Do Homosexual Couples Value Women Less?

What a mess in Texas. Jason Hanna and Joe Riggs are homosexual partners who decided they wanted a family. Because the two men cannot procreate with each other, they enlisted an egg donor and a surrogate who gave birth to two boys, one sired by each man who was listed as that child's father on the birth certificate along with the surrogate. Hanna and Riggs wanted to adopt each other's boy so they could be legally recognized as parents; however a Texas judge disallowed the listing.1

This whole issue is a mess and it grieves me that Hannah and Riggs don't like the ramifications of their choice to be a homosexual couple. Part of choosing a homosexual relationship is knowing that one can never naturally produce children. It simply cannot be. Instead, they decided to father children through artificial means. This means that the two men enlisted the aid of at least two women in their desire to create children, one or more as the egg donor and another woman to carry the babies to term.

The fact that women are necessary to the child-bearing process shouldn't surprise anyone; even a third grader can tell you that every baby had a mommy and a daddy at some point. But Hanna and Riggs really don't like that reality. They are trying to manufacture a family while still holding onto their male-only relationship. But the question then arises: If a mother is necessary for the first nine months of human development, why would anyone think that she is optional for the next eighteen years? Why are the same feminists who scream because there are no women priests not screaming when two men appear before a Texas judge and say, "We would like you to legitimize our choice to deprive two children of their biological requirement for a mother"? Of course, they didn't put it in those terms, but that's what is implied by the action. Hanna and Riggs think that women add nothing essential to the proper development of human beings. Two people are all that matters, even if they are the same sex.

As an aside, why two? Where does the idea of a couple come from? That is also a result of biology, because only one man and one woman can procreate. You can't get a child with one or three. But if one ignores biology it could be one or five or perhaps even the government itself.

Perhaps that's the solution; take all biology out of the equation, have the government create the babies and assign them to people. Everyone gets the same chance that way and orientation or fertility never come into play. Or, we can say that we feel for the individuals who cannot conceive, but such a solution is worse than the affliction.

Riggs has protested the court decision, claiming that it isn't good for the babies. "Ultimately, we're talking about is what's better: one parent or two parents. For me it's two parents. It's a no-brainer."2 If Riggs was thinking about what's better for children, then he should have thought twice about the surrogacy itself. As I've written before, children from sperm donors don't do as well as children from biological parents.  Also, Mark Regenerus' huge study comparing same-sex families to natural families underscores the fact that if one wants the best outcome for a child, they should be reared with a mother and a father.

 I therefore think that it is right for the judge to rule as she did. Interestingly, I think a case can be made that those who hold to natural marriage as the appropriate environment in which to rear children actually value women more than those lobbying for the legal rights of homosexual men adopting children. Natural marriage proponents see women as irreplaceable—irreplaceable!—in the development on young lives. While some children may tragically lose the opportunity for a mother, to create that scenario by design strikes me as cruel.

References

1 Jehangir, Mariam. "Texas Judge Denies Gay Couple Legal Parenthood of Biological Sons." First to Know. Web. http://firsttoknow.com/texas-judge-says-gay-couple-cant-adopt-listed-birth-certificates-biological-sons-gay-couple-adoption/ 18 June 2014. Accessed 23 June 2014.

2 Ibid.

The Challenge of Islam (podcast)

Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the world, but is still a mystery to most Christians. Is it a religion of peace and a breeding ground for terrorists? Join us as we examine Muslim beliefs and discuss how to effectively witness to Muslims.

• The Challenge of Islam (Part 1)
• The Challenge of Islam (Part 2)
• The Challenge of Islam (Part 3)
• The Challenge of Islam (Part 4)

Keep Your Maybes Away from Our Babies - Arguing when Life Begins

It is a common bromide for people to claim that taking a secular approach to moral issues is better since secular positions aren't as biased by dogma. They claim religion will yield conclusions that are unscientific and unproven. The abortion debate is a perfect example, with the pro-abortion side creating placards of "keep your rosaries off my ovaries" and other nonsense.

However, in the last couple of weeks it has been telling how much pro-abortion supporters don't want to face science; they are looking increasingly desperate in their attempts to shove the question of when a human life begins into the domain of dogma. The whole thing started when Florida Senator Marco Rubio made the statement, "Science is settled — it's not even a consensus, it is a unanimity, that human life begins at conception."1

Rubio is right, of course. Take any human being and trace their point of origin and that being begins his or her existence at the point of conception. A fertilized egg, left to its natural progression, has all the information within itself to develop into a fully functional human being. Pulling just one quote from many, The Harper Collins Illustrated Medical Dictionary defines an embryo as "An organism in the earliest stage of development; in a man, from the time of conception to the end of the second month in the uterus."2 This seems like a no-brainer, right?

