Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

Yeah, the only reason the article mentions England is because that is where the movie is set.

IJ:

There is one specific flaw about abstinence-only education (at least the type you have in mind). It tries to cover up the fact that we are sexual beings. I am opposed to a puritanical view of human sexuality: God created us male and female, and it was his intent that we enjoy the gift of sex. However, just because we are sexual beings does not mean that we can safely engage in sexual behavior indiscriminately. In my opinion, therefore, a good sex education program should:

1. acknowledge the fact that we are sexual beings, and help kids to acknowledge their natural attractions, even express them in healthy ways.

2. teach kids to recognize the dangers of premature sexual activity and measure the risks, including teen pregnancy, venerial diseases, psychological and social consequences, etc.

3. promote a healthy attitude toward sexuality and sexual behavior, including abstinence before marriage.

Otherwise, sex education becomes nothing more than a "How To" class, in which case, what's the point? They can figure that part out on their own.

Furthermore, families need to be more proactive in helping their kids develop healthy attitudes toward sexuality. Most parents, it seems to me, are reluctant to even approach the subject, maybe because of embarassment, or because of their own prior indiscretions.

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Didymus, you're preaching to the choir, except for this point. I certainly think that abstinence before marriage is a worthy philosophy, and wouldn't have a problem with it being taught in a program such as you describe, except for one thing: It alienates and discriminates non-heterosexual students. Until marriage is considered a right of all people, teaching "no sex before marriage" is the same as teaching "no sex, ever, sorry, tough luck" to homosexual students.

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Since you asked my opinion, I'll answer. On the cost of medicine, I agree. If a Canadian wants a heart bypass, and especially wants it before his or her own mortality, it's my understanding that they must go to the U.S.A. to receive the procedure in a timely manner. The poor in Canada have to wait it out, risking their own lives. Yes, I agree that medical care and money have a high correlation anywhere on planet Earth, at any time in history.

I had a horrible idea, and I will not implement it, but let me discuss the legality of it before anyone chimes in and insists it's different from abortion: I know it is, I'm just discussing legality.

If I take a ship outside of costal waters of any country, I am no longer subject to that country's laws. I am subject to Maritime law to be sure, but not to any country or police. Let's say I buy a big old ship, and get a bunch of college kids who love those shoot-'em-up video games, and give them a chance to play for real with real guns out in international waters. They love the idea, and a few dozen go out, of their own volition, and one victor returns alove, having "legally" shot the others out there on my boat. Now, what will happen when he returns to the USA, legally? He's comitted something that is a crime in the U.S., but performed it outside the U.S. with completely voluntary victims. So, is it legal? I begin by agreeing that there's little moral comparison to abortion... please do not bring that up. I just want to know if it becomes legal. If it's somehow not legal, then neither would extranational abortions be legal once outlawed in a country.

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Only if it's legal in the country from which the ship hails.



Wikipedia knows all.



That's only true if said hypothetical law were to classify abortion as the same sort of offense as frat boys killing eachother on a boat.

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Well, having worked on a ship, that's true. A ship designated with a U.S. flag would be U.S. soil... so to speak. However, there are probably a number of countries in which I could register the ship that would not have the interest or manpower to hunt me down for letting foreigners (to them) kill one another. So for the experement to work, I'd have to avoid registering the ship as U.S. or English... or most other first world countries.


Those who oppose abortion say, without exception of which I'm aware, that it is murder. So (in Ohio Law, at least), that would be an Unclassified Felony above the F-1 severity. So unless the crime were classified down with selling pickles that don't bounce in Connecticut, I'm fairly sure abortion would be up there with frat boys playing a live-action game of Quake.

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"This is an issue which I take very seriously, and if elected, I will do everything in my power to halt the sale of pickles everywhere, bouncing or not!"

Seriously, though, I do consider abortion murder. IJ's arguments based on "personhood" don't convince me otherwise. I spend a great deal of time in a dementia ward (no comments from the peanut gallery!), and I know people who some would classify as vegetables (no offense, Larry). Would I be in favor of killing them, just because their brains no longer function properly? Absolutely not! In the same way, I will not support the killing of unborn children, regardless of their stage of brain development. As I stated in a previous post, I do not make that distinction between personhood and humanity.


Only if you assume that homosexuality falls within the category of a healthy attitude toward sexuality. I do not make that assumption. But since this is not the thread for that discussion, I will not pursue it.

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I replied to this before. To see the official stance of my denomination, through example not bylaw, please click on through to http://benevolences.ag.org/caring/hcp_200108_04_wwjd.cfm. There's the story of what most Christians believe and how we behave. Don't believe everything you see on TV about us.

