I buy car insurance, but I have no say if some one else hits me. I buy health insurance because I might get a disease. One buys insurance to protect from things. It is risk pooling. If you want to have sex and not live under the terrible threat of child support then how about child support insurance?

There can't be a market for something like that because then the insurance companies would price it differently for people who f&ck; less and are more intelligent about birth control. At which point, insurance would become too expensive for some people, the insurance companies would ask invasive questions, and "progressives" would start b^tching about how "unfair" it all was.

Is there any circumstance under which a man should have to pay support for his child?

Where he agrees to have it. In a large majority of term births, he does.

There can't be a market for something like that

Hey I am on record as saying it won't work, I am asking if it addresses the men's rights concerns.

One buys insurance to protect from things. It is risk pooling. If you want to have sex and not live under the terrible threat of child support then how about child support insurance?

Or how about having a say on whether or not you have a child? Gosh, we can't have that now can we?

Is there any circumstance under which a man should have to pay support for his child? Any at all? Or should raising a child always be the responsibility of the mother only?

There are plenty of circumstances under which a man should have to pay support. Every marriage contract should come with language that states that both parties are responsible for any children conceived unless otherwise stipulated. If the father wants custody or partial custody he should have to pay support at a level commensurate with his custody. If a father is informed of the pregnancy and does not declare his wants or declares that he wants the child he should have to pay support.

#1532 Are you seriously saying that the currently existing safety net is adequate for the child? Because if so I'd say you're nuts.

If it doesn't, that's an issue with the safety net, and you should attempt to fix that, rather than throwing the rights of other people away. There are currently many single parents who are actually getting by with only that level of support already. If the child with a disinterested father is having his/her rights violated, then so are they.

You can't coherently argue, that child A has a RIGHT to x, and child B has a right to x+y. It's fundamentally opposed to any current understanding of rights. Rights, by definition, have to be equal for everybody.

#1541 It's simply inadequate. And I might add, designed that way.

It's certainly not impossible for a single woman to raise a child without the support of the father. My mother managed (though my father didn't leave until all 4 kids were old enough to go to school. It's much tougher when the kids aren't old enough for school) and so did my sister. Both had completed their education and both had good jobs (both teachers), but that's certainly far from the norm.

Will the kids starve under the current system? No. But that's aiming too low. And currently we (that is society) has decided that the father will (where possible) make up the difference.

Now if you're arguing that the current setup -- a percentage of income -- could stand to be overhauled, separate discussion and I'm on board.

But the resources of the planet in general are finite.

Technically finite. But extremely, massively large.

The only resource of consequence volume within the earths' crust and low atmosphere and solar energy impinging on the surface. Not including fissionables yet to be mined, and thermal energy currently stored as magma/molten iron in the planetary core. Or nuclear fusion (non-solar).

Probably enough to support (in theory) several more orders of magnitude increase in population.

/Blatant hijack attempt.

nd currently we (that is society) has decided that the father will (where possible) make up the difference.

And yet clearly the fathers in most cases can't afford to make up the difference yet we keep on hitting them up for it and sending them to jail because they can't pay while we pat the mother on the head and say, "there, there".

If a person has an unwanted pregnancy and they cannot afford to raise the child they should either abort the fetus or give the child up for adoption.

Why shouldn't they be able to sell the infant at whatever price the market will bear? Adoption is expensive and the mother sees precious little of the proceeds. Why should we tolerate a system designed as a sop for rapacious lawyers and their middleman stooges?

Treat unwanted pregnancy the same way you treat mumps and measles. That way any guy that impregnates a woman has done so clearly by choice.

I was about to post something similar when Sam did. So I will add on - may as well put in your fancy egg/sperm genetic screening technology with your babby license. We all have ###### up genes, but probably have some gametes that combine the best of each allele.

Why shouldn't they be able to sell the infant at whatever price the market will bear?

Why shouldn't they indeed.

