Slow News DayFollow

Sometimes, all I can do is shake my head. People are exhausting. WTF is the point of protesting the doll fashion show of a company that provides funds for charities that don't directly sponsor something you object to? I guess press is a pretty decent reason, but it all smacks of fanaticism and mob mentality.

Yeah, I saw this. Mob mentality, indeed.

Sort of off topic but ... in majoring in Business Managment one learns about stakeholders and their control/power over an industry. With enough bad press a company like matel might consider not providing funds to this chairity. Sort of sad actually.

This was on my local radio station today. A lot of people called in and were, just like you, fuming. As a religious man, I would have to say that these people trying to ban this are complete and utter morons. Sex is going to happen. It is just that simple. Do you know what really promotes promiscuity? Hormones and being a kid with no morals.

If something such as cervical cancer is preventable via use of a drug...great! Give it to every single girl that goes on birth control or to any that are interested.

Edited, Tue Nov 1 16:46:35 2005 by Mearyk

Well, it would vaccinate against a dangerous contagious infection (HPV), so it does fit in with other *mandatory* vaccines.

The only difference is that this particular contagion is spread by sexual contact. Hence the opposition by the radical self-styled Christians.

Again, what happens when a vaccine becomes available for HIV? Should it be mandatory, and when?

Oh, yes, because it's so very evil to consider protecting the 10,000 women who will contract cervical cancer each year.



Well, that's all well and good, but welcome to the real world where teenagers don't ask the permission of their parents before having sex. Do you want your uninnoculated daughter to be the one that bumps fuzzies with the uninnoculated boy who happens to be carrying the cancer-causing strain of HPV? Guess what: it doesn't matter if you want it or not, if she decides she's going to do it, she's going to do it. Is her life worth your moral stance?



Again, that's all well and good in la-la land where everyone waits until they're an adult before becoming sexually active and makes sure they have all their vaccinations beforehand. But, again, welcome to this quaint little place called REALITY, where kids are losing their virginity between the ages of 12-14 at astonishing rates. There's no mention that the vaccine works worth a damn if it's administered AFTER the virus has already been contracted. Waiting until your kid is old enough to decide if she wants the vaccine isn't necessarily going to help if she decides to have sex before that day.

We vaccinate kids to protect other kids; that's why they can't get into school unless their vaccinations are in order. It has nothing to do with encouraging them to have sex; it has to do with making sure anyone they happen to have sex with, despite any encouragement or lack thereof is, isn't going to give them something that will kill them on down the line.

Stupid people who are willing to let their kids die so they can pat themselves on the back for their firm moral convictions annoy me intensely.

I got the pill unbeknownest to my very conservative father. I could have probably wrangled in a shot or two, I'm sure, so the concerns of the parents seem pretty baseless. If your kid wants to have sex despite deep religious convictions *cough*Laviont*cough*, they will, but there are things you can do to minimize the risks. Whatever happened to protecting them against a possible rape or abuse scenario? Hell, if you feel you can trust your child to abstain, then what's the difference?

I think making it mandatory would be optimal as far as people's health is concerned, since many HPV carriers are both unaware that they carry the virus, and that condoms may provide some protection but usually do not cover the range of the infected area. However, I don't think that this should hold up distribution of the drug. Put it out there. If kids want it, they'll talk to their doctors and find a way to get it.

Gbaji, you are so full of sh[/i]it, you squeak going into a turn.

Just needed to get that out of the way.

gbaji wrote:

*cough* Isn't it my choice as a parent though? If I feel that the increased chance of my child getting cervical cancer is worth the possible decrease in odds she'll be sexualy active in her teen years in the first place, then that's my choice to make. More importantly it definately isn't the governments choice to make.

First off, show me numbers that say that giving anyone a vaccine that prevents an STI will actually increase the odds of them being sexually active. You can't do it. Why? Because those numbers don't exist. Here's the problem with your whole bogus argument: the conjecture that innoculating against STIs will "encourage" sexual activity is exactly that--conjecture. It's moralistic alarmist nonsense that has nothing to do with reality.

And frankly, the choice to endanger your child from a potentially fatal illness is NOT yours as a parent. We have negligent homicide laws for a reason, and that reason is that if there is a foreseeable danger of death to another and a person does nothing to prevent it, they are liable.

