The Politics Thread

[thebish]

[Hoboh]

Live and left live, you don't like it, it does you no harm then leave it alone just don't persecute those that are different.
On the other hand if they plant bombs are determined to abolish everything you believe in and hate you with a vengence they are hell bent on spreading, blow the feckers away!!

[thebish]

Live and left live,

Hoboh urges us to live as lefties shocker!! you dark horse!

[Hoboh]

Live and left live,

Hoboh urges us to live as lefties shocker!! you dark horse!

I don't mind you till you start interfearing in my empire building;

"blow the feckers away!!"

[Worthy4England]

So no mince pies then?

[Prufrock]

Well that was always going to happen. I normally check through things before I post them, mainly so Bishy can't get me, and like all good prufreaders, start from the end. I stopped this time because I started giggling at having written not 'holes in', but 'hole sin'. The simple things.

The 'what does that even mean' was at you, the rest general rant. Clearly. .

I'm confused as to when you are talking about 'natural', and when you are talking about 'right'. The natural point seems bizarre. The language you couch it in is that for something to be natural it has to further the species? Is that right? Homosexuality is not natural because it doesn't lead to procreation? But neither does language, or running. Are they unnatural? Or is it that communication and running both help us stay alive and thus more likely to get chance to pass on our genes, in which case the theory that homosexuality occurs in a species, or some species, to look after abandoned young, and allow them to procreate, thus furthering the species. Or is it that homosexuality isn't just 'not procreation' but sort of anti procreation? In that case so are abstinence, masturbation, and to take it all the way, me sat at this laptop right now not having sex. Any possible time we have where we could be procreating but aren't could be said to be unnatural, because we aren't acting to further the species.

Maybe we are coming at it from completely different concepts of the word natural. Cars are, to me, natural. Sure they are man made, but from materials that occur on this planet, sourced by methods invented by people from this planet, and put together by people, using methods, from this planet. That's not to limit it to this planet, if we got things from other planets that could be natural, but without any outside help. Rabbits doing anything without deliberate interference from a 'higher power' would be natural. I quite like Russell Howards description of a flight back from Spain with two gays kissing and cuddling and getting ever more frustrated stares from a group of skinheads. One of the skinheads eventually roars 'it's not natural!', one of the gays looks over his shoulder and says, 'You're flying'.

All that said, this discussion of natural, whilst interesting, seems irrelevant. It's difficult to thing of a definition of natural which would exclude homosexuality, without excluding plenty of other things most rational people consider acceptable. It's very hard, for instance, to define homosexuality as 'unnatural' without also so defining heterosexual couples choosing not to have children, and that would be a very narrow definition of natural, in my view.

As for the question of wrong or right. I don't think homosexuality is wrong, and that people do saddens me. Equally I don't think it is 'right'. In my view it is morally neutral. I don't think we have a moral duty to procreate, I think most of us are programmed to, but I don't think it is a moral, right or wrong, issue. It happens, it doesn't affect anyone else, other than potential future people who don't exist yet, so ultimately I don't see how anyone can, or wants to comment on it.

As for freedom of speech. I'm all for it to a point. There, in my view, has to be a limit. Inciting hatred or violence seems to be about right. It is a high threshold, and should be. I don't think you have actually said you think homosexuality were wrong. If you had, I think it seems obvious to most but the left wing facists Bobo so loves that that wouldn't reach the threshold of 'inciting hatred'. If anyone does think such a thing, then by all means 'fight to death for their right to say it applies', but I'd still feel it was sad, and wrong.

Trying to keep my view simple (which is obviously failing miserably)

The only reason I can see that we're here in existence, is that we procreate and perpetuate our existence through that very act, and ultimately die. Everything else is just pretty much incidental. Therefore the only natural thing to do on the planet is procreate and everything else is shades of unnatural, conditioned by the societies we live in.

Conversation is really just conditioning. If I wanted a leg-over as a cave-man, I just hoiked someone over the head with my club and had sex - notwithstanding that someone else might have hoiked me over the head for doing so. Conversation not essential. Running is an interesting one, we needed to do that, I guess when we needed to catch food or run away from dinosaurs, we very rarely "need" to run today other than to keep fit etc. But conversation and running are only conditioned responses in today's society. We don't NEED them to perpetuate our existence. That said, running and conversation don't preclude us breeding either - some could argue that they enhance our chances. I don't think any of the other things you listed prevent us from breeding apart from 2, abstinence and couples who don't want kids.

Being homosexual, abstinence and couples who don't want kids does preclude breeding (by choice) unless they occasionally change that choice. I would ask therefore as you did in your original post, whether that makes it a pointless existence? In my view yes, perhaps I should just start calling gays pointless instead of unnatural, but it's certainly unnatural, by my way of thinking as it contradicts the only real reason we're on the planet that I can come up with and that I currently know about. (I don't for one minute accept that my real reason for being here is to enhance shareholder value! It's just incidental.)

Ok, I get where you are coming from. What then of homosexuals who donate to sperm banks or act as surrogate fathers?

