12.09.2012

Why can't Rod Dreher just address it?

Rod Dreher has a habit of deleting my best comments just when people take notice and seem interested. He is pretty upfront about not wanting to discuss the topic of same-sex conception rights, apparently he doesn't want to resolve the issue just yet. He leaves some comments up, but always seems to delete the best ones, like my response to Nate deep in this thread. In case he deletes these ones, I'll post them here:
John Howard says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
December 8, 2012 at 11:26 pm
Specifically I say that the question of allowing a type of relationship to marry should be the same and always has been the same as whether we allow that type of couple to reproduce offspring together. If we want to allow same-sex couples to join their genes to make offspring together, we should allow them to marry, and vice versa.
What’s Rod got against my solution? What do you think you gain from suppressing it and not agreeing to it? What am I missing?

John Howard says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
December 8, 2012 at 11:29 pm
“Apparently, someone needs to tell all these unmarried couples that they don’t have the right to procreate.”
Huh? Every religion already says that, most countries and states already say that, the supreme court says that…what are you talking about?

12.06.2012

I support helping Intersexed people (for Dale Carrico)

Transhumanist "critic" Dale Carrico over at his blog Amor Mundi is still trying to get away with pretending he is a critic of Transhumanism and not a fellow traveller. He responded to my question with accusations that I don't support healthcare for intersexed people, and then said he would delete any follow-up comments I leave, so I will leave my comment here in case he deletes it there. (And when he says he's "been around the track" with me, no, Dale has always just gone around the corner, spewing ten thousand words of baseless accusations and diversions, and then when it seems far enough away, he scurries back to his comfy starting line refusing to print my follow up comments. Pretty low, but if you are a deceitful fraud, you have to do stuff like that I guess.)
Intersexed people should certianly be allowed to use medicine to enable them to be fertile and have children, but only as the sex which their doctors believe is their most likely chance of success, without genetic engineering of their gametes to be the other sex. The sex which someone most likely would be able to conceive children using their own gametes is usually abundantly clear, even when there is ambiguous genitalia, and when it isn't, the lab can figure it out very quickly. As for application of the law to intersexed people, we'd go by their public, legal sex for public legal recognition and marriage purposes, and the assumption would be that it matches the most likely to conceive sex so they would have the public approval to conceive offspring together (but not a guarantee, just like every other marriage). So some privately same-sex couples would wind up married. But a lab would notice after some preliminary lab work that they were both more likely to be fertile as the same sex, and thus it would be illegal to help them conceive offspring with each other. Their marriage would remain intact, because publicly they would still be a man and a woman, and the information about their true sexes would never leave the doctor's office. But the law is intended to stop unethical experiments in same-sex reproduction and genetic engineering, so of course it has to apply to the private actual sex, not the public sex. It's health care to help an intersexed person reproduce as the sex most likely able to help them, not the sex they most desire to reproduce as, or as the other sex of the person they want to reproduce with. That is transhumanism.

11.08.2012

Time for conservatives to unite as Bio-Conservatives

We can add Rod Dreher and The American Conservative to the list of supposedly conservative bloggers and websites that want to avoid the subject of same-sex conception and transhumanism. This was my most recent attempt to participate in his discussions, this on on his post "Conservatism: What's Next?" which I will copy here, and Tweet a link to it, @roddreher:

John Howard says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

November 8, 2012 at 1:19 pm
{{{I’m trying to sneak my suggestion into this thread about “what’s next” for conservatives without Rod noticing, so shhhh no one respond!}}}

{{{OK here it is: social conservatives and fiscal conservatives should unite as bio-conservatives. “Bio-conservatives” don’t worry as much about abortion and contraception and religion as they do about designer babies and genetic engineering and transhumanism and transgender/postgenderism. We think about the social costs and dangers of biotechnology, in particular reproductive biotechnology.

Social conservatives need to get the focus off of abortion and birth control and put it on something that even liberal women find appalling: genetic engineering of human beings, eugenics and loss of equality and dignity, exploitation of women, harm to babies, commodification of people and materialist manufacturing of people, wasting money and energy and health resources on something totally unnecessary and stupid.

Social conservatives should remember that the Republican party is based not on Libertarianism and states rights and materialist view of of people, but on human dignity and equality and a belief that people are created by God with equal rights and dignity.}}}

5.15.2012

It's still here: The Egg and Sperm Civil Union Compromise

It's great to see same-sex marriage is going to be an issue in the 2012 elections. Perhaps it will drive some traffic to this blog, which I don't update much, but still should contain most of my arguments (they haven't changed) and links to useful articles. It looks the same as it did when I created it in 2004. And the Egg and Sperm Civil Union Compromise is still on the table just as it was in 2006: Federal recognition for state Civil Unions that are defined as "marriage minus conception rights" and give all the rights of marriage except the right to conceive genetic offspring together, while preserving marriage's essential right to conceive offspring together, and limiting the right to conceive offspring to a man and a woman. That would achieve the things we can agree on right now, and bring the issue of whether to allow genetic engineering and same-sex conception under the purview of the People, through Congress. If we ever decide to allow same-sex couples to conceive children, then we would allow those Civil Unions to be upgraded to marriages. But we would be better off to rule out the prospect of all-female or all-male reproduction, and being able to reproduce as either sex, to use our resources for more useful things.

4.02.2012

Wish I could comment on FamilyScholars

FamilyScholars.org has blocked me from commenting at their site, so I'll respond to Fannie's post here, and email them to ask them to respond. I suspect they will ignore my argument, we'll see.

Anyhow, Fannie makes the same old procreation/infertility argument as if I hadn't debunked it a hundred times:

This past weekend, a relatively of mine got married for the fourth time. She is in her mid-50s and has had a hysterectomy.

There will never be a link between procreation and marriage in her marriage. Just like every same-sex couple.

She gets to legally marry her chosen partner because she and her partner have the “correct” sex composition- male and female- and not because they have the ability or potential to procreate together.
Fannie, she is ALLOWED to reproduce with her chosen partner because they have complementary sex cells (and aren't already married, under 18, or related by a prohibited relationship). They aren't required to procreate, they are ALLOWED to procreate. All marriages should always be allowed to procreate using their own genes. No one should be allowed to procreate with someone of the same sex.

It shouldn't be hard to remember this simple argument, that same-sex couples should not have the equal right to procreate that a married man and woman have.