Tag Archives: Baby

Podcasts

Should gay marriage be legal? Michael Brown vs Eric Smaw

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This is a must-see debate! (And you can buy Michael Brown’s new book here if you like it – I bought two copies)

About the debate:

On April 21, 2011 at 7:30pm at UCF’s Health and Public Affairs Building (Room 119), Rollins College professor, Dr. Eric Smaw and author and seminary professor Dr. Michael L. Brown will debate the question “Should same sex marriage be legalized in America?” The event will be held at 4000 Central Florida Blvd and is open to the public. After the formal portion of the debate, Brown and Smaw will field questions from the audience.

About the speakers:

Dr. Smaw will be responding in the affirmative. He earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy of Law from the University of Kentucky in 2005. His areas of expertise are philosophy of law, international law, human rights, ethics, and modern philosophy. He has published articles on human rights, terrorism, and cosmopolitanism. His most recent publication is “Swaying in the Balance: Civil Liberties, National Security, and Justice in Times of Emergency”.

Dr. Brown will be responding in the negative. He earned his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and is a nationally known evangelical lecturer and radio host. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and twenty books, including the recently published study “A Queer Thing Happened to America”, which is quickly being recognized as the definitive work on the history and effects of gay activism on American culture.

Here are the first two parts:

Part 1 of 10:

Part 2 of 10:

The rest of the segments are here.

Summaries of the opening speeches

Summary of Dr. Brown’s opening speech:

There is no compelling reasons by the state should change the definition of marriage

The reason the state conveys benefits for marriage is because marriage is beneficial for the state

Traditional marriage is recognized by the state for several reasons:
– it domesticates men
– it protects women
– it provides a stable, nurturing environment for children

Marriage has three public purposes:
– to bind men and women together for RESPONSIBLE procreation
– to get the benefit
– to provide children with two parents who are bonded to them biologically
– to create the next generation of people to keep the society going

Normally, opposite sex couples create children

Homosexual couples can NEVER create children together

Men and women are differences that are complementary

Monogamy is the norm for opposite sex couples.

For gay men, open relationships / cheating is the norm.
This is because women have a tempering effect on sexuality.

There is no evidence that recognizing same-sex civil unions and marriages have changed this trend.

Same-sex marriage guarantees that children will either not have a father or a mother
So which of the sexes is dispensable when raising children?

For example, consider Dawn Stefanowicz, who grew up with a gay father and no mother
She never got a chance to see a man model love and protect a women within a marriage
That makes an enormous difference in a woman’s life – in the way she relates to men

Even with scientific advancements, every baby has a mother and a father

If we change the definition of marriage so that it is based on consent, then why limit it to just two people
If marriage is not the union of male and female, then why have only TWO people
In Canada, you have civil liberties lawyers arguing for for polygamy
In the United States, Professor David Epstein was in a consensual relationship with his daughter
Should incestuous relationships also be celebrated as marriage? Why not?
Should polyamorous relationships also be celebrated as marriage? Why not?

Sexual orientation is not the same as race
Men are women are different in significant ways, but different races are not
You need separate bathrooms for men and women, but not for people of different races

Summary of Dr. Smaw’s opening speech: (He ended his speech after only 10 minutes)

You can redefine marriage so that it no longer based on the public purposes he mentioned (controlling procreation, fusing complementary male and female natures, providing children with mothers and fathers who are biologically linked to them, providing children with a comparatively stable development environment that offers comparatively less instability, promiscuity and domestic violence rates compared to cohabitation, etc.), but is instead based on consent and feelings, and that redefinition of marriage won’t open marriage up to polygamy, polyamory, etc.

If you like feminism, then you should allow same-sex marriage

If you like abortion rights, then you should allow same-sex marriage

Homosexuals participate in society by working at various jobs, so they are participating in society

Homosexuals should be given the same tax breaks as married people because they work at various jobs for money

Working at a job for money achieves the same public purpose as procreating and staying together to raise children in a stable environment

You can listen to the rest for the rebuttals, and cross-examination. Oh yes – there was cross-examination! It starts two thirds of the way through Part 5, if you want to jump to it. And sparks were flying! There is also Q&A from the audience of students.

