North Carolina Passes Amendment Banning Same-sex Unions

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Interesting. Two friends of mine, a man and a woman, are married. She is infertile due to some bad plumbing complicated by bad doctoring when she was young. My friend knew this when he married her.

They have adopted two children (just this year -- we're all very happy for them). What's your take on the validity of (a) their marriage, and (b) their suitability as adoptive parents?

My take on their marriage is that it was unfortunate, and I am sorry that it was not fortunate. My take on them is adoptive parents is that I can't really comment, knowing nothing about their relationship.

In so far as the legal situation goes though, it shouldn't be any harder for them to adopt whether they can have their own children or not. I happen to think adoption is awsome, and preferable to any of the modern jiggery-pokery doctors perform, better emotionally for child and adult. If I had a wife and I was infertile I would we should adopt, and if she couldn't accept that I would tell her she needed another man.

Is adoption infidelity as well? What is the matromonial paradigm? Where are you getting these arbitrary definitions?

@Lemur: beat me to it...

No of course it isn't.

That child is already here, you aren't creating it. Artifical insemination is exactly the same as having sex with a man when he's gagged and covered in a sheet with a hole for his little man.

The paradigm is man + woman = baby, ergo man + woman = marriage because we want the family untis staying together, rather than forming new more complex units. It's inefficient, it leads to children growing up without parents and that is bad for society.

But is it really "emotions" to ask ourselves "does marriage need the children to come from coupling with each other? It's clearly the case that adoptive parents love their children just as dearly (or close enough if you insist). I don't think all of the specifics of how marriage has typically been done are central to marriage. And in legal arguments you have to consider what was merely incidental don't you?

The Pro-Gay marriage argument always starts, "but if two people love each other..."

This is not something I am concerned with. If I got a girl pregnant I would offer to marry her, if she said no I would say we could get divorced intwo years if she didn't like me, but in the mean time and afterwards she and the child would be protected by the full force of the law and they would always know who their father was. If she still said no I would assume the child was not mine, because what I'm offering her is a much better deal legally and financially than state-enforced child support allows for.

She'd get more in the divorce, and I would make sure both she and the child were as well provided for as I could manage.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

That child is already here, you aren't creating it. Artifical insemination is exactly the same as having sex with a man when he's gagged and covered in a sheet with a hole for his little man.

The paradigm is man + woman = baby, ergo man + woman = marriage because we want the family untis staying together, rather than forming new more complex units. It's inefficient, it leads to children growing up without parents and that is bad for society.

So I don't get why adopted children don't make it a marriage, we still want the family unit to stay together.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

So I don't get why adopted children don't make it a marriage, we still want the family unit to stay together.

Simple, with adopted children the family has broken down - the point of marriage is to keep the biologically family together because children generally do best with their biological parents - it's also about linking a father and his children without the need for expensive forensice investigation. However, once the father has sodded off that's already failed, hasn't it? In that case, assuming the mother had the werewithal to nail him down to begin with the marriage is the permenant hook she has in him, because even if they get divorced she's entitled to support.

So there's no particular reason for the adoptive parents to marry; granted there's no reason they shouldn't be married but in the vast majority of cases where the couple are infertile they only find out after trying to have natural children.