Poster Boy for Gay Marriage

[Guest thaiworthy]

If anyone needs convincing that gay marriage might help control world population, take a look at this breeder who fathered 30 kids with 11 women. Not that this will convince anyone that gay marriage can benefit society, but if it were also possible for gay couples to adopt kids (many years from now-- someday), I know one guy who might be convinced to accept that offer:

 

You have to say this much for Desmond Hatchett: He has a way with the ladies.

 

The 33-year-old Knoxville, Tenn., resident has reportedly set a Knox County record for his ability to reproduce. He has 30 children with 11 women. And nine of those children were born in the last three years, after Hatchett -- who is something of a local celebrity -- vowed

in a 2009 TV interview, saying he wouldn't father more children.

 

But Hatchett is back in the news this week because he's struggling to make ends meet on his minimum-wage job. His inability to make child-support payments on such a meager salary also means he's back in court again and again, most recently to ask for a break on those payments.

 

http://www.latimes.c...0,4036567.story

[Rogie]

I've learnt quite a bit about Knoxville. Population 178,874, third largest in the state of Tennessee. Founded by James White in 1791. Folk hailing from this highly ordinary-sounding town are either Knoxvillians or Knoxvillites . . . take your pick!

 

Now I am going to turn amateur sociologist. Whereas in 1791 a 'breeder' such as Mr Hatchett would no doubt have been welcomed with open arms, nowadays a singleminded individual with such a wholehearted attitude toward insemination is an anachronism, surely? Yes, that kind of thing used to happen, but has almost completely died out. One thinks for example of King Chulalongkorn (Rama the 5th) who had 92 wives. Common practice amongst kings, emperors, sultans etc. This merely mirrored what happens in the wild amongst our mammalian brethren. How often do we see nature programmes where the top lion or the top polar bear or whathaveyou battles it out with a much younger johnny-come-lately would-be usurper for shagging rights with the herd of expectant females. It's nature! Nature at its most primeval. Nature going about its business in the way it has done since the first fish crawled out of the sea.

 

Hackett is a throwback. Even kings, emperors and sultans have turned monogamous, no longer thoughtfully fingering their moustaches as they ruminate which female shall share their bed tonight. What I am not clear about is whether Hackett holds true to mankind's 'harem' nature and, keeping all 11 under his thumb, drifts from one woman to another and back again, or whether he beds first one woman 'monogamously' before abandoning her and taking up with another. Yet another disturbing aspect is why so many children? It's almost as if his sperm count is off the scale - most normally fertile couples are advised it can take up to a year for a pregnancy. This chap would no doubt be in much demand at a Sperm Bank. MInd you, it wouldn't surprise me it turns out he's some sort of freak, maybe he secretes an unusual pheromone that attracts women of equal super-fertility to himself. He'd be the very person to pack off in a space rocket aimed at the stars along with his women and told to "get on with it". By the time the rocket reached its destination it would be seriously overcrowded . . .

 

One final point that concerns me. If eleven of Hackett's wenches have had an average of 3 buns in their ovens each, what does that have to say about the other menfolk in Knoxville? Are they all gay? Even if 1 in 10 of them are what about the other nine? Are they getting a proper look in, or are they such 'new men' they are either quite happy to go to bed with a mug of cocoa and a hand job if they are single or are so in love with their wives they wouldn't dream of philandering?

 

Come on you hot-blooded male Knox-villites, start making it a bit more difficult for the Hacketts of this world!

 

Back to Thaiworthy's comments. Many gay couples would make loving parents for kids from broken homes. Maybe I am being a bit old-fashioned but IMO a child who has over 20 half-brothers and sisters most certainly comes from a broken home.

[Guest fountainhall]

No doubt civil liberties leaders, those who promote free speech and those against the provision of free condoms will scream, but if ever there was a case for some form of sterilization, this surely has to be it. Hatchett has a minimum-wage job. He lives in a country where neither the nation nor the state provides generous welfare subsidies. In some months, the most support he can provide to some of his children’s mothers is US$1.49! It's a preposterous situation.

