Them folk are not like us folk. I really had to twist my brain to read this article from Touchstone on "contradeception", because I'm finding it hard to imagine how screwed up in the head you have to be to think that way.
It's an article against contraception. When these quiverful zealots argue that they love kids, I can sympathize; when they say they are trying to outbreed non-Christians, I can sort of understand the logic, even though I think they're wrong; but this story…children are like an afterthought. The reason you shouldn't use contraception is because getting pregnant is public evidence that you are fulfilling your marital duties.
It's a kind of busybody's idea of heaven and earth…or perhaps a very monkey-like one. Everyone is supposed to monitor everyone else's sexual behavior, and the purpose of marriage is to make it easy for everyone to track who is screwing who.
Sexual relationships, while enacted privately, are public property. The lover declares, "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine." This protects the relationship from internal and external breach. Those within the relation-ship are bound to each other by their promise of troth, held in trust by the neutral third parties who witness the promise. Those outside the relationship know that this new unit of their community is being rightly founded, and also that any attempt to besiege the promise is illicit.
And shunning contraception means everyone will be able to tell who is sneaking around, and who is getting the job done in the bedroom. Well, at least it'll make it easier to monitor the women, but then, that's what this is all about…making sure that female fidelity is evident.
And in former times, when the married couple fulf lled their vows to God and each other and their witnesses, they produced, at God's favor, babies to prove it. The lack of a baby indicated either a broken body or a broken vow. While both called for the community's prayer, the latter also called for the community's assistance in healing the marriage for the benefit of everyone, for a broken vow means broken people. When a baby gave evidence of a union where no vow had been made, it was similarly in the interest of the community to correct the situation in the way that would most benefit all the parties involved.
Again, it's all about letting everyone know that the woman is having sex, by making sure she's pregnant all the time. If you have sex outside of marriage, you are "damaged goods" and must be prominently labeled as such.
In marriage, a couple gives over supervision of their marital health to those who approved their avowal. A sexual relationship between people who made no vows would normally not remain a secret for long. But contraception blinds the community by concealing the sexual act outside of marriage, or its absence within marriage, and by leaving goods damaged in various ways unmarked as such.
It really is the public notch on the bedpost model of the purpose of pregnancy!
Why must we have physical, public evidence of the faithful fulfillment of even those marital vows most of us can't imagine neglecting, at least at first? Who would lie about such things? Well, who would talk about them? Allowing nature to manifest our faithfulness is certainly more graceful than a verbal report.
Except…Mrs Murphy could be knocking boots with the mailman every morning, in which case her swelling belly is not a testimony to faithfulness, and Mr Murphy could be making regular visits to the bordello out on county road 6. Pregnancy is not a good evidence of fidelity, but only of the fact that a woman is getting inseminated.
The whole article is this bizarre. Not rushing to have children, practicing family planning, implies that maybe you aren't having sex as often as you should.
This is also why the Church perceives discord in the decision of a newly married couple to take a few years to "enjoy being married" before ending marital enjoyment with children. Apparently, we are expected to take them at their word that they are fulfilling the vows made before us, although they refuse to tender the token. In those storied former times, we'd have worried that perhaps the sweet things weren't quite sure how things worked. For now, charity ordains that we fill in the child-shaped marital deficiency with the sad assumption of trouble conceiving, except in the great majority of cases, where bride and groom make no secret of being confirmed window shoppers at the baby mall. If you're going to be married, be smart, after all. Be ever copulating but never conceiving. Their debt to their witnesses (to say nothing of each other) goes quite unacknowledged.
I married at 23, and we waited 3 years to have our first child. I swear that we were not celibate for that period of time, nor would any sane person have assumed we were. I did not feel a need to get her pregnant instantly as a way of staking a claim on my ownership of her uterus.
And yeah, we were copulating all the time — I thought we were paying a debt to each other in building a bond. We owe no debt to witnesses outside of the marriage. I suppose if they'd insisted, we could have gone at it on the picnic table at a family reunion, but seriously — it was none of their business. Apparently, by abstaining from flaunting our fertility we were treating everyone else disrespectfully.
So also is the public treated disrespectfully by the couple who, 2.1 children later, give no sign of continued faithfulness to their vow. Is he so disgusted by the sight of his wife's birth-changed body that he will no longer suffer its embrace? Is she using her maternal exhaustion as an excuse to withhold herself from him? Can this marriage survive? The only way we know a marriage to be sexless is when it comes out in therapy, on the golf course, at play dates, on the pages of The Atlantic.
This whole thing is very disturbing. We stopped with 3 children, by intent — we love kids, but we wanted to give each one the attention they deserved, and we had to plan ahead for that expensive business of making sure each one got a good education. The good of the children, however, is not part of the equation with these people.
So we stopped having babies almost 20 years ago…and apparently, this blue-nosed wowser would think from that that I'm now disgusted with my wife's body, or that my wife is withholding sex now that the tiring business of making children is done. You know, it's none of your business what any two people's private sex life is like, but anyone can note that despite the fact that she's had a flat belly empty of embryos for a score of years, my wife is still with me and we're still happy together.
Who'd have thought that you don't need to be in a state of constant pregnancy to have a good and productive relationship? It's sad to think that there are women out there who feel the measure of their worth is determined by the diameter of their abdomens.
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The quiverful gang is all agog at the prospect of "outbreeding" less religious people and swamping the culture with their progeny. It's a fail-safe, sure-fire plan since religion is hereditary! I have another: When only straight people reproduce, gays will go extinct!
Right? I mean, it's only logical.
Too much religious antilogic! Honestly, I think that PZ is testing our resolve by managing to find one vile example of religiosity after another. I'm not sure I can take it anymore.
I think PZ owes us a nice fluffy post, possibly with bacon. Or some acceptible vegetarian alternative.
So infertile women, or women who marry after they are still able to conceive, are essentially under infinite suspicion of infidelity?
These people are just fucked in the head, and you made this point oh so well in your Sunday Sacrilege post: why would any woman ever agree to be a part of these sick, twisted, misogynistic hate cults?
The article is blithering madness.
Nevertheless, even without such religious nonsense as presented, we DO (sadly) live in a world where far too many women relate their sense of worth to the diameter of their abdomen - a world full of skinny dieting pre-teens, eating disorders, size 0 models, airbrushing....
Someone should send the author of that bit a copy of the study demonstrating that something on the order of 10% of men are unknowingly raising children biologically unrelated to them.
And a box of condoms lest she breed.
What's so vile and damaging about this way of "thinking" is that the whole Christian sexual ethos is about tying a woman's entire worth as a human being to her sexual experience. (A man's worth is not assessed on similarly narrow criteria.) The Quiverfull crowd just take it to its most egregious extreme.
Things like this really make it really obvious that all this shit is about dominating the womenfolk.
Especially this puts into perspective how these organizations literally view their women and children as property that pay off some dividend rather than actual genuine people you love and support.
