Arkansas voters will get to decide on a measure to protect children and help ensure a stable, healthy environment for adopted children.
The measure would restrict unmarried couples, homosexual or heterosexual, from adopting children.
While this measure would also rightly prevent unmarried heterosexuals from adopting (if they cannot commit to one another, why should they be entrusted to committing to raising a child?), homosexual activists are the group speaking out against the measure the loudest.
A pro-homosexual group called Arkansas Families First, masquerading as a pro-family group, opposes the measure. (This bait-and-switch is becoming a favorite Leftist tactic isn't it? Like the pro-abortion "South Dakota Campaign for Health Families")
Homosexuals have much higher rates of AIDS, STDs, hepatitis, depression, substance abuse, suicide and domestic violence. Homosexual relationships also have much higher rates of promiscuity than heterosexual ones, and even those relationships which claim to be monogamous usually involve a twisted definition of "monogamy" that involves outside sexual partners.
This is not the place for any child, and certainly not one being adopted, since adopted children often come from backgrounds that have already been troubled. They need stability and healthy environments--not one that deliberately robs the child of either a mother or father, and also subjects them to considerable health risks.
Featured Article
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Unelected Judges Fight Arkansas Adoption Measure
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
26 comments:
how does a heterosexual couple's choice not to marry mean that they can't commit to each other?
That's obvious to most people...except maybe to those heterosexuals who refuse to commit to each other, then refuse to admit that they refuse to commit to each other.
ok now you're just confusing "can't" with "won't."
In the area of relationship commitments, they're essentially the same. "Can't" is a way of avoiding responsibility used by the one who "won't."
oh gotcha. i guess my girlfriend and i choose not to marry because we aren't "committed" enough. which is kind of weird, because we've been a couple for almost eight years, haven't cheated on each other once, and don't need a piece of paper or gold bands to tell us we're in love. meanwhile, one of my christian friends is divorcing his wife of two years. apparently a twenty-minute ceremony, a shared surname, and legal benefits aren't always the mark of a committed relationship. and if you look at statistics, all a marriage license tells you is that your chances of making it are about fifty-fifty. thanks, but we're fine the way we are.
Not all homosexuals have "much higher rates of AIDS." They're called lesbians. And they're actually less likely than even you to get it.
Anonymous 8:19, Between the two of you, you're fine (ignoring moral considerations, of course). But you and your girlfriend, like the other couple you mentioned, lack commitment. If you had it, you'd be married. As it is, you have a quick walk-away (even quicker than your friend).
And if you lack the commitment to even profess one, you don't need to be adopting children into your environment of noncommittal. It's not fair to the child.
Anonymous 9:58, The general belief is that lesbians have lower AIDS rates than male homosexuals, due primarily to the physical differences in homosexual sex between women as compared to between men. However, an Australian study a few years ago found that 93% of lesbians reporting having sex with men (and 72% of AIDS cases spring from male homosexual behavior--and male homosexuals do occasionally have sex with women; follow me here?), and lesbians were 4.5 x more likely to have 50 or more lifetime sexual partners than heterosexual women.
Even assuming lesbians have lower AIDS rates than male homosexuals. We should therefore ignore their remaining risk factors (which are higher for BOTH sexes of homosexuals), like syphilis, Gonorrhea, hepatitis, herpes, HPV, depression, substance abuse, suicide and domestic violence?
Let's quit fooling ourselves here: this kind of environment is the LAST place a child should be subjected to. Only myopic selfishness says differently.
bob, you're right, my girlfriend and i can walk away from each other if we want to. and it would be so easy - no documents to sign, no laywers, no name changes, nothing. but the fact that we choose NOT to despite how easy it would be should tell you something. although i'm guessing it won't.
Yes, it tells me you like keeping your options as open as possible.
Homosexuals have much higher rates of AIDS, STDs, hepatitis, depression, substance abuse, suicide and domestic violence. Homosexual relationships also have much higher rates of promiscuity than heterosexual ones, and even those relationships which claim to be monogamous usually involve a twisted definition of "monogamy" that involves outside sexual partners.
This is all crap. Please post a link to the specific data you used to determine this. You can't because it isn't true. I live in Arkansas and I can't WAIT for this vote. This stupid backward state is last in everything for a reason and it starts with crap like this.
As much as I'm tempted to provide some links to the multitude of information on this subject, your ignorance compels me not to.
If you're that ignorant, then you need the intellectual exercise of looking it up for yourself (I'll give you one hint, though: you can find at the CDC website that 72% of male AIDS cases arise from homosexual activity).
I suspect, though, that you're not that ignorant; you'd rather simply deny this dangerous reality so that you and other homosexual apologists can feel better about this dangerous activity. In that case, no amount of proof will convince you of anything.
So go start doing some research...if you're brave enough.