 

As to Rogie’s comments on fecundity, be assured it remains alive and well – and not just among the wacko sects like that of convict Warren Jeffes. In parts of the Islamic world, the law still permits a man to have up to four wives – at any one time. The US may be about to elect a President from the mormon sect, some of whom still believe in that sect's earlier promotion of polygamy. (I am aware that polygamy is against the law in the US, but it is still practised and there has been no successful prosecution in the 60 years prior to 2009!)

 

Other states actually encourage the production of a greater number of offspring, nowhere more so, I suspect, than Israel.

 

Government subsidies and huge charitable support make the marginal cost of having another child zero, or even a net gain, to relatively poor families with five children and more. And one branch of Israeli society takes full advantage of such laws.

 

The ultra-orthodox population, which supports the two major political parties, has held the balance of political power for most governments, either of the left or the right. Consequently, they succeeded in transforming political power into direct financial support for their independent educational system, for securing generous child allowances for large families, for highly subsidized housing projects for young couples, and more. It can be assumed that as long as these political realities persist in Israel’s society, very high fertility levels of the ultra-orthodox population will be maintained. Even if the political structure does change, which seems very unlikely, it will take years before growth rates of this population declines to lower levels, in part because their age structure is extremely young.

 

http://www.un.org/es...landerpaper.PDF

 

I have heard it said by several orthodox Jews that the aim is to increase their numbers to a more significant proportion of the country’s overall population specifically to have an even greater say in its future policies. If you can’t outvote the opposition, you can certainly outbreed them – over time!

 

Presently, the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox make up around 10% of Israel's near 8 million population. Since the ultra-orthodox tend to be married at the earliest legal age of 17 (although some violate the law by marrying even at 15) and immediately start producing children, it doesn’t take an Einstein to work out that if each couple produces ten children, one couple can end up with well over 1,000 great grand children in less than 100 years. (That's merely an assumption. The present birth rate is between 5 and 7 children per family.)

 

Incidentally, as I am sure thaiworthy is aware, gay couples in some parts of the world are indeed able to have or adopt children. I know of one US couple now living in Singapore with an adopted child. And three years ago, good friends in New York had a child via a surrogate mother.

[Guest]

There seems to be some kind of debate about gay marriage in one or two western countries at the moment, including 2 beginning with a U.....

Now I don't see the point of marriage, but if you're going to permit some couples to get married, I don't see any logical or moral reason to prevent any couple from doing so. However, some predominantly straight people seem to think they should interfere in other peoples issues, which are NONE OF THEIR DAMN BUSINESS,

 

Of course if we are going to start interfering in other peoples issues, how about:

1 Sterilising stupid people to stop them breeding?

Well, at the very minimum we could eliminate this peverse European idea of subsidising children & follow the Chinese way, where they make the parents pay for everything if they have more than one child. Seems like a good way to stop overpopulation.

 

2 Only permitting approved religions. So any that go around creating social disorder get their places of worship shut down.

 

In principle, this is no different to straight people saying gays should not be allowed to get married.

[Guest fountainhall]

. . . the Chinese way, where they make the parents pay for everything if they have more than one child. Seems like a good way to stop overpopulation.

 

The Chinese one-child policy has drawn condemnation from a variety of sources over the years, and clearly there have been some extreme measures taken (although I have no idea how many). The real question that is rarely answered, though, is this. If you are running a state with a rapidly growing population and what, at the time the policy was introduced, were relatively backward industrial and agricultural sectors, how do you control population growth in a fast and meaningful way?

 

Add into the mix the Chinese tradition dating back millennia of wanting sons to take care of parents in their elder years. Any couple giving birth to a daughter immediately keeps adding to the family until a son is born.

 

It's not a problem faced by most advanced countries, whose birth rates have been falling quite rapidly for decades. So what do you do? Hand out condoms? Education? How long will that take to erase such an in-bred cultural issue?

 

Personally, I think China had no alternative. The policy is not without serious consequences, though. One has been a massive increase in abortions. Another is the disappearance of many newly born girls, to the extent that China now has a frightening imbalance between young men and women. In fact, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reckoned in 2010 that by 2020 there will be 24 million Chinese men unable to find women to marry. Worse, in some regions, the ratio of male to female is 130 to 100 The norm is reckoned to be 103 - 107 to 100. (Perhaps this might encourage the government to become more liberal in gay issues - pairing off a few million men with other men will solve that problem rather nicely )!

