And?

…and I’d guess he can afford a babysitter.

“A child that wouldn’t exist without two elderly queers wishing it to now does.”

I’m very much with Tim on this one. Though I thought it was his boyfriend who had become a father, not Elton. He’s just going to adopt it. In any case, aren’t we above this tabloid stuff here? 😉

“Mere existence does not justify the circumstances of its conception and birth.”

Says you. Who has absolutely nothing to do with the issue. Nothing gives you the right to judge these people. What possible claim can you have over their lives? Your disgust? On that basis, you should cease to exist because you disgust me.

“Well you can keep your smug, self-satisfed cant and stuff it.”

It would have been better for the rest of us if you had never existed. Alas your low-income but loving father stuck his penis into the vagina of your loving but low-income mother and here you are. Alas we have to deal with you loathing bigotry.

I blame your parents.

“Why should you be able to judge others but GeoffH not have that freedom in your view?”

In the same way as not tolerating intolerance.

“WIn the same way as not tolerating intolerance.”

Ah, the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card played by those who think their own moral superiority places them above ordinary mortals.

Not that I have any role in entering this two-way mud slinging contest between GeoffH and KayTie but KayTie did begin his mudslinging with a premise:

“What possible claim can you have over their lives? Your disgust? On that basis, you should cease to exist because you disgust me.”

My two cents are that there are loads of bad parents out there who breed unhappy children, I can’t understand 1) why Elton John and his partner should become such or 2) why that’s more of a problem then when the bad parents are hetero?

Further GeoffH has made (at least) two statements in this thread that are clearly contradictory:

1) “Two, rich, self-regarding and selfish celebrity qu**rs, too old to be proper parents have just condemned a child to the status of a trophy baby.”

2) “I’m happy to trade insults with you all day long but quite how you think you can insult two blameless people who are not here and able to defend themselves is puzzling.”

Also: “As Paul ilc suggests, it is the motivation as much as the circumstances that is questionable here.”

Sorry, but what do you know about their motivation? Please go tend to your own life and stay out of that of others

Kay Tie

“In the same way as not tolerating intolerance.”

Not tolerating intolerant acts is broadly civilised behaviour. Not tolerating intolerant judgements is censorship.

“Not tolerating intolerant acts is broadly civilised behaviour. Not tolerating intolerant judgements is censorship.”

I’m not censoring him. His own words condemn him. I do judge him by his words.

“An accessory, life-style baby for the couple who have everything else. That’s what is truly loathsome.”

But is it any more loathsome than, say, Jolie’s or Farrow’s habit of ‘collecting’ ethnic moppets like Pokemon?

“A healthy dose of intolerance is the necessary balance to the libertarian ideal of freedom to do what you want. If you don’t have the freedom to both voice intolerance & act intolerantly then there’s nothing whatsoever holding society together.”

What’s this “society” of which you speak? Those that invoke the amorphous blob of society are the same ones who in years gone by pass sumptuary laws that tell me how many buttons I cahave on my coat, or lock single mothers up in mental asylums or who sterilised gypsies for passing on “bad blood”.

“Price we pay.”

Very much not so: it’s the price someone else pays. Which is why you don’t have the slightest problem with intolerance because you’re with the majority dishing it out, not the minority on the receiving end.

But is it any more loathsome than, say, Jolie’s or Farrow’s habit of ‘collecting’ ethnic moppets like Pokemon?

JuliaM. No. Just the same. Loathsome but then the others weren’t the object of this commentary.

And loathsome too, is that Italian woman over 60+ years undergoing IVF and now at 70 or so thinking of going through it again, I read somewhere.

Kay Tie

“I’m not censoring him. His own words condemn him. I do judge him by his words.”

By all means judge GeoffH and his words. But you said to him: “Nothing gives you the right to judge these people”, which sounds like politically correct censorship to me. You are denying he has any freedom to voice these opinions with which you passionately disagree.

Personally I feel sorry for children of all celebrities. It doesn’t matter who the parents want to have sex with. They all seem to be at pretty high risk of getting fucked up.

I wonder if the baby in question will ever have to be nervous about his parents finding out that he’s straight?

The idea that existence is inherently a good thing is absurd. You wouldn’t miss it if you weren’t around to do so!

On the other hand, there is an asymmetry here because the idea that human existence is inherently a bad thing is not absurd, given the presence of suffering. See David Benatar’s really excellent book “Better to never have been”.