I went to the CDC website and read that a demographic comprising only 13% of the U.S. population accounted for nearly half (49%) of the HIV/AIDS cases reported in 2005. Can you guess what that demographic is? African-Americans. This confirms a personal belief that I've held for most of my life: having sex with black people is dirty, unhealthy, and dangerous.
It's also common knowledge that black people are statistically more likely to be incarcerated, beat their spouses, have children outside of wedlock, and commit violent crimes. Yet we allow these disease-spreading criminals to raise helpless children?! America has truly gone insane. What kind of godless world do we live in where our government says it's "ok" to have relationships with people who obviously pose a serious threat to society?
People often call me a bigot for saying these things, but they're so wrong. I have nothing against black people; in fact, many of my dearest friends are black people. I love them, but I despise what they do. It breaks my heart to see them caught up in a behavior that puts them at an undeniably higher risk of contracting AIDS and other STDs. My black friends often get defensive and say that having sex with their own kind is "just how they were made." Not true. To them I say, "You couldn't help being born with black skin, but having sex with other black-skinned people is a choice - a disgusting, self-destructive choice that only someone with serious moral and intellectual failings would make!" I wish I could say that encouraging black people to have sex with white people is the answer, but think of all those poor white people we'd be putting at risk! I think the only logical solution is to demand lifelong celibacy. With 49% of AIDS cases caused by only 13% of the population, the danger is just too severe to let these unhealthy black people remain sexually active.
Anonymous, do you think this is because black people are having sex...or is it because a lot of black people are having sex in a risky, immoral manner?
I'd venture a guess that any reasonable person would conclude that the high AIDS rate had nothing to do with their innate and morally neutral skin color, but rather with the fact that many of them chose to have sex outside of marriage and did so in high-risk sexual situations.
Interestingly, homosexuals are a group of people whose group identity is based on nothing genetic/nothing according to skin color/and according to no other innate and morally neutral physical characteristic, but rather based on their mutual proclivity to have sex outside of marriage in unhealthy and high risk situations, usually involving others of a highly promiscuous disposition.
So it's really no wonder that we see this.
If black people are having sex in a healthy and moral manner (exclusively with their spouse), they have no fear of AIDS. If homosexuals would likewise abandon their high-risk sexual behavior and only have sex with a spouse, they'd not only avoid AIDS, but they would be living heterosexually, and thus a moral and healthy lifestyle.
I wonder why homosexuals choose to do unnatural things with their bodies (things their bodies obviously were not meant for), and choose to have sex with people and in ways that are obviously fraught with tremendous health risks?
I doubt they lack the intelligence to recognize these dangers, so I would surmise that it's a moral and spiritual problem: they insist on sin over moral behavior...and unfortunately pay the price that inevitably comes with the choice to sin.
I guess you're not a reasonable person then, because the AIDS crisis has nothing to do with innate and morally neutral sexual orientation (and it is morally neutral, by the way - same-sex attraction is not a sin), but rather with the fact that many gay people choose to engage in high-risk sexual situations.
And you must be ignorant to what's going on in California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and several other states, because these are places where gay people ARE abandoning promiscuous, anonymous, high-risk sexual behavior in favor of having sex with only one person, their partner. These places recognize this reality, and have set up legal sanctions/benefits to ENCOURAGE homosexual monogamy.
Hey, that's great to hear, that at least in the places you mentioned some homosexuals are finally starting to make wiser decisions regarding their health instead of simply obeying their lusts where ever they lead.
People can and do remain monogamous regardless of legal benefits. But providing legal benefits to an illegitimate relationship which does absolutely nothing beneficial for society is not only a futile gesture, it takes away from the status of the only legitimate sexual relationship: a committed marriage between a man and a woman--the only kind of marriage there can be.
And "sexual orientation" isn't morally neutral; if you have sex with someone of the same sex, that's immoral. Period.
Do you not understand the difference between sexual orientation and sexual behavior? Did you put quotes around the former because you don't believe it exists at all? Do you think sexual orientation is a myth?
I'd like to hear more about why you think homosexual couples do "absolutely nothing beneficial for society." Is it simply because they cannot produce children? If so, what social purpose do infertile heterosexual couples serve? What possible use do we have for them? Do you think it's right that taxpayers are paying for the legal benefits of heterosexual couples who cannot have children biologically and cannot afford to adopt?
On the other hand, do you believe that a couple of uneducated nineteen-year-old kids whose irresponsible behavior results in an unwanted pregnancy and a shotgun wedding will benefit society MORE than a financially stable, emotionally mature homosexual couple who spend years and thousands of dollars trying to adopt a child that they will devote their lives to raising well? After all, when adoption is a couple's only avenue for starting a family, there is no such thing as an unwanted or unexpected child.