The whole thing reminds me of a recent news story on Terri Schiavo parents who have been basically running a scam charity for themselves based on their attempt to "save their daughter". To those more and more inside the patriarchy, the humanity of women and children are decreased more and more until they are merely something to exploit as a get-rich scheme like Terri's parents or a means to "keep track of your 'manliness'" as measured by sperm motility and willingness to forcibly impregnate and a means of striking a blow against the "brown hordes".
You see the same with their obsession in keeping their kids "christian". Once they're not, they might as well have never existed, since all that matters is keeping the numbers of the cult up through breeding and sustained child abuse. Turn out atheist or gay, throw them out of the house because they're no longer a means to advancement.
It's a disgusting practice and fighting it is one of the things I'm most grateful to feminism for.
I am disturbed by the statement that the couple owes kids to those who attended their marriage, and to the public in general. What the fuck?
People have an obligation to society, right enough: to contribute to society at some minimal level. Having babies before or after the desire to have children is far outside the bounds of that minimal level. I don't owe society kids -- and certainly, I don't owe society the proof my wife & I are making the beast with two backs.
I'm ooged out by the thought. It's none of society's business what my wife & I do in the bedroom, by ourselves or with other consenting adults.
I wonder if this "obligation" is somehow related to the desire of many theists to prohibit same-sex marriage? There seems to be a link here, what with the talk of "obligation" and the need of the public to know the couple fulfills their role of copulating couple.
That piece is just twisted.
oh damn you blockquote typo
In other words: "We like to watch."
It's a simple formula for these people:
woman == living incubator
"the Church perceives discord in the decision of a newly married couple to take a few years to "enjoy being married" before ending marital enjoyment with children."
Not only do they want to interfere and tell everyone what to do, any remote possibility that you might enjoy sex is obviously to be squashed.
@nigelTheBold:
Oh, I'm sure it is. The theist wants nothing more than to dictate what you can and can't do in your bedroom. I made the pithy comment about the state of my... well, state as such:
Virginia is for lovers - that is to say, those who are straight, white, only do the missionary position, don't use contraception, and who vote Republican.
Oy. Where the hell do you find this stuff?
Why do I get the feeling that the the women who wrote and disseminated the article would be happiest peering into their neighbours' windows, just to make sure that marital 'duty' is being fulfilled.
I'm surprised they aren't also calling for sheets to be publicly displayed on wedding nights just to prove the bride was a virgin.
Somehow this tripe always seems worse when it is spread by women revelling in their own oppression.
I'm not as creeped out by that mental image as I thought I would be. Perhaps because it's such a sweet sentiment.
That's what sex tapes are for.
The spousal unit & I have no kids. I guess we're not even human.
Yet another demonstration that to some people, a woman is nothing more than a walking womb.
Perhaps the saddest aspect is the women who themselves appear to believe this.
I dont even know where to start with this little piece of insanity. The fact that it's written by a woman surprised me a bit, but hey, religion is an equal-opportunity brainwasher. I can't even imagine what a shithole the world would be like if everyone followed this logic.
Anri
They want everyone else to be as miserable as they are.
Reading this alongside the previous item is just so fascinating . . .
I don't think I've ever seen so many women supporting blatant misogyny as on that Generation Cedar site's comments. *sigh*
Overpopulation is a serious issue
This was the exact argument used by my priest when I was in high-school and the debate about homosexuality being biological or simply a "choice" was in full swing in the mid-80's...
"If being gay was genetic, they'd have all died out hundreds of years ago".
Naturally, I thought he was a moron, even then.
@MoonShark:
It's all over the Christian religion, sadly. Women sit day in, day out listening to preachers who tell them that they're objects and property of their husbands. They nod and praise Jesus for the wonderful sermons.
This morning's paper had an article about how France has outlawed the burqa because it treads on equality and freedom, but I think about that and it makes me sad to see women in America putting themselves in emotional burqas while their minds get swallowed by religion-glorified misogyny.
The people who approved my avowal are me and my guy, and we are the ones who "supervise" the health of our relationship. We are the only two people who need to be okay with my decision to never have kids. The general public can fuck right off.
This post is sort of amusing in a very perverted, twisted sort of way. The kook comes across as a chimpanzee explaining what their society is like. It might have even made sense when most children died before adulthood and women commonly died from pregnancy and childbirth.
But this is all far out on the very edges of the lunatic fringes beyond crackpottery and into something nameless and crazy.
The average family size in the US is 2+ and we would be in negative population growth without immigration. A few serious baby factories out in the boonies aren't going to make any difference.
*waits for KingUber to derail...
Exactly
Are you fucking? You promised us you'd be fucking! You'd better be fucking! Prove to us that you're fucking!
With all these stupid dehumanising rules, these people clearly don't understand religion. Isn't God supposed to be this nebulous spirit of nzz...*snore*...snzzup! Huh? Sorry, I accommodated myself to sleep by boredom.
Holy distended vagina, Batman!
So my husband and I aren't fulfilling our duties to those who witnessed our marriage vows, because I thought one kid was plenty and had a tubal?
Just wtf business was it of the JP and his two clerks who conducted our wedding if I were reproducing? I'd never met them before that day, and I never saw them again.
Can you imagine what would have happened if I'd tracked down where my marriage witnesses lived to tell them about my reproductive efforts? Can we say "restraining order" and "held for observation in the psych ward"?
What... the fuck... did I just read? This makes no sense. This is some Alex Jones-level bullshit right here.
Beware-a picnic table is not as sturdy as it appears..
"A Puritan is someone who is desperately afraid that, somewhere, someone might be having a good time." --H.L. Mencken
What is so good about big families anyway?
My friend the exCatholic came from one of 6 kids. They were very well off but with 6 kids resources were still tight and the kids competed among themselves for them. They all get along as adults but it could have turned out differently.
Among the 6 kids, there are a total of 6 grandchildren. Some had 2, some had zero. FWIW, none are Catholics anymore either.
This whole lets outbreed the normal people idea has some flaws. It assumes that bunny rabbit breeding is hereditary, that people have no desires or interests in being anything but baby factories, and that it is all that much fun and worthwhile in the end.
Rather than struggle to raise 15 kids, most of us get educations, travel, have friends, pets, and hobbies and a myriad of other interests and ways to spend out time including trying to make the world a better place.
Or Mr. Murphy, for that matter.
Or at least can use the idea to gain power, status, and control over others for themselves.
As my mother used to say, "Momma's baby - daddy's maybe," which still sort of bothers me since my father is 5'3" and I'm 6'2".
Maybe it's the prurient nature of this post, but the more I think about it the more I'm fascinated.
So, this (or something like it) is the reason for all the discussion in the bible about this or that 'barren' woman. Why it's almost as if the Abrahamic religions were invented solely so everyone could have their nose up every woman's nethers.