If a father is informed of the pregnancy and does not declare his wants or declares that he wants the child he should have to pay support.

an honor system. great. no guy would ever take advantage of having an out when he gets a woman pregnant.

any of you stalwarts ever raised a child by yourself? just curious. if the situation was reversed, child support from both parents would be sacred.

you remind me of those players who got chewed out by frank robinson on the field when they screwed up the infield fly rule.

i'd desert this stupid thread, but i just want to mention that the LA times ran an article breaking down the makeup of the college of cardinals, which is something i wondered about earlier.

the college is made up as follows, with number of cardinals by region:

europe 61
latin america 19
north america 14 (US 11)
africa 11
asia 11
oceania 1

now that they need a 2/3 majority (benedict implemented that after his election, crafty so and so) any cardinal from a non european area is going to have to have broad support from other regions. seems a tall order. because they seem the most likely to get european support, i think a south american might have a good shot, especially odilo scherer or leonardo sandri.

Right, just like there's "substance", and it's "not name-calling", to pointing out that Sam's a fat, white southern lawyer as a way of discrediting his POV.

I am neither fat nor a lawyer.

Then you either need another picture than the one that got posted here a while back, or you need a different dictionary.

Sorry about the lawyer accusation, though, as if it's not true then that's a low blow and I sincerely apologize.

And BTW don't get me wrong. Some of my best friends are fat white Southerners. Love them accents, if not their nasty idea of what constitutes barbecue.

an honor system. great. no guy would ever take advantage of having an out when he gets a woman pregnant.

Honor system? The system would be giving men the exact same rights a woman has. Are you implying that women are taking advantage of that right?

now that they need a 2/3 majority (benedict implemented that after his election, crafty so and so)

He actually restored the long-time tradition. JP II had changed it to a simple majority after 12 days of deadlock, but Benedict thought it was wrong for a slim majority to be able to force a choice through by delaying.

#1559 "Most" is clearly an error. Most non-custodial fathers do in fact pay the support they're ordered to. Many (perhaps most) feel that the calculations are not fair to them, but they pay.

Found a site with some useful numbers.

62% of custodial mothers do not receive child support. 75% of those either have not asked for it (or have accepted some other form of financial support -- 20% have done so) 7% of fathers evade (in some way) child support orders. Roughly half of those simply can't be located.

Rather than link to the analysis, I'm just going to post the data source. Granted, it's 20 years old, but I don't think the numbers have changed a lot. (Sources for data: GAO/HRD-92-39FS, January 9, 1992, and DHHS Greenbook, chapter 11)

And yeah, sign me up with those who feel that putting a guy in jail (or refusing to renew his license) for failing to meet his support payments is seriously wrong-headed.

Also, if only just over 1/3 of custodial mothers need (or want) support then perhaps the safety net is closer to being adequate than I had thought. Surprises mte that the percentage of women not getting any support is so high.

"Most" is clearly an error


Let me rephrase it. Most of the unpaid money is from fathers who cannot afford to make the payments.

And yeah, sign me up with those who feel that putting a guy in jail (or refusing to renew his license) for failing to meet his support payments is seriously wrong-headed.

Especially when there are other market-oriented methods of ensuring proper payment is extracted. Most deadbeats surely have two kidneys, yards of skin, and extraneous hunks of liver that could be harvested and sold on a free market for the benefit of sick patients, with the profits then going to pay his obligations to his children.

Also, if only just over 1/3 of custodial mothers need (or want) support then perhaps the safety net is closer to being adequate than I had thought. Surprises mte that the percentage of women not getting any support is so high.

Or maybe they just know they can't get money out of the father b/c he never works (on the books at least).

Then you either need another picture than the one that got posted here a while back, or you need a different dictionary

I'll take my chances against your skinny ass, old man.

#1568 According to the same site ( Child support statistics ) 25% of those who don't pay (or are significantly behind) can't afford it.

And #1570 Or are ignorant of their options or ...

#1569 If there are multiple children one (or more) could be sold for medical experiments.

My favorite bit from "The Meaning of Life" is "Every Sperm is Sacred" (perfectly done pastiche of "Consider Yourself")

#1569 If there are multiple children one (or more) could be sold for medical experiments.

Nah, from the standpoint of an Institutional Review Board the provenance of the children doesn't matter, they're still subject to FDA regulations overseeing clinical trials as outlined in 21 CFR 50.54.

#1568 According to the same site ( Child support statistics ) 25% of those who don't pay (or are significantly behind) can't afford it.

And yet if they could just sell one kidney I'd wager that number would plummet to under 5%.