“…you don’t have the slightest problem with intolerance because you’re with the majority dishing it out, not the minority on the receiving end.”
A strange accusation to make of someone living in a culture not their own & who’s constantly aware that he’s a guest here & should behave like one.
“..the amorphous blob of society..” as the Lady misquotedly said doesn’t exist but intolerance is one of the ways that individuals arrive at a consensus about what behaviour is likely to be in the common good.

Strangely, or maybe not so, all the examples of intolerance you quote are the sort of things that get handed down from those in authority. Do you really think any individual would be bothered about how many buttons were on a coat?

That’s the problem really. Groups need rules if they’re going to get along together. We can either design our own rules by a process of approval & censure or someone will contrive the power to force those rules on us. Then you’re left with the capriciousness of the powerful.

“I hold that people are individuals to be judged on their behaviour.”

Which is precisely what I was doing regarding John and Furnish. But, of course, you can’t see that since ‘queerdom’ puts a protective carapace around them shielding them from all criticism.

And all in the cause of your self-defined privileged recipients of ‘tolerance’.

‘the first rule it will produce is” That there will be no intolerance but that which we decide.”’

ALmost, but not quite, correct.

Should read ‘but that which Kay Tie decides’.

@35
Oh, I’d already put her down is a Guardianista in deep cover…

“Oh, I’d already put her down is a Guardianista in deep cover…”

Hehehe. It’s a pity my handlers there didn’t tell the moderators at CiF, who banned several of my accounts.

“Define unpleasant bigot”

Yes, there is a bit of redundancy in that, for there are no pleasant ones. Put it down to poetic licence (and quickly, before Geoff’s committee revokes mine).

@ 36 & 41
OK if you won’t I will. Someone who’s opinion you have a problem arguing with.

I don’t have to agree with Geoff to respect his right to have that opinion & voice it. If it doesn’t receive any support then it’s just his opinion.
But let’s say his opinion is overwhelmingly shared by the public. Then by definition his opinion is correct. That’s how people at large feel about this subject. Banning it as a topic of conversation won’t change things.
And I can’t see why he should have to keep silent just because he might offend you or for that matter the ‘gay lobby’ or whatever they’re calling themselves this week.

“or for that matter the ‘gay lobby’ or whatever they’re calling themselves this week

Oh dear, Pete. Now you’ve done it.

Sorry to see you falling for Kay Tie’s monomania, ambrose.

We’re getting sidetracked.

GeoffH, why are they selfish? Would you disapprove if it was a straight couple adopting/having a child aged 48/63? What’s the difference? Do you think the child will be disadvantaged somehow? Or what?

Would you disapprove of a straight bachelor using a surrogate mother and raising the child himself? What about a straight couple using a surrogate because the wife is infertile?

“But no more qualms than I would have about a child born because their parents were horny but not using contraception, no more than I would than a child born to loving heterosexual, long together parents to whom the child was a “surprise”.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake. Why do you think nature puts a time limit on a woman’s fertility?
Precisely to avoid the situation that these two are going into.

Tim adds: “Nature” doesn’t put a time limit on anything. But you’re right, the evolutionary process has indeed put a limit on a woman’s fertility. That limit is that she’s born with all the eggs she’ll ever have. So, once she’s used them all up she no longer contributes to the propagation of her parents’ genes.

So, die why don’t you?

Men generate gametes continually. So this restriction doesn’t apply.

More to the point though, we don’t kill women once they’ve gone through the menopause. Heck, some of us don’t even divorce them when they have.

Up until very recently, humans very often died of accident or disease by their 30s or 40s. Thus there was no evolutionary drive to evolve longer lasting bodies. (It makes no sense to evolve a body that can reproduce at 70 when the chances are it will be dead by 40). It is more likely that statistics and evolution are responsible for the reproductive time limit of animals than any puritanical streak of nature.

But if we are going to indulge in anthropomorphising nature, then I would say that nature can fuck off quite frankly. Nature has given us disease, suffering and premature death. People are at their best when they are working to thwart nature.

Can’t argue with anything you’ve said there Tim but answer me this: How long before the lifestyle choice of a pair of mega-rich queens becomes the ‘right’ of every gay couple denied the opportunity to procreate because cruel nature has overlooked providing either of them with the appropriate plumbing. State funded of course. Ten years?

“Tim adds: “Nature” doesn’t put a time limit on anything. But you’re right, the evolutionary process has indeed put a limit on a woman’s fertility. ”

How to disagree with yourself in two sentences.

And you have the nerve to question what I say?

Someone (Dennett?) proposed a thought experiment in which mankind deliberately increased over time the age at which women have their first pregnancy as a life extension mechanism. A thought experiment only, of course, as the opportunity cost would be too high. But pete is right: we might be doing this inadvertently anyway.

