TexasScientist said:

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Coke Bear said:

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Jinx 2 said:

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Women's cycles vary. Some women have predictable cycles; others never do. If the five-day window you mention were totally predictable for all women, we would have very few "unplanned" pregnancies. The fact is, some women have irregular cycles, and their fertile periods are very hard to predict. Some women ovulate more than one egg; I had a work colleague whose first pregnancy was fraternal triplets--2 girls and a boy who was crushed to death in the womb. She spent half that pregnancy in bed, and was informed that all of her pregnancies were likely to be multiple and dangerous. She got her tubes tied. Your one-size-fits-all scenario may fit religious guidelines, but not real women.

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Their are doctors that are educated on how to help women avoid these types of surgeries. Sadly, it's too easy for them to schedule a tubal ligation or stick a woman on the pill as a panacea.

Jinx 2 said:

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The Guttmacher Institute says that "Couple who do not use any method of contraception have approximately an 85% chance of experiencing a pregnancy in a given year." https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-use-united-states

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I don't doubt their findings; however, NFP is different than just "unprotected" sex. It works in concert with a woman's body. It's proven to be approximately 98-99% effective in "controlling" pregnancy.

Would you agree that this is healthier for a woman than many other forms of contraception?

Jinx 2 said:

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Avoiding a woman's fertile period also requires discipline from both couples. Women have not always been able to force that disicpline upon their husbands. Jewish law enforced a version of that discipline, but the period of time during which a woman is "unclean" and thus not available for sex is much longer, and hard to figure out. If you really want your eyes to cross, read this: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-laws-of-niddah/

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The Jewish article in interesting. I'm glad that I'm not an Orthodox jew. Having said that, NFP guidelines are much easier to follow. A simple checking of the natural secretions and/or temp check and daily charting is not that inconvenient. Even in the husband doesn't engage in this process, a wife should inform the husband of her fertile periods. Study after study on NFP has shown that this has improved their relationships and enhanced their intimacy.

The divorce rate for couples that use NFP is less than 5%. For contracepting couples, 50%.

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Quote:

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The divorce rate for couples that use NFP is less than 5%. For contracepting couples, 50%.

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How about - It's much more likely that couples that use NFP are members of a religious cult that forbids divorce?

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I have a good friend who jokes that she and her husband have stayed together for almst 50 years because, during the hard years when their children were young, they had an agreement that if one of them decided he or she wanted a divorce, that parent had to take the kids.

Jinx 2 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Jinx 2 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Jinx 2 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Jinx 2 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Jinx 2 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Jinx 2 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Jinx 2 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Why only one partner?

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Because that's entrenched in civil law.

People can and do practice plural marriage. But all of our systems are set up to deal with married couples or with successive marriages, not plural marriages.

Which makes it possible for religions that do practice plural marriage, such as the FLDS Mormons, to exploit the system by applying for welfare for plural wives as they bear child after child for the patriarch with the support of the federal government, since only wife # 1 is legal. Under the law, all the sister wives are single mothers, and thier children are eliglble for Medicaid and whatever dole we provide these days--used to be AFDC.

Do you think the law should allow plural marriages of various types, and if so, how would that work?

A group of people can certainly live together now and call it a marriage--that's what the FLDS Mormons do--and we obviously haven't solved the problem of how to make sure we don't subsidize that.

---

Leaving aside any question of divine purpose, the human purpose of marriage is, or was, to bind parents to their natural offspring. All the essential elements of marriage--the requirement of two and only two partners, of opposite sexes, in an exclusive, permanent relationship--existed for this reason. Today it no longer applies. I don't think we should allow plural marriages, but what's the compelling reason to prohibit them? Laws can change, as we've seen.

---

What's the compelling reason to keep people from choosing to marry someone of the same sex?

That's not religious, as in "They're sinners according to my Church, so I don't want their 'lifestyle' legitimized by the law"?

In addition to being a religious institution, marriage confers lots of civil benefits--rights of inheritance, rights of health care decision making as the "next of kin," a right gay couples realized they needed during the AIDS crisis if they wanted their putative spouse to make decisions rather than a family member whom they may not have seen for years, parenting rights, etc. Our society subsidizes married couples with more favorable tax treatment.

Why should gay couples who want to marry not have these same rights?

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There is no reason, unless the purpose of marriage is to support the traditional family. So how is polygamy any different?

---

Marriage has lots or purposes. "Support the traditional family" is only one of them.

Monogamy is another; most people make a commitment to only have sex with each other after marriage.

Estate planning is another. Couples can and do live together without marriage, but marriage confers lots of property rights, including inheritance and survivor benefits on pension plans (less relevant for people of my generation, but very relevant in my mother's generation).

Lower taxes is another, at least in the U.S. Married couples get a tax benefit (or at least they used to).

Love is another. At least in our society, people supposedly marry because they love each other and want to be each other's partners through life.

Family alliances and gain of wealth. In societies where marriages are arranged, marriage is more like a business transaction that may include the payment of a dowry. Parents want their children to marry someone of or above their class and status to assure their place in society.

My argument: Supporting the traditional family is a religious purpose--and definitions of "the traditional family" are different in different societies. In some, your family is anyone related to you, including far-flung cousins who are likely to show up and expect to share your wealth if you gain any (a real problem for economic development in some African nations). In our society, we operate mostly as nuclear family units. FLDS Mormons live in compounds where several wives and their children live under the rule of a single patriarch. In some countries, many generations of a single family live together.

Gay couples may not constitute a 'traditional family," but they are fully capable of a lifetime commitment, monogamy, raising children and loving a partner, and they deserve access to the civil benefits and protections marriage confers of inheritance and survivor benefits. Last year, I watched a gay man who had lived in our neighborhood since the 1970s be kicked out of the home he had shared with his lifelong partner because the home was in his partner's name, and the partner died without a will. The partner had run an antiques business for years, and his relatives sold off his antiques and the contents of his house. They allowed Bill to stay in the house until the sales were done, and he was then forced to move in with a sister in another state, having no assets of his own and nowhere else to go. Had they been married, the house and its contents would have automatically become Bill's.

---

You're talking about different individual motives for getting married. I'm talking about the purpose of the institution itself. Society doesn't recognize marriage in order for people to get tax benefits. In fact it's the other way around: we give tax benefits in order to encourage marriage. The question is why. Why is it important that gays are capable of commitment, monogamy, raising children, and loving a partner? You can do all those things without getting married.

There are two basic views on this. The conjugal view, which I described above, was shared by religious and non-religious people until recently. Marriages among multiple partners would have been counterproductive, among other reasons, because they would cast doubt on the father-child relationship. The revisionist view, which is now the law of the land, sees marriage essentially in terms of companionship. Raising children might be part of it, but there's no particular interest in binding specific parents to their specific biological children. The recognition of same-sex marriage makes that clear. So why not recognize three or four or ten loving caregivers instead of just two? Wouldn't it be even better in a way?

---

I've clearly stated the civic purpose of marriage. People may not get married for tax benefits or because of inheritance law or survivor benefits, but those are benefits available to and valued by married couples. Why should gay couples be excluded? Especially in a society where children are only one of many reasons people choose to marry, and many heterosexual couples are childless.

I'll let you make the argument for group marriage. The two models I'm familiar with--FLDS Mormons and Muslims--make it appear like a very bad option for women especially, bad for children, who compete with more siblings for fewer resources, and not much better for the men involved, who function (inadequately, with FLDS Mormons) as the sole support for a large number of dependents.

---

Again, there is no reason to exclude gays if your view is correct. The question is why you want to exclude groups of more than two. Is there any necessary reason for group marriages to be the kind of arrangements that some religious groups have? Couldn't they as well consist of free, enlightened individuals living on an equal basis with love and respect?

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I've answered your question: our legal system is set up for marriages of 2 people.

I'll celebrate my 37th anniversary next week, and I honestly can't imagine a group marriage working. A marriage between two people is very hard work, and many people don't manage to sustain one of those.

And my "view" doesn't have to be "correct." Especially according to church doctrine.

If all people are equal under the law, that includes gay people. My "view" has nothing to do with it.

If we have a legal system that allows two people to marry, and if we now recognize that gay people aren't deviants or perverts or sinners and aren't "choosing a lifestyle," denying them the privilege of marrying the spouse of their choice makes no sense.

We haven't done that before because our laws were dominated by a conservative religious view--this is where "views" come into the picture--of gay people as sinners whose impulses are shameful, rather than as people who have same-sex attraction who, although they are a minority, are a common variation that has remained constant throughout recorded history.

---

Well, there are different views. Mine certainly isn't unique to Christianity. If anything it's our rule against polygamy that's more a religious view, since it was borrowed directly from canon law.

In any case, there are estimated to be around 500,000 de facto group marriages in the US. Apparently they work for some people, and some well known intellectuals have already called for recognition under the law. We shall see whether a few tweaks to the tax code are considered too high a price for equality.

---

Are you crediting the Catholic church with establishing marriage that involved only couples?

Here's a worthwhile article about marriage traditions: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/13/conservatives-say-marriage-has-always-been-between-a-man-and-a-woman-theyre-wrong/?utm_term=.2195b7941158

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No, only with suppressing polygamy in medieval Europe.

