pull themselves up by their own bootstraps' conservative argument! Besides your religious fundamentalist blinders, the other problem is your dedication to conservative "strict father" morality that permeates conservative thinking. Conservatives are blind to the reality that some people...a lot of people right now...might be poor for reasons outside of their immediate control - especially in an economic system that is increasingly controlled by the rich and powerful few. It needs to be said again that conservative and libertarian dogma is not supported by the bulk of the scriptures that were written in the Old or the New Testaments. A Christian who wants to be a libertarian conservative has to do a lot of cherry-picking to find stuff to support their economic theology. Except that the Jews had one thing that aboriginal communities here did not have - MONEY! I suppose it never occurred to you that fate handed the Jews a very important gift during the centuries of persecutions and attempted exterminations by Christians in Europe - Christians were prevented from engaging in modern banking practices by the Church, because of the prohibitions against usury. And this allowed the non-Christians to step in and fill the void...and the Jews did not lose their advantage in the world of banking and finance once it was handed to them on a silver platter. And that ought to tell you something about how ingrained social norms are when entire groups of people either gain an advantage, or are set at a disadvantage in the past. Yes, speaking of the Jewish people, have you been totally clueless regarding the long history of Nazi-hunting and Nazi holocaust trials? There are still investigations ongoing, even though very few of the accused are still alive. Just yesterday I learned from a CBC Radio show about a movie being made regarding one of the most shocking events in Nazi-occupied France - where French police rounded up more than 9000 women and children and crowded them into a tiny velodrome cycling track for several days, until the survivors were deported to concentration camps in Germany. There are a few old and frail former French police who are among the accused and awaiting trial....so don't tell us how the Jews just forgot all about the Holocaust and let bygones be bygones....bad example! And when it comes to monetary compensation - the former government of West Germany had to pay financial compensation to Israel, and in the most recent news article I could find on the subject, the German Government is fighting with Israel regarding new claims: 12/17/2007 Holocaust Compensation RowGermany Refuses to Negotiate with Israel over New Claims another bad example that refutes your premise. YOur power-of-positive-thinking speech would be all fine and dandy if it wasn't for the other built-in premise that the larger society has a moral obligation to do something about some of the isolated, broken communities that do not even have safe drinking water and are living below most third world living standards.

There is a major flaw in your definitions here: you are conflating strong or positive atheism with antitheism. An antitheist goes beyond the debate over the existence of a conscious creator of the Universe, to propose that the belief in such a creator, and the belief in supernatural forces, and forming dogmas and ethical systems based on those beliefs are harmful to the individual and to society. I can be a strong or positive atheist, since from what I've learned about our Universe and nature, directly conflicts with the notions that the Universe is intelligently designed, or that life has been designed by a creator who is concerned for the wellbeing and future of living organisms. That said; I am not an anti-theist, because I believe everyone has to come to terms and make sense of their own existence in whatever way makes sense to them and provides meaning and purpose in life. The only demands I make on organized religion is that it shifts away from the in-group dogma of only valuing the "saved" members of their creed, and shows concern for global issues that threaten the entire World. For instance, if the Catholic Church would stop the "sanctity of life" bullshit and stop road-blocking birth control, and population reduction strategies, I would have a lot more respect for the Church leadership! You are correct in your assumption that aggressive antitheism advocated by loud atheist spokesmen like Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris, is a doppleganger of belligerent religious fundamentalism; because of their faith-based assumption that everyone should think alike, and will be happier once they are freed from the shackles of religion. The antitheist is stuck in the same boat as the fundamentalist, because they are classifying people as worthy and unworthy based solely on their metaphysical beliefs. Until recent years, I would have said that, at least there is no greater harm created by the antitheist; but, since so many have found a way to follow principles of the Enlightenment straight to loudly supporting Neoconservative foreign policies, I'm not so sure that there is no harm in being regarded as an inferior by an anti-theist leader.

First, it's a black mark in history which was perpetrated by people who think exactly like you do and would do again if the opportunity was available. Second, the residential school system, which lingered on longer than 40 or 50 years ago, destroyed communities that had their children forcibly removed by taking children away from their parents, and cutting the ties with extended family. All well and good now to say 'put the genie back in the bottle' just because you can't deal with this issue.