Then you either need another picture than the one that got posted here a while back, or you need a different dictionary

I'll take my chances against your skinny ass, old man.

Sorry, I'm not into jello wrestling or duels with foam tomahawks. But if you really want a showdown there's always Kevin or Good Face.

Esquire story on Bin Lader "shooter" sparks debate on Veteran benefits


I still dont get why the guy quit the service 4 years short of when he would have received his pension? Why should we feel sorry for someone who voluntarily quits?

Also, if only just over 1/3 of custodial mothers need (or want) support then perhaps the safety net is closer to being adequate than I had thought. Surprises mte that the percentage of women not getting any support is so high.

Or maybe they just know they can't get money out of the father b/c he never works (on the books at least).

You are forgetting the fact that many women do get support- informally without a court order - there are guys who do pay child support voluntarily- maybe they figure I might as well pay X, because otherwise I'll get sued, pay a lawyer, and still pay X or more.

Or the woman has money, or the woman has married someone with money, or know the father has no money and has no interest in effing with him for no reason (novel idea, not all women are gold digging ####s)
or the woman wants nothing to do with the ex, doesn't want him in her or the kids life, is afraid of him, doesn't want to give him a reason/excuse to be involved

So, SH, since I thought you were a lawyer myself, what do you do for a living?

Unfortunately, all I've seen thrown out here for the most part is a lot of theoretical and rather abstract grievances on behalf of men, as opposed to any practical suggestions which would result in anything better than what we have now.

I've seen a dozen concrete grievances in the last 150 posts. I've seen practice tied to theory. I wondered why 6 years wasn't more appropriate than 18, or 21. I've brought up case specifics.

Then there was post 1114, in response to CrosbyBird's interesting post:

I don't see any rights theory here that leaves a man partly responsible wrt a decision he has no say in. Any thoughts?

It is a theory of conflicting rights, which cannot all be addressed concurrently. The potential father has a right to his earnings, the potential mother has a right to biological autonomy (which includes the freedom NOT to have an abortion), the actual child (whenever you may believe it arrives) has a right to proper care, and the individual members of society have a right to their own earnings.

Actually, it's not a theory of conflicting rights. I put forward the idea of support for six years simply as a practical matter, not really as an attempt to resolve a conflict between rights--I'll be surprised if it does. I do think there can be value in putting forward ideas that might lie somewhere between extreme positions. I also think the idea of stretching a sperm donor's support for a woman's decision to have a child to 21 years is absurd on its face. We don't demand that husbands with intact families send their children to college, and indeed most 19 year olds don't go to college. Most states extending misnamed 'child support' awards until an adult is 21 also force the sperm donor to contribute to college costs.

It's not a theory of conflicting rights as the woman has no right to claim support for her decision to being a zygote to term. To address your four claims to rights,

1) the potential father does have a right to his earnings but, infinitely more importantly, has the right to choose with whom he is going to have a family. For the sake of argument I'm assuming unless otherwise specified birth control was properly, carefully used, and simply failed, and that the woman was aware of the man's disinterest in fathering a child with her. It's worth being clear, and I don't think nearly enough has been made by the pro-rights crowd of the extraordinary betrayal involved when a condom was properly used, the woman knew of the man's disinterest, and she went ahead anyway and brought the zygote to term. It's an extraordinary abuse of trust and of one's autonomy.

2) the potential mother has a right to biological autonomy, but unless she's getting sperm from a willing donor, she doesn't have the right to violate a man's biological autonomy, which includes the right to fertilize the eggs of his choosing with the woman's consent. The woman can't abrogate to herself more rights than the Catholic Church abrogates to itself. She can't decide on Monday that abortion's fine and dandy, but on Tuesday that ejaculation = a child. The mother does indeed have a right to biological autonomy, along with an obligation to accept the financial (and other) consequences that come with exercising that autonomy.

3) "the actual child" is indeed a consequence of the mother's exercise of her biological autonomy, and therefore has a claim on all parties who exercise choice in that child's creation; in this case, there is one party fitting that description: the mother.

4) individual members of society do have a right to their own earnings, with a whole lot of stipulations, taxes, and so forth along the way. I don't know what true libertarians envision wrt child care in a society that does not violate men's civil and reproductive rights, and I won't presume to speak for them. I'm fine with excellent child care on demand.