Good thing we invented pornography so we could watch strangers in the act of having sex, rather than stand at our neighbour's door with a gourd to our ear and wonder.
Did anybody see this link on the article page?
http://concordiansisters.blogspot.com/
I can't tell if these people are serious or just taking the piss.
In any event, "creepy insanity" comes to mind.
Of course you know that the accomodationists over at the intersucktion will simply complain that PZ is just making True AtheistsTM worse by attacking the low-hanging fruit and picking on the "fringe" christians... True ChristiansTM don't actually think this way... right?
Or would that be completely missing the point?
Meh. It's about quality not quantity.
What do they expect to *do* with all these kids?
I am pretty sure people who think like this assume that their kids will raise each other. That is how large families work in my experience- the older kids got raised by parents, and then the older kids raise the younger kids, and so on until mom's uterus falls out or stops working. Its a horrid thing to do to kids.
This is very old fashioned and primitive. Haven't they heard of the 21st century?
These days instead of being continuously pregnant, people could just post proof of their fucking on the internet.
I suppose facebook or myspace would work for photos. But really the breeders need to get their own Youtube channels. Just upload timestamped videos as proof of reproductive activities. Keep them under a minute or storage space is going to get tight pretty quickly.
This is just simply bizarre. It's not even logical on its own terms, even if you accept that married couples are required to "fulfill their vows" (my vows were notably absent on the subject of copulation, though that would liven up weddings!) even if neither party wants to. The vows belong to the public??
But then, to claim that pregnancy is some kind of proof? Does the "sweet young thing" who wrote this article really understand how it works?
This is nothing more nor less than the thinnest possible veil on the proclamation that women should be kept barefoot and pregnant.
Y’all are obsessing over the lacework in the veil.
Cheers,
b&
--
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
``All but God can prove this sentence true.''
My marriage vows were not religious ones, but I've been to plenty of religious weddings, and I don't recall any of them promising anything to me as witness, much less promising to fuck each other's brains out and reproduce as often as possible.
Damaged goods? Public property? Duty to the witnesses? WTF is wrong with these people? I can't begin to imagine how anyone in modern day America, even someone deluded by religion, can hold a world view that says that your sex life is everyone else's business and that they will use the evidence of your sex life shown by your pregnancy to judge you and decide if you are a real woman or your husband a real man. This is the most misogynist crap I've ever heard.
Maybe we should start a baby making arms race, atheists vs. religious. If we got serious about it they could never beat us, in spite of their numbers, because we don't have god telling us when, where, and who we can and can't knock up. Of course, we atheists can form our own ideas about morality and ethics, which given our society and our education usually includes not making a bunch of babies for ulterior motives.
Of course the real baby making race they think they're in is against Muslims and Hindus, I hate to tell them, but I don't think they can win that race either.
Dodgeball tournament, duh!
Yeah. My grandparents were from a family like that. My grandma got abused horribly and spent her whole life being semi-crazy. Most of her many siblings slowly killed themselves through self abuse, and her closest companion brother died of a horrid illness when he was six. She never actually says what and I think it's more sinister than she lets on.
All her life she kept the only pic of that brother hanging up some where in the house.
That's how poor immigrants lived back then when they came here to work.
I didn't think people idolized it.
I'm pretty sure my family would have done things differently if they'd thought they could.
They couldn't then. There was no birth control and no divorce. Not in that community.
Funny thing. Despite all that over breeding. I'm not just he only child... but damn near the only descendant.
I only have a few cousins on that side. Turns out raising a lot of kids badly is a terrible long term strategy for survival.
As if I needed more evidence that stupid people think stupid things. I know one shouldn't get too big a head about how much they know (or think they do), but seriously PZ, every day I come here I feel that I've grossly underestimated my own intelligence compared to that of others. This QF item is further evidence.
I couldn't help but notice how many times this thing cites the rights of the public at large. What are these people, communists? Doubtful, since they are also theists, but I do note that irony. Another big one I'd point out is that these QFs may very well be taking a lot of government "hand-out" money they otherwise decry for others at the ballot box. How else are they affording 12 children when mom's at home all day and dad works an HVAC technician job?
I-- I-- ::goggles::
Anyone in the Philadelphia area might want to duck, because the exploded bits of my brain are raining down right now.
It's definitely worse for being written by a woman. Denial much? The whole thing stinks of someone who's frantically trying to stamp out the tiny little glimmer in her brain that knows this is utter bullshit. If she listens to that glimmer, she'll have to admit that she's been an idiot for her entire life. That's very sad.
It's things like this that make me fantasize about forming a secret A-Team-like organization that rescues women from fundie religions and brings them to deprogramming centers.
Oh yeah- does the weird community monitoring of private matters thing smack of mormonism to anyone else? I think that robbing people of privacy and breaking down their sense of self in a community is an easy way to brainwash just about anyone.
Backwards. That's the only description for people like them.
And once again, Christians seem to suggest that without some sort of external monitoring and sanction, they would go apeshit. This is part and parcel with the claim that without belief in God there is no reason for people not to murder and rape. There is no sense of personal responsibility, no sense of a rational morality -- it's all "we better not do it because we'll get caught".
Actually, I think the idea of breeding less is a good one. People around here have as many kids as they can afford, and when the economy dips, they are totally fucked. The economy dips down every 5-10 years, and when it takes a major hit, that means your huge clan is in fucking poverty and has seriously decreased their life expectancy and health. Then there is the whole matter of not ruining the earth to attend to. "Winning" at the breeding game is still losing is a serious way. These quiverfull assholes don't know enough about the world around them to see how damaging and stupid their plan is for everyone, including their spawn.
My virus detector went nuts when I tried to open that page. Did anyone else have this problem?
This was written by the woman of 16 17 Kids and Counting, right?
They seem to think they have to outbreed us godless heathen atheists.
They don't realize--we don't breed new atheists--we take *THEIR* kids. Bwahahaha!
(And I wonder where the bloody-sheet-on-the-wedding-night "proof" fits into this perversion...)
I'm pretty sure they could solve this whole problem by fucking in public. Who knew Quiverful were exhibitionists? Oh wait, yeah...
Most of the huge families I have known had fairly successful business dudes heading them. In fact, I think the luxury of thinking about doing shit like being quiverfull is an exercise of class privilege. Anyone who does this without enough money will end up having their kids taken away.
What bugs me about the guys who do this and have enough money is that they expect infinite growth of the economy to be possible (to keep their lifestyle going for more than one generation). Why the fuck else would someone have 10 kids and expect to be able to pass on enough business to the dude children for them to have 10+ of their own? Its fucking madness. The world absolutely cannot work that way. There is not an infinite amount of resources.
What a sick person. Maybe we should remind them that striving to maximize copies of their DNA is actually a Dariwnian response ...
"Pregnancy is not a good evidence of fidelity, but only of the fact that a woman is getting inseminated."