As you can imagine, the pro-abortion crowd went into overdrive to try and counter Rubio's assertion. Phillip Bump of the Washington Post went to a single source (the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' Hal C Lawrence, III, MD) and derived a comment of when pregnancy begins, not life. Bump then concludes, "'Life' is something of a philosophical question."3 Planned Parenthood's president Cecile Richards at first refused to answer the question of when life begins, claiming it is a question "that will be debated through the centuries."4 She then said that for her her three children weren't alive until they were born.

While folks like Mollie Hemingway over at the Federalist has done a good job taking apart the claim of no scientific consensus, I wanted to approach the view from another angle. If the beginning of life is something that can be debated and relativized for each person, then it stands to reason that the end of life can also. If science cannot determine if a human zygote is alive, then they cannot identify the clear signs of life at all. So, does that mean that death is a "philosophical" question that doctors cannot answer? Should doctors refrain from judging a person who claims his beloved wife is not dead? How can one pronounce a scientific assessment of death, given all its ramifications, for such a philosophical issue? Perhaps every hospital should have a staff philosopher on hand to help declare things alive and things dead!

Determining life is actually easier than determining death, as two separate entities (egg and sperm) come together to form a new thing. Death doesn't always offer such a clear hallmark; there are cases where it is difficult to determine whether or not a person is dead. However, those are usually dealing with rare situations involving minutes or hours. A person who is dead for a week is definitively dead. In that sense it makes it even less plausible to beg off the beginning of life as "philosophical" while trying to retain a medical standard for the cessation of life.

It's obvious that pro-abortion advocates are running scared in this line of questioning. They are making bad excuses and trying hard to marginalize a significant question of human existence for political and profit motives. They are trying to create a new dogma about life, while seeking to ignore the clear science that agree with the position of those who hold to the biblical view of human life beginning with conception.

References

1 "Rubio: It's 'the left' that denies 'scientific consensus' — on abortion." Speed Reads. THE WEEK Publications, Inc. Web. 15 May 2014 http://theweek.com/speedreads/index/261630/speedreads-rubio-its-the-left-that-denies-scientific-consensus--on-abortion Accessed 20 June 2014.

2 Dox, Ida G. et al. The Harper Collins Illustrated Medical Dictionary. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993. 146 Taken from "Life Begins at Fertilization." Princeton University. Web. https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.html

3 Bump, Philip. "Marco Rubio demanded people look at the science on abortion. So we did." The Washington Post. Web. 15 May 2014.. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/05/15/marco-rubio-demanded-people-look-at-the-science-on-abortion-so-we-did/ Accessed 20 June 2014.

4 Ernst, Douglas. "Planned Parenthood president: Start of life not ‘really relevant' to abortion discussions." The Washington Times. 28 Feb. 2014. Web. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/28/planned-parenthood-president-start-life-not-really/ Accessed 20 June 2014.

Evidence of Life's Design Fits Like a Glove

I recently wrote a post on how the origin of life argues for God's existence. In the comments section, one person replied, "I wouldn't say intelligent design is 'a priori' forbidden, but I would look for the design. Is there a map, or some kind of blueprint? Is there some kind of scaffolding left over from the construction phase? These are things we're actually looking for." Well, scaffolding doesn't continue to exist even on buildings we construct today, so that may not be the best indicator. However, other indicators of design do exist, and one points clearly to the need for a designer.

Most people realize the importance of proteins to life. Proteins make up muscle and tissue of organisms. They even form even the walls of cells, including single-celled organisms. Without proteins, life simply cannot exist. There are many different proteins, however all proteins are built with the use of only about twenty smaller units, known as amino acids.

Amino acids are interesting molecules, in that they are not all shaped the same way, even when they have all the same chemicals. They are known as chiral molecules, which means their structures have direction. One illustration that is often used is to look at your left and right hands. Even though each of your hands has four fingers and a thumb, they aren't the same. A left hand won't fit into a right-hand glove. Amino acids are like your hands; they have a "handedness" to their shape.

The Origin of Life Flips Heads Thousands of Times

Chiral amino acids tend to occur naturally in equal numbers. Just as one would expect to find about as many left hands as right hands in any random sample, nature produces an equal number of "left-handed" and "right handed" amino acid types. The left-handed and right handed versions of these amino acids have the same chemical properties, but here's the interesting thing; only left-handed (levorotatory) amino acids are the ones used to build the proteins needed for life. This means that under random conditions, you have about a 50% chance of a left-handed acid being used in the construction of a protein as well as about a 50% chance of a right-handed acid being used. Each will bond equally well to the backbone. Yet, if you were to mix these acids, you're going to do grave damage to the protein.