The only way to remove the conflict is to recognize that because a man ejaculates does not mean he surrenders to a woman his reproductive rights. She does not get to violate his reproductive autonomy any more than society gets to violate her reproductive autonomy when her contraception fails, by compelling her to have a child.

Fwiw, I do think it's important to begin reframing the issue by ceasing to call it the misnamed 'child support', and instead call it what it really is: 'support for ('subsidizing' might be better) a woman's decision to have a child.

--It hasn't been raised, but I wonder if a discussion between the man and the woman in advance of sex, where a man asserts he doesn't want a child at this point in his life (or similarly) could be held to constitute a contract. Not that that has any practical value at this point...

In short, I'm not sure what you're objecting to, and I'm only one of a half dozen posters arguing the case for mens' civil rights.

I am not going to agree that men should ever have the right to force a woman to abort, and I've never going to agree that a woman's refusal to abort gets the man off the hook, UNLESS HER FINANCIAL STATUS MAKES HER INDEPENDENTLY ABLE TO SUPPORT THE CHILD ON HER OWN.

No one has argued here, even once, that men should ever have the right to force a woman to abort. No one posting here wants that and it's been a given.

Your caps are interesting, though, as that part of your post goes against the fundamental thesis of child support in this country. The rights theory implicit in it is intersting, too. It suggests that children do not have an inherent right to support. It also declares, by painting the man's obligation as supplemental, even contingent, that the man's obligation is less than the woman's; correspondingly it asserts the woman's obligation to support is primary.

Huge Questions: Where the woman is wealthy, if the man is not obliged to support, may he "opt in"? May the woman deny him custody or visitation?

edit: Nick, sorry for the second reply to your post and a couple of redundancies. I thought the earlier one got lost in some internet backwash. Ah--and I just caught up to your post 1326. All's well, and thanks for the dialogue. Even when we disagree I enjoy engaging your thinking.

Huge Questions: Where the woman is wealthy, if the man is not obliged to support, may he "opt in"? May the woman deny him custody or visitation?

In most states she'd probably win a custody battle, but wouldn't be able to deny him visitation unless she could convince the court he was abusive to the child. Many states now default to "joint custody" in those states in theory she could deny him a share of custody only by showing he was a danger to the child somehow.

So, SH, since I thought you were a lawyer myself, what do you do for a living?

I'm really hoping he says he lives off support payments from his ex.

And yeah, sign me up with those who feel that putting a guy in jail (or refusing to renew his license) for failing to meet his support payments is seriously wrong-headed.

There are two different (at least) streams happening here, let's not conflate them. One regard the morality of forcing a man to pay to support his progeny (since the woman has an option to abort that he cannot avail himself of). A second relates to the fairness of the current system.

A huge percentage of the "child has a right to support from both its parents" crowd (and certainly me) are not claiming the current system is perfect. We are claiming it is moral to force the father to pay support towards his children. It can be moral to do that and there also be problems with the current system.

It is difficult for me to discuss the current system because while I am paying child support I have not experienced any of the horror stories. Used the MN calculator, determined what I owe and bob's your uncle. I am willing to believe there are horror stories, but I bet there are horror stories around pretty much any law, especially one a commonly needed as around child support. Plus there are 50 states and 50 (at least) versions of the laws, I know some of them are totally screwed up (From a friend my understanding is Alaska is seriously biased in favor of the man in a divorce, for example).

So, SH, since I thought you were a lawyer myself, what do you do for a living?

I ain't Ricky, but I believe Ricky works in IT. Ricky does database things for a major player, but I don't know exactly what he do, when he do that thing.

That's the decision tree. 1) have sex. 2) decide to carry to term or abort. Please note, that at this point, there is NO CHILD. So all of these arguments to "think about the children" or "the child's rights supercede everything else" are categorically false on the facts.

If the woman who had sex chooses 3a, the the result of her decision is having a child. The woman, and only the woman, has decided to have a child.

So far, I am with you.

The only person who can be held morally responsible for that decision is the person who made the decision.

Still with you.

The only person who can be held to account for the consequences of the action - the action being the decision to have a child - is the person who made that decision of her sole volition.