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I think of it as murder. Once a baby starts developing, it is a functioning human being, whether it can do anything or not. Once a human can feel pain, people should go to jail for killing a human.

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I think I won the powerball. -Homsar

I wouldn't even qualify it that way. Human beings have inherent worth, regardless of their sensitivity, viability, or self-awareness. My evidence? I work in a nursing home, and most of my residents are advanced cases of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. These are people who are essentially unable to care for themselves, and in some cases, are little more than vegetables. But I don't see anyone out there advocating the execution of these people. They have rights, regardless of their mental capacities, and we are morally obligated to respect those rights. And I feel that the same ought to be true regarding the unborn.

That was pretty much why I ignored IJ's arguments about viability and personhood (which he relates to "self-awareness"). He seems to want to set their value according to measurable criteria, whereas I view all human life inherently valuable.

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Actually, there are people advocating the execution of these people. However, I don't believe we are in the company of any such degenerates here in this community.


While that may be true, we do need to be careful to set our criteria (or inherent value system) in such a way as to differentiate between an unborn but human baby versus a molar pregnancy.

Those of you who favor legal elective abortions probably think we pro-lifers are rabidly anti-scientific religious nuts. But we're not. Like Didymus, we're caring, thoughtful, and most of all, loving people who don't believe that two wrongs make a right, but instead believe that love can right a wrong.

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An interesting point of view from some user over at Kos:



Though I won't endorse this point of view without further consideration, it certainly seems worth considering.

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The argument doesn't follow. It's one thing to legislate that you must act to save someone (say, by donating a kidney), but it's a completely different thing to legislate that one demographic (women) have the right to take the lives of another demographic (unborn children). You might as well argue that, if I'm hungry enough, I have the right to kill you and take your food.

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I'm... hesitant... to identify a healthy woman carrying a healthy baby to term with losing a kidney. Considering that "donating a kidney" is a medical procedure less than 100 year old, while "being pregnant" is not a medical procedure and is (at least) several thousand years old, I find them a little incomparable in that legal sense.

For example, if you are a medical doctor (or even an EMT), and you walk by a dying man you are capable of saving -- on the street, off your hours, without pay -- you are legally/criminally liable in most states. Your unique qualification burdens you with extra responsibilities. Refusing to perform your duties is committing a crime.

Similarly, parents or guardians are chraged with criminal neglect if they fail to feed their post-natal children, expose them to the elements, or refuse any of a myriad of other responsibilities the parents don't have to anyone else in the country.

A woman is uniquely suited to save the life of the baby in her womb; for at least two trimesters no one else (not even another woman) can. She must feed and clothe the baby (though for a short time, it's with her body). These are the metaphors that we see the situation among.

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[quote="thefreakyblueman"]Well, what do you think?
I personally believe that it's the woman's right to decide whether to have an abortion or not, not the government's. I guess the main reason here is the crime of rape. A pregnancy caused by this will most likely ruin a woman's life. I guess that, in my mind, the only moral problem with abortion is if the baby is aborted when it is has a developed a brain and can feel emotions and physical things, but then again, I think that the woman should still be able to choose.[/quote] Sure she can have an abortion if she wants to commit murder and be miserable (more miserable, mind you, then if she had given birth from rape, as you said would ruin her life.) Have you ever met a woman that had an abortion that was actually OK with it, let alone happy? No I don't think you have. And another thing, a baby has a heartbeat when it is the size, or smaller than, a pea. Apparently you sould educate yourself about this subject. ABORTION IS MURDER EVEN IN ITS EARLIEST STAGES!!

Medically speaking, a human fetus doesn't resemble a human being at all. Visually or biologically. It is a parasite, that isn't considered an independent organism until a certain stage. At which point, an abortion is illegal anyway. And no, it doesn't have a heartbeat when it's the size of a pea... it hasn't even formed a heart at that stage. So maybe YOU should educate yourself on the subject, m'kay?

And yes, there are women who've had abortions and don't feel guilty. Just thought I should throw that in...

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Unfortunately, abortion is going to happen, whether it's legal or not. If it's illegal, then it will go back to what it once was, a coat hanger in a dirty alley. Even though I might not Morally agree with abortion, I think that it should be kept legal, because it will be safer for the woman if a trained professional did it rather than a shady looking guy in the Bronx.

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You think wrongly. I do know such women, and say what you will about them, they are happy today and believe that they are happier than they would have been had the made a different choice.

It's easy for you to sit in your pulpit and say "every woman who has an abortion ends up miserable!" You've clearly had someone pound that into your head. But that doesn't make it true or even remotely realistic.