And, assuming the baby is the husband's, it only shows that the couple is having sex once a year.
They might well be getting huge amounts of taxpayer provided, government welfare, food stamps, aid to dependent children, subsidized health care and so on.
The state of Utah did a study of Mormon polygamists in their town of Colorado City Utah. Turns out that 90% of the population was on welfare! How else does some guy with no education support a few wives and a mob of kids in the middle of nowhere?
IIRC, the state went bonkers and told them they didn't want to support them and their kids so they better like, you know, get jobs and work. Not sure, but I think these days the FLDS does a lot more to support themselves.
These fringe groups don't have any problems with taking as much government money as they can. As far as they are concerned, the outside world is filled with evil monsters who only have a kid or two, work for a living, and do science and stuff. They rationalize begging, borrowing, stealing, and parasitizing the rest of us as much as possible.
This makes sense if you assume she somehow believes that we are still living in small agrarian villages where the community is responsible for everything and everyone, where "making sure every woman has as many children as possible" is pronounced "making sure our tribe survives through hard winters and famines". Because the attitude she is promoting is appropriate for that kind of world, where a large number of women die in childbirth, a large number of children die in infancy, and the work of children is essential to survival. It is absolute nonsense for the modern world in which none of the above is true, however. This makes one wonder if the author believes it is the case, or if she wishes it were.
Perhaps it's just the flow of the rhetoric, but I strongly suspect that the idea of the wife being repulsed by the husband has not occurred to the author - or is simply not important.
PZ, you might want to disable that link. Whether it's original or not, the site is now doing some crazy malware type shit.
Actually, 19 and counting
If you're ever in a conversation with anyone, and he (it *will* be a he) refers to any woman as 'goods' (damaged, or otherwise), then punch him, hard, firmly, and with malice.
You'll be doing the right thing, really.
Skeptifem-
I logged in here to post almost exactly this, but you beat me to it.
Seconds #65 The link starts one of the computer security scams. Not happy McCrappy Security didn't pick it up.
This reminds me of the story about the daughter of Augustus Caesar. Supposedly she had several children, all by her husband, even though she was incredibly promiscuous. A friend asked how all her children looked like her husband, even though it was well known she carried on many affairs with other men. She said something to the effect that she never took a lover until she was already pregnant by her husband.
What do they expect to *do* with all these kids?
Use them as a way to disprove that "there is no free lunch", obviously.
From a commenter on that article:
Yes, THAT is the reason the church is "suffering" so much - never mind that people are becoming more and more disillusioned with their ancient, bigoted, sexist maxims and demands, never mind that church officials have spent hundreds of years abusing their positions of trust in order to further their own personal agendas, it's PROMISCUITY and SECULAR SOCIETY! We're making it WORSE for everyone by making them SHOW how HOLY AND RIGHTEOUS they are, instead of it just being assumed off the bat!
@65, 69 : Yeah, Kaspersky, too, is insisting the page contains a trojan.
True. The rule is it takes 3 generations to spend a fortune. Seen it myself.
The patriarch was a timber baron and investor, smart guy born in a shack up in the hills. Tens of million of USD at least. 4 or 5 kids, 16 or 20 grandkids, a few great grandchildren.
That money is all gone. One of the family retainers said it. "They overbred and overspent".
I accidentally stumbled upon that ’18 children and counting’ television program the other weekend whilst nursing a stupendous hangover. I’m ashamed to say that I watched it avidly for about an hour… * sheepish *
It was the most astonishing combination of scary and cringey.
And blatant ego stroking - ‘Look at us, aren’t we godly and blessed and amaaaaazing, with all these children, bla bla bla… And we have NO debts’.
Well of course you bloody don’t, you’re probably being paid god knows how much to pimp your children out on TV.
In fact the most worrying part was probably Jim Bob’s helmet hair. (Oh crap I’ve even remembered the names and everything…) :-P
But you’re right, this is classic KEEP THE WOMEN UNDER CONTROL!!! They don’t know what’s best for them. And by the way we want to know when you’re fucking, who you’re fucking, and if you’re doing it right according to us and our special fairy story. Because if you aren’t then baby jesus will cry and cry…
@ raven-
They are all on food stamps because their "spiritual marriages" don't count, so they are counted as single mothers by the state. They don't need that money though, polygamist cult women who live in huge compounds make shit loads of money for the cult leaders. These people get 3rd grade educations because they work their asses off in fields all day. The cult leaders go for maximum exploitation.
If the polygamist groups were so poor I don't know how they would manage to build enormous compounds and uproot to move when it becomes legally inconvenient. I think that whoever is doing the brainwashing is raking it in.
BTW, if you go to the site (or any other) and it starts popping up a bunch of fake security warnings and crap, use Alt + F4 to close the windows, don't take a chance on clicking anything.
Throughout the bible, god treats humanity like livestock, commanding them to breed and then culling the herd. It’s no coincidence that many fundamentalist Christians think of themselves as sheep and feel the need to breed like farm animals.
I suspect you're right about this, skeptifem. And it is a horrid thing to do to kids, as the older ones never actually get to be kids.
This is also incredibly damaging to woman's health. There is a lot of literature on the "four 'too's" that lead to increased maternal mortality: too early (young), too many (high parity), too close (not enough recovery time between pregnancies) and too late (old). Usually, these issues are more localised in developing countries with high infant mortality rates and high average family size...usually.
The duggars (19 kids and counting) are finally going to get some serious flack soon. Most people thought they were harmless or weird but not bad, but now that they had that kid that weighed like one pound and almost died (still could die) and are saying they will still have more children the press is freaking out. Rightfully so. I guess they didn't hear the jesus speak when they say shit like "I leave it up to god!", it means "I will have babies until I cannot anymore". It is deplorable.
I find it strange that Christians who comment:
What utter nonsense. God sanctions the vow, no one else; this woman seems to almost have a fetish about considering what people do in private and how this “affects” the public.
don't get that this exact drive that "this woman" exhibits is a core principle, a foundational cornerstone of most religions.
The commenter rightfully mocks the medieval attitude but apparently doesn't take the next logical step to consider that the God she believes in might itself be just another invented tool to justify control and meddling in other people's private lives.
I'm going to have a lot to say about this later when I have more time. But for now:
1) This seems like it boils down to "We aren't mature enough to maintain a healthy relationship with our spouses, so we need to do whatever we can do get the neighbors to nod in approval."
2)
None of your fucking business. In fact, I'm not even going to give anybody my word about whether we are fulfilling our vows because those vows were between us. I swore an oath to her, not the world.
3) Incidentally, frequent shagging was not one of those vows. Sex ≠ marriage.
4) Their interest in where everybody else's genitals have been is disturbing.
Sadly they will outbreed us.
In the meantime, if any fundies really want evidence that I'm doing the horizontal mambo I'll happily go over to their house and wipe my dick on the curtains.