And here you lose me. We can absolutely be held accountable for the consequences of actions that we contribute nothing to. It's not my fault that John has no insurance and broke his ankle, but I am held accountable through increased medical costs or taxation for the cost of his treatment. It's not my fault that there are potholes on the street, seeing as I don't even own a car, but I must pay taxes to repair them as part of living in the city.

The man owes the woman nothing. He does, however, owe the child support by nature of the genetic connection. That the woman could protect him from this duty by eliminating the child doesn't absolve him of this duty. In a case of fraud, I have no problem with a civil judgment forcing a woman to provide restitution for the cost of that support.

And before you talk to me about tone, let me see you focus on the "white boys" and "little Mattie" comments and take some ownership of them.

Hell of a nerve, robin. Mattie's been shitting on everyone in this thread he disagrees with since long before I got back to it. I was just the latest target. Seriously, you're whining that we're not holding still so you can take the next shot. You're taking swings and when you finally get hit back, you scream "unfair!" It's ridiculous behavior, and you're getting called on it. If you don't like being mocked, stop earning it.

I am not sure what to do about that, but I am fairly sure that your ideas on the subject are pretty unsophisticated.

Is this another lazy joke? I've done more heavy lifting wrt specifics, wrt moral philosophy, the nature of rights, court cases, facts on support, and research than the whole PIVS gang combined, and I skipped around 900 posts.

Jesus. You sound exactly like the chump sitting on his shovel ######## that the guy out in the sun working away isn't sweating quite enough. Take a hike, son. Take a hike.

It's easy to tell the players without the numbers on the names on their tunics. They are the ones who always will at some point bail, and haughtily refuse to discuss an issue that takes a turn they don't like (in a way they can't refute). Some things can only be discussed one way. At the littlest deviation, it always becomes all ad hominem all the time. Why do you hate women? You're a misogynist. Got it. (Talk about your incisive comebacks.) If there were women taking part here, I'll bet you dollars to donuts they'd be making innuendoes about people's manhood. I've never seen so many people argue like Joe Kehoskie who would ridicule Joe Kehoskie for so arguing.
No one here has argued for anything other than responsibility commensurate with the choices one made.

I did want to point out that the only hint of violence came from the only poster in this thread who self-identified as female.

@671: "Also, the next person to equate rape to paying a check: I will find you and it will not be pretty."

No one so equated, by the way. She simply made this up. A lot of the rage in her post was manufactured, imputing to people things they simply hadn't said, and were little more than character assassination. I hadn't been involved in the thread at that point for the previous 400 posts, and the caricature and flat mistating of peoples' positions was obvious and unfortunate.

It's a pity. There's a fascinating discussion to be had on this subject, if we can wade through the dross. I did mention the topic of the thread to a female friend, a tough, compassionate, professional woman, and she had no problem stating it's ridiculous to force men to support children they don't want and didn't agree to. This is a woman who raised her son alone, btw.

We didn't get to specifics. I'll ask her next time we get together how she'd handle the practical side of the issue.

Why not 6 instead of 18? It won't play in the court of public opinion. What about the people in long-term marriages. What about the divorcees who are doing their best to manage? So this guy made a careless mistake, but he should essentially be rewarded for it by paying LESS for his child's upbringing than someone who is more responsible? That's how that looks to a large segment of the populace.

........................................

Thanks for the measured reply, Jay.

I have made what I thought was a clear distinction between men who took strong contraceptive precautions and were clear in their disinterest in having a child with the woman in question, versus men in marriages who had children (the de facto assumption being they agreed to them, erring on the side of agreement). The latter have a clear and complete obligation to support their children.

I also think it's important when talking about rights, and especially competing rights, to distinguish between what plays in the court of public opinion, and the right thing to do. I'd agree, of course, that they often have nothing to do with each other.

It's important to put facts out there. It can change the debate if the fact becomes well known that most people who can't meet their support obligation can't because of hardship, and not because of irresponsibility.

It's important to put the fact out there that women meet their support obligations less frequently than do men, not because it paints women as 'bad', but because it reframes the issue as a problem with hardship, with economics, as opposed to 'men are shirkers'.

We have a ridiculous enforcement system in place, a system that demands we imprison x% of those with support obligations simply because our economic system doesn't allow full employment. The more facts we can put into the court of public opinion showing that, the better.

