From: Ronn!Blankenship <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Not unlike saying that artificial insemination does not count for lesbian couples.
Did anyone say that it does not count? John said that he "does not believe in it", which I presume is because the Catholic church discourages it. AFAIK, the Catholic church does not teach that babies born through IVF are sub-human, or indeed anything but fully human. (If I am wrong on this, I'd appreciate correction from someone who knows what the Catholic church teaches.)
John did not mention artificial insemination at all, seemingly ignoring that possibility in his original post. I'll quote the relevant bit here:
"3) Homosexual unions are ill-suited for the siring and raising of the next generation. By definition, homosexual unions are infertile. For pro-life reasons, I am opposed to in vitro fertilization (say what you will, but I am at least consistent in the consequences of my belief that human life begins at conception.) As such, it is unreasonable to believe that homosexual unions will be producing children - and thus, don't meet the first standard for why governments should provide incentives to promote them."
So, he objects to IVF on pro-life grounds, but ignores artificial insemination
(these are two different things). I am pretty sure artificial insem. has no pro-life
objections (though I'm a little less sure that it has no *other* Catholic objections,
(despite being a Catholic myself)). This is probably what Erik was referring to.
(As an aside, I believe the pro-life objection to IVF is that more human embryos
are created than are actually implanted in a given IVF cycle, essentially leaving
a stockpile of frozen human embryos that eventually will be tossed out.)
In my reply, I pointed this oversight out, which he acknowledged and then shifted his position to argue that the government shouldn't encourage homosexuals to have children: "I'm sure that it is possible..... unmarried couples can have children. Homosexual couples are of course physically capable of adoption. Nevertheless, homosexual unions do not naturally produce children the way heterosexual unions do. Moreover, the question becomes - should we *incentivise* homosexual couples having children. I argue that we should not."
-Bryon
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