And saving the lives of citizens IS the government's choice to make. Are you saying that kids aren't entitled to government protection of their health and safety against a potentially deadly epidemic?

Your choice as a parent involves how much you TALK to your kids about sex, what sort of message you send them. Hopefully, if you're good at it, your kid will realize the risks aren't worth it and abstain, vaccine or no vaccine.

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We're not talking about a disease that's spread by kids playing in the playground during school. It's reasonable for the government to be concerned about ensuring innoculations for such things in public schools, since they are spread around. You don't chose to breath in the air the other kids are breathing out. It happens by being at school. And since public school is government run and mandated, that government is responsible for the wellbeing of my child while at that school.

It doesn't MATTER how the disease is spread. It's out there, and it's killing people, specifically women. (While we're on that subject, how much less objection to this idea do you HONESTLY expect there would be if the danger in question were posed to men instead?)

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This is a wholely different issue. Unless you are suggesting that our mandated public school curriculum requires that the kids have sex, the government does not have any responsiblity to ensure that kids attending public school are vacinated against this. There is *no* reason to require these vaccinations.

The majority of sexual contacts a sexually active teenager will have are made with people they encounter in the course of their education. That makes it a concern of the school system, because they have a responsibility to protect the health and safety of the children they are educating, even if it's a kid who has made a stupid choice.

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Guess what? If I don't send my kid to public school, I don't have to get them their innoculation shots either. It's the parents right to choose. Not yours. And not the governments.

Bull. Provide links to private schools that aren't requiring innoculations for their students. Show me a school that doesn't care about protecting the health of their students, and about protecting themselves from liability for endangering the health of their students. Go ahead. Do it.

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There are some people who believe that any medical science is lack of faith in God and refuse to use it. The government cannot force them to provide medical care for their children. If their children die as a result, that's their choice. Harsh? Yes. But that's what it means to live in a "free" society. If I want to believe that modern medicine is "evil" and refuse to take it, I have that legal right to do so (and even die as a result).

Not true. Children have been removed from their parent's custody if the parent's faith requires fasting or inadequate nutrition to the child, the government has overruled parents on whether or not to have life saving procedures performed on their children. There are plenty of cases where it has been made very clear that your right to practice your faith DOES NOT entitle you to endanger the health and safety of another.

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I just love how those who talk the most about freedom and liberty are the first to insist that they know best how to raise other people's kids and insist that we pass laws mandating their ideas...

How you have the balls to ever accuse anyone of resorting to irrelevent rhetoric is absolutely mindboggling.

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Yeah. And I'm pretty sure that for the last 60 years, as that "alarming" change has occured, every single time some conservative religious guy said: "Hey! Let's not do this thing because it'll encourage promiscuity among young teens", you and others like you laughed him off and told him he was trying to enforce his religious values on you and should **** off.

At what point do we start listening to those guys?

Hmm...maybe when they gain even a SHRED of credibility. These people who are so opposed to the availability of condoms to minors, or comprehensive sex ed, because it [i]might encourage them to have sex (note the "might" there, because there is not a single bit of hard evidence to back up the claim) have no compunctions about greenlighting commercials that claim that the product their company manufactures will make you sexier, commercials that are seen by our children who walk away with the message that being sexy is the be-all and end-all of everything. These people pimp everything from fast food to cars to skimpy clothing to cigarettes six days a week, and on the seventh day whinge about how attempts to protect kids from the potentially deadly consequences of sexual activity is "encouraging" them to have sex.

So let's address the message out there that anything worth having is going to increase your sex appeal and the people who are pimping that message day after day to our kids while they watch their afternoon cartoons, THEN lets talk about whether or not vaccinations against STIs might encourage sexual activity.



After they take a good hard look at the message they themselves are sending out, maybe? Just a whacky notion there that maybe, just maybe, the underlying problem with teen pregnancy doesn't lie with education and innoculation, but by golly, maybe it lies with every TV spot and billboard from which these hypocrites make their living.



Oh, something has indeed changed, but it's not what these whackjobs are pointing their fingers at. It's that somewhere along the way, some advertising guru came to the understanding that sex sells, and suddenly every moment of every day was inundated with the message that if you're not sexy, you're nobody. And these very "moral" people are ABSOLUTELY NO LESS guilty of it than anyone else.