 

More worrying to me is that, with its increasing wealth, China is breeding a couple of generations of spoiled brats. When kids without siblings are used to getting what they want, without discipline they tend to grow up with similar expectations. How will that affect the country's leadership in the coming decades, I wonder?

[Guest]

Well, I only get to meet the educated young Chinese & find no evidence of spoilt brats. They're generally very polite & well behaved people.

As for birth control, I would suggest the entire planet should adopt a 1 child policy. Seven billion people on the planet at present & increasing rapidly. This is very unsustainable.

[Rogie]

Seven billion people on the planet at present & increasing rapidly. This is very unsustainable.

Yes it surely must be.

 

I am far less concerned with whether any particular young cosseted middle-class Chinese male turns into a spoiled brat than the situation the world faces with regard to poverty. The very opposite of the spoiled brat in fact. It is very easy to get a little hysterical bemoaning the fate of some people subject to conditions out of their own control. One thinks here of drought, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, civil war, killer illnesses (eg. untreated malaria) and no doubt a few others. However, on a daily basis, where there is no immediate danger to a county's inhabitants from any of nature's or mankind's more extreme factors, life has to go on.

 

IMO we should be more concerned with the quality of life from cradle to grave of children born today. Absolute numbers of people is of less concern to me than whether they are living above or below the 'poverty line', however you may wish to define that. Here is an interesting yardstick that attempts to measure poverty I came across on the Wikipedia site. It seems to me a more useful index than picking an arbitrary limit of US$1.25 a day for example.

 

According to a UN declaration that resulted from the World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995, absolute poverty is "a condition characterised by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services."

David Gordon's paper, "Indicators of Poverty & Hunger", for the United Nations, further defines absolute poverty as the absence of any two of the following eight basic needs:

• Food: Body Mass Index must be above 16.
  
• Safe drinking water: Water must not come from solely rivers and ponds, and must be available nearby (less than 15 minutes' walk each way).
  
• Sanitation facilities: Toilets or latrines must be accessible in or near the home.
  
• Health: Treatment must be received for serious illnesses and pregnancy.
  
• Shelter: Homes must have fewer than four people living in each room. Floors must not be made of dirt, mud, or clay.
  
• Education: Everyone must attend school or otherwise learn to read.
  
• Information: Everyone must have access to newspapers, radios, televisions, computers, or telephones at home.
  
• Access to services: This item is undefined by Gordon, but normally is used to indicate the complete panoply of education, health, legal, social, and financial (credit) services.
  

For example, a person who lives in a home with a mud floor is considered severely deprived of shelter. A person who never attended school and cannot read is considered severely deprived of education. A person who has no newspaper, radio, television, or telephone is considered severely deprived of information. All people who meet any two of these conditions — for example, they live in homes with mud floors and cannot read — are considered to be living in absolute poverty.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold

[Guest fountainhall]

IMO we should be more concerned with the quality of life from cradle to grave of children born today. Absolute numbers of people is of less concern to me than whether they are living above or below the 'poverty line'

 

I agree entirely with the first part, but not the second, if only because they are interlinked. It's surely no accident that many of the poorest people in the world live in many of its most populated countries - and in countries where the rate of population growth is still exploding. I have seen the slums in Manila - and been horrified that human beings have to live in such degradation. In 30 years, absolutely nothing has been done to change the lives of the majority of these slum dwellers; yet still more migrate from the countryside to the city each year.

 

The Philippines cannot gets its economy growing fast enough to sustain its population growth. Just look at the figures -

 

1970 - 48 million

1990 - 66 million

2010 - 95 million

 

In Asia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia make the Top 10 of countries with the fastest growing populations. In sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, The Congo and Ethiopia are also on the list. Poverty in almost all these countries is endemic.

 

Population control is surely the essential ingredient in achieving a reduction of poverty and a better quality of life, the more so when we consider the almost finite resources of our planet and the seeming limit to how much more productive science can make it. Reducing the increase in the world's population is therefore crucial.

[Rogie]

Reducing the increase in the world's population is therefore crucial.

In many countries, yes I quite agree, those where a link between an unsustainable increase in population and poverty is established.