We've decided to create a criminal underclass for no good reason. A sizable majority of people in prison for falling behind simply could not pay. We're putting people in prison because of structural unemployment.

I do not care about what kinds of sex people have, how many partners, how often. Please, please use multiple forms of birth control. But why can't we look at the social circumstances that are generating these births? Does that have to be off the table?

I think it should be on the table. Absolutely. It's a critical factor in so much this. Something like 60% of births to unwed mothers are to unwed mothers with HS or less. The NYT article I linked to also brought social circumstances back to the discussion.

1584:

There's no justification for holding forth in such dogmatically absolute terms. It wasn’t long ago that women’s reproductive rights were seen as natural but with different consequences and results, despite ambiguity and ambivalence. In fact, as to the child, not too long ago, babies (not fetuses--babies) found lacking were left on the side of a hill to die or be killed by predators. Same for the old and infirm. And it still is being done. (And I think some now in our society would like to revert to a modern equivalent of that.) No less a sympathetic person to primitive peoples than Jared Diamond, on NPR I think it was, spoke of how his precious New Guinea tribes still engage in infanticide. (And if a woman doesn’t like it, she’s liable to get a noogie with mallet handle.)

We, in the modern western cultures, have decided to do something different, but I wouldn’t be so trigger-happy when it comes to couching our reasons in some high moralistic it-has-to-be-that-way terms. Abraham was ready to wield the knife on his son if God hadn’t said (out on Highway 61), “Hey, Abe, at ease: it’s just a gag.”

Your genetic connection, in this day and age, and considering as an example and guide what the revolutions in our views as to women and race and, yes, children, reads a lot like mere tenuous but-for causation.

@1332--rr, once again you think you've said something by simply quoting. You haven't. Once again you strip out the context to score points. It's feckin lazy, buddy. When McGreer talks about the effectiveness of the threat of jail in getting frightened men to cough up money, he also talks about how paying--while driving men deeper into poverty and desperation--merely postpones the threat, which gets hung over them all over again, often in under a year.

He talks about agreeing with his Dad not to borrow the money necessary to keeping himself out of jail from his Dad because his Dad isn't well off, and because the next year they'll just have to do it all over again. Soon they won't be able to afford to keep McGreer out of jail, so if he's going to go anyway, why break his Dad in the process?

As for your third graf, McGreer's giving you the finger. He's obviously saying, "You made me a criminal. You made a lot of us criminals. I'm done being ashamed of it. We should recognize each other and talk to each other."

It appears he was successful in that.

I've never seen you indulge in anything like this intellectual dishonesty before, so I'm going to assume your feelings are blinding you to what you're doing.

Anyway, let me ask, then, what direction do you think the conversation can still productively take?

Specific, politically feasible changes to the family court system, rather than just talking about how badly men get screwed and how victimized they are by having to pay child support.

Talk about a dishonest framing. Well, keep being willfully (at least you're getting partial credit) stupid, I guess, but I'm done playing along.

And here you lose me. We can absolutely be held accountable for the consequences of actions that we contribute nothing to. It's not my fault that John has no insurance and broke his ankle, but I am held accountable through increased medical costs or taxation for the cost of his treatment. It's not my fault that there are potholes on the street, seeing as I don't even own a car, but I must pay taxes to repair them as part of living in the city.

Isn't this a strong argument for a strong safety net, and the spreading among many rather than one the cost of a woman's decision to have a child?

I still dont get why the guy quit the service 4 years short of when he would have received his pension? Why should we feel sorry for someone who voluntarily quits?

Perhaps he had had as much of the kill or be killed lifestyle as he could stomach.

So, SH, since I thought you were a lawyer myself, what do you do for a living?

BI consulting, specifically into sales and marketing organizations within Fortune 200 businesses. Which is one of those things that makes me giggle internally when David accuses me of being a socialist or whatever. Rickey won't buy you coffee, because coffee is for closers.

Is this another lazy joke? I've done more heavy lifting wrt specifics, wrt moral philosophy, the nature of rights, court cases, facts on support, and research than the whole PIVS gang combined, and I skipped around 900 posts.

Not at all. I already explained why the McGreer thing is very limited in its utility, and the fact that you have Googled a couple of court cases is not impressive to me, nor is philosophizing about rights (particularly given the intensity of your partisanship on this issue). As Cranly says to Stephen Dedalus, "Every jackass going the roads has ideas."