It's comforting to know that should I turn out to be infertile I am automatically of 'broken body' and defunct as a member of the community. How nice of the guy in the sky.
re 60:
I was actually expecting this reference to Darwin to come from a supporter of this view. Something along the lines of "Who are you atheists to judge, even your oh so holy Darwin expects you to make as many babies as possible". Or something.
My friend the exCatholic came from one of 6 kids. They were very well off but with 6 kids resources were still tight and the kids competed among themselves for them. They all get along as adults but it could have turned out differently.
Imagine how hard life is when you're poor with 8 kids.
My mother's never gotten over growing up in those circumstances. She's 71, and I can guarantee that right now she has at least 25 clothing articles in her closet with the price tags still on them, and they'll each show a markdown. Half of them has never and will never fit her. Half of the other half she will never wear even though they fit. If there are less than 50 pairs of shoes in her house (all but five pairs lightly or never worn), I'll eat them.
She's terrified of not having clothes and shoes. There were times when she had to make two dresses and one pair of shoes last a whole school year.
Her 5 older brothers who survive are all Scrooge cheap. One of them lived in an oil worker's cottage for the free rent while saving 90 cents of every dollar he and his wife earned. He paid for up front for his first home, a modest little ranch number that he built with wood from torn-down schools. He drives Chevys. He buys his clothes from the same place he buys his furniture and appliances: Sears.
And he's worth millions.
It's obvious that this obsessive cheapness is the other extreme of what causes my mother's profligacy.
Brownian- I believe it. Anti polygamy activists have been talking about the freakish number of dead babies that Utah/Arizona area FLDS cults produce for awhile now. It is totally fucked up:
http://www.childbrides.org/excuses_CP_plig_cults_Southern_Utah.html
At first I thought this madness was written by a gay man who felt under constant pressure to prove he was straight. That would have made some sense.
But the author is a woman who is advocating the use of her own body as a means of... of anxiously, frantically, panickedly bending to that kind of peer pressure so she can become one of the bullies, the in-group, herself.#
It's only fitting that the page contains a trojan. Do not visit it unless you have Windows and a good antivirus program (I do, heh heh). "By their fruits you shall know them" indeed!!!
Well, yeah, but she didn't think that far. She's too terrified to think in general (see comment 50).
Same for my maternal grandparents: their 6 children have 6 children in total so far.
Speaking of population, I saw this guy on The Daily Show a few weeks ago:
http://authorsplace.co.uk/fred-pearce/blog/the-overpopulatiom-myth-as-p…
Annoying copy editor warning: Celibate means unmarried. Not having sex is "chaste."
Before you publish your book, you might want me to take a look at it. I do that for a living. In your case, no charge.
Don't know if anyone else had the issue, but when I went to the link to the original article, it tried to tell me my windows directory was corrupt (on my linux machine, no less). Nice red flag for attempted malware installation
Fair warning - May want to remove the link from the article. FWIW, my husband saw the same garbage come up when he went to the link from HIS work computer.
This fool reminds me of when I was pregnant with the Twin Spawn and felt sort of visibly sexual. Then I realized that I'd taken advantage of the advances of reproductive medicine and really, no one could tell if I'd ever had sex or not. Given the marvelous advances of science, the only real evidence that married couples are boffing each other's brains out in the approved manner has got to be PZ's picnic table scenario.
I will propose this next time my Catholic neighbor starts mouthing off about the sanctity of marriage or the evils of birth control. Good thing the local RCC parish has a number of those sturdy aluminum picnic tables...
I am pretty sure people who think like this assume that their kids will raise each other. That is how large families work in my experience- the older kids got raised by parents, and then the older kids raise the younger kids, and so on until mom's uterus falls out or stops working. Its a horrid thing to do to kids.
This is exactly how the Duggers organize the parenting load. Each new child is paired up with an older sibling. How the homeschooling works is anybody's guess.
What pisses me off about this hatching machine gone berserk is that I suspect (strongly) that tax dollars are paying for them to imitate bunnies. I don't know how they can survive without relying on government subsidies. Charity can't provide all that a family that size needs, and I seriously doubt that the only breadwinner earns enough to forsake gubmint help.
Wow, I think I threw up in my mouth a little reading that dreck.
It's very clear this is just an excuse to be able to look down on others.
What vile, vile people.
Jeez, isn't that why there's webcam??
I've gotta start typing faster, and stop getting distracted by half dressed Asian men, baseball and youtube.
One needn't suspect that tax dollars are subsidizing them, even if they don't get WIC or welfare or any of that kind of assistance, you still get a $3650 deduction on your income tax for each child, plus a $1000 tax credit. We tend not to think of it this way, but those credits and deductions are expenditures, they are tax dollars subsidizing having children. That's not necessarily an unreasonable thing, but when one family has 19 kids? That's $88,350. Quite a subsidy. There are income rules and what not, so maybe they don't see all of that, but maybe we should cap the number of eligible children?
The name escapes me now, but I'm reminded of a story of a Roman woman (a wife of a politician, I believe). She had several children by her husband, and yet was certainly not faithful to him. She said she would only take on "passengers" when she already had "cargo."
@legistech:
Did you promise to have and to hold?
OK, before the tax experts show up and question my math or tax skills, it's not $88,350. They get $19,000 for having 19 kids, but the $3650 per kid is a deduction in the amount they are taxed on, not in their actual tax, so for that amount the actual subsidy is quite a bit smaller. Still a lot of money.
Annoying copy editor warning: Celibate means unmarried. Not having sex is "chaste."
Thanks for the warning... nope, still annoying.
By etymology, "celibate" does mean just "unmarried." But etymology is not meaning, nor does it tell us anything about current usage. For that you need a dictionary, not a mistaken pedant, and a perusal of several dictionary definitions reveals that the word is indeed commonly used to mean "chaste" as well as "unmarried." That usage has actually pretty much displaced "unmarried" in the vernacular.
Before you publish your book, you might want me to take a look at it. I do that for a living. In your case, no charge.
Yeah, 'cause the publisher won't have anybody who does that for a living.
FIFY.
I think the government doesn't need to get into the business of telling people how many children they can have. That particular sword can cut both ways.
I guess it's another question whether we want to continue to offer what amount to tax subsidies to people for breeding. Personally, I think it might be no bad thing to try to assure that children are cared for by giving their parents a bit of extra money. The risk of abuse seems small to me relative to the benefit, but I admit that this is really just a top-of-my head guess.
And while I'm one of the people who think the Duggars are a bit weird, I don't think that the misfortune of having a premature infant is evidence that they're to blame because of having too many children. The rate of prematurity in the U.S. is over 10%. With nineteen kids, it might be more of a surprise to find only one premature birth.
Chastity actually means having sex in accordance with one's state of life, so if you're unmarried, you don't have any, even with yourself, and if you're married you do in the approved manner and only with your designated partner. The word and teachings about it are still loaded with anti-sexual-pleasure overtones, though.
