Oh yes...one other thing...
May. 11th, 2004 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chaoswolfIf anyone would like to help me with my homework, I'd like these questions to be answered.
1. Do you believe that same sex couples should have all the legal rights & privelages that are granted to straight couples? Explain.
2. Do you believe that family needs to be contained to blood relatives? Explain.
3. Is family important? Why is this so?
4. How do TV Families differ from real families?
5. Please include legal name.
1. Do you believe that same sex couples should have all the legal rights & privelages that are granted to straight couples? Explain.
2. Do you believe that family needs to be contained to blood relatives? Explain.
3. Is family important? Why is this so?
4. How do TV Families differ from real families?
5. Please include legal name.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-05-11 11:41 pm (UTC)Marriage (religious term)/Cival Union (Goverment Speak)
is a form of partnership that allows indivuals to join their lives without the need for detailed contracts, as they are assumed/defined by the government when it creates the union.
It's primary purpose to define inhertance of property to children or spouse(s).
2) Nope.
Family is form of deep emotional bond. Blood relations do not mean someone is family, mearly that they are related.
3) Yes.
Humans are social animals. The basic social unit is the family. Which as I defined in 2, not neccassarly blood relations.
4) TV - Fiction
Characters on TV rarely display the true range of personality & emotions of real people
5) John O'Halloran
no subject
Date: 2004-05-12 12:03 am (UTC)The gains to economic society with strong, stable families are large: they become caretakers for each other, and two potential breadwinners working together are less likely to need government assistance than two unrelated people. The losses to economic society of allowing same-sex couples to marry are no worse than allowing opposite-sex couples to marry.
2. Heavens, no. My wife is not my blood relative. ;->
3. Yes. A family is the most significant support network that most people have. It's where we all came from, and evolutionarily it's what we all hope to create. In many ways, it's the center of a healthy life!
4. I can't judge; I watch too little television. (Unless you really want me to compare Family Guy or The Simpsons with my relationship to Eli?)
5. Legal name: Brent E. Edwards
no subject
Date: 2004-05-12 12:51 am (UTC)Absolutely. If they are making the same commitment to each other that straight couples have, they should have the same rights and recourses.
2. Do you believe that family needs to be contained to blood relatives? Explain.
Nope. If I had to depend on my blod relatives for support and comfort, I'd've been dead and gone a long time ago. Family are the people who love and support you, warts and all.
3. Is family important? Why is this so?
Absolutely. FIrst off, your biological family gives you life, and the values you grow up with. Then your family of choice helps you revise that over the course of your adulthood. Family of choice is also your support system for the rough stuff, and the people you share all the good stuff with.
4. How do TV Families differ from real families?
TV families are pretty cohesive, and even the ones that aren't your "average" family do embody certain values (like love and support) that are not necessarily forthcomingfrom your biological family.
5. Please include legal name.
Deborah Joyce Wunder
My answers, part 1
Date: 2004-05-12 01:36 am (UTC)Yes. The reason is fairly simple: There is literally no good reason for heterogendered couples, as a class, to be granted these rights and privileges. There is a good reason for homogendered couples to be granted these rights and privileges.
The traditional reason for heterogendered couples to be granted special rights and privileges is because they provide a useful service: they create offspring. The death rate for females during childbirth (and even infant mortality) was high enough that giving incentives for men to stay with and support the women they impregnated was useful for preventing the population from dying out. (Make it easier for women to survive childbirth, more of them stay alive, thus more of them have more children.)
However, we're now in a different time, with different issues to address in our society, and our society isn't adapting. We face a population explosion, and an overstretching of resources, and the impetus to reward people for /producing/ children is no longer there. (There are children being born into welfare families, who have everything stacked against them. There are children who are born to drug-addicted mothers. There are children who are born to mothers who realize that they can't take care of them.) Thus, the impetus to provide for those families is also no longer there -- welfare stipends get smaller, mothers have to work because their husbands (when they have husbands) can't support all of their families' needs, and we have a huge number of children who are improperly cared for.
When a child isn't loved or cared for, growing up, the values that society is based upon are not ingrained into him or her. This creates a rift in the fabric, a snag in the weave of that society, and the society comes closer to falling completely apart.