 Life requires all the same-handed amino acids to be chosen, but to assume that such a feat was accomplished thousands of times without someone screening out the right-handed acids stretches credulity to its limit. According to this podcast with bio-chemist Dr. Charles Garner, scientist working in laboratory conditions haven't even been able to come close to any model where such an event would happen. Just as any coin that consistently turns up heads would be evidence of tampering, so too does the same-handedness of amino acids.

DNA and RNA - The Other Glove Drops

Some may at this point argue that it is because of DNA or RNA that the left-handed acids are chosen for building proteins. But DNA and RNA have the same issues themselves. The nucleotide chains that make up these molecules are all right-handed! So if one were to start with a nucleic acid to build proteins, it still requires a model of selecting only right handed acids, even though there's a 50/50 chance of getting a left-handed one there. The problem still exists, and it is possibly made worse given the simplest life forms require some hundreds of thousands of base-pairs within the genome.

In all, we have only right-handed nucleotides able to give the instructions for forming proteins and only left-handed amino acids to be used in creating those proteins. Yet all of this was to have happened through mechanical processes with no intelligence involved. In any other field of study, such evidence would be clearly identified as purposeful organization. There is no reason to not count it so here, too.

Natural Marriage: Crucial to the Survival of a Culture

The same-sex marriage debate continues to rage and many of its proponents paint the conflict in individual terms. They ask, "How could you deny two people who love one another the same chance at happiness as anyone else?" They argue that marriage is based on a legal understanding of union, and if one were to change the laws in a state or country, it would simply open the door for more people to be happy.1 However, this is a woefully simplistic view of both society and the law. Those who argue for maintaining a natural view of marriage are not trying to stifle anyone's happiness; they are seeking to guard our society from the dangers that accompany any weakening of the understanding of marriage.

When one claims that "marriage is the building block of society" it's important to understand just what this means. The first communal unit in human history was the family. Families grew into tribes, tribes grew to communities, and communities grew to cities, states, and nations. But the core relational unit that binds all these relationships together is the family.2 This means that the family is the building block of society. Without a man and a woman joining together and rearing children, a society simply cannot survive.

The conclusion that the natural union of a man and a woman is at the basis of continuing our civilization is not mine alone. Paul Nathanson is a sociologist, a scholar, and a homosexual. However, he voices grave reservations about the concept of homosexual marriage. Nathanson has identifies at least five functions that marriage serves and are functions that every culture must have in order to survive and thrive. They are:

• Foster the bonding between men and women
• Foster the birth and rearing of children
• Foster the bonding between men and children
• Foster some form of healthy masculine identity
• Foster the transformation of adolescents into sexually responsible adults 3

Note that Nathanson considers these points critical to the continued survival of any culture. He continues "Because heterosexuality is directly related to both reproduction and survival, ... every human society[y] has had to promote it actively . ... Heterosexuality is always fostered by a cultural norm" that limits marriage to unions of men and women. He adds that people "are wrong in assuming that any society can do without it." 4

Nathanson has partnered with fellow Canadian scholar Katherine K. Young to author "Marriage a la mode: Answering the Advocates of Gay Marriage." There, Young and Nathanson put forth an excellent case why heterosexual marriage needs to be not only protected but encouraged by society in order for the society to survive. They state:

Although no particular culture is genetically encoded, the ability and need to create culture is genetically encoded. We are equipped and even driven by nature, paradoxically, to be cultural beings… culture is not a superficial veneer on something more primitive and basic, in short, but a defining and fundamental feature of human existence.

Because heterosexuality is directly related to both reproduction and survival, and because it involves much more than copulation every human society has had to promote it actively (although some have allowed homosexuality in specific instances.)"

Young and Nathanson then conclude, "Heterosexuality is always fostered as a cultural norm, in other words not merely allowed as one 'lifestyle choice' among many"5 (emphasis added.)

References

1. "Getting married means that things are legal, and you are protected by the law" stated Anne Kester when asked about her relationship that was legally recognized in the Netherlands. The quote appears in the Nov. 20, 2003 Christian Science Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1120/p14s03-woeu.html
2. For one example see _Evolution of Human Societies_ by Allen W. Johnson and Timothy Earl
Stanford Univ. Pr; 2nd edition (November 2000)
3. Nathanson, Paul as quoted in "Questions and Answers: What's Wrong With Letting Same-Sex Couples 'Marry?'" by Peter Sprigg
http://www.frc.org/index.cfm?i=IF03H01&f=WU03L06
4. Ibid.
5. Young, Katherine K. and Paul Nathanson "Marriage a la mode: Answering the Advocates of Gay Marriage"
http://www.marriageinstitute.ca/images/mmmode.pdf Sept. 29, 2003