So celibate priests, being unmarried, are still capable of being unchaste if they masturbate or bother the altarboys, parish women, or each other.
#46 > Maybe we should start a baby making arms race, atheists vs. religious. If we got serious about it they could never beat us, in spite of their numbers, because we don't have god telling us when, where, and who we can and can't knock up.
The atheists are sure to lose that battle, unless you can find some way to keep them from eating their babies.
What gets me about the Duggars is that they're essentially using their older daughters as slave labor. Have a look-see at that show sometime, the oldest four girls frequently have multiple buddies, always comprised of the youngest children. The boys have buddies who are of an age to generally take care of themselves.
We've been watching family sizes get smaller in my Catholic family. My grandfather had 12 siblings, they all had between 8 & 13 children (except my great-uncle the priest). So my dad has 66 first cousins and seven brothers. One brother had five kids, but most of the rest are 2, 3, or 4, so I have 24 first cousins and three siblings. Of the cousins (and I am one of the oldest, so this may just take time) only two have children, and they both only have two (and one has adopted both of them). It'll be interesting to watch, as many of us have only gotten married in the past two years, but I know that my husband and I are reluctant and many of the others are still getting advanced schooling and whatnot.
The Duggars
Youtube!!! Youtube!!! Youtube!!!
The picnic table fucking will work, sort of. In the summer. In the winter, it is going to be pretty miserable. How cold does it get in Minnesota, -20 degrees F sometimes. What happens if people get caught in a whiteout blizzard?
I don't know why churches need proof that people are fucking anyway. People do it voluntarily without having to be forced into it. In fact, the religious freaks spend a huge amount of time and energy trying to make sure their teen age kids don't do it.
ambulocetacean #83:
These mouthbreathing creatard quiverfulls (quiversfull? whatever) will probably squirt out 20 kids each. As for me... I drew the line at adopting a parrot. Damn. It. All.
I visited the site before reading the comments, so I was unaware of the Trojan ("contradeception" indeed). Using XP, browsing with Chrome, have basically no antivirus installed. Am I fucked? Is it my holy duty to remain infected as proof of getting fucked?
No such prevention needed. We'll just let the Quiverfulls do all the baby-making meal-raising for us.
*Sigh* I dream of a future where quiverfull families are dotingly tended in serene and lush open fields by atheist ranchers, where only the finest excessive babies are dew-picked, cleansed in finest-quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope and lovingly frosted with glucose.
Presumably the quiverfull morons also regard it as shameful to lose a child - whether through spontanious abortion or infant mortality.
So their response to losing one of their children is...to blame the (presumably grieving) mother. And to expect the mother to blame herself. For not being dedicated enough.
(Channeling David M)
David M: What antivirus software do you have?
jidashdee (my father is 5'3", I'm 6'2"): Interesting how that can turn out. My mother's mother had three sons born before my mother and one son born after her; the oldest was 15 when the youngest was born. The first two sons were hulks, over 6', and both had full heads of hair into their 80s. The third son (my namesake uncle) and my mother were much shorter and gracile, about 5' 5" or 6", and the uncle had Adlai Stevenson hair by age 50. The fourth son died at 12 of polio (are you paying attention, antivaxers?) and I never knew him. I never knew my mother's father; he died at 52, younger than me, and I suspect that alcoholism was the ultimate cause of his death. (I have his taste for booze, but unfortunately not his talent for making the stuff; see "Golden Pond, Kentucky.")
My father's mother had seven tall brothers but was not tall herself. She was robust, as opposed to fat -- robusta, non gracilis. I look just like her as she looked at my age, facially speaking, and I have the same body conformation. My father was slight and short; his only sibling, a sister, was slight and tall -- several inches taller than him. Both my sister and my brother are taller than me. (Well, OK, they drank lots of milk as kids and I couldn't stand the stuff . . . and I am the oldest.)
I have one son; I'm confident that he actually is my son only because he looked incredibly like me when he was one or two. He doesn't look that much like me now, and he's taller than I am.
Oh well, TMTMI . . . where are Kseniya and Lynna?
So, would this person say it's equally inappropriate for people who are having sex outside of marriage to use contraception, since they haven't made any sort of promise to have sex in that case? Or should they get it free?
It's perfectly understandable, though. These are high status, privileged women striving to maintain their own position of dominance over other women, who are their most direct competition, in a social system that doesn't let them compete directly with men.
Nope, could be computer animated. Only the picnic table will do. We could move them into the church hall in the winter, or just do it on the stage. We could even install a pole, or just use the flag. Then we'd need some music, some disco lights, and some saucy nordic wenches serving beer. Oh wait, do we want our churches to become live sex show clubs? (Hint - it might make the altar boys safer.)
Maybe a little OT, but if you think about it, the Darwinian competition isn't actually about making more babies, but more grandkids.
The issue is self-replication, and making a baby is only half-way there, because you are not a baby. You are replicator, and a baby is not (yet) a replicator. You haven't successfully completed replicating yourself until you make another replicator. (Or, more broadly, your progeny has to replace your ecological role. Only then, from the perspective of your genes, is your soma safely dispensible and you can go kaput without evolutionary penalty) The whole process of raising your progeny, whether you participate directly or not, is part of the self-replication process.
That's why K-selection works as a strategy. You make fewer kids, but you end up with more grandkids. And it's what the early Social Darwinists completely missed when they fretted about those they considered their "inferiors" outbreeding them.
People (ie: women) having sex outside of marriage aren't supposed to use contraception because it covers up their sinning. They're have to get knocked up so the community will know what dirty, dirty whores they are. How would the Puritans have known to punish Hester Prynne if it hadn't been for Pearl?
What a lovely way to bring a child into the world: as a signifier of the sins of the parents.
What the...
I can't...
What is this I don't even
My browser said the site contained malware.
Appropriate, somehow...
They have, not they're have. Typos. Blaaaah.
Ah, well do I remember the abandonment of youth and cackling uncontrollably on the floor surrounded by the remains of the dining room table...
Exactly, because the people believe sex is something to punish a woman with and give the man control. In addition to "sinning" sex with contraceptive implies that both party are enjoying the sex which is a big no no in fundie circles (since only they are allowed to have fun with sex apparently).
I went to my local planned parenthood, and saw some protester with who hung a picture of the virgin mary on a tree in what I think to be an attempt to call all the women who goes there "whores". I would have torn it down if my parking wasn't about to expire.
Great point. It's amazing how many men (and women) miss this very important distinction.
These are the exact type of people who think people such as myself (childfree) should not be allowed to legally marry. If you're not knocked up, barefoot and busy pouring the bible into kids' heads, you don't qualify for basic human rights.
http://www.motivatedphotos.com/?id=18770
Do you think they would be satisfied if the happy couple nailed their used condoms to the door?
Brownian: Would you take the bones out?