The WaPo editorialist claims to address what marriage is, but he quickly digresses to matters of motivation and circumstance. So we read that marriage was once about finding good in-laws. But how did one do that? By wedding a person of the opposite sex. Or it was about securing economic advantage. Again, how? By wedding a person of the opposite sex. He says it wasn't always about love (no kidding). By now we're dying to know what it was about, but he still avoids the question (spoiler alert: it was still about wedding a person of the opposite sex). One could go on and on. For example, sometimes it was about forming political alliances. Guess how?

He eventually concedes that with some rare exceptions, conservatives are right about the history. His real argument is that a history of oppression doesn't justify further oppression, which of course is true, but it doesn't mean much unless you've established the fact of oppression to begin with.

---

The point of the WaPo article is that marriage has changed over the past two centuries due to dramatic improvements in women's economic and political status. Women gained the vote about 100 years ago, and they also started joining the professions and becoming educated in higher numbers, although that access was limited until the 1970s, possibly due to the expanded contraception options that became available in the 1960s.

The availability of safe and reliable contraception has been a major factor in women's access to professional schools and jobs. Women can still choose not to use contraception or, even if they use it to time or limit the number of children they have, to be stay at home mothers for all or part of their lives.

But most women in the first world choose to use contraception, and most either want to work because they have a vocation or talent for law or teaching or medicine or business, or find they must work at the best job they can get to support themselves and their children, either because one income isn't enough or because they're single, divorced or married to an underemployed or disabled man. Women who must work to support themselves and their families really benefit from having more options and the availability of reliable contraception.

---

That sounds more relevant to your discussion with Coke Bear. It doesn't tell me much about what marriage is or why it should be limited to two people.

There was a long history of educated and powerful women before the 1960s. Medieval women were educated in convents, castle schools, cathedral schools, court schools, college church schools, village schools, apprenticeships, and universities. Their studies included Latin, Greek, rhetoric, music, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and law. Abbesses, often as young as 12 years, competed with male scholars, wrote treatises, and controlled large amounts of property. It is true, for various reasons, that the majority were not educated in this way. But that had nothing to do with a lack of pills or copper coils. It had to do with the customs and demands of an evolving society.

Sam Lowry said:

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Jinx 2 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Jinx 2 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Jinx 2 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

Jinx 2 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

Jinx 2 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

Jinx 2 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

Jinx 2 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

Why only one partner?

---

Because that's entrenched in civil law.

People can and do practice plural marriage. But all of our systems are set up to deal with married couples or with successive marriages, not plural marriages.

Which makes it possible for religions that do practice plural marriage, such as the FLDS Mormons, to exploit the system by applying for welfare for plural wives as they bear child after child for the patriarch with the support of the federal government, since only wife # 1 is legal. Under the law, all the sister wives are single mothers, and thier children are eliglble for Medicaid and whatever dole we provide these days--used to be AFDC.

Do you think the law should allow plural marriages of various types, and if so, how would that work?

A group of people can certainly live together now and call it a marriage--that's what the FLDS Mormons do--and we obviously haven't solved the problem of how to make sure we don't subsidize that.

---

Leaving aside any question of divine purpose, the human purpose of marriage is, or was, to bind parents to their natural offspring. All the essential elements of marriage--the requirement of two and only two partners, of opposite sexes, in an exclusive, permanent relationship--existed for this reason. Today it no longer applies. I don't think we should allow plural marriages, but what's the compelling reason to prohibit them? Laws can change, as we've seen.

---

What's the compelling reason to keep people from choosing to marry someone of the same sex?

That's not religious, as in "They're sinners according to my Church, so I don't want their 'lifestyle' legitimized by the law"?

In addition to being a religious institution, marriage confers lots of civil benefits--rights of inheritance, rights of health care decision making as the "next of kin," a right gay couples realized they needed during the AIDS crisis if they wanted their putative spouse to make decisions rather than a family member whom they may not have seen for years, parenting rights, etc. Our society subsidizes married couples with more favorable tax treatment.

Why should gay couples who want to marry not have these same rights?

---

There is no reason, unless the purpose of marriage is to support the traditional family. So how is polygamy any different?

---

Marriage has lots or purposes. "Support the traditional family" is only one of them.

Monogamy is another; most people make a commitment to only have sex with each other after marriage.

Estate planning is another. Couples can and do live together without marriage, but marriage confers lots of property rights, including inheritance and survivor benefits on pension plans (less relevant for people of my generation, but very relevant in my mother's generation).

Lower taxes is another, at least in the U.S. Married couples get a tax benefit (or at least they used to).

Love is another. At least in our society, people supposedly marry because they love each other and want to be each other's partners through life.

Family alliances and gain of wealth. In societies where marriages are arranged, marriage is more like a business transaction that may include the payment of a dowry. Parents want their children to marry someone of or above their class and status to assure their place in society.

My argument: Supporting the traditional family is a religious purpose--and definitions of "the traditional family" are different in different societies. In some, your family is anyone related to you, including far-flung cousins who are likely to show up and expect to share your wealth if you gain any (a real problem for economic development in some African nations). In our society, we operate mostly as nuclear family units. FLDS Mormons live in compounds where several wives and their children live under the rule of a single patriarch. In some countries, many generations of a single family live together.

Gay couples may not constitute a 'traditional family," but they are fully capable of a lifetime commitment, monogamy, raising children and loving a partner, and they deserve access to the civil benefits and protections marriage confers of inheritance and survivor benefits. Last year, I watched a gay man who had lived in our neighborhood since the 1970s be kicked out of the home he had shared with his lifelong partner because the home was in his partner's name, and the partner died without a will. The partner had run an antiques business for years, and his relatives sold off his antiques and the contents of his house. They allowed Bill to stay in the house until the sales were done, and he was then forced to move in with a sister in another state, having no assets of his own and nowhere else to go. Had they been married, the house and its contents would have automatically become Bill's.

---

You're talking about different individual motives for getting married. I'm talking about the purpose of the institution itself. Society doesn't recognize marriage in order for people to get tax benefits. In fact it's the other way around: we give tax benefits in order to encourage marriage. The question is why. Why is it important that gays are capable of commitment, monogamy, raising children, and loving a partner? You can do all those things without getting married.

There are two basic views on this. The conjugal view, which I described above, was shared by religious and non-religious people until recently. Marriages among multiple partners would have been counterproductive, among other reasons, because they would cast doubt on the father-child relationship. The revisionist view, which is now the law of the land, sees marriage essentially in terms of companionship. Raising children might be part of it, but there's no particular interest in binding specific parents to their specific biological children. The recognition of same-sex marriage makes that clear. So why not recognize three or four or ten loving caregivers instead of just two? Wouldn't it be even better in a way?

---

I've clearly stated the civic purpose of marriage. People may not get married for tax benefits or because of inheritance law or survivor benefits, but those are benefits available to and valued by married couples. Why should gay couples be excluded? Especially in a society where children are only one of many reasons people choose to marry, and many heterosexual couples are childless.

I'll let you make the argument for group marriage. The two models I'm familiar with--FLDS Mormons and Muslims--make it appear like a very bad option for women especially, bad for children, who compete with more siblings for fewer resources, and not much better for the men involved, who function (inadequately, with FLDS Mormons) as the sole support for a large number of dependents.

---

Again, there is no reason to exclude gays if your view is correct. The question is why you want to exclude groups of more than two. Is there any necessary reason for group marriages to be the kind of arrangements that some religious groups have? Couldn't they as well consist of free, enlightened individuals living on an equal basis with love and respect?

---

I've answered your question: our legal system is set up for marriages of 2 people.

I'll celebrate my 37th anniversary next week, and I honestly can't imagine a group marriage working. A marriage between two people is very hard work, and many people don't manage to sustain one of those.

And my "view" doesn't have to be "correct." Especially according to church doctrine.

If all people are equal under the law, that includes gay people. My "view" has nothing to do with it.

If we have a legal system that allows two people to marry, and if we now recognize that gay people aren't deviants or perverts or sinners and aren't "choosing a lifestyle," denying them the privilege of marrying the spouse of their choice makes no sense.

We haven't done that before because our laws were dominated by a conservative religious view--this is where "views" come into the picture--of gay people as sinners whose impulses are shameful, rather than as people who have same-sex attraction who, although they are a minority, are a common variation that has remained constant throughout recorded history.

---

Well, there are different views. Mine certainly isn't unique to Christianity. If anything it's our rule against polygamy that's more a religious view, since it was borrowed directly from canon law.

In any case, there are estimated to be around 500,000 de facto group marriages in the US. Apparently they work for some people, and some well known intellectuals have already called for recognition under the law. We shall see whether a few tweaks to the tax code are considered too high a price for equality.

---

Are you crediting the Catholic church with establishing marriage that involved only couples?

Here's a worthwhile article about marriage traditions: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/13/conservatives-say-marriage-has-always-been-between-a-man-and-a-woman-theyre-wrong/?utm_term=.2195b7941158

---

No, only with suppressing polygamy in medieval Europe.