I'd suggest pointless would be a better, if somewhat nihilistic idea, just because couples who choose not to have kids rarely have the word 'unnatural' thrown at them in the barbed way many do to homosexuals.

Procreation may, ultimately, be our purpose (and I would disagree, propagation of the species is, not necessarily our own genes, which in itself would make more sense of adoption theory) but I don't think it means that without it a life is pointless. I don't think biology and nature are the same thing. Here we are using the word 'natural' differently.

[Worthy4England]

Ok, I get where you are coming from. What then of homosexuals who donate to sperm banks or act as surrogate fathers?

I think they're wankers.

[Little Green Man]

So no mince pies then?

No, but they do like a Mince Round.

[Wandering Willy]

I can see little point of "mankind" (or any other species) other than to ultimately perpetuate "mankind" (or any other species), which you can do naturally with a man and a woman, and unnaturally with gay people - adoption, sperm/egg donorship etc.

There are those who believe in a more spiritual way of life in that perhaps we are put on this earth to love. Indeed, I would think most of us get pleasure out of the people we love - kids, wife, family, friends over anything else. The notion that we are here simply to perpetuate mankind would seem to have no point without some other reason.

I will now brace myself for "you're a hippy gayist with a Bruce shirt" comments.

[Armchair Wanderer]

What happened to the politics thread?

I don't understand why low-to-medium paid people vote Tory, but many of them must do it, especially in the south-east.

[William the White]

What happened to the politics thread?

I don't understand why low-to-medium paid people vote Tory, but many of them must do it, especially in the south-east.

There's nothing short of electricity on the bollocks that would make me vote Tory... but I look at, listen to, think of Ed Milliband and wonder about a party that can be stupid enough to elect him as leader... Actually, wonder about the trade union leadership that shouldered him in... piss up, brewery, party comes to mind... Labour's Ian Duncan Smith... lamentable and everyone knows it, but you're stuck with the error, so bad he makes lightweights like Cameron (surely the least convincing Tory PM since John Major) look credible...

[Armchair Wanderer]

What happened to the politics thread?

I don't understand why low-to-medium paid people vote Tory, but many of them must do it, especially in the south-east.

There's nothing short of electricity on the bollocks that would make me vote Tory... but I look at, listen to, think of Ed Milliband and wonder about a party that can be stupid enough to elect him as leader... Actually, wonder about the trade union leadership that shouldered him in... piss up, brewery, party comes to mind... Labour's Ian Duncan Smith... lamentable and everyone knows it, but you're stuck with the error, so bad he makes lightweights like Cameron (surely the least convincing Tory PM since John Major) look credible...

There's plenty of stuff I can't do but I'd have a real go at being a better leader of the labour party than Ed.

Up to the last election everyone was singing to Rupert Murdoch's tune about how terrible labour were. Bashing labour with Iraq, Afghanistan and the global financial crisis. I'm wondering if people just read newspapers and just absorbed all the anti-labour propoganda, or whether there are working- and middle-class people who actually want to pay much lower taxes because they don't need the NHS, schools, police, refuse collection, libraries, etc.

[Lord Kangana]

More interestingly, those issues now seem to be superfluous. Or indeed, out of the hands of the present government, because they are global problems. After all, we are all in it together.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

This is another 'gay marriage' picture that appears to be doing the rounds at the moment:



It is interesting how many people making a pro-gay marriage point feel happy to express their complete revulsion for first cousin marriage and somehow don't see that this might be even slightly contradictory.

[Lord Kangana]

Can you marry your first cousin if you're gay?

[CrazyHorse]

Which states is it legal for someone to marry a pig? And is the pig allowed to be same sex?

[Lord Kangana]

As long as its not your cousin I don't see the issue. As long as it wears lipstick.

Judging by that map above, I would say its a fait accompli that first cousin marriage does nothing to enhance the gene pool. Its like playing hick bingo.

[boltonboris]

So if you want to marry your gay cousin, you should move to Vermont, or Massachusetts(sp)?

[bobo the clown]

Well, sorry to upset everyone, but it remains legal, if a social taboo, to marry your first cousin in the UK.

Not that I'm advocating it, mind, but it is.

"Marriage of Cousins
Despite the long list of degrees of forbidden relationship, you can marry a cousin (courtesy of Henry VIII who changed the law to marry his cousin!). However, it would be sensible for you both to consult your GP to ensure that there are no factors in your family's health records that would make your decision to have children inadvisable on medical grounds."

[thebish]

Well, sorry to upset everyone, but it remains legal, if a social taboo, to marry your first cousin in the UK.

Not that I'm advocating it, mind, but it is.

"Marriage of Cousins
Despite the long list of degrees of forbidden relationship, you can marry a cousin (courtesy of Henry VIII who changed the law to marry his cousin!). However, it would be sensible for you both to consult your GP to ensure that there are no factors in your family's health records that would make your decision to have children inadvisable on medical grounds."

such as a homicidal Uncle?