Maybe at the point where you respond to the challenge I have laid before you time and again to show how, when taking into consideration both the increase in population over the last 60 years AND the increase in socially mandated sexual activity, birth control and abortion AREN'T working. And, again, you can't do it. Because when you take into consideration that not only are there more people, but that the majority of those people are sexually active (because they're getting the message from every frickin' direction that they NEED to be sexually active to be worth anything) you find that the "epidemic" of teen pregnancy is a drop in the bucket, and the only thing keeping it from becoming a flood IS the birth control and abortion, and that the drop in question exists in the corner of the bucket where socio-economics and pie-in-the-sky moralism conspire to prevent to availability of birth control and abortion.




There are already laws saying that you can't willfully endanger someone's life, even if it's because you are "raising your children as you wish."



No, because I have logic and reasoning and FACTS on my side, rather than just God. God isn't doing a very good job of protecting the health and safety of our kids, so I guess I just gotta step in and play the heavy.



I'm completely about freedom. A shot doesn't compromise that except in someone's overwrought imagination. If you're educating your kids about sex, if you're instilling in them good decision-making skills and even, yes, MORALS, then there's no way a shot can undo all of that. Ever stop to think about the idea that maybe the reason these people are so opposed to the idea is because it's a tacit admission that they're not doing their jobs properly?

Argh! What IS it with the quote thing?

Edited, Wed Nov 2 19:52:34 2005 by Ambrya

No, I'm claiming that they're going to have sex if they want to have sex, vaccination or no vaccination, and that ultimately there's not a damned thing we can do to prevent it.



How can you say it does? Show me numbers. Go on. Amaze me. Show me proof that it WILL encourage them. You can't, because the proof doesn't exist. Because kids out there, in this culture we live in that glorifies sexual activity, aren't basing their decision to have sex on whether or not it's safe to do so, they're basing it on whether or not it's cool and socially acceptable to do so. They're basing it on what their hormones are telling them to do. Sometimes they're basing a little of it on what their parent's have told them, but not nearly as often as they're basing it on what their friends and TV is telling them. They sure as hell aren't basing it on their innoculation records, and to assume those innoculation records would ever enter into their reasoning is frankly the idiotic hysteria of people who obviously don't remember what it's like to actually BE a teenager.



Faulty logic. Slippery-slope reasoning. Show a direct causal connection between trying to protect people from the consequences of sexual activity and the rates of teen pregnancy. You can't, because, again, it doesn't exist. Rather than pointing at one little facet of society and villifying it, try looking at the whole picture and the plurality of factors that are out there making our kids WANT to have sex.

You ask why I don't take time to consider if these people are right? This is why: because their argument attempts to oversimplify an extremely complex and multi-tiered problem. They're more concerned with appointing a villain than they are with fixing the problem.



Only as long as that stupidity doesn't endanger the lives of others.



Well, that's a lovely idea, but unfortunately, that 18 year old fu[/i]cked the plague-carrying idiot spawn of a moralistic moron at the age of 13 and as a result will die of cervical cancer at the age of 35.

"Dad was a moral guy" makes a great toast at a parent's wake, but looks lousy on the tombstone of a young woman cut down in the prime of her life.

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Until then, they are their parents responsiblity. Does it cost you anything if someone else's kid dies? Aside from a broad social "dignity" issue, what difference does it make? Harsh? Yeah. But it's *not* your problem or your responsiblity or your right to interfere.

Oh, well, close the doors to CPS and send the social workers home, because it doesn't cost me anything if a father bludgeons his six year old to death with a 2x4 either.



Sanctimonious dolt.

[i]Edited, Wed Nov 2 19:54:59 2005 by Ambrya

I know, I know...I've just in a pissy mood today between a head cold and boredom, and the rampant idiocy I'm seeing is overwhelming my sense of restraint.

It's not something that happens automatically as a result of attending public school, no. Exposure to things like measels and polio *are* the result of simply sitting in a room in close proximity to anyone infected.

The government "forces" children into a condition of exposure to those other things when it mandates public education. Thus, it must require innoculations for students attending public school. The same cannot be said for sexually transmitted diseases. The government is not forcing your child to have sex with another by merely requiring that they attend school together. Thus, mandatory vaccination against a sexually transmitted disease should *not* be a requirement for attending public school. Get it? Sheesh!