Not accurate. There are a lot of studies, with results ranging from 1% to much higher than 10%. Where the man is in a stable relationship, the figure is closer to 1%. In the population as a whole, it is probably less than 5%.
I published one of the most comprehensive "survey of surveys" at:
http://www.childsupportanalysis.co.uk/analysis_and_opinion/choices_and_…
*HEAD DESK*
Between reading this post and the "Rape isn't so bad!" insanity post, I think I've suffered some serious brain damage.
Does anyone know what percentage of those men are in fact unknowingly raising children biologically unrelated to them? I can think of plenty of circumstances in which a man and woman would agree that it was nobody else's business who the biological father was: for example, she had an affair or one-night stand but they agreed to stay together, it's a polyamorous relationship, they became involved when she was already pregnant, he's sterile and they asked a friend for help rather than going to a sperm bank, she was raped and decided to keep the baby. In some of those cases they'd be basically sure, in some it would be guesswork, but I wouldn't label any of them "unknowingly."
(I'm assuming that these studies exclude adoptions and stepparenting in which everyone acknowledges that the social father isn't a biological parent.)
@legistech:
Many people have wedding vows that require copulation... at least, it's my understanding that's what "with my body I thee worship" is talking about.
Reading the comments on that article, I can say that there's dissent on the author's position even from within her own community. The point "Nobody's business but the couple's" has been made by several posters, most articulately by a lady named "Jennifer" (go girl, that's my name too!).
Her most interesting statement was:
Misattributed paternity is likely waaaay above 10%. I bet that isn't even the tip of the iceberg.
If I took the bones out they wouldn't be crunchy would they?
Seriously, though no connoisseur would deign to eat a deboned baby, sound marketing practices dictate I should probably develop a boneless line for the agnostics. They'll probably eat 'em with Cheez Whiz and simulated bacon bits and other crimes against nature.
Just for the arrogant, holier-than-thou, "you can't really know anything" type, though.
Wow.
just freakin Wow.
That's some weapons-grade stupid there.
PZ, do be sure and handle only with proper protective clothing.
You mustn't let them get to you. Because if they found out, then they'd just continue doing this stupid until they completely destroy your brain.
Be strong. (For the sake of the children...)
Per official catholic doctrine, ALL children are signifiers of the sins of the parents, all the way back to the original sin of Eve (officially Adam and Eve, but privately, we know they think it's just Eve).
ALL sexual activity is sinful, married or not. Just when within marriage it is a lesser sin than when not. But still a sin.
All babies are evil, tainted babies. One wonders why they are so pro-life.... and against human cloning. If they had any doctrinal consistency, human clones would be the holiest of the holiest that human beings could possibly get.
This is part of why it's been so hard to eliminate FGM, especially amongst the Sande. The only authority a Sande woman ever has is over new Sande initiates.. and you can't be a Sande initiate without having your clitoris carved out. The women feel that if clitoridectomy is abolished, they'll lose what little scraps of power they have.
I sometimes wonder if there's also a hazing mentality that goes on. "I had it done to me, now I want my chance to do it to others."
The key to really delicious babies is swaddling. Swaddling is like a veal box for infants, it keeps the meat extra tender. Free range babies can be a little stringy.
Skeptifem @ 59:
I've heard that rationale before too, and I'm not sure I believe it. The Duggar (sp?) father apparently does OK for himself. But one of my parents was the last of seven kids (not that QF was even around in the first half of the 20th century), and I know someone who currently has 9 kids and will persist in having as many as possible until she can't anymore. In neither case is there significant money floating about, although times, tax codes, and social mores have changed. Maybe some of these changes allows for extra money, such as tax credits for each kid. But as other point out, breeding as survival strategy only leads to more suffering once something goes wrong. As much as I'm against legislating that people can only have a certain number of kids, I'm pretty well set against the very erroneous assumption that resources are endless on this planet. At some point one woman's desire to have as many kids as possible is going to intersect with the rights of those already living.
<headdesk>
If you have Windows, don't visit that site unless you have a good antivirus program. I've survived it.
You run around free, having Windows but no antivirus?!? You are fucked.
Man.
I give up. You win.
?
Avast. It's free.
LOL!
Probably dip them in ranch dressing, or put katchup on their boneless baby-dog.
amphiox @ 137:
Which is another example of how evil the idea of original sin is. Assuming the Bible is true, how many generations has it been since A&E? And we're still having to pay for their sins? But there's that human element at work there. Even their god said down to the 7th generation would repayment for sins be demanded. Yet here we are, well past that point, and it seems only us humans remember how deep that was supposed to go. That is, unless it's 7 years starting with each individual. In which case the doctrine is not only evil and worthless, but utterly inescapable.
#72 quotes someone from Crazyland (where I'm not going, not even on a Linux box):
By the same logic, I suppose we should make sure everyone's computer has enough viruses and malware on it, or take the thing away from them because they're obviously not using it very much.
Criminy, I'm not getting any lately specifically because we have kids! (Having small children keeps you permanently sleep-deprived, which limits sex drive.)
Time to change the child tax credit. It should be limited to 2 or 3 children. Anything beyond that, Uncle Sam isn't covering the bills. Welfare should work the same way.
I expect they'll all become good little atheists.
If I remember reading correctly elsewhere, the Duggars have the tax thing covered in ways other than child tax credits. I think they've declared themselves a church or some religious entity. I'm looking for a citation in between producing some useful labor here in my cube.
Color me culture-shocked.
This woman need serious help - from the psychiatric kind.No sane person can come up with so much bullshit in one place.
I think the "have and hold" part was in my vows, but there was no indication or quantity, quality, or frequency.
@131:
Yes. Do bear in mind that the QFs are the fringe of fundyism. Of my friends from fundamentalist days, the largest families I can think of off-hand have four kids (though I may be missing someone larger), and some have none. Even my devout Catholic friends have "only" seven. So on the whole: above average for my generation, but nowhere near lunatic double-digit fecundity. Even Tim LaHaye only recommended five -- and advised using the Pill to plan their timing.
Why doesn't anyone talk of slow cold smoking and curing human babies? They have almost no meat - they're nearly all fat and viscera, sort of like bacon with sweetbreads and chitlins mixed in.
That article is absolutely vile. Should we start hanging bloody sheets out the window after the wedding night, too?
What about using one's body to serve bacon and beer? Does that count, or do genitals have to be involved?
I actually sort of like the idea of sex as worship (in the atheistic awe sense, of course), but I doubt the proponents of baby-as-evidence-of-worship folks are talking about the real Pentacostal shaking and speaking in tongues intensity whoopie that I have in mind. And too much public discussion of the nature of one's worship in this particular arena is just weird and creepy.
Wouldn't it be great if define family based on caring rather than sex?
I guess their definition of a "productive" relationship is the relationship which "produces" the most human biomass. I don't know about everyone else, but I'd much rather be a K-determined population than an r-determined population.
