Add to that the fact the survey was meant to guide government and wasn't even conclusive. Now, on to India's national pastime.

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Nonsense. Only married couples can raise families, as every schoolboy - as Augie - knows.
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Their is not weight to your argument. Facts and research prove this to be wrong. It is merely an opinion. If you can highlight to me that there is no cases where same sex couple successfully raised a family, provide me the evidence. Your post loose and meaningless words.

To prove your point research from Same-sex parented families in Australia by Deborah Dempsey and the guardian highlight this notion of the success of raising a family at the same level and even better than heterosexual partners.

Auggie wrote on Feb 22^nd, 2018 at 11:01am:


You think? Over the years many different social models have been suggested: Plato's Republic, Moore's Utopia, Rouseau's noble savages, the Paris Commune, the Communist Manifesto, etc, etc, etc.

Families were never just a heterosexual couple until the Victorian nuclear family. A family once consisted of extended kin. Breastfeeding was often shared by different mothers. The only reason you think the nuclear family is the best form is what Marx called ideology: you've internalised the economic model we're structured in.

The economic superstructure is is the reason different family models fail. Quite a few were tried in the 60s and 70s: the Manson "Family," the Hare Krishnas, radical lesbian communities, etc. They didn't fail because they were inherently inferior to the nuclear family, they failed because they didn't fit into the economy.

Look at the difference with the Mormons. Some live in faith-based communities in polygamous families. They haven't died out because they build very successful businesses (with very cheap labour - all the sons they create).

The nuclear family is the current way to fit people into the wider economic model of capitalism, that's all.

Plato, Moore, Rousseau and Marx all had things to say about bringing up citizens. Children were seen as owned by the state, not their parents. This is the fundamental point of the social contract.

And yes, the nuclear family is a distinct shift from the extended family. The nuclear family is a middle class phenomenon. In India, for example, only middle class people have the freedom to live together as couples with their 2.5 children. The rest of the country lives with parents and in-laws and heaps of kids. Your choice of partner is restricted - most marriages are arranged. Wives are responsible for their husband's parents. Parents - and even siblings - are responsible for getting their daughters and sisters married off.

The whole model is about child care, aged care and the welfare of women and girls. We outsource many of these functions in our society, and women are fully included in the labour market. With the rise of the atomised individual, we've forgotten that for much of our lives, we're dependent on parents, partners or carers to survive. This is also capitalist ideology.

On the extended family, consider the politics of Romeo and Juliet - "two houses both alike in dignity", not families. "From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star crossed lovers take their life" in order to mend their parent's strife.

The Montagues and Capulets made up the "blood" of the city. Such extended families never lived in isolation. The "chemistry" Shakespeare described in this play was not just about love, but the interrelationship of extended families. Mercutio even makes a joke about Juliet's wet nurse. This nurse gets more lines than either of Juliet's parents. She sees Juliet as her own daughter.

Our own sense of family is fundamentally different to Elizabethan England. The change? Capitalism.

Auggie wrote on Feb 22^nd, 2018 at 2:47pm:


By equations do you mean the Republic, the Utopia, etc?

The only constant I can see is the male providing the seed and the female providing the womb.

Auggie wrote on Feb 22^nd, 2018 at 2:56pm:


No one values hommersexual marriage, Augie. History is pretty consistent on this.

I don't think anyone really cares about it today, either. Do a poll in the US, NZ England or Ireland.

I'll bet they've forgotten it even exists.

Auggie wrote on Feb 26^th, 2018 at 8:42am:


True, but you don't need a marriage certificate to breastfeed.

In some places, most families are now single-parent families - mothers. This is now possible because the state has become responsible for sole-parent incomes and child care.

In the past, the church was responsible. Unmarried mothers went to institutions hidden from the rest of society, or had their children removed and adopted out. Prior to that, they were placed in work houses, or lived in slums, or worked in prostitution.

Many single-mothers around the world are sex workers today. What else do you do in a country without state income support? Marriage is largely a contract designed to keep men supporting the mother of their kids. Once mothers don't require this support, the institution of marriage will naturally break off, fading into irrelevance.

Marriage is not an irrelevance in developing countries without social security or paid maternal leave. But it is here.

I don't think it would be conservative to change our policies to those of India or Bangladesh, for example. This would be a radical change.