This is such a great debate – I love to hear two passionate guys disagreeing about something. I love to hear both sides of the issues. There is always something to learn by listening to the other side. It makes me more effective and more tolerant when I stand up to defend my side of the argument.

By the way, my own secular case against same-sex marriage is right here, if you want to see how I would debate this issue. Also check out the recent studies on the effects of gay parenting on children.

Related posts

Commentary

Which side of the abortion debate is uncomfortable with evidence?

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Here’s a short, sweet post by Eric Metaxas sent to me by Mary.

Excerpt:

It’s hard not to blame the influence of technology for the seemingly inexorable spread of the culture of death. Accurate and safe prenatal testing has led to the destruction of an estimated 90 percent of unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome. Sonograms reveal that the sex of yet-to-be-born children has led to a “small-h” holocaust against girls in places such as China and India, where boys are often preferred.

But technology can also be a huge advantage in the fight to recognize and protect the sanctity of human life—every human life. For example, pro-lifers have worked diligently to place sonogram machines into pregnancy care clinics, and the presence of these high-tech wonders—which clearly show the humanity of the fetus—has no doubt contributed mightily to a substantial drop in the abortion rate, as well as a marked increase in the percentage of Americans who consider themselves to be pro-life.

It seems that our technological prowess doesn’t so much corrupt our hearts as reveal what’s in them.

You can see this principle in action in a recent article in Slate magazine. The writer, Allison Benedikt, recounts “the latest in baby-making fads,” such as midwives and birth photographers. But what really gets her attention: “Pregnant woman are Photoshopping sonograms onto their naked stomach glamour-shots.”

[…]For Benedikt, such uses of technology are troubling—even “bad for women.” She writes, “… the more we treat fetuses like people—including them in our family photo shoots, tagging them on our Facebook walls, giving them their own Twitter accounts—the harder it will be to deny that they are people when the next, say, personhood amendment comes up, with legislators and activists arguing that ‘the unborn child’ inside a pregnant woman’s womb should have the same rights as the living among us.”

In other words, don’t believe what your lying eyes tell you about fetuses, because if we start viewing them as people, those mean ol’ anti-choicers might start demanding that we treat them that way.

This approach to the unborn—“nothing to see here, folks, just move along”—says so much about the pro-choice worldview. But it gets worse.  Writing about the recent congressional debate over sex-selection abortion, instead of bemoaning the elimination of millions of future women, Benedikt urges pro-choicers to embrace sex-selection abortion.

She writes: “No matter how many ultrasound pics get posted to Facebook, these are fetuses with female genitals or male genitals—not little girls and little boys. If pro-choicers object to aborting because of the sex of the fetus, aren’t we then saying that abortion is ‘murdering’ girls?  . . . That is not the case to make if your goal is to protect abortion rights. Gulp for a second if you must, then get over it.” Wow!

What does this tell us about the pro-abortion crowd? Is the pro-abortion view reasonable? Does it fit with what we know about the unborn from science? Which side cares about the truth in this debate?

News

What causes women to become single mothers by choice? Are men to blame?

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Dina sent me this revealing article from the UK Daily Mail. It answers the question “Where does fatherlessness come from?”.

Excerpt:

My marriage ended, without rancour or argument, 18 months after it had begun. There was no recrimination, just a realisation, as sharp as physical pain, that we would never — could never — agree on one fundamental point.

I wanted children; my husband Anthony did not. You may think we should have resolved this crucial issue long before we bought a house and vowed to spend the rest of our lives together, but love had a way of blinding us to the depth of our disagreement.

By “love” she means three things: 1) he was physically attractive, 2) she became sexually active with him after one month of meeting him, and 3) she moved in with him before he made a commitment to marriage and parenting. (As we shall see) As far as I can tell, she spent her late 20s to mid 30s with this guy – a guy she chose of her own free will. A guy who never indicated any interest in children, but who indicated plenty of interest in recreational sex.