The WaPo editorialist claims to address what marriage is, but he quickly digresses to matters of motivation and circumstance. So we read that marriage was once about finding good in-laws. But how did one do that? By wedding a person of the opposite sex. Or it was about securing economic advantage. Again, how? By wedding a person of the opposite sex. He says it wasn't always about love (no kidding). By now we're dying to know what it was about, but he still avoids the question (spoiler alert: it was still about wedding a person of the opposite sex). One could go on and on. For example, sometimes it was about forming political alliances. Guess how?

He eventually concedes that with some rare exceptions, conservatives are right about the history. His real argument is that a history of oppression doesn't justify further oppression, which of course is true, but it doesn't mean much unless you've established the fact of oppression to begin with.

---

The point of the WaPo article is that marriage has changed over the past two centuries due to dramatic improvements in women's economic and political status. Women gained the vote about 100 years ago, and they also started joining the professions and becoming educated in higher numbers, although that access was limited until the 1970s, possibly due to the expanded contraception options that became available in the 1960s.

The availability of safe and reliable contraception has been a major factor in women's access to professional schools and jobs. Women can still choose not to use contraception or, even if they use it to time or limit the number of children they have, to be stay at home mothers for all or part of their lives.

But most women in the first world choose to use contraception, and most either want to work because they have a vocation or talent for law or teaching or medicine or business, or find they must work at the best job they can get to support themselves and their children, either because one income isn't enough or because they're single, divorced or married to an underemployed or disabled man. Women who must work to support themselves and their families really benefit from having more options and the availability of reliable contraception.

---

That sounds more relevant to your discussion with Coke Bear. It doesn't tell me much about what marriage is or why it should be limited to two people.

There was a long history of educated and powerful women before the 1960s. Medieval women were educated in convents, castle schools, cathedral schools, court schools, college church schools, village schools, apprenticeships, and universities. Their studies included Latin, Greek, rhetoric, music, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and law. Abbesses, often as young as 12 years, competed with male scholars, wrote treatises, and controlled large amounts of property. It is true, for various reasons, that the majority were not educated in this way. But that had nothing to do with a lack of pills or copper coils. It had to do with the customs and demands of an evolving society.

---

Do you think marriage should be limited to two people? And that people should only be allowed to marry a person of the opposite sex, precluding any possibility of marriage for same-sex couples?

Do you have any reasons for either of those conclusions that aren't religious?

The point of legalizing gay marriage is to allow same-sex couples access to the same civil rights and same societal status we afford opposite-sex couples who marry. It really is that simple, and that has nothing to do with religion. Churches remain free to label gay people as sinners and not to perform gay weddings. Which works fine unless church leaders feel compelled to impose their view of morality on society as a whole--which they were able to do, in aggregate, until relatively recently.

Conservative Jewish sects have imposed very strict rules regarding marriage and sex on their members for centuries without seeking to impose them on everyone else.

Mormons had to give up polygamy to achieve statehood--and most did.

The Catholic Church managed to influence many governments, sure as Ireland's and governments of central and south American countries, to outlaw contraception and abortion. Which results in "workarounds" such as prescriptions for birth control pills to treat issues unrelated to preventing pregnancy, issued with a wink and a nod. Or in too many poor children. That influence was roundly rejected in the recent Irish referendum on abortion, which affirmed a woman's right to choose and was helped by the Church's numerous black eyes due to the abuse meted out in church-run homes for unwed mothers and orphanages and its failure to address sexual abuse of children by priests. The Church's influence over public policy has been diminished by its failture to address abuses perpetrated by priests. The move to separate public policy decisions from religious doctrine is one of the cost of that failure the Church will have to accept.

Jinx 2 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Jinx 2 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Jinx 2 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Jinx 2 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

---

Jinx 2 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

---

Jinx 2 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

Jinx 2 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

Jinx 2 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

Why only one partner?

---

Because that's entrenched in civil law.

People can and do practice plural marriage. But all of our systems are set up to deal with married couples or with successive marriages, not plural marriages.

Which makes it possible for religions that do practice plural marriage, such as the FLDS Mormons, to exploit the system by applying for welfare for plural wives as they bear child after child for the patriarch with the support of the federal government, since only wife # 1 is legal. Under the law, all the sister wives are single mothers, and thier children are eliglble for Medicaid and whatever dole we provide these days--used to be AFDC.

Do you think the law should allow plural marriages of various types, and if so, how would that work?

A group of people can certainly live together now and call it a marriage--that's what the FLDS Mormons do--and we obviously haven't solved the problem of how to make sure we don't subsidize that.

---

Leaving aside any question of divine purpose, the human purpose of marriage is, or was, to bind parents to their natural offspring. All the essential elements of marriage--the requirement of two and only two partners, of opposite sexes, in an exclusive, permanent relationship--existed for this reason. Today it no longer applies. I don't think we should allow plural marriages, but what's the compelling reason to prohibit them? Laws can change, as we've seen.

---

What's the compelling reason to keep people from choosing to marry someone of the same sex?

That's not religious, as in "They're sinners according to my Church, so I don't want their 'lifestyle' legitimized by the law"?

In addition to being a religious institution, marriage confers lots of civil benefits--rights of inheritance, rights of health care decision making as the "next of kin," a right gay couples realized they needed during the AIDS crisis if they wanted their putative spouse to make decisions rather than a family member whom they may not have seen for years, parenting rights, etc. Our society subsidizes married couples with more favorable tax treatment.

Why should gay couples who want to marry not have these same rights?

---

There is no reason, unless the purpose of marriage is to support the traditional family. So how is polygamy any different?

---

Marriage has lots or purposes. "Support the traditional family" is only one of them.

Monogamy is another; most people make a commitment to only have sex with each other after marriage.

Estate planning is another. Couples can and do live together without marriage, but marriage confers lots of property rights, including inheritance and survivor benefits on pension plans (less relevant for people of my generation, but very relevant in my mother's generation).

Lower taxes is another, at least in the U.S. Married couples get a tax benefit (or at least they used to).

Love is another. At least in our society, people supposedly marry because they love each other and want to be each other's partners through life.

Family alliances and gain of wealth. In societies where marriages are arranged, marriage is more like a business transaction that may include the payment of a dowry. Parents want their children to marry someone of or above their class and status to assure their place in society.

My argument: Supporting the traditional family is a religious purpose--and definitions of "the traditional family" are different in different societies. In some, your family is anyone related to you, including far-flung cousins who are likely to show up and expect to share your wealth if you gain any (a real problem for economic development in some African nations). In our society, we operate mostly as nuclear family units. FLDS Mormons live in compounds where several wives and their children live under the rule of a single patriarch. In some countries, many generations of a single family live together.

Gay couples may not constitute a 'traditional family," but they are fully capable of a lifetime commitment, monogamy, raising children and loving a partner, and they deserve access to the civil benefits and protections marriage confers of inheritance and survivor benefits. Last year, I watched a gay man who had lived in our neighborhood since the 1970s be kicked out of the home he had shared with his lifelong partner because the home was in his partner's name, and the partner died without a will. The partner had run an antiques business for years, and his relatives sold off his antiques and the contents of his house. They allowed Bill to stay in the house until the sales were done, and he was then forced to move in with a sister in another state, having no assets of his own and nowhere else to go. Had they been married, the house and its contents would have automatically become Bill's.

---

You're talking about different individual motives for getting married. I'm talking about the purpose of the institution itself. Society doesn't recognize marriage in order for people to get tax benefits. In fact it's the other way around: we give tax benefits in order to encourage marriage. The question is why. Why is it important that gays are capable of commitment, monogamy, raising children, and loving a partner? You can do all those things without getting married.

There are two basic views on this. The conjugal view, which I described above, was shared by religious and non-religious people until recently. Marriages among multiple partners would have been counterproductive, among other reasons, because they would cast doubt on the father-child relationship. The revisionist view, which is now the law of the land, sees marriage essentially in terms of companionship. Raising children might be part of it, but there's no particular interest in binding specific parents to their specific biological children. The recognition of same-sex marriage makes that clear. So why not recognize three or four or ten loving caregivers instead of just two? Wouldn't it be even better in a way?

---

I've clearly stated the civic purpose of marriage. People may not get married for tax benefits or because of inheritance law or survivor benefits, but those are benefits available to and valued by married couples. Why should gay couples be excluded? Especially in a society where children are only one of many reasons people choose to marry, and many heterosexual couples are childless.

I'll let you make the argument for group marriage. The two models I'm familiar with--FLDS Mormons and Muslims--make it appear like a very bad option for women especially, bad for children, who compete with more siblings for fewer resources, and not much better for the men involved, who function (inadequately, with FLDS Mormons) as the sole support for a large number of dependents.

---

Again, there is no reason to exclude gays if your view is correct. The question is why you want to exclude groups of more than two. Is there any necessary reason for group marriages to be the kind of arrangements that some religious groups have? Couldn't they as well consist of free, enlightened individuals living on an equal basis with love and respect?

---

I've answered your question: our legal system is set up for marriages of 2 people.

I'll celebrate my 37th anniversary next week, and I honestly can't imagine a group marriage working. A marriage between two people is very hard work, and many people don't manage to sustain one of those.