Tim adds: There’s an element of this observable. Women with later menopause tend to live longer lives (this has been shown with some statistical rigour but lost in trying to remember where or who by).

And it’s also been shown that it’s the very fact that older men have an eye for younger women that has led to the extension of human life spans. Even if only half the genes come from someone who has managed to get old that’s a start…..

“Tim adds: No qualms? Of course not. But no more qualms than I would have about a child born because their parents were horny but not using contraception, no more than I would than a child born to loving heterosexual, long together parents to whom the child was a “surprise”.”

Except we have several hundred thousand years of evolution that produces good results, by and large, from exactly those results. We know that children with step-fathers do worse than children with biological parents. So here we have a male parent with no biological ties to the child. Every expectation we should have should tell us such a child has a higher risk.

“Indeed, given the lengths to which these two went to have a child I’d say I have fewer such qualms. Precisely because those things which humans have to make effort of achieve are those which they value more.”

But they value them for their own reasons. It is not always true that those reasons are the same as the long term interests of the child.

“And it really is going to be terribly difficult to state that this child is ever going to want for anything material, isn’t it? Unlike, ooooooh, 98% of the species? 99%?”

Which is irrelevant. Above a certain level what children need has nothing to do with material wants. Charles Murray makes this exact point somewhere.

All this is a massive experiment with the object being children – children who have not and cannot give their consent. Nor is it really about the children. There is a pre-existing ideological goal – equality for Gays – which is driving this. And it has nothing to do with the welfare of the children. All of this ought to give any sane person pause for thought. It may be bigoted and homophobic, but the driver of policy regarding children ought to be the welfare of the children. Not some idea about what sort of perfect society we would like to create.

“The worst thing that could possibly happen is that Elton writes a song about the laddie. Children in the Wind anyone?”

That shows a rather limited imagination about what the worst consequences are likely to be. Civilisational extinction is a bigger one I would think.

ChrisM – “So did not tending the sick, and allowing the weak to die. It is not our duty to do evolution’s job.”

I don’t see your point – we have evolved to take care of the sick and we do a damn good job of it. It, presumably, has a strong evolutionary advantage. I am not asking for us to do anyone else’s job. It is just that if we have evolved to engage in stupid sexual behaviour *and*then*cope* with the consequences, we are likely to be quite good at that. As opposed to something else entirely.

“Because step parents may want their own children, and bringing up other people’s children is a barrier to them bringing up their own.”

That may be why it has evolved but these days we have so few children that there is no barrier. It still does not, apparently and I would be careful with the numbers, mean that step-fathers are the best for children. Every gay family is going to have at least one step parents – ignoring the fact they will also lack even one parent who has had nine months to become intimately acquainted with the child.

“Are you suggesting we ban people from bringing up children who are not their own? This will affect more than just gay couples.”

No but I would suggest it is good social policy to encourage as many children as possible to be raised by two biological parents.

“At higher risk of what?”

Abuse and neglect in all their forms.

“The same goes for plenty of children.”

I agree.

“Or, ‘I never asked to be born’ as every child ever has at some point come out with. There is nothing unique about this child in that regard. Every childs upbringing is massive experiment.”

Except we have 6 billion existing people and some several hundred thousands of years or prior experience which tells us heterosexual parents can do a pretty good job. We have precisely none that suggests Elton John et al will. It may be true that every relationship is an experiment, but this child is an experiment in ways that other children are not.

“No, this is something the Mr and Mr John did themselves. There was no policy here. There is a rich gay couple using some of their wealth to have a child.”

No they did not. They could not have done this in the 1950s. They would have been in jail for one thing. We did not pay surrogates for another. We have weakened existing laws to make them more equal each and every year since then. We have done so with the goal of an equal society in mind. We have now gone so far that we are experimenting with children’s lives. There is a policy here and it is absurd to deny it.

“Wow, that is one hell of a slippery slope you are positing there. Given there are more people alive than now than have ever been alive before – and that has been the case for thousands of years – this does not seem like a very realistic fear. And certainly not one to lay at Mr and Mr John’s doorstep.”

Yeah but they are not members of our own civilisation are they? Where the population is growing are precisely the regions that have rejected Gay rights. Those regions that have accepted Gay rights are dying. I have seen at least one claim that Dutch marriage patterns remained strong right up to the point where Gay marriage became legal. Since then they have dived off the same deep end as the rest of us. The future belongs to the bigots. The only question for us is which set of bigots do we want that to be.