Which is where homogendered couples come in: Historically, homogendered couples have had higher income than heterogendered couples, had higher amounts of disposable income than heterogenered couples, and been more affluent than most heterogendered couples who have children that they cannot properly care for. Allowing these homogendered couples to adopt children, and take care of them, would not be a bad thing -- if anything, the children raised by such relationships would be more accepting of diversity, and less insular and xenophobic. Thus, it would be a good thing to grant the same rights to homogendered couples as are granted to heterogendered couples -- raising a child isn't easy, and stacking the deck against the homogendered couples so that they're more likely to fail at it is unfair and very harmful to society as a whole.
As for homogendered couples who choose not to adopt or foster children... the same rights and privileges are granted to heterogendered couples who do not have children (either by biology or by choice) as those heterogendered couples who do have children. There would be a very, very large inequity if the same rights and privileges were not granted across the board. (After all, in the United States, our founding document states that everybody is entitled to equal protection under the law. Not granting equal protection would fly in the face of that.)
My answers, part 2
Date: 2004-05-12 01:37 am (UTC)I'm trying to figure out how to answer this, because it implies that there could really be any way other than to not constrain it to 'blood'. Relatives by marriage are one of the main aspects of this -- can you really say that your "in-laws" are not your family, even though you are not related to them by blood?
However, on the grander scale, I don't believe that the formal recognition of 'marriage' is really necessary to form a familial bond. On some levels, you choose who you want to spend your time with -- you choose your family. And you interact with their families, as well -- if your best friend's sister were in a horrible accident, and your friend needed your emotional support... could you deny it, even though the instigation was outside of those who you would choose as your family? Even if his sister was someone you despised, but he loved dearly? (Would you do it for your husband or wife, if his or her mother, whom you despised, was struck with cancer or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's Disease? Is there a difference?)
There's far too much to support the idea that you don't need to have blood relation to someone to act as though they are family -- and acting as though they are your family effectively makes them your family.
3) Is family important? Why is this so?
Family is, most definitely, important. Our families are those people who we can trust, those people who we have built bonds with, those people who we can go to for protection if and when we have very bad times and need time to recoup. Our families are, in a large way, our societies -- our social groupings, the places where we act out our biological needs and desires to interact with other beings.
Our families are also where we learn how to interact with others, and learn what's okay and what's not okay. (This is one reason why there is fracture between the ways that upper-class, middle-class, and lower-class families and social groups live.) We teach what we have been taught, we teach what we have learned from our forebears, and we learn what our forebears have taught the others in our families.
4) How do TV families differ from real families?
I do not watch much TV, so I'm limited in what I can say here. One thing that I do know, though, is that TV families hardly ever have to learn how to accept and deal with differences that we could consider 'irreconcileable'. TV families don't throw their children out because they're gay. TV families don't disown their members. TV families don't have to deal with situations where one member chooses no longer to be a part of the family -- or where the rest of the family chooses to no longer recognize or accept one member as a part of the family.
In many ways, TV families are shallower, more 'picture perfect'. Their lives stay relatively static, and they hardly ever have to deal with the 'hard problems' -- a member starts to become involved with drugs, or a member is diagnosed with a major disease, or a member has to move away, or a member goes to jail, or any of a hundred thousand different things that real families have to learn to deal with.
When one doesn't have effective role-models for living in a family... a TV family is a very, very poor substitute.
5) Please include legal name.
Kyle Andreas Hamilton
no subject
Date: 2004-05-12 09:24 am (UTC)2)No. My family consists of those I care for, both blood relatives and non-blood relatives. Most people wouldn't marry there cousin. Most would marry someone not blood related to them, which makes them part of their family.
3)Yes. Without family, you really don't have anyone to show you unconditional love for your entire life. Family encourages you to do your best, and is there for you when you need to talk to someone.
4)Tv= fiction. There's nothing real about TV families. They don't have the same conflicts that real families do.
5) Danica Nicole Dixon
no subject
Date: 2004-05-12 09:54 am (UTC)Yes. In most nations, marriage has two definitions. Church marriages, which is governed by the articles of faith, and civil marriages, which are governed by secular law. Since civil marriages confer very real legal benefits to couples, discrimination in who gets to marry is a violation of the 14th Amendment.