More:

Today, I am 37 and a single mum to gorgeous three-month-old twin boys Charlie and William. They were conceived through IVF, using my eggs and sperm from an anonymous donor, and the love I feel for them is all-consuming.

[…]Anthony, a policeman, was easy and fun; we chatted comfortably together, and when we started dating I was impressed by his integrity. He had passionate views about fairness and loyalty. He was attractive, too — tall, dark hair, blue eyes — and I felt we could build a loving relationship together.

“Easy and fun” = no divisive truth claims, no moral judgments, no moral boundaries, no goals, no plans, no expectations, no obligations. Perfect! The modern feminist ideal.

More:

After a month or so, our physical relationship began, but we did not rush things. It was a couple of years before he moved into my flat in Crawley, West Sussex, and I expected we’d eventually marry and have kids.

Looking back, I suppose I should have heeded the warning signals. When I broached the subject of children, he stalled. His stock reply was: ‘We’ll have them later.’

So although he was non-committal, I loved him and assumed that his paternal instinct would kick in as he grew older. But the years passed and I was not reassured.

She thinks that a man who agrees to recreational sex after a month and then agrees to cohabitation after two years is the kind of man who is capable of making a lifelong commitment to be faithful to her and to raise children. That strikes me as equivalent to saying that a man whose favorite movie is Top Gun would also make a good airline pilot.

More:

And then I reached 30. My friends were marrying; settling into comfortable domesticity, preparing for parenthood, and Anthony and I were still in this limbo.

[…]Then my best friend announced she was pregnant and the joy I felt for her was tainted by Anthony’s absence of commitment to the idea of having children with me. So we had another discussion — this time, it was a passionate one. ‘It’s a deal-breaker,’ I said. ‘Much as I love you, if you don’t want children we can’t carry on.’

But, again, he assured me that it would all happen. I just had to bide my time.

So I waited until Anthony was 30, an age when I felt he was old enough to settle down. We loved each other whole-heartedly; we’d bought two successive homes together and the understanding was implicit: my future was bound up in his.

[…]I wanted so much to believe he would warm to the idea, but Anthony equivocated. He still wasn’t ready, he protested.

[…]But then Anthony demonstrated just how strong his aversion to babies was. We were visiting a friend who’d recently given birth and, when her baby cried, Anthony made his excuses and went home.

‘I just can’t stand the sound of that crying,’ he said testily when I confronted him later. ‘If we had a baby, I’d have to move out for the first six weeks.’

It wasn’t a propitious sign, but eventually he seemed to soften.

‘If we’re going to have children, we’ll have to get married first,’ he said the next time I raised the subject, and for once I agreed absolutely. We should get married; by making a public commitment to stay together for the rest of our lives, we would be taking the first step towards establishing a secure home for our future babies.

[…]After six months as man and wife, there had been no mention from Anthony of children. So one day, as we walked home from town, I broached the subject again.

‘We can’t afford to have children,’ he responded sharply and, rather than discuss the topic further, he marched off ahead of me.

[…]This was not the life I had planned for myself: for the first time I started to feel anger towards Anthony. I felt he had forced this situation onto me.

Have no fear, the government was there to give her taxpayer-funded IVF and single mother welfare payments, free day care, free public schools, and free health care. After all, none of this was her fault. It was all that beastly man’s fault. It’s nothing that can’t be solved by taking a little money from the other single men’s pockets, though. After all, if they have less money, that will make them even MORE likely to marry and conceive children. Anthony couldn’t afford to have children, so the solution to that is to tax all the other men so that they can’t afford to have children. Fatherless children impose enormous costs on society as well, most directly through increased crime. But who cares? As long as this woman gets what she wants, right?

And it goes on and on and on, with feminists completely ignorant about how they are causing their own messes with their support for wealth redistribution and their own irresponsible choices with men. He was attractive though. Very attractive. I’m sure her friends were all impressed and envious of her on the wedding day. After all, if a man has a square jaw and enjoys recreational sex, that is a clear sign he is ready for marriage and parenting. Right?