I put quotes around "sexual orientation" because it is a debatable concept that is usually used to excuse immoral behavior. Even a homosexual orientation may be changed--people have been doing it for thousands of years--but even if it isn't, an inclination toward homosexual behavior is no more excuse for actually performing homosexual behavior than an inclination toward drunkenness is an excuse for drunkenness.
Heterosexual couples can produce children if the biology is working correctly--which it usually is--and the couple is willing--which they usually are.
Homosexual couples, on the other hand CAN NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER produce children even if both sets of sex organs are working at 100% peak efficiency and the couple is 100% willing to produce children. And now I will answer the obvious "why": because their sex organs were not meant to work in concert with one another.
There will always be people who will insist on misusing their biological capabilities, but society is under no obligation whatsoever to confer any recognition, status or benefits on those relationships which do not provide a useful function to society, i.e. producing children and raising them in a healthy, stable home environment.
And given that homosexuals have high rates of AIDS, STDs, hepatitis, depression, substance abuse, suicide, domestic violence, promiscuity, and lack of monogamy, this is one of the LAST places a sane society would allow adopted children to be placed. Furthermore, such an environment deliberately deprives the child of either a mother or a father, and sends the unmistakable message to the child that either a mother or father is not necessary or is undesirable--again, a negligent and harmful message to send to a child.
First of all, can you prove that people have been changing their homosexual orientations for thousands of years? You're actually the first person I've ever heard say that. And I know that the concept of orientation is open to debate. But what do you think? Do you think there's such a thing as sexual orientation? Or do people just....do...things without a trace of psychological motivation that results from a combination of biology and environment?
Second, you never answered my question: If a heterosexual couple cannot have children biologically and cannot afford to adopt, do they serve a social function? If so, what can they do that homosexual couples cannot? If not, why are their relationships legally recognized?
1 Corinthians 6:9-11, written almost 2,000 years ago, says "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God."
This says there were people in the church at Corinth who had been homosexuals (among other things), but they were no longer those things; obviously they'd changed.
The best evidence indicates that sexual orientation can be warped or modified from the heterosexual norm by unhealthy or abnormal relationships with parents, or abnormal or unhealthy relationships between parents which affect children, and by abuse of the subject child.
But just like anything which can warp a person's perceptions of normality and healthy tendencies, those can be overcome.
Human beings are no machines that have no choice but to follow a set string of programming, nor are they animals who must obey instinct. God gave us will--free will--that we may choose, even above warped tendencies and even above any circumstances around us--to choose good or evil.
With the programs available, I doubt there are any couples who cannot adopt if they want to. There are a number of Christian organizations who help keep such costs very low. Even if that were to be the case, they could still function as foster parents and provide a positive benefit to society. In fact, I know of several families in western South Dakota who fit this bill, a couple having fostered more than two dozen children.
And even if they did not perform this role, they would still provide a testament with their marriage to the value and normality of marriage. In Ephesians 5, the relationship between Christ and the church is said to be like marriage; men are even commanded to love their lives sacrificially, as Christ loves the church. So marriage is a portrait or reflection of Christ's relationship with his church, and so portrays a beneficial model of this relationship.
A homosexual couple, on the other hand, paints a picture of abnormality, of misuse, and paints a distorted, misrepresentative portrait of the relationship between Christ and the church. It also undermines the model of a healthy sexual relationship between a man and a woman, which can only be fulfilled in marriage, and so undermines the stability of society.
I had a feeling you were going to quote Corinthians. Unfortunately, that's an example of people changing their sexual behavior, not their sexual orientation - two completely different things. Changing your behavior does not mean you've changed your orientation. An alcoholic, for example, usually has a genetic inclination for drinking. He may go twenty years without choosing to drink, but that doesn't change the fact that if the trend runs in his family, his children will probably inherit his predisposition for alcohol. Notice that I said predisposition, not behavior; behavior is always a choice.
But since you cited that verse in particular for your argument, you come across as someone who thinks that if a homosexual man stops having sex with men, then he ceases to be a homosexual. How do you reach that conclusion? Are you a heterosexual only when you have sex with your wife?
By the way, I'd be hesitant to use the Bible as evidence for anything, unless, of course, you can prove its other claims. Can you prove that a man once held a conversation with a donkey, or that a man lived inside a giant fish for three days?
How do you know their orientation didn't change? There's nothing to indicate that it didn't. While some homosexuals continue to struggle with temptation, many homosexuals are completely delivered from the temptation.
Just as I've been completely delivered from the temptation to drink to excess--haven't had a drink in more than 15 years. I'm no longer a drunk because I no longer live the lifestyle of a drunk, and no longer behave habitually in that manner. You are right that it's a choice, just as homosexuals can choose not to give in to the temptation to sin.
By the way, I have not the slightest qualms about citing the Bible, because not a single solitary claim it makes has ever been proven false. Not one. Meanwhile, many have been empirically proven accurate with modern science and archaeology.