 

Part of me, the 'concerned' side, would like to see poverty go away. I hate to see beggars on the streets. I mean true beggars, those genuinely in desperate need, and not the sort manipulated by a sort of latter-day Fagin. The other part of me, the nonchalant side, pretends it couldn't care less how many people there are in the world. Too big an issue for me to address I'm afraid, so under the carpet it gets swept. When people start talking about the ways and means to combat population growth it becomes frightening, assuming such a gigantic spectre that some very unsavoury methods are touted. At the end of the day, or even until the end of time, there's no easy answer and it scares me a lot to be honest, and that's why I blithely wrote "Absolute numbers of people is of less concern to me . . ."

[Guest fountainhall]

It concerns me, not only for the utter poverty that children will be borne into, but also the economic colonialism that countries are now practising. The earth's raw materials are being grabbed up at an ever increasing rate, with China at the head of the list. Of course, the Chinese have always had the ability to to see 25 - 50 years and more ahead, whereas most countries are lucky if they can see beyond the next electoral cycle.

 

Even more than raw materials, though, will be water! From what I read, control of water resources will be vital for countries as this century progresses. We already know that the Chinese have several dams on the Mekong and will no doubt be looking at other ways of tapping into the water reservoir that is the Himalayas. In some ways, I'm quite glad I'll not be here when it all begins to dry up!

[Rogie]

Yikes! Now we're on to saving the planet! Now, that is scary - I agree with FH I don't want to be around! This is a really interesting topic for the Beer Bar but it has such monumental significance and touches on so many wide-ranging aspects. Rather like the Russian dolls, take one out and another one appears, but unlike the dolls which get smaller and smaller, a great many of the problems the world is facing are huge. There aren't many 'small' problems. We'd need a whole conference with all the world's experts gathered together to address all the issues and even then that's all they'd do, they still wouldn't have all the answers, and even if they did have all the answers they wouldn't be able to implement them.

 

Closer to home (Thailand) Baht Stop has an excellent thread tracing the on-going histrionics over the plans to build the Xayaburi Dam on the Mekong.

 

http://www.baht-stop...pic=10610&st=25

[Guest]

Well, I would much rather the people of the Philippines ignored the ludicrous & immoral advice dished out by their religious leaders. That way, they might stop the disastrous population growth.

 

However, if we're not going to win that battle, the next line in the sand is to ensure we neither have to pay for their self inflicted failings nor come under any substantial military pressure as they try to gain territory.

In the case of the Philippines, I suspect we can avoid the worst of it.

[Guest fountainhall]

Rather like the Russian dolls, take one out and another one appears

 

Nice analogy, but I think I'd have used an onion - the more you peel off its layers, the more you want to cry!

[Rogie]

. . . the next line in the sand is to ensure we neither have to pay for their self inflicted failings . . .

 

Here's a nice succinct summary of what foreign aid involves:

 

Foreign aid is when one country helps another country. The country may give money or things. It may also send people. This is especially needed when a disaster happens in a poor country. Sometimes this help comes from a country's government and sometimes the ordinary people give money. Some foreign aid helps by giving food and clean water to people who need them. Most of the time it is acharity which donates to the poor countries. The poor countries are called LEDCs (Less Economically Developed Countries).

 

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_aid

 

(NB. No need to click on the link, the quote above is in its entirety)

 

Of course, anyone can trot out the theory of foreign aid, but which countries deserve it and how to implement it are real hot potatoes.

 

Another hot potato is corruption. How to guarantee money, food or whatever, reach the people it is intended for. This problem is often aired in the British media and drives some people wild, witness some of the comments readers have added to articles such as this one:

 

Foreign countries should be stripped of aid money because of widespread theft of British taxpayers’ money, MPs warn today.

 

The International Development Select Committee said fragile and war-torn countries should lose British aid where there is corruption.

 

And they pointed to warnings by the National Audit Office that the British government has ‘greatly underestimated the extent of fraud within its own programmes’.

 

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082383/Strip-corrupt-countries-British-taxpayers-foreign-aid-say-MPs.html#ixzz1va7OFlWi

[Guest]

Morally, I see a clear difference between a foreseeable self inflicted disaster & a natural unpredictable one.