And my "view" doesn't have to be "correct." Especially according to church doctrine.

If all people are equal under the law, that includes gay people. My "view" has nothing to do with it.

If we have a legal system that allows two people to marry, and if we now recognize that gay people aren't deviants or perverts or sinners and aren't "choosing a lifestyle," denying them the privilege of marrying the spouse of their choice makes no sense.

We haven't done that before because our laws were dominated by a conservative religious view--this is where "views" come into the picture--of gay people as sinners whose impulses are shameful, rather than as people who have same-sex attraction who, although they are a minority, are a common variation that has remained constant throughout recorded history.

---

Well, there are different views. Mine certainly isn't unique to Christianity. If anything it's our rule against polygamy that's more a religious view, since it was borrowed directly from canon law.

In any case, there are estimated to be around 500,000 de facto group marriages in the US. Apparently they work for some people, and some well known intellectuals have already called for recognition under the law. We shall see whether a few tweaks to the tax code are considered too high a price for equality.

---

Are you crediting the Catholic church with establishing marriage that involved only couples?

Here's a worthwhile article about marriage traditions: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/13/conservatives-say-marriage-has-always-been-between-a-man-and-a-woman-theyre-wrong/?utm_term=.2195b7941158

---

No, only with suppressing polygamy in medieval Europe.

The WaPo editorialist claims to address what marriage is, but he quickly digresses to matters of motivation and circumstance. So we read that marriage was once about finding good in-laws. But how did one do that? By wedding a person of the opposite sex. Or it was about securing economic advantage. Again, how? By wedding a person of the opposite sex. He says it wasn't always about love (no kidding). By now we're dying to know what it was about, but he still avoids the question (spoiler alert: it was still about wedding a person of the opposite sex). One could go on and on. For example, sometimes it was about forming political alliances. Guess how?

He eventually concedes that with some rare exceptions, conservatives are right about the history. His real argument is that a history of oppression doesn't justify further oppression, which of course is true, but it doesn't mean much unless you've established the fact of oppression to begin with.

---

The point of the WaPo article is that marriage has changed over the past two centuries due to dramatic improvements in women's economic and political status. Women gained the vote about 100 years ago, and they also started joining the professions and becoming educated in higher numbers, although that access was limited until the 1970s, possibly due to the expanded contraception options that became available in the 1960s.

The availability of safe and reliable contraception has been a major factor in women's access to professional schools and jobs. Women can still choose not to use contraception or, even if they use it to time or limit the number of children they have, to be stay at home mothers for all or part of their lives.

But most women in the first world choose to use contraception, and most either want to work because they have a vocation or talent for law or teaching or medicine or business, or find they must work at the best job they can get to support themselves and their children, either because one income isn't enough or because they're single, divorced or married to an underemployed or disabled man. Women who must work to support themselves and their families really benefit from having more options and the availability of reliable contraception.

---

That sounds more relevant to your discussion with Coke Bear. It doesn't tell me much about what marriage is or why it should be limited to two people.

There was a long history of educated and powerful women before the 1960s. Medieval women were educated in convents, castle schools, cathedral schools, court schools, college church schools, village schools, apprenticeships, and universities. Their studies included Latin, Greek, rhetoric, music, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and law. Abbesses, often as young as 12 years, competed with male scholars, wrote treatises, and controlled large amounts of property. It is true, for various reasons, that the majority were not educated in this way. But that had nothing to do with a lack of pills or copper coils. It had to do with the customs and demands of an evolving society.

---

Do you think marriage should be limited to two people? And that people should only be allowed to marry a person of the opposite sex, precluding any possibility of marriage for same-sex couples?

---

Yes and yes.

Can't reply--thread's too long.

But Sam, if the two people who want to marry aren't Catholic, why do you believe their choice of a spouse and their abiltiy to marry should be governed by the doctrine of the Catholic Church or any church?

I don't. My definition of marriage is supported by any number of moral and intellectual traditions unrelated to the church. Pretty much all of them, in fact. My personal favorites are the ancient Greeks.

fadskier said:

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Waco1947 said:

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quash said:

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Waco1947 said:

---

Quash said "Paul knew Greek culture. He knew about homosexuality. The Sacred Band of Thebes predates Paul by centuries."
Paul knew about homosexual behavior not orientation and psychology. Are you making a case that Paul knew about sexual orientation? How is that related to scripture?

---

As I said before, Paul may have been gay according to some. Again, Bishop Spong is one who thought so.

And just because modern psychology began in the 19th century doesn't mean we only began to deal with homosexuality recently.

---

I'm not making the point that we only began dealing with homosexuality recently. I am making the point that Paul dealt with in a misguided 1st century way. Many of us Christians are gaining new insights and acceptance of homosexuality because of recent studies on orientation. Paul was addressing a specific time and place with a 1st century understanding. It's all he had. It is inadequate for today's morality.

---

Today's morality? So someday, murder can be okay?

What a dark world you live in.

---

Stupid slippery slope argument

Waco1947 said:

---

fadskier said:

---

Waco1947 said:

---

quash said:

---

Waco1947 said:

---

Quash said "Paul knew Greek culture. He knew about homosexuality. The Sacred Band of Thebes predates Paul by centuries."
Paul knew about homosexual behavior not orientation and psychology. Are you making a case that Paul knew about sexual orientation? How is that related to scripture?

---

As I said before, Paul may have been gay according to some. Again, Bishop Spong is one who thought so.

And just because modern psychology began in the 19th century doesn't mean we only began to deal with homosexuality recently.

---

I'm not making the point that we only began dealing with homosexuality recently. I am making the point that Paul dealt with in a misguided 1st century way. Many of us Christians are gaining new insights and acceptance of homosexuality because of recent studies on orientation. Paul was addressing a specific time and place with a 1st century understanding. It's all he had. It is inadequate for today's morality.

---

Today's morality? So someday, murder can be okay?

What a dark world you live in.

---

Stupid slippery slope argument

---

Started by you...

and I'm sure long ago, it was considered immoral to suck a live baby out of it's mother's womb OR insert a tool to scramble it up...

you support the slippery slope...which makes you...slimy

Jinx 2 said:

---

There are as many reasons why women and couples use more reliable forms of contraception than NFP--which is not really contraception but rather an effort to avoid sex when the woman is fertile--as there are life circumstances.

---

You are incorrect and correct about two points in this statement.

Incorrect: NFP is statistically more successful in controlling pregnancy that all other forms of contraception.
Correct: NFP is NOT contraception. It is a natural and moral methods of family planning that can help married couples either achieve or postpone pregnancies.

Jinx 2 said:

---

So when you say "Would you agree that [NFP] is healthier for a woman than many other forms of contraception?" my answer is: Hell, no. Using NFP is like playing Russian roulette with the woman's body, with a pregnancy always possible--which is why the Catholic church supports it. I honestly can't imagine a bigger disincentive to sex than that, and I'm continually surprised that so many women either knowingly risk unprotected sex or let themselves be persuaded or, in the case of teenagers, believe myths like "You can't get pregnant the first time."

---

We'll have to agree to disagree on this point.

fadskier said:

---

Waco1947 said:

---

quash said:

---

Waco1947 said:

---

Quash said "Paul knew Greek culture. He knew about homosexuality. The Sacred Band of Thebes predates Paul by centuries."
Paul knew about homosexual behavior not orientation and psychology. Are you making a case that Paul knew about sexual orientation? How is that related to scripture?

---

As I said before, Paul may have been gay according to some. Again, Bishop Spong is one who thought so.

And just because modern psychology began in the 19th century doesn't mean we only began to deal with homosexuality recently.

---

I'm not making the point that we only began dealing with homosexuality recently. I am making the point that Paul dealt with in a misguided 1st century way. Many of us Christians are gaining new insights and acceptance of homosexuality because of recent studies on orientation. Paul was addressing a specific time and place with a 1st century understanding. It's all he had. It is inadequate for today's morality.

---

Today's morality? So someday, murder can be okay?

What a dark world you live in.

---

That is miles from what he said. Morality does change and it has been improving for centuries.

See Michael Shermer's "The Moral Arc".

quash said:

---

fadskier said:

---

Waco1947 said:

---

quash said:

---

Waco1947 said:

---

Quash said "Paul knew Greek culture. He knew about homosexuality. The Sacred Band of Thebes predates Paul by centuries."
Paul knew about homosexual behavior not orientation and psychology. Are you making a case that Paul knew about sexual orientation? How is that related to scripture?

---

As I said before, Paul may have been gay according to some. Again, Bishop Spong is one who thought so.

And just because modern psychology began in the 19th century doesn't mean we only began to deal with homosexuality recently.

---

I'm not making the point that we only began dealing with homosexuality recently. I am making the point that Paul dealt with in a misguided 1st century way. Many of us Christians are gaining new insights and acceptance of homosexuality because of recent studies on orientation. Paul was addressing a specific time and place with a 1st century understanding. It's all he had. It is inadequate for today's morality.

---

Today's morality? So someday, murder can be okay?

What a dark world you live in.