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I wish you had applied that logic to this quote...

Which is not only factually mistaken in it's history, but also projectively mistaken in it's psychology and makes heavy use of invalid emotionally-laden images so that he doesn't have to defend his position as rigorously. Read the thread on Michael Crichton's speech (and the speech itself) for context.

No insult meant to you Ramrod: I have simply seen a lot of people won over by rhetoric as you have been, when no historical or psychological facts about the situation have been made available to you.

For example, abortion was legal to save a mother's life well before Roe v. Wade. My grandmother almost had one in the 50's because she had some trouble with the twins. It would have been performed in a hospital (a Catholic hospital!) with a surgeon and medical tools, not an unshaven, unlicensed sawbones with a coat hanger in an inner-city alleyway.

And the philosophy that "people will do whatever they want whether it's legal or not" is far from true. Did you know that physician assisted suicide (a la Dr. Kevorkian) is not being practiced in the numbers predicted... because it's illegal?

You're right that not everyone obeys the law, but most people are willing to as long as it goes hand-in-hand with their own protection by the law. My observation indicates that people start disobeying laws when they feel the law (i.e. law-enforcement) does not protect them. Anger and violence (then lawbreaking) are psychological results of feelings of threat, helplessness, and lack of agency in one's situation.

Finally, the "trained physicians" performing the overwhelming majority of elective abortions in America do so not in hospital operating rooms, but in little clinics that aren't required to meet the standards of other surgical procedure sites, even eye laser surgery. The physicians present only perform abortions, and are not gynecologists, general surgeons, obstetricians, psychologists, or even general practicioners... and even though their practice overlaps all of those fields heavily they will not, in general, refer you to one of those other professionals for a second opinion. So my connotation (just to use your emotional argument against you) of them is that the back-alley chop doc shaved and rented a hole-in-the-wall when he realized he could make more money that way.

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Actually Doodyman, I don't really care whether the human embryo, fetus, zygote, or whatever, is developed enough to have a heartbeat or to feel or think like a normal human being. He/she is a developing human being, regardless of which stage. I do not base a person's worth on how functional they are. If I did, I wouldn't be ministering in a dementia ward in a nursing home. Human beings are inherently valuable. Their worth is not based on medical criteria, and this goes for the unborn as well as elderly adults suffering from dementia. I have to agree with Zaius on this: you really should study up on your medical science before trying to posit arguments based on medical science.

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As heatless as this sounds, I am a strict believer in youthenasia (or however it's spelled) If someone is a vegetable, there is no reason to waste resources keeping their body alive. And to go further to the extreme, some stages of mental handicaps should not be burdening society. I speak of those who have the mental capacity of... well, less than an infant...

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I believe in Youth in Asia. That's why I've spent time in China getting to know some of them.

I think you need to be very careful before you endorse euthanasia. One reason is that it may not be very long before the standards are raised and raised and you have some condition that makes you eligible for termination. Go rent Swing Kids, and see how the kid with clubbed feet feels (sorry to appeal to emotion). To be terribly cruel, suppose I figured you were stupid because of your opinions here, and therefore a burden to society... if I happened to be the person in charge of euthanizing, then oops, no more Dr. Zaius.

Societies that haved supported euthanasia, in general, result in ending lives for political reasons, not health reasons. I realize that you're young, and that you've seen examples of people kept alive on machines with no brain activity for months, costing a billion dollars to society. But if you look through even recent history, you'll see that the principle that allows us to let dead people get buried will always get exploited to political and economic ends at the sacrifice of people that should not be killed but are.

Hence (in part) my stance on abortion. People are making life-and-death choices based on the almighty greenback. Abortion is a profitable business for the people advising the girls making the decision. It's a scary enough time as it is, and here comes threats of poverty and ruined life and very few choices... it's not fair to have to make those kinds of decisions under that kind of pressure.

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You're certainly right about that first part. It is cruel and heartless of you. I will point out the inherent contradiction: you cannot claim to care about the good of society unless you acknowledge the inherent worth of individuals. Otherwise...well, remember that really mean German guy from the 1940's whose name you're not supposed to mention in forums? Well, that's what you get when you value society without valuing individuals.

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Yeah, except I don't view perfectly functional people as "inferior" because they're different than me. No, only those who have nothing to offer society, cannot even care for themselves, and have no possibility of getting better are those I feel should be euthenised. But my standards are set very low, so very few people fall into it...

So, before you go comparing me to Hitler and Nazi Germany, know that I don't care if someone is born with down syndrome, there is still a chance for a cure for that somewhere in the near future. There is no cure for total mental retardation, where a 25 year old man still has the mental capacity of an infant and has to be changed...