“Many of your points can apply to any child, not just children of gay parents.”

Sure. Except that chil#d rearing as a product of a marriage between two biological parents has been road tested. Exhaustively. It does not work all that well, but it works. Nothing else we know of works as well. There is no reason to think Gay marriage will either.

So homosexuality is a social construct whereas healthcare is evolved? I find this unlikely. It seems are more likely that healthcare is a social construct. I don’t see why you are fetishing those things which give an evolutionary advantage. What separates us from the animals is that we have largely broken free of such constraints. We don’t have to only have reproductive sex. Gays are hardly the only people who engage in non reproductive se.

We have more children than ever before. The human race is increasing in numbers, not decreasing. And of course having step children is a barrier to having your own children. Children are not cost free to raise! If you have to spend resources on raising other children, you do not have the available to raise your own. I am glad you are ignorint the fact that neither of the parents carried the child for nine months, it means I can too.

“No but I would suggest it is good social policy to encourage as many children as possible to be raised by two biological parents.”
I don’t disagree with this. BUT that hardly means I need to condemn those families where this is not the case.

I don’t for one second think that Mr and Mr John’s child is at higher risk of neglect and abuse than the children of the average straight couple.

The debate is not over whether or not hetero sexual parents do a pretty good job (some do, some do not), but whether there is any reason to think gay parents will not (some will, some will not). Louise Brown was an experiment too; now there are millions of IVF babies. This child is no more an experiment than any other child.

“No they did not. They could not have done this in the 1950s.”
Nor could a rich couple have had IVF in the 1950s. So what? There are all sorts of things we can do now that we could not do in the 1950s.

“They would have been in jail for one thing. ”
Hardly something to boast about or an argument.

“We did not pay surrogates for another. ”
Who is we? None of this changes the fact this is not a societal policy, this was a rich couple using their wealth, plus current technology to have a child.

“We have weakened existing laws to make them more equal each and every year since then. ”
Where laws are odious, weakening them is a good thing, abolishing them even better.

“We have done so with the goal of an equal society in mind. ”
Depending on what “equal society” means this is a good thing. (If it means equal rights in law rather than wealth redistribution to acheive equality of wealth)

“We have now gone so far that we are experimenting with children’s lives. There is a policy here and it is absurd to deny it.”
This is hysterical rhetoric. Mr and Mr John are not policy makers, and indeed had to go to another country to thwart the UK’s policy so it is absurd to keep on claiming that what they did is the policy of anyone other than themselves.

“Yeah but they are not members of our own civilisation are they? Where the population is growing are precisely the regions that have rejected Gay rights. ”
I would not call societies that execute gays civilised, but I take your point. However most people would not claim these are the kind of societies we should aspire too. If you are so concerned about Western birth rates, you ought to be pleased that there is now one more baby born in the west than there would have otherwise have been. (There is not some straigh couple out there that would have had a baby, but now will not just because the Johns have had one.

“Those regions that have accepted Gay rights are dying. ”
Lets not mince words, these are often regions that execute gays. Many of these places do not allow drinking, pork, sex outside marriage or all sorts of other things. Not places we want to emulate.

“I have seen at least one claim that Dutch marriage patterns remained strong right up to the point where Gay marriage became legal. Since then they have dived off the same deep end as the rest of us.”
I have seen at least one claim for all sorts of things. Seeing one claim hardly makes something fact. I see no plausible mechanism whereby straight people decide not to get married, because gay people can. The idea is absurd.

“The future belongs to the bigots. The only question for us is which set of bigots do we want that to be.”

You can see the future? That is a pretty bold claim to make. When I was a lad, communists claimed the future belonged to them right up until suddenly it didn’t.

“Sure. Except that chil#d rearing as a product of a marriage between two biological parents has been road tested. Exhaustively. It does not work all that well, but it works. Nothing else we know of works as well. There is no reason to think Gay marriage will either.”

I agree that the ideal is two biogical parents in there 20s or 30s raising children to maturity, prefereably lottery winners, with no history of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, crminal tendencies etc. Where we differ is that I don’t think that those who do not fit this ideal should be prevented from having children.

@ Dave “Do you mean the population of the planet is higher than at any time in the past?”

Yes, I do mean that. I have actually heard the other claim – that there are more people alive now than have every existed – but like you know this to be nonsense. Its up there with being able to see the Great Wall of China from space in terms of nonsense claims that somehow seem to persist.

I am not sure what taste or talent have to do with being a parent, but I must confess every time I have ever seen EJ caught on camera or interviewed, he has always struck me as a fairly unpleasant person.