---

That is miles from what he said. Morality does change and it has been improving for centuries.

See Michael Shermer's "The Moral Arc".

---

He mentioned today's morality...implying that morality changes.

fadskier said:

---

quash said:

---

fadskier said:

---

Waco1947 said:

---

quash said:

---

Waco1947 said:

---

Quash said "Paul knew Greek culture. He knew about homosexuality. The Sacred Band of Thebes predates Paul by centuries."
Paul knew about homosexual behavior not orientation and psychology. Are you making a case that Paul knew about sexual orientation? How is that related to scripture?

---

As I said before, Paul may have been gay according to some. Again, Bishop Spong is one who thought so.

And just because modern psychology began in the 19th century doesn't mean we only began to deal with homosexuality recently.

---

I'm not making the point that we only began dealing with homosexuality recently. I am making the point that Paul dealt with in a misguided 1st century way. Many of us Christians are gaining new insights and acceptance of homosexuality because of recent studies on orientation. Paul was addressing a specific time and place with a 1st century understanding. It's all he had. It is inadequate for today's morality.

---

Today's morality? So someday, murder can be okay?

What a dark world you live in.

---

That is miles from what he said. Morality does change and it has been improving for centuries.

See Michael Shermer's "The Moral Arc".

---

He mentioned today's morality...implying that morality changes.

---

I said it, too. But neither of us said murder was going to be moral. That was all you.

quash said:

---

fadskier said:

---

quash said:

---

fadskier said:

---

Waco1947 said:

---

quash said:

---

Waco1947 said:

---

Quash said "Paul knew Greek culture. He knew about homosexuality. The Sacred Band of Thebes predates Paul by centuries."
Paul knew about homosexual behavior not orientation and psychology. Are you making a case that Paul knew about sexual orientation? How is that related to scripture?

---

As I said before, Paul may have been gay according to some. Again, Bishop Spong is one who thought so.

And just because modern psychology began in the 19th century doesn't mean we only began to deal with homosexuality recently.

---

I'm not making the point that we only began dealing with homosexuality recently. I am making the point that Paul dealt with in a misguided 1st century way. Many of us Christians are gaining new insights and acceptance of homosexuality because of recent studies on orientation. Paul was addressing a specific time and place with a 1st century understanding. It's all he had. It is inadequate for today's morality.

---

Today's morality? So someday, murder can be okay?

What a dark world you live in.

---

That is miles from what he said. Morality does change and it has been improving for centuries.

See Michael Shermer's "The Moral Arc".

---

He mentioned today's morality...implying that morality changes.

---

I said it, too. But neither of us said murder was going to be moral. That was all you.

---

That's not my point. My point is if morality changes then one day, could murder be moral?

It wasn't too long ago that homosexuality and abortion were immoral, but morality changed. We've already seen "assisted suicide. My point is that "morality changing" is a slippery slope and we must be careful.

I'll give another case in point...and chime in your opinion. I was/am not against gay marriage. The government should not be in the marriage business. If need be, call a church service "marriage" and outside of church a "civil arrangement." However, many of my relatives (conservative Hispanics, mostly) vehemently opposed gay marriage saying that it would erode morals and open the door to other things. I scoffed at that. However, now, no doubt encouraged by the acceptance of gay marriage (or not, I don't know) we are now being expected to call a man or woman whatever they want to be called...man, women, cis, they, etc. Recently, a gay support group advocated that pedophilia was normal behavior and should be accepted.

The slippery slope has begun...

fadskier said:

---

quash said:

---

fadskier said:

---

quash said:

---

fadskier said:

---

Waco1947 said:

---

quash said:

---

Waco1947 said:

---

Quash said "Paul knew Greek culture. He knew about homosexuality. The Sacred Band of Thebes predates Paul by centuries."
Paul knew about homosexual behavior not orientation and psychology. Are you making a case that Paul knew about sexual orientation? How is that related to scripture?

---

As I said before, Paul may have been gay according to some. Again, Bishop Spong is one who thought so.

And just because modern psychology began in the 19th century doesn't mean we only began to deal with homosexuality recently.

---

I'm not making the point that we only began dealing with homosexuality recently. I am making the point that Paul dealt with in a misguided 1st century way. Many of us Christians are gaining new insights and acceptance of homosexuality because of recent studies on orientation. Paul was addressing a specific time and place with a 1st century understanding. It's all he had. It is inadequate for today's morality.

---

Today's morality? So someday, murder can be okay?

What a dark world you live in.

---

That is miles from what he said. Morality does change and it has been improving for centuries.

See Michael Shermer's "The Moral Arc".

---

He mentioned today's morality...implying that morality changes.

---

I said it, too. But neither of us said murder was going to be moral. That was all you.

---

That's not my point. My point is if morality changes then one day, could murder be moral?

It wasn't too long ago that homosexuality and abortion were immoral, but morality changed. We've already seen "assisted suicide. My point is that "morality changing" is a slippery slope and we must be careful.

I'll give another case in point...and chime in your opinion. I was/am not against gay marriage. The government should not be in the marriage business. If need be, call a church service "marriage" and outside of church a "civil arrangement." However, many of my relatives (conservative Hispanics, mostly) vehemently opposed gay marriage saying that it would erode morals and open the door to other things. I scoffed at that. However, now, no doubt encouraged by the acceptance of gay marriage (or not, I don't know) we are now being expected to call a man or woman whatever they want to be called...man, women, cis, they, etc. Recently, a gay support group advocated that pedophilia was normal behavior and should be accepted.

The slippery slope has begun...

---

The slippery slope banned slavery, let blacks and women vote, etc.

No, murder will not become moral.

quash said:

---

fadskier said:

---

quash said:

---

fadskier said:

---

quash said:

---

fadskier said:

---

Waco1947 said:

---

quash said:

---

Waco1947 said:

---

Quash said "Paul knew Greek culture. He knew about homosexuality. The Sacred Band of Thebes predates Paul by centuries."
Paul knew about homosexual behavior not orientation and psychology. Are you making a case that Paul knew about sexual orientation? How is that related to scripture?

---

As I said before, Paul may have been gay according to some. Again, Bishop Spong is one who thought so.

And just because modern psychology began in the 19th century doesn't mean we only began to deal with homosexuality recently.

---

I'm not making the point that we only began dealing with homosexuality recently. I am making the point that Paul dealt with in a misguided 1st century way. Many of us Christians are gaining new insights and acceptance of homosexuality because of recent studies on orientation. Paul was addressing a specific time and place with a 1st century understanding. It's all he had. It is inadequate for today's morality.

---

Today's morality? So someday, murder can be okay?

What a dark world you live in.

---

That is miles from what he said. Morality does change and it has been improving for centuries.

See Michael Shermer's "The Moral Arc".

---

He mentioned today's morality...implying that morality changes.

---

I said it, too. But neither of us said murder was going to be moral. That was all you.

---

That's not my point. My point is if morality changes then one day, could murder be moral?

It wasn't too long ago that homosexuality and abortion were immoral, but morality changed. We've already seen "assisted suicide. My point is that "morality changing" is a slippery slope and we must be careful.

I'll give another case in point...and chime in your opinion. I was/am not against gay marriage. The government should not be in the marriage business. If need be, call a church service "marriage" and outside of church a "civil arrangement." However, many of my relatives (conservative Hispanics, mostly) vehemently opposed gay marriage saying that it would erode morals and open the door to other things. I scoffed at that. However, now, no doubt encouraged by the acceptance of gay marriage (or not, I don't know) we are now being expected to call a man or woman whatever they want to be called...man, women, cis, they, etc. Recently, a gay support group advocated that pedophilia was normal behavior and should be accepted.

The slippery slope has begun...

---

The slippery slope banned slavery, let blacks and women vote, etc.

No, murder will not become moral.

---

Not everything on the slippery slope is bad. I indicated that we must be careful.

Coke Bear said:

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Jinx 2 said:

---

There are as many reasons why women and couples use more reliable forms of contraception than NFP--which is not really contraception but rather an effort to avoid sex when the woman is fertile--as there are life circumstances.

---

You are incorrect and correct about two points in this statement.

Incorrect: NFP is statistically more successful in controlling pregnancy that all other forms of contraception.
Correct: NFP is NOT contraception. It is a natural and moral methods of family planning that can help married couples either achieve or postpone pregnancies.

Jinx 2 said:

---

So when you say "Would you agree that [NFP] is healthier for a woman than many other forms of contraception?" my answer is: Hell, no. Using NFP is like playing Russian roulette with the woman's body, with a pregnancy always possible--which is why the Catholic church supports it. I honestly can't imagine a bigger disincentive to sex than that, and I'm continually surprised that so many women either knowingly risk unprotected sex or let themselves be persuaded or, in the case of teenagers, believe myths like "You can't get pregnant the first time."

---

We'll have to agree to disagree on this point.

---

Coke Bear, where are you getting your information on NFP? I've been going to OB/gyns since I was 16, which was in the 1970s, and I can honestly tell you that none has EVER promoted NFP as a realistic family planning option. NFP used to be known as "The Rythm Method" and noted for its unreliability. (It's also easy for a man to blithely say how "healthy" and 'convenient" it is, since women bears both the burden for it and the baby when it doesn't work.) I remember scores of jokes about it. My guess is that "NFP" is a "rebranding" effort. But every doctor I've ever talked to recommended a pill, implant or IUD if reliable contraception was the goal.