The Gregarious Misanthrope @146:
I think any plan that ends up making life harder for low-income mothers is a bad idea.
The idea that marital fidelity is linked in any way to pregnancy is insane to the point of having been a constant source of comedy.
Two relatively recent examples I instantly thought of were the film "The Man Who Went Up A Hill & Came Down A Mountain" and Father Ted's hilarious "Speed 3" with its super-randy milkman leaving the good catholic women of Craggy Island with "very hairy babies".
What about using one's body to serve bacon and beer? Does that count, or do genitals have to be involved?
I haven't had enough coffee yet for the impact of that statement to sink in...
Did anyone read the second comment in that thread?
there may be hope yet:
These idiots may not believe in childless marriages, but they certainly believe in getting divorced.
From reality.
@Ichthyic - The beer and bacon are part of the malabrigio religion cult.
159 comments on this one and before the ink is completely dry. Every time I thought that the profound stupidity of fundieism had reached the absolute limits... Where in the flying, singing, summersaulting ratfuck did the author of that manifesto of overwhelming idiocy come from? -- Nevermind I don't even want to know.
Though I must give this fundie crackpot credit for adding a word to my vocabulary. I had to look up 'troth.' The dictionary labels the term 'archaic.' Biblical?
As a teenager I read Ehrlich's book The Population Bomb. That and a few other books like Silent Spring, etc. really got my dander up about selfish people having too many kids...what, their genes are so fabulous, they need to breed indiscriminately? With the population of the earth at 6,822,199,173 according to the World Population Clock, it is just SELFISH to breed too many people. ADOPT a kid who is languishing in foster care if you want another child. And I practice what I preach, I have one female offspring, age 29 yrs. There is not enough food, space, clean water, energy for all the people we have now on earth. And us here in the developed west, we hog all the resources. People in other parts of the world do not get their fair share of the earth's resources. I say, 1 child is enough. Condoms should be passed out free of charge everywhere including middle and high schools.
According to the writer cited by PZ, woman's role is as a physical release and brood mare for her husband...
I will dedicate my vasectomy to them in July. And if they want to know why we're stopping after only 1 child (far short of 2.1), I'll gladly tell them that it is related to PTSD caused by sexual abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest (you know, one of those Christians).
What the fuck. Are they still living in the Roman Empire?
As a poster hinted above, there seems to be some downside to the bunny rabbit breeders. One group, the polygamists seem to have a lot of dead babies scattered across the landscape. Part of this might be due to incestuous inbreeding which is another of their problems.
So, who pays for and supports all these kids? In many or most cases, directly or indirectly, you do. The taxpayers, the government.
David Marjanović #141
And yet after installation of and scanning with Avast... clean. Being a work-only computer, it doesn't venture far beyond PubMed and a few sites like Pharyngula on a regular basis.
IslandBrewer #153:
Two words: baby gravy. You haven't lived until you've had oven-roasted Thanksgiving baby with baby gravy.
because I'm finding it hard to imagine how screwed up in the head you have to be to think that way
You can say that again. I've read and reread the article and get puzzled by the comments that this is "good" or "nicely written" as it it seems kinda creepy. I have a funny hunch that we are all misinterpretting what its point is supposed to be. But for the life of me I don't have the slightest idea what it could be.
The bit of joyful sinning of the flesh (as opposed to sin of the devil) and knowing glances and joy in teenagers getting knocked up and forced to marry, all seem to imply this *isn't* some pious anti-everything xian kill-joy but some bizzare example of what a fun-loving but devout xian *would* be ... which is, apparantly, utterly alien and completely incomprehensible.
The beer and bacon are part of the malabrigio religion cult.
after all is said and done, you may have found the one, single, religion to escape being relegated to knitting circles.
:)
oh yes, I went there...
after all is said and done, you may have found the one, single, religion to escape being relegated to knitting circles. :) oh yes, I went there...
Hee, hee. *chortle*.... Wait... I don't get it. Though it sounds like it should be very funny.
---
("It smells like librarian in there" also sounds like it should be a punch-line to a very funny and very dirty joke, but I don't get that one either...)
But . . . but . . . the best thing about being human is getting to fuck like bunnies without having to reproduce like bunnies!
These poor people are unclear on the concept, methinks (bad pun intended).
An unhealthy obsession with sex, plus lots of indicators that you're not getting enough, is the hallmark of the fundamentalist. That makes sense, when you consider that they all seem to hate each other and spend most of their time peeking in each others' windows looking for sin ammo.
This Rebekah person is 31 and has five children. She gives her industry as law enforcement, but I suspect that means her husband is in law enforcement, since she also claims to have been pregnant and/or nursing since she was 22. As the mother of four children (two sets of two, 11 years apart), I guaran-damn-tee you she and Mr. Rebekah aren't making whoopee any too often, unless they're seriously into 4-minute quickies.
I furthermore predict that when she's 37 and has 8 children, Mr. Rebekah is going to run off with a younger model who doesn't view him as a walking turkey baster, at which point she'll have to become a doula or lactation consultant (since that's her skill set).
"So we stopped having babies almost 20 years ago…"
Didn't PZ's daughter just graduate from university?
So was she around 16 when she graduated from high school or something, given that she graduated from university at 19?
Public property? That's a very collectivist point of view.
Wonder if Glenn Beck is going to go after these guys for being communist. :P
This is called sour grapes. Crazy fundies deny themselves the use of contraception, because an old book says so. They have sexual urges, like anybody, but repression only makes them stronger, I guess. So they find themselves burdened with numerous children. OK, I know it's the wife who is actually burdened with them, while the husband preaches, writes fire-and-brimstone articles and goes to gun shows. But still, I can't help thinking that they're jealous of other people who only have a reasonable number of children, or none at all, and have free time and can afford more things.
We had a high church wedding and "with my body I thee worship" was in there (which,as the nice pagan girl I was at the time--talk about your mixed marriages--I was perfectly happy to indulge in) but I am pretty sure it was not followed up with "and we're going to be checking up to make sure that you do!" Let alone, "you better pop out a kid every year so we know you are keeping to it!"
I see this whole article--I did read the whole vomitous thing before seeing the virus warnings but I'm on a Mac so probably safe--as just another example of pregnancy as punishment. The whole opposition to contraception and abortion has very little to do with saving the precious little babbies and a whole lot to do with making sure that if a woman is going to fuck she is going to have a badge of shame to show for it. In the context of marriage, the baby isn't so much a badge of shame but the pressure against using contraception is a warning to stick to your spouse--woe to the woman who pops out a kid who looks like the milkman, or the local priest or whoever! The "damaged goods" remark just drives it home.
This attitude infuriates me. I loved being married, loved having kids, love being a mother and wanted a big family--but there is no way I could have justified squeezing out twenty of the little darlings. The "proof of your fidelity" argument is at least slightly less disturbing than the "little warriors for God" argument, but not by much.