No point to posting a link without comment....but, I decided to take a look anyway. It turns out to be a typical argument now from the denial side, that goes along the line of 'focus on smog and particulate air pollution that directly harms health, rather than rising CO2 emissions, which have secondary negative effects by inducing a more extreme climate. It also quotes research that part of the acceleration in global mean temperatures may be due to the reduction in air pollution, which has allowed more sunlight in to warm up the atmosphere....and that leads to the next bad advice - let's just geoengineer our way out of this mess instead of dealing with our additions to greenhouse gas levels. Even if geoengineering is possible, and can reduce global temperatures...a lot of attempts to modify weather end in disaster because the climate systems are so complex...there still is the problem of increased carbon absorption by the World's oceans. The oceans are becoming more acidic, and this is a primary cause of rapidly declining fish stocks, coral bleaching, documented in a new IPSO report on the state of the World's oceans. The oceans are dying, which will kill most of the creatures on land, if past similar mass extinctions are any indication of how this scenario will play out; so just pumping crap in the air to keep the atmosphere cooler, will not deal with this crisis at all!

And you just negated your opening statement about how you are able to take an independent perspective! Survival as a species is going to be a lot more difficult than following primal drives and urges. That old hard-wiring needs to take a back seat to doing what's best for the common good. Contemplating Earth as a living organism is a useful perspective to use to counter the exploitation-at-all-costs thinking of those who think our world is a giant candy store that can endlessly supply everything we want. Bullshit it's a mainstream cause! You want a citation! Every fucking Republican in the U.S. Congress is a global warming-denying creationist...there's your citation! Forty years ago, the first Earth Day was a major cultural event worldwide, and environmentalism was taken seriously by the right, as well as everyone else. And we know where science and engineering goes when it is totally divorced from morality and ethics! It is impossible to make any progress without an informed public to start with, and that is going to require not only fighting back against rightwingers who want to exploit every last drop of oil and coal seam underground, it also requires a public that is aware of the misdirections and frauds conducted to pretend to do something about climate change: cap and trade schemes, carbon capture schemes, ripping out forests to plant Acacia trees, promoting biochar as a carbon capture solution etc. There are a number of frauds being stamped with the green label that have been created by scientists and engineers.

Ideal, schmideal! An editorial by Dahlia Lithwick a few years ago, summed it best: Rules rooted in sweeping moral judgments don't generally work in family law for the same reason they don't work for families: Kids love and need the parents they have, not necessarily the parents we love. Why Courts Are Adopting Gay Parenting

Every animal has the ability to procreate, so this is nothing to be bragging about, as world population nears the 7 billion mark. If procreation is everything, then you are telling us that couples who are unable to have their own children, and have to adopt - are not as "important" as "regular" marriage.

Okay, I know you think you are a genius, but yet you are unable to take a detached perspective and explore how a conscious biosphere (I'm not saying such a thing exists in reality) would view the sudden, rapid growth of this one species, and the effects it has had on the planet. Many new age types have a warm, fuzzy notion of Gaia, or Mother Earth...while I'm thinking that a real Gaia would view us as a botulin...something similar to a disease causing food poisoning. Too bad your narrow ideological limits and blind faith in progress cannot allow you to see this perspective. It would be the cold, slap in the face that a lot of people need to shake their complacency about our present situation. Forty years ago, the promise of space travel looked a lot closer to colonizing other worlds than it does today, and yet there was more general concern for environment and overpopulation than there is today. Besides the funding problems for NASA and other agencies, the failure of closed biospheric systems has revealed that creating a working biosphere is more difficult than engineers envisioned back in the good old days. For the foreseeable future, this world is the only one we've got, and we need higher motivations than procreation and exploitation to save the world for future generations!

It never ceases to amaze me how many of my former ideological brethren on the right just cannot come to terms with the hard evidence that nature imposes hard limits on resource exploitation. It's like they think the planet will grow to match their demands! The calamity created by conservative economics, is multiplied by their cynical coopting of conservative Muslim, Christian and Hindu religious desires to return to old patriarchal standards...which include the fight against allowing women to control when and how many children to have.