The claims you cited about a talking donkey or an amphibious creature that could contain a man for three days are really insignificant accomplishments if one single verse of the Bible is true: Genesis 1:1. If that is true, then every other claim in the Bible is as easy as pie for God to accomplish.
Objectively speaking, you're right. There is nothing to indicate that their orientation didn't change. But if we're going to be fair, there's also nothing to prove that it DID change.
"While some homosexuals continue to struggle with temptation, many homosexuals are completely delivered from the temptation."
First of all, how exactly can you know that many homosexuals are "completely" delivered from the temptation? Second, your sentence contradicts itself. If a homosexual has been completely delivered from temptation, then he is no longer a homosexual...but you continue to call him one anyway? That doesn't make sense. That would be like someone calling you an alcoholic even though you're sober.
"By the way, I have not the slightest qualms about citing the Bible, because not a single solitary claim it makes has ever been proven false."
As with the sexual orientation issue, you seem to think that the absence of contrary evidence is enough to prove something as true. By that logic, do you believe that unicorns exist? How about bigfoot? Why don't you cite fairy tales as factual sources? After all, no one has ever disproved that Jack climbed up a magic beanstalk and escaped from giants that live in the sky.
"The claims you cited about a talking donkey or an amphibious creature that could contain a man for three days are really insignificant accomplishments if one single verse of the Bible is true: Genesis 1:1. If that is true, then every other claim in the Bible is as easy as pie for God to accomplish."
The operative word being "if." Why do you assume that Genesis 1:1 is true?
Nothing to indicate their orientation changed except...their behavior. While not a certainty, since their behavior changed, the odds are greater for than against a corresponding orientation change. But again, the behavior matters infinitely more than the orientation/temptation.
How can I know that some homosexuals have been completely delivered from their temptation? In the same and only way anyone can know anything about the temptations of another person: their testimony. I have read the testimony of homosexuals who have said they no longer feel that temptation.
And you have a good and valid point about calling someone who no longer engages in homosexual behavior and no longer experiences that temptation a homosexual. I wouldn't call myself a drunk anymore since I no longer do it, and no longer experience the temptation. Thanks for admitting that homosexuals can change.
I would say that, given the hundreds if not thousands of years of effort on the part of countless people to find even one error from the Bible, the absence of a single error is pretty darn good proof of truth and accuracy. After all, the textbooks we use in schools and colleges across the world don't have a record that good.
As to whether unicorns once existed or whether Bigfoot still does, I have no idea.
As to why I believe Genesis 1:1 is true, there is zero evidence to the contrary. And there is tremendous evidence of it's truth--so much so that the famed and lifetime atheist Anthony Flew abandoned his atheism--based on careful examination of science, by the way. Not only is life too complex by far to have developed spontaneously, even the universe around us (i.e. the planets, stars, galaxies, etc) are far too complex to have formed spontaneously. Materialistic explanations of the universe require multiple violations of the laws of physics...violations which are themselves impossible according to the doctrine of materialism.
But we are WAY off topic here, so while it's been fun, the post is on judicial activism and homosexuality.
Having been raised - and raised VERY well - by a single parent, I take personal offense at this horrible amendment and the suggestions that it raises.
Think about it for a second: a dysfunctional married couple is capable of raising kids, while a loving, stable unmarried couple (or gay couple) is not. Christian conservative logic and bigotry at work, as usual.
Growing up, my single parent household environment was not "inferior", "unhealthy", "damaging", or anything else that the conservatives wish to suggest it might have been. I graduated at the number two rank from my high school class, finished my undergraduate education at my flagship state university in 3 years on a full-ride scholarship and as the Outstanding Undergrad in my department, and am currently attending one of the world's finest graduate schools on a full-ride tuition scholarship. If being raised outside of a heterosexual married couple "damaged" me somehow, those mysterious "damages" have yet to surface in my life.
This is right-wing Christian conservative bigotry in its worst, most vile and disgusting form. I know plenty of people raised by single parents, by unmarried straight couples, and by loving gay couples who turned out just fine. I also know plenty of indolent, criminal, thuggish kids who were raised in married, Christian heterosexual households. Hmmm!
Arkansas may be a Southern state, but it looks like they're going to reject this piece of garbage. And good for them.
Adam, it's great to hear you turned out so well, having been deprived of a mother or a father. Most children don't fare so well.
However, I'm a little stunned that you of all people would fail to recognize the importance of having both a mother and a father.
Having a mother and a father in the home is something every American should want for every child, should encourage at every opportunity, and do anything we can to help make that happen.
Since you seem offended at what is obviously the best setting for any child, I can only assume that you have a deep-seated jealousy for those who did have a mother and father in the home, or have some sort of bias against moral choices.
Either way, children are the losers if our society adopts such a position.
Post a Comment