Here's one thing that really bothers me about the Catholic stance on contraception: The Church apparently views sex solely for pleasure as sinful or, at the very least, unacceptable. The Church wants sex only if its purposeful, and that purpose is babies. I've always wondered about the virgin birth because it parallels a common myth where the hero is the son of a god and a mortal woman. But the Catholic Church adds to that mythic status of the "immaculate conception" ("immaculate" because it didn't involve sex) the cult of purity, and Mary is a symbol or purity and holiness because she didn't have sex before Jesus war born. In the Catholic Church and many other churches, women are no longer pure once they've had sex--in or out of marriage. And sexual desire isn't a virtue; it's a temptation. I don't think that's a healthy view of women or for women.

It's certainly not a healthy view of women, nor is it the Catholic view.

NFP was never known as the rhythm method. They're two different things.

NFP, like any form of birth control, varies in its failure rate by how well it is implemented. A condom in your wallet will fail.

NFP, when perfectly implemented, will have a fail rate of .4 to 5 per cent. " Under typical use, however, the failure rates are between 12 and 24 percent." Again, distinguishing between perfect and typical use, a condom fails right in the middle at 18 per cent.

Reversibles, like IUDs and implants, get around the issue by making typical use more nearly perfect. An implant fails at .05.

https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/contraception/index.htm

Sam Lowry said:

---

It's certainly not a healthy view of women, nor is it the Catholic view.

NFP was never known as the rhythm method. They're two different things.

---

Here's an explanation of the Catholic view of sex: Contraception is subverting God's willing by "frustrating the purpose for which God designed that act to have" and "saying God's presence is not desired." To the first assertion, I'd say, "Well, duh," but to the second, "Whaaatttt????" A married couple wanting to have sex with each other without risking a pregnancy, which you do every time you have unprotected sex, shouldn't be a sin.

This site compares the use of contraception to using an eating disorder--bulemia--to control weight rather than a good diet, implying that the use of contraception is psychologically sick, and also reflecting a gross misunderstanding of bulemia disorder (which involves compulsive binge-eating and purging as a means of dealing with anxiety, stress and depression) by referring to "gluttony." It states that couples use contraception to "sterilize their acts of lovingmaking in order to enjoy the pleasure of the marital act apart from God's design." Horrors!

You can even buy a "purity pack" at this site.

https://chastityproject.com/qa/whats-the-big-difference-between-nfp-and-contraception/

Morality
Suppose that a married couple is using contraceptives for the same reason another couple is practicing NFP. Both couples already have children and hope to have more. But for good reasons they need to space the next birth by a couple of years. Both have the intent to regulate births, and responsible parenthood allows couples not to have more children than they can care for.

However, the good intent of a couple is not sufficient to determine the morality of their act. For example, if two women wanted to avoid becoming overweight, one might go on a diet, and the other might binge and purge (bulimia). Both may stay slim, but one exercises the virtue of temperance, while the other succumbs to gluttony and unnatural, unhealthy behavior.

Similarly, the Church's condemnation of contraception does not imply that the couple has bad intentions but that they are using a means that is immoral. Married couples are free to have intercourse (or to agree to abstain from it) on any given day, regardless of the wife's fertility. But when they do join as one flesh, they must not frustrate the purpose God designed that act to have. It is God alone who has the power to create an immortal soul as a result of the marital act, and to contracept is to say that God's presence is not desired. Clearly then, a couple abstaining from sex for a just reason cannot be compared to a couple who sterilize their acts of lovemaking in order to enjoy the pleasure of the marital act apart from God's design.

The reason the Church denounces contraception is not because it is artificial. After all, the Church allows the use of countless artificial drugs and other technological advances that medicine can offer man. However, these are to be used to heal dysfunction and promote the proper functioning of the body as God designed it. Contraception does the opposite: it prevents the natural functioning of the body.

Therefore, the moral difference between NFP and contraception is that contraception deliberately interrupts, sterilizes, and works against (contra) conception, while NFP respects the way God ordained conception to occur. In no way does NFP interrupt or sterilize an act of intercourse. NFP couples are not acting against the way God has designed fertility but are working with it.

Right, but that stuff about desire being unvirtuous and women not being pure once they've had sex. That's just way off.

A married couple who uses contraception is immoral? Don't they mean unCatholic?

quash said:

---

A married couple who uses contraception is immoral? Don't they mean unCatholic?

---

Ask Luther and Calvin.

Sam Lowry said:

---

Right, but that stuff about desire being unvirtuous and women not being pure once they've had sex. That's just way off.

---

So is that stuff about contraception subverting God's purpose for sex. While I disagree with that, preaching it as church doctrine falls under freedom of religion.

Trying to eliminate access to contraception under law and eliminating government programs that provide contraception both in the U.S. and to women in foreign countries is unacceptable.

And telling men and women that NFP is a better or more reliable form of birth control when it has a 25% failure rate, based on objective measures, is dishonest.

What I'm saying is, the Church doesn't teach that desire is unvirtuous or that women who've had sex are impure. Your description of the doctrine is incorrect. You may think the actual Catholic (and Protestant) teachings about contraception are incorrect too, but that's another issue.

There are different estimates of the failure rate of NFP, depending on who's doing the numbers and which method or combination of methods you're talking about. Planned Parenthood calls it between 12% and 24%. Assuming that's accurate, the better methods are only slightly less effective than the Pill, which according to Quash's link has a failure rate of 9%. I'm not arguing that NFP is the optimal method in terms of pregnancy prevention. I find it advantageous for its lack of harmful side effects, both medical and moral.

Sam Lowry said:

---

quash said:

---

A married couple who uses contraception is immoral? Don't they mean unCatholic?

---

Ask Luther and Calvin.

---

Lutherans and Prebyterians no longer consider that immoral.

Sam Lowry said:

---

What I'm saying is, the Church doesn't teach that desire is unvirtuous or that women who've had sex are impure. Your description of the doctrine is incorrect. You may think the actual Catholic (and Protestant) teachings about contraception are incorrect too, but that's another issue.

There are different estimates of the failure rate of NFP, depending on who's doing the numbers and which method or combination of methods you're talking about. Planned Parenthood calls it between 12% and 24%. Assuming that's accurate, the better methods are only slightly less effective than the Pill, which according to Quash's link has a failure rate of 9%. I'm not arguing that NFP is the optimal method in terms of pregnancy prevention. I find it advantageous for its lack of harmful side effects, both medical and moral.

---

The Church does, however, teach that use of contraception is immoral. Coke Bear calls NFP a "moral" form of family planning. But most Americans and most Catholics do not believe a woman or couple's decision to use an effective form of contraception is immoral.

Trying to impose the Church's view that God should and must make the decision regarding whether every single sex act will result in a pregnancy is not congruent with separation of church and state. While I disagree with your beliefs, they would not bother me nearly so much if the Church has not and did not still advocate their implementation as government policy with the force of law.

Sadly, what it's taken to end that, in Ireland at least, is evidence of the fact that the Church was perfectly willing to police the bedrooms of its members, but not its priests or of its institutions for children or for unwed mothers. A vigorous interest in life in the womb becomes considerably less credible when people learn that the children of unwed mothers who weren't sold away from their mothers in Irish institutions were starved, abused, received abysmal medical treatment, and were dumped in mass graves after they died of curable childhood illnesses, all because they were considered inferior children of sin, and that mothers who bore children out of wedlock were essentially enslaved. THAT is why Ireland voted itself out from under canon law--because it protects the Church and covers over the sins of its priests, nuns and employees, while condemning married couples for wanting to have sex without fear of a pregnancy resulting. If Church officials and members would acknowledge and atone for this level of hypocrisy and actually do something about it instead of doing everything it possibly can to avoid the criminal consequences that should result from such abuse or paying child support (in the cases of priests who fathered children), that would make things a little better. But, instead, the Church demands a level of morality from ordinary parishioners it does not require of its leaders.

So, IMO, the Church has certainly lost any moral authority it might assert to non-Catholics, and Catholics, rather than preaching to protestants about the immorality of contraception, should be demanding that priests and Church leadership be accountable for THEIR sins instead of holding the rest of the world accountable while excusing, ignoring and hiding their own transgressions.

Jinx 2 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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What I'm saying is, the Church doesn't teach that desire is unvirtuous or that women who've had sex are impure. Your description of the doctrine is incorrect. You may think the actual Catholic (and Protestant) teachings about contraception are incorrect too, but that's another issue.

There are different estimates of the failure rate of NFP, depending on who's doing the numbers and which method or combination of methods you're talking about. Planned Parenthood calls it between 12% and 24%. Assuming that's accurate, the better methods are only slightly less effective than the Pill, which according to Quash's link has a failure rate of 9%. I'm not arguing that NFP is the optimal method in terms of pregnancy prevention. I find it advantageous for its lack of harmful side effects, both medical and moral.