As to MCOA, I don't expect you to know this, either, but when I was into it with Kehoskie once, I explained to him that, for the most part at BTF, you get what you give. MCOA is very self-aware, and he can also be cutting as hell, so he gets this. I wasn't running interference for him. I was simply pointing out to you that you are not really in a position to be in people's faces about tone issues, as your most recent post addressed to me demonstrates yet again. If you want a more polite discussion, stop insulting everybody who insults or irritates you. IOW, look in the mirror.

And, if you want to focus on content, I asked a specific question addressed to your side about family law. If you want to answer it, answer it. If you don't, don't.

And here you lose me. We can absolutely be held accountable for the consequences of actions that we contribute nothing to. It's not my fault that John has no insurance and broke his ankle, but I am held accountable through increased medical costs or taxation for the cost of his treatment. It's not my fault that there are potholes on the street, seeing as I don't even own a car, but I must pay taxes to repair them as part of living in the city.

This is an argument for an "it takes a village" social security net for children, not for our current state "if you humped the ass, you pay the lass" system of child support.

The man owes the woman nothing. He does, however, owe the child support by nature of the genetic connection.

I simply disagree. I think you're making the "genetic connection" as an excuse for the status quo. There's no logical necessity in maintaining it in a modernist society.

Jack,

Not being dishonest at all. I am not interested in male victimization narratives; I have heard them before, here and elsewhere. You can save those for Causa and Ray and Rickey. Like I said, if you want to answer the question, answer it. If you don't, don't. Instead, you chose to call me dishonest and stupid. Once more: if you want to improve the discourse on the thread, try looking in the mirror.

As to McGreer, you are reading stuff into what I posted that simply isn't there. I was simply selecting certain things from his overall narrative that I thought were interesting, some of which made him look bad IMO; others of which didn't. If I had been looking to interpret them, or reading more into them, I would have done that myself, and my description of the actual document that McGreer produced and why he produced it is completely accurate.

I am not interested in male victimization narratives; I have heard them before, here and elsewhere. You can save those for Causa and Ray and Rickey.

I have not argued anything based on "male victimization narratives." My position is no more reliant on victimization narratives than a woman's right to choice is reliant on as much.

I have not argued anything based on "male victimization narratives."

We are going to have to agree to disagree to an extent on that one, Hoss. But also note that I didn't really say you had--I simply said that you would be part of a more appreciative audience for them than I am.

Are you open to female victimization narratives?

Are you open to female victimization narratives?

Personally I am not fond of any victimization narratives, but if we are collecting them can child victimization narratives have a place at the table?

There's no justification for holding forth in such dogmatically absolute terms. It wasn’t long ago that women’s reproductive rights were seen as natural but with different consequences and results, despite ambiguity and ambivalence. In fact, as to the child, not too long ago, babies (not fetuses--babies) found lacking were left on the side of a hill to die or be killed by predators. Same for the old and infirm. And it still is being done.

I wouldn't say no justification. There are moral and pragmatic reasons for holding biological parents responsible for the welfare of their offspring.

While there's evidence of models that don't agree, I don't think that they are particularly good models for a civilized modern society. This whole thread is an ought discussion, and built into any such discussion is "given certain basic assumptions about right and wrong."

We, in the modern western cultures, have decided to do something different, but I wouldn’t be so trigger-happy when it comes to couching our reasons in some high moralistic it-has-to-be-that-way terms. Abraham was ready to wield the knife on his son if God hadn’t said (out on Highway 61), “Hey, Abe, at ease: it’s just a gag.”

I don't think it has to be that way. I just think it should be that way.

My position: You can't leave a child without proper care in a modern, civilized nation; someone has to pay. It's more reasonable to charge the genetic parents with that care than to spread the burden throughout society if possible. The woman's decision as to whether or not to bring the child to term doesn't have any effect on the child's claim to support from its genetic parents. The physical, emotional, and cultural consequences of abortion or carrying a child to term fall so disproportionately upon the woman that it isn't unreasonable or unfair for her to have ultimate right to choose, even though that can end up having consequences for the biological father.

I recognize that there are certain assumptions being made here about the child's claim to support from genetic parents (or legal proxy, in the case of adoption).