2. Do you believe that family needs to be contained to blood relatives? Explain.
No. Family, as a concept, has gone through many changes. Marriage, for example, extends a family without actual blood ties.
Family is what you consider it.
3. Is family important? Why is this so?
Extremely important. We are a social species. We cannot survive without emotional support and close contact. Family provides that framework.
4. How do TV Families differ from real families?
For the most part, TV families are "extremes." Huge and perfect (The Brady Bunch) or massively dysfunctional (Married With Children)
5. Please include legal name.
Douglas E. Berry
no subject
Date: 2004-05-12 10:47 am (UTC)2.) "Blood relative" is a dangerous term to begin with. Where does that put adopted children, who are supposedly family all the same? Stepchildren? I've had people with peculiar attitudes claim that my brother isn't my "real" brother because he's "just a half-brother," since we had different mothers. The mere concept of making blood relatives a criteria for family smacks of eugenics and antiquated ideas of "miscengenation." Genetics is a dangerous precedent on which to base relationship.
The people who have done the least for me in my life (or outright destructive acts) have been "blood family." Those who have done the most have been "chosen family." With the exception of my brother (and my Wretched
Niece, the non-adopted one--oops, there's why I get along with her sister, she's adopted!), I don't have any blood family left, anyway.
So the answer is resoundingly NO.
3.) It' true "no man is an island, entire of self." We are social beings. I regard my closest friends as "family." Without them, I might as well give it up. It's been my adopted family who have gotten me through the hardest times in my life. My adopted family is even how I got the down payment for buying my house, until I could come up with the money on my own. Family (by whatever criteria) is part of one's community and support group. I suspect people who end up living under bridges have no family. They might have blood relatives, but no family. Family is someone who cares about your welfare in real terms.
4.) Because they exist for entertainment value, everything has to be larger than life. Very few real people are as witty, as disfunctional, as compassionate, as flashy, as erudite, or as forthcoming as TV characters. We see only aspects, perhaps 2 dimensions as opposed to one, but not a full being. Networks also censor or dictate what we see, like disfunctional parents dictating the game face that a real family might put on to show to the world. But because these are characters, who exist only in a void, only existing for the time the actors are playing them, not eating, sleeping, doing grooming, bodily functions, etc. they can never be more than stick figures. There is no underlying emotion or angst, the effects of being around people for years, nothing but what a scriptwriter wants you to see.
The truest comment on the difference came from the Survivor All-Stars finale. People stood up and said "We're not characters in a TV show, we're real people. You can talk about how this is all a game, but the reality is that we're real people with real emotions, and there are consequences to your actions, in the real world. We've lived with each other for days and weeks. We have lives that have nothing to do with this TV show." And one of them was offended enough that she left.
Probably more opinions and comments here than you were looking for. ;-)
5.) Jane G. Beckman
no subject
Date: 2004-05-12 02:12 pm (UTC)Generally, in societies where the nuclear family is most important, marriage is a man and woman because the legal issue has to do with children. In societies where the social unit is most important, more options exist in marriage, because the primary focus is creating socially-responsible units, not for control of progeny and creation of progeny. Most Western marriage laws are based around issues of fertility and heredity. Hence you get cases like how, until recently, some states forbade mixed-race marriages, and syphilis testing was mandatory for marriage because it affects fertility (the fact it's a nasty disease was a secondary issue).
no subject
Date: 2004-05-12 03:01 pm (UTC)Nope, if only because there are far too many abandoned children that still need good homes.
Family rocks! ...uhm...just because.
Well, have you ever seen a TV family with a toilet?
5. Raymond A. Clay
no subject
Date: 2004-05-12 04:20 pm (UTC)Yes I do because under the Amendment XIV of the us constitution all citizens are guarenteed equal protection under the law so they should have equal rights under the law as well.
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
2. Do you believe that family needs to be contained to blood relatives? Explain.
If family were limited to solely blood relatives wouldn't that make marriage illegal?
3. Is family important? Why is this so?
Ya I think family is important cause without it. Future generations would be deprived of valuable learning experiances.
4. How do TV Families differ from real families?
They usually lack an emotional bond
Mathew Evan Juriaich