Get this straight. I'm not saying that this vaccination is "bad", or should be fought or something silly like that. I *am* saying that it should not be required for someone to attend public school. The only innoculations/vaccinations that should be required for attendance should be things that will cause a public health risk to any student attending school if they don't have them. Unless sex with other students is mandated by the government, then that's not the case with this vaccination.

Um. Yes it is. It's not negligent homicide. There's currently a huge fight over the rights of parents to not provide medical care to their children, and the subject is still a matter of debate legally. It's clearly not illegal for a parent to choose not to vaccinate their child against a sexually transmitted disease. They're not even in the same ballpark.



No. Liberals believe that caring for the day to day health of its citizens is the responsiblity of the government. Conservatives do *not*. You automaticaly assume your own political belief is the only one and is somehow the law of the land. Parents are entitled to have their government *not* endanger their child's health (by say requiring them to attend a school without finding a way to prevent rampant spread of disesase there). But the government's responsiblity ends there. It's the parents *choice* to avail themselves of that or not.



What if I want to raise my child with no knowledge that sex even exists? Don't I have the right to do that? You're starting with the assumption that you are the best determinant of what is best for everyone's children, and the parents only get to make slight modifications to what you've already required of them.

Sorry. That's not correct. I don't agree with it from the start, and it's definately not the law yet (although you guys keep trying).



Huh? It doesn't matter how the disease is spread? Look. I know you want the government to control every aspect of everyone's lives, but most people want the government only to intervene when it has to, not whenever it can.

A sexually transmitted diesease is not something you're going to catch just by sitting in a classroom. Therefore a vaccination to such a thing is *not* required for anyone sitting in a classroom. It's something that's advisable for someone who's sexually active. But then let each person choose to take it based on when they choose to become sexually active. Don't mandate that via government fiat. That's just oppression.



That's BS and you know it. The majority of people your kid is going to do drugs with will be people they encounter in school. Should we have mandatory drug testing in schools now too?

It is *not* the job of the government to protect people from making stupid choices. That's what freedom is about. How can you be free to make good choices, if you aren't also free to make bad ones? Think about that for a minute...



Two words: "home schooling". I never said private school. You made an assumption. You do that alot, don't you...?



Yeah. And those cases have been fought bitterly in the courts. CPS have taken children away from families in that case, and it's caused quite an uproar. Your argument is circular. Many conservatives think that the CPS in most states are *waaaaay* to intrusive on their rights as parents. There are a lot of challenges to CPS organizations around the country in courts right now. Saying that it's ok for CPS to take your children away because CPS has done it before it not a proof. It could just as easily mean that we've already gone too far at taking away parental rights.


Again. You are basing your position on a political assumption which something like 50% of the population does not agree with you on. Saying that you're right because past liberals have been able to push their agenda to a certain point is not proof. Not everyone agrees that the "dignity" of society requires that the government violate people's liberty in order to ensure that they meet some kind of social requirements. I'd point you at the fundamental difference between Liberals and Conservatives if I hadn't already written something up about that in another thread within the last 24 hours.

It's definately not something that everyone will agree on. Hence (obviously) the disagreement. Fundamentally, Conservatives do not believe that the government should remove freedoms from individuals to improve the livelyhood of the entire society. So taking a parents child away because that parent isn't raising the child the way the society as a whole thinks is "best" is a horrible violation of freedom to Conservatives and will generally be fought hard.



How you have the balls to ever accuse anyone of resorting to irrelevent rhetoric is absolutely mindboggling.[/quote]

It's irrelevant? You are arguing that a parents right to choose whether to vaccinate his child against a sexually transmitted disease is overriden by the government's right to enforce such things based on some very broad sociological statistics, but you're arguing that you *aren't* advocating a restriction of people's liberty?

Excuse me? That's textbook. Can we not accept that mandating a vaccination of a child is a violation of the parents rights? And doing so over something that a child wont need vaccination against until/unless that child is sexually active? It's waaaay out of the bounds of reasonable things to require for school. It's being proposed, not because it's needed, but because it's convenient. And I don't know about you, but I get concerned when my government starts mandating things that violate parents rights purely because it's convenient for the government to do so. Don't you?