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The Church does, however, teach that use of contraception is immoral. Coke Bear calls NFP a "moral" form of family planning. But most Americans and most Catholics do not believe a woman or couple's decision to use an effective form of contraception is immoral.

Trying to impose the Church's view that God should and must make the decision regarding whether every single sex act will result in a pregnancy is not congruent with separation of church and state. While I disagree with your beliefs, they would not bother me nearly so much if the Church has not and did not still advocate their implementation as government policy with the force of law.

Sadly, what it's taken to end that, in Ireland at least, is evidence of the fact that the Church was perfectly willing to police the bedrooms of its members, but not its priests or of its institutions for children or for unwed mothers. A vigorous interest in life in the womb becomes considerably less credible when people learn that the children of unwed mothers who weren't sold away from their mothers in Irish institutions were starved, abused, received abysmal medical treatment, and were dumped in mass graves after they died of curable childhood illnesses, all because they were considered inferior children of sin, and that mothers who bore children out of wedlock were essentially enslaved. THAT is why Ireland voted itself out from under canon law--because it protects the Church and covers over the sins of its priests, nuns and employees, while condemning married couples for wanting to have sex without fear of a pregnancy resulting. If Church officials and members would acknowledge and atone for this level of hypocrisy and actually do something about it instead of doing everything it possibly can to avoid the criminal consequences that should result from such abuse or paying child support (in the cases of priests who fathered children), that would make things a little better. But, instead, the Church demands a level of morality from ordinary parishioners it does not require of its leaders.

So, IMO, the Church has certainly lost any moral authority it might assert to non-Catholics, and Catholics, rather than preaching to protestants about the immorality of contraception, should be demanding that priests and Church leadership be accountable for THEIR sins instead of holding the rest of the world accountable while excusing, ignoring and hiding their own transgressions.

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America is not a Catholic country. Our laws and opinions for and against contraception have never been based on Catholic dogma. I'm not even sure why we're talking about Catholicism. As for the Church and its moral authority, I really don't think any sort of atonement will improve your opinion unless you understand what the Church teaches and why.

Sam Lowry said:

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Jinx 2 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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What I'm saying is, the Church doesn't teach that desire is unvirtuous or that women who've had sex are impure. Your description of the doctrine is incorrect. You may think the actual Catholic (and Protestant) teachings about contraception are incorrect too, but that's another issue.

There are different estimates of the failure rate of NFP, depending on who's doing the numbers and which method or combination of methods you're talking about. Planned Parenthood calls it between 12% and 24%. Assuming that's accurate, the better methods are only slightly less effective than the Pill, which according to Quash's link has a failure rate of 9%. I'm not arguing that NFP is the optimal method in terms of pregnancy prevention. I find it advantageous for its lack of harmful side effects, both medical and moral.

---

The Church does, however, teach that use of contraception is immoral. Coke Bear calls NFP a "moral" form of family planning. But most Americans and most Catholics do not believe a woman or couple's decision to use an effective form of contraception is immoral.

Trying to impose the Church's view that God should and must make the decision regarding whether every single sex act will result in a pregnancy is not congruent with separation of church and state. While I disagree with your beliefs, they would not bother me nearly so much if the Church has not and did not still advocate their implementation as government policy with the force of law.

Sadly, what it's taken to end that, in Ireland at least, is evidence of the fact that the Church was perfectly willing to police the bedrooms of its members, but not its priests or of its institutions for children or for unwed mothers. A vigorous interest in life in the womb becomes considerably less credible when people learn that the children of unwed mothers who weren't sold away from their mothers in Irish institutions were starved, abused, received abysmal medical treatment, and were dumped in mass graves after they died of curable childhood illnesses, all because they were considered inferior children of sin, and that mothers who bore children out of wedlock were essentially enslaved. THAT is why Ireland voted itself out from under canon law--because it protects the Church and covers over the sins of its priests, nuns and employees, while condemning married couples for wanting to have sex without fear of a pregnancy resulting. If Church officials and members would acknowledge and atone for this level of hypocrisy and actually do something about it instead of doing everything it possibly can to avoid the criminal consequences that should result from such abuse or paying child support (in the cases of priests who fathered children), that would make things a little better. But, instead, the Church demands a level of morality from ordinary parishioners it does not require of its leaders.

So, IMO, the Church has certainly lost any moral authority it might assert to non-Catholics, and Catholics, rather than preaching to protestants about the immorality of contraception, should be demanding that priests and Church leadership be accountable for THEIR sins instead of holding the rest of the world accountable while excusing, ignoring and hiding their own transgressions.

---

America is not a Catholic country. Our laws and opinions for and against contraception have never been based on Catholic dogma. I'm not even sure why we're talking about Catholicism. As for the Church and its moral authority, I really don't think any sort of atonement will improve your opinion unless you understand what the Church teaches and why.

---

Catholics and Protestants diverged on the issue of contraception in 1930. In the 1960s, The Church waffled on the pill, allowing it to become entrenched, but you yourself have said you thought the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, was one of the worst court decisions ever.

The Catholic view of contraception is particularly stringent and equates interfering with sperm or preventing conception as murder, I guess because of the belief that only God should make decisions regarding life and that every time a couple has sex, God should have the right to decide whether a pregnancy will result.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pill-catholic-church-and-birth-control/

A Mortal Sin
On New Year's Eve 1930, the Roman Catholic Church officially banned any "artificial" means of birth control. Condoms, diaphragms and cervical caps were defined as artificial, since they blocked the natural journey of sperm during intercourse. ******s, suppositories and spermicides all killed or impeded sperm, and were banned as well. According to Church doctrine, tampering with the "male seed" was tantamount to murder. A common admonition on the subject at the time was "so many conceptions prevented, so many homicides." To interfere with God's will was a mortal sin and grounds for excommunication.

The Purpose of Intercourse
For the Vatican, the primary purpose of intercourse was for the sacred act of procreation. If couples were interested in having intercourse, then they had to be willing to accept the potential for the creation of another life. For devout Catholics, that left only abstinence or the church-approved rhythm method (the practice of abstaining from sex during the woman's period of ovulation). However, the rhythm method was unreliable, and many believed it placed a heavy strain on marital relations.

Here's an interesting article about why the Church condemns the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, which affirmed the right of married couples to make their own decisions regarding contraception without government interferences, and claims that decision was a slippery slope that allowed unmarried adults to buy contraception and set a precedent of people's privacy to make their own decisions about sex and reproduction that resulted in the decision in Roe v. Wade:

https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/abortion/the-bad-decision-that-started-it-all.html

After all, Griswold simply allowed married couples to decide whether to use contraceptives. But the Supreme Court soon transformed the right to privacy (the reference to marriage quickly disappeared) into a powerful tool for making public policy. In Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), the Court changed a right of spouses justified in Griswold precisely by reference to the importance of marriage into a right of unmarried adults to buy and use contraceptives. Then, in a move that plunged the United States into a culture war, the Court ruled in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton(1973) that this generalized right to privacy also encompassed a womans virtually unrestricted right to have an abortion.

First, Sam, thanks so much for doing the heavy lifting on this last night. I was not able to get to computer as I was extremely busy with family responsibilities.

Jinx 2 - I'm not trying to "Fisk" you on this paragraph; however, I would like to clear up some misconceptions that you may hold about this topic and the Catholic church ...

Jinx 2 said:

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Here's one thing that really bothers me about the Catholic stance on contraception: The Church apparently views sex solely for pleasure as sinful or, at the very least, unacceptable. The Church wants sex only if its purposeful, and that purpose is babies.

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This is so NOT true. The Church teaches that sex has both creative and unitive qualities. The Church wants married couples to enjoy sex. I am searching for the source that wrote about a husband's responsibility to ensure that "achieves her climax". I think that it was Pope John Paul II. (I'll continue to search.)

Jinx 2 said:

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I've always wondered about the virgin birth because it parallels a common myth where the hero is the son of a god and a mortal woman. But the Catholic Church adds to that mythic status of the "immaculate conception" ("immaculate" because it didn't involve sex) the cult of purity, and Mary is a symbol or purity and holiness because she didn't have sex before Jesus war born.

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The immaculate conception is NOT about Mary not having sex. It concerns the fact that Mary, by a singular and unique grace, was preserved from the stain of Original Sin. Many Catholics confuse this too, because they were poorly catechized.

Jinx 2 said:

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In the Catholic Church and many other churches, women are no longer pure once they've had sex--in or out of marriage.

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I've never her the church use "pure" in this regard before. If anyone has sex, they are no longer a virgin. We are all called to live chaste lives, inside and outside of marriage. If we fail, the Church gives us confession and absolution to try again. She knows that we are all sinners.

Jinx 2 said:

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And sexual desire isn't a virtue; it's a temptation. I don't think that's a healthy view of women or for women.

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Finally, sexual desire is a temptation, but so is the desire to eat. Desire is natural and necessary. How one chooses to act on those desires determines its morality. I love ice cream. Eating a small bowl is great. Eating the entire 1/2 gallon of Blue Bell's Cookies and Cream is gluttonous and bad for my health. Recognizing that a woman other than my wife is beautiful is fine. Lusting after that woman is not.