Overpopulation in places like the Philippines or Bangladesh is self inflicted. I see no ethical justification for foreign aid in these places, unless a good proportion of it is going on effective birth control education & campaigns.

Tsunamis & earthquakes are natural disasters, which do justify aid.

 

As for the UK government policy of spending 1% of GDP on foreign aid, well as all the political parties seem to be supporting this policy. Therefore the electorate has no choice, so I would like to see the issue put to a referendum. When our own country is borrowing at an irresponsible level, it is ludicrous to provide aid to countries with nuclear weapons, or corrupt incompetent governments. Better still, give each taxpayer an opt out for that proportion of his taxes.

[Rogie]

Overpopulation in places like the Philippines or Bangladesh is self inflicted.

These poor people are little different to those living in Britain in the 18th or 19th century when life expectancy was a fraction of what it is in developed countries today - a hand to mouth existence, survival of the fittest. Lots of children need to be born in order that a few survive. I cannot put myself inside the head of a couple living in a hovel in Bangladesh so have no idea what's going on in their minds, but I suspect they are living purely on instinct. Where the food is going to come from to feed the next child when he is born does not feature - there is no forward planning, just living for the day. What an awful meagre existence that must be. Of course governments are to blame but when many governments in turn seem incapable of seeing beyond their fingers in order to try and address their country's problems, what hope is there? Foreign aid supplied by international charities is well-meaning, but as already discussed, such help is often frittered away. Maybe I am being over cynical, but I wonder if wealthy countries aid budgets are just a political football. If a country is seen by its peers to be generous, that country's foreign aid minister can sleep soundly at night untroubled - he doesn't want to concern himself with the minutiae.

 

I would like to see the issue put to a referendum.

Not a bad idea, but referendums are expensive and time consuming and many British voters are apathetic. The only way to galvanise the average Brit is to make it personal, i.e. hit his pockets. The Anti-Foreign Aid supporters would have to spell out the implications in simple language.

[Guest]

Not a bad idea, but referendums are expensive and time consuming and many British voters are apathetic.

 

I think our government policy is to spend 1% of GDP on foreign aid. That's VERY expensive, so a referendum would be a fraction of that cost.

Either way, aid donations to what I would regard as undeserving countries like Pakistan, India etc should not be imposed upon us by the political parties. I prefer an income tax opt out option for every tax payer, but at the very least the national contributions should be put to a referendum.

 

Ultimately, if the political & religious leaders of certain countries will not embrace the concept of birth control & related education programmes, starvation will be the only thing that limits population growth.

 

Finally, I imagine the effectiveness of aid programmes run by successful experienced business people will have much more effect than those administered by incompetent politicians. Or to put it another way, Bill Gates probably gets a lot more done for every dollar he spends than Brown, Cameron or Clegg ever will.

[Rogie]

I prefer an income tax opt out option for every tax payer,

 

That's a recipe for anarchy! Perhaps one of the best known 'grievances' is that of single people or childless couples who resent having to pay that proportion of their taxable income that goes towards the schools budget. But there must be hundreds of similar 'irksome' demands on peoples' taxes and if you take a hundred people at random you'll probably get a hundred different demands for an opt out.

 

Finally, I imagine the effectiveness of aid programmes run by successful experienced business people will have much more effect than those administered by incompetent politicians. Or to put it another way, Bill Gates probably gets a lot more done for every dollar he spends than Brown, Cameron or Clegg ever will.

 

I haven't a shred of evidence and don't have the time to check that assertion you make Z but I would eat my hat if it turned out the Bill Gates Foundation squandered more money, dollar for dollar, than any foreign aid donated by any government, anywhere.

[Guest fountainhall]

Now gentlemen, let's not get into a discussion on how donors put foreign aid to use. I am sure they are both equally effective. It's just that government agencies and a whole load of parasites cream off great chunks of official aid. But what's so wrong with that? It all helps to create jobs for middlemen transferring cash to Swiss accounts, keep local croupiers in jobs, and require labourers and other craftsmen to build plush residences. Indeed, it could be said that official aid keeps local arts and crafts industries going when normal economic forces would otherwise see them die out! Oh, ye of little faith!