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I will admit that comparing you to Hitler is extreme. Of course, I will point out that I never made the direct connection; I only pointed out that your line of thinking leads that direction.

I still stand by my statement though: in order to value society, you must begin by valuing individuals within that society, regardless of whether you think they might be useful. Once you start labeling some people as useful and others as useless, you begin down that road that leads to the gas chambers. Ever read "Thanatos Syndrome" by Walker Percy?

But in this regard I might have an advantage over you. I work with elderly adults, and more than 2/3 of my assigned residents suffer from advanced forms of dementia, so it might be simply that I've had more first hand experience in this.

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I think you've got it backwards in the "cure" category. Down's Syndrome is a result of a genetic trisomy, and there's no way to cure that with even with any imagined treatment. You'd have to surgically alter every cell of the body, and even that would not undo the damage done by the developmental results. There is not now, nor will there ever be a cure for Down's Syndrome in a living person.

However, depending on the level and source of the more general term "mental retardation," some forms of that could be cured.

So, good doctor monkey-man, do you value anything other than the economic value of a human life? Is it all dollars and cents to you? Don't you love anything? Anyone? Because let me repeat what I don't know if I've emphasized enough. You don't get to set the value standard permanently, and if we euthanize for political/social/economic reasons, it'll come down to "people who oppose me politically have no societal value, so I get to kill them." I know it sounds extreme, but it is inevitable (your youthful optimism inspires me, but I would like to see you mature into a little more of a cynic ).

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Not only that, but the very notion of human rights is founded on the idea of inherent value in each individual. You cannot say a person has any rights unless you first accept that they have inherent value as human beings. Therefore, to dismiss any human being because of some utilitarian value system completely undermines the rights of all people. When the colonists kept and abused slaves, they were undermining the very idea of personal freedom. Here's the problem: once you set human value to "contribution to socieity," then you end up dismissing the rights of all people.

But here's yet another problem: the elderly HAVE ALREADY MADE THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO SOCIETY! These are the people who got our country through the Great Depression. These are the people who fought against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. These are the people who put men into space. And yet you're willing to just march them all off to the gas chambers because they haven't done anything for you lately. Personally, I am appalled by your lack of gratitude for those who have worked so hard in their lives to make yours so comfortable.

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Well, to answer your question Buzz, I don't view anyone in terms of dollars and cents. I'm a socialist, if it were up to me, money would be done away with entirely...

And you're twisting my views. I don't care if "one thing can lead to another", that situation can be applied to just about anything...

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Sorry I came in so late, but I just found out that I was being challenge'd! Doodyman, though it's apparent that you aren't reading this anymore, what you said about the misery of a woman is, in my mind, clearly wrong. Put yourself in these shoes: a 17-year-old who has just been raped. It's obvious that you are going to have a child from the signs that you get, and you have a choice to either get an abortion or to have the child. Remember, you're still in school, and have no real source of income; would you really be able to sustain a child? Is having the child aborted before it's eating, breathing, and in your hands better than having it die of starvation, or put in an orphanage, never to know it's mother? I think that the obvious choice here is to have an abortion. As InterruptorJones said, he knows people who have had an abortion, and prefer their life to the other choice. Also, what you said about the baby's heart seems just wrong. Just because an embryo has a heartbeat doesn't mean that it is what I call "alive". Alive to me means being able to feel pain, to think, to understand. A heartbeat simply means blood is circulating through the body. Obviously, you need to educate yourself.

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Evidence of the ol' glassies! Nothing up our sleeves, no magic little Alex! A job for two who are now of job age! The police!

Ok, ok, obviously I was WAY wrong about the whole heartbeat thing, but I still agree with didymus that it's a human being regardless of wether it has a heartbeat or not.
And to respond to your post freakyblueman, I will admit, given that very tough position (your analogy) I actually would be tempted. I suppose if I wasn't a Christian, I really wouldn't hesitate as much(although it is extremely hard to imagine this position.) I also think if it was in very early stages I could try really hard (after it was aborted) to make excuses for doing it. So to answer, I will give you two:

1:If I was a Christian, I would probably remember my family and I would feel very obligated not to do it. so no.

2:If I was not a Christian, I really wouldn't have any reason to not do it. so yes. (Although I think all women, Christian and non alike, feel some guilt after abortion wether it's just a very small flickering flame, or a burning bonfire)

In closing, let me apologize for saying something out of haste that I did not study on. However, I still hold my view, It's a real person no matter if it has a heartbeat or not. Oh and let me give y'all a quote
"I noticed that everyone who is for abortion is already born"