Coke Bear said:

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First, Sam, thanks so much for doing the heavy lifting on this last night. I was not able to get to computer as I was extremely busy with family responsibilities.

Jinx 2 - I'm not trying to "Fisk" you on this paragraph; however, I would like to clear up some misconceptions that you may hold about this topic and the Catholic church ...

Jinx 2 said:

---

Here's one thing that really bothers me about the Catholic stance on contraception: The Church apparently views sex solely for pleasure as sinful or, at the very least, unacceptable. The Church wants sex only if its purposeful, and that purpose is babies.

---

This is so NOT true. The Church teaches that sex has both creative and unitive qualities. The Church wants married couples to enjoy sex. I am searching for the source that wrote about a husband's responsibility to ensure that "achieves her climax". I think that it was Pope John Paul II. (I'll continue to search.)

Jinx 2 said:

---

I've always wondered about the virgin birth because it parallels a common myth where the hero is the son of a god and a mortal woman. But the Catholic Church adds to that mythic status of the "immaculate conception" ("immaculate" because it didn't involve sex) the cult of purity, and Mary is a symbol or purity and holiness because she didn't have sex before Jesus war born.

---

The immaculate conception is NOT about Mary not having sex. It concerns the fact that Mary, by a singular and unique grace, was preserved from the stain of Original Sin. Many Catholics confuse this too, because they were poorly catechized.

Jinx 2 said:

---

In the Catholic Church and many other churches, women are no longer pure once they've had sex--in or out of marriage.

---

I've never her the church use "pure" in this regard before. If anyone has sex, they are no longer a virgin. We are all called to live chaste lives, inside and outside of marriage. If we fail, the Church gives us confession and absolution to try again. She knows that we are all sinners.

Jinx 2 said:

---

And sexual desire isn't a virtue; it's a temptation. I don't think that's a healthy view of women or for women.

---

Finally, sexual desire is a temptation, but so is the desire to eat. Desire is natural and necessary. How one chooses to act on those desires determines its morality. I love ice cream. Eating a small bowl is great. Eating the entire 1/2 gallon of Blue Bell's Cookies and Cream is gluttonous and bad for my health. Recognizing that a woman other than my wife is beautiful is fine. Lusting after that woman is not.

---

I admire your faith, and it's apparent from your posts that it's a positive force in your life.

Thanks for a courteous response.

I don't question the right of churches to guide their parishioners in personal morality.

I am concerned with a church or religious institution seeks to impose its will on everyone in a country, regardless of their political affiliation and personal beliefs, on everyone. That's Sharia.

And I think it's immoral to stop services badly needed in countries where AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are a real problem because of a church prohibition on any form of "artificial" contraception. That doesn't meet my definition of "pro-life," where concern for life too often appears to stop the instant the baby exits the womb.

I also think society has come to a general agreement about some things that are morally wrong: murder, assault, stealing, vandalism, bearing false witness, and many others.

I don't think morality is relative, but I do believe our perception of what's moral and what's not changes as we gain knowledge. People used to assume that people who were gay "chose" that "lifestyle." Now, the broader society has acknowledged, by sanctioning gay civil marriage, that being gay is a natural variation, not a choice, and that it's hard-wired. That leads me to conclude that gay people should be granted the same rights in civil society as everyone else. I'm glad Seth--the original subject of this thread--can choose not to attend his father's church--which necessarily means that Seth's father also has the choice to stop supporting him and tell him he can no longer live at home. I don't think that particular choice is a good one--love accomplishes more than hate and contempt and condemnation. But it's important that people be able to choose their own faith--as long as they don't also seek to impose it on others by physical force or impose beliefs about being gay or using contraception on others who don't share those beliefs with the force of law.

As we've moved from a rural, agrarian society, to an urban, industrial society, large families have become more of a liability and less of an asset. People in civil society should be free to decide for themselves whether to be sexually active, when to marry, whether they wish to have children and how many--without having anyone else's assumptions about God's will in the matter or whether sex is moral outside of marriage imposed on them with the force of law.

America is now a large and diverse enough society that we have to have a legal system that provides a stable foundation for people representing a broad spectrum of religious and cultural traditions while holding to certain moral truths, like that murder is wrong (even if we disagree on the issue of whether preventing conception or aborting an early term fetus or permitting executions of convicted criminals or random shootings by police constitutes murder), stealing is wrong, etc. I wish churches, like the Catholic Church, would try to contribute to that discussion in a more positive way than putting an immoral man like Donald Trump in office because he's pledged to appoint Supreme Court Justices that will advance a specific religious agenda. That undermines respect for the Church's moral authority on any issue, because the church is willing to fall in line behind a selfish man who is an adulterer and cheater, so dishonest he can't and won't release his taxes, who has left years of scorched earth business transactions, and is now panicking because the scurrilous man he chose to run his campaign is being exposed as a thief, a cheat, a liar, a spendthrift and a traitor.

Jinx 2 - Please don't think that I'm trying to pick on you. I would like the opportunity to split a few beers and discuss our similarities and differences.

Once again I would like to clear up a few misrepresentations or misunderstandings ...

Jinx 2 said:

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Catholics and Protestants diverged on the issue of contraception in 1930.

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It wasn't all Protestants that that diverged in 1930. At the Lambeth Conference in 1930, the Anglican Church allowed for married couples in a VERY limited manner to use contraption. That opened the lid on pandora's box. Most, if not all, Protestants, have widened that gap now.

Jinx 2 said:

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In the 1960s, The Church waffled on the pill, allowing it to become entrenched, but you yourself have said you thought the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, was one of the worst court decisions ever.

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Some officials wavered on this issue, but the Church never has. 50 years ago (and two weeks - July 25, 1968) Pope Paul VI wrote his prophetic and beautiful Humanae Vitae encyclical about God's plan for marriage and love. He held firm to traditional teachings of the Church. He was vilified in the media and culture for this. As the moral fabric of our society continues to unravel, many are know recognizing that his letter was truly prophetic.

Jinx 2 said:

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The Catholic view of contraception is particularly stringent and equates interfering with sperm or preventing conception as murder, I guess because of the belief that only God should make decisions regarding life and that every time a couple has sex, God should have the right to decide whether a pregnancy will result.

---

I've never heard the term "murder" with respect to this. It is considered a mortal sin.

Jinx 2 said:

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https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pill-catholic-church-and-birth-control/

A Mortal Sin
On New Year's Eve 1930, the Roman Catholic Church officially banned any "artificial" means of birth control. Condoms, diaphragms and cervical caps were defined as artificial, since they blocked the natural journey of sperm during intercourse. ******s, suppositories and spermicides all killed or impeded sperm, and were banned as well. According to Church doctrine, tampering with the "male seed" was tantamount to murder. A common admonition on the subject at the time was "so many conceptions prevented, so many homicides." To interfere with God's will was a mortal sin and grounds for excommunication.

The Purpose of Intercourse
For the Vatican, the primary purpose of intercourse was for the sacred act of procreation. If couples were interested in having intercourse, then they had to be willing to accept the potential for the creation of another life. For devout Catholics, that left only abstinence or the church-approved rhythm method (the practice of abstaining from sex during the woman's period of ovulation). However, the rhythm method was unreliable, and many believed it placed a heavy strain on marital relations.

---

With all due respect, this is a PBS article They are not completely accurate on the views of the Catholic church (this is not a condemation of PBS, their views are their views.) Here are a few sites that will provide the what the actually Church teaches:

Catholic Answers
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
The Vatican

Coke Bear said:

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Jinx 2 - Please don't think that I'm trying to pick on you. I would like the opportunity to split a few beers and discuss our similarities and differences.

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Never liked beer, but I'd be happy to have a glass of wine.

My first real date with my husband involved a trip to George's. We'd become friends in a history class, and I'd said I didn't like beer. He offered to take me to George's, convinced that a nice, cold Big O would convince anyone, including me, to like beer. I think they cost 65 cents back then.

It tasted like water in which someone had steeped dirty athletic socks to me. Several of his frat brothers were there in another booth. They soon joined us, eager to convince me that beer was great. One took the salt shaker and shook salt into my beer, claiming that would improve the taste. It didn't, and my husband was irritated, because then even he didn't want to drink it.

Jinx 2 said:

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Coke Bear said:

---

Jinx 2 - Please don't think that I'm trying to pick on you. I would like the opportunity to split a few beers and discuss our similarities and differences.

---

Never liked beer, but I'd be happy to have a glass of wine.

My first real date with my husband involved a trip to George's. We'd become friends in a history class, and I'd said I didn't like beer. He offered to take me to George's, convinced that a nice, cold Big O would convince anyone, including me, to like beer. I think they cost 65 cents back then.

It tasted like water in which someone had stepped dirty athletic socks to me. Several of his frat brothers were there in another booth. They soon joined us, eager to convince me that beer was great. One took the salt shaker and shook salt into my beer, claiming that would improve the taste. It didn't, and my husband was irritated, because then even he didn't want to drink it.

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Decent beer wasn't widely available in America until the mid-1990s. It's worth revisiting if you haven't tried it in a while.