So because they may have some outthere ideas about somethings, they are therefore automatically wrong about everything? I'm sure there's a logical fallacy for that, but I don't feel like looking it up.

Look. You cannot deny that these guys have opposed a number of things for several decades now, all with the "don't do this because it'll increase promiscuity among teens" argument. And they've been overruled on every single one. And today, magically, promiscuity among teens is super high. So either they were just really good guessers, or maybe they were right?

But you don't know that because we haven't tried it their way, have we? Sheesh. You're so sure of yourself that even when you acknowledge that the exact consequences these groups have said would occur as a result of those things happens, you refuse to even accept the *possiblity* that they might have been right?



Not a lot of church groups putting up sexy billboard Ambrya. Not sure where you're getting this one...



And that had nothing to do with the introduction of the pill? Or the destigmification of casual sex? The legalization of abortion? The introduction of sexual education in public schools? Are you seriously saying *none* of that had any effect on the rates of teen sexual activity? It was all about some advertiser who just decided that "sex sells"?

Ever consider that sex sells *because* we have changed our society to make those things more acceptable? Ever think that advertisers use sexual imagry to actract customers because they know that their customers have been taught that casual sex is ok? I'm pretty sure that a victoria secret ad would not have been recieved positively in puritan New England back in the day. Advertisers aim for what their customers want. They don't create those things. We'd already shifted to a sex oriented society before the advertising shifted with it.




Purely anectdotal, but somehow the rates of unwed births have increased 10 fold in the last 60 years. So back when we illegalized abortion, did not have sex ed in public schools, and in most places illegalized the sale of birth control, we had a very very low rate of unplanned pregnancies.

Explain that. Please. I can't say that those things are the *only* cause, but you can't say that they aren't *a* cause. That's the point. You reject the notion out of hand that we've increased the rates of these things (effectively creating the very problem we're trying to fight), but you have absolutely no evidence to support that notion.

Let me explain again. I don't have to prove my position. You're the one saying that those religious types are wrong. Not just wrong, but so wrong that you should override their parental decisions with government decree. I'm simply saying that you can't prove they are wrong, and so maybe you shouldn't force them to change the way they raise their children?

Get it? You're the one supporting a mandated government change. The burden to prove that you are absolutely 100% correct to mandate that is on you. At what point did you decide that parents must prove their parenting methods are the best before we allow them to raise their children the way they want? The default is that a parent can do anything they damn well please with their child. The government should have to prove a justification for any regulations or restrictions they place on those parents. And that burden must be set very very high, because you are infringing on a very basic right (to raise your own children).


I don't have to prove that those things caused the increases in teen pregnancy and promiscuity. You have to prove they *didn't*. And I know for an absolute fact that you can't. So if you can't prove these parents aren't right, why are you endorsing a government mandate that overrides their choice in this case? In the absense of proof, the parents rights should have sway.

You seem to have your rights backwards. Your rights protect you from the government, not the other way around...





Hahaha! So a parent is free to raise his child how he sees fit as long as he "teaches his child about sex...". Got it. So he can do whatever he wants, as long as what he wants happens to agree with what you want... Got it.

But you're all for freedom? How can you say that? Do you even know what freedom is?

Huh?! But you're argument hinges on the assumption that the concern that some parents have (that it'll promote promiscuity in teens) is unfounded. So yeah. You have to prove that it wont to make your argument.




Ok. So your advocating that we do "whatever is required to safeguard the lives of our children in a society where sex happens whether we want it to or not".

Does that apply to parallel situations? Violence happens whether we want it too or not, right? As a parent, am I more or less in control over whether my child might be a victim of a violent crime versus whether my child will have sex?

Which is it? I'm assuming less, right? After all, I can teach my child not to engage in sex. I can try to fill that child with values. And maybe it'll work. I can at least do *something*. The odds of my child being a victim of violence is pretty much out of my hands though, right? Sex occurs as a choice of the child, which I can affect. Violence can occur whether the child chooses or not, right? So clearly, I have less control over the odds of violence occuring to my child.

I'm pointing this out because I could just as easily change your sentence to "I'm advocating that we do whatever is required to safeguard the lives of children in a world where violence will happen whether we want it to or not"

Would you agree that that is a valid substitution? If you can advocate one, should you not advocate the other? I've already established a decent argument that the violence thing is under less control then the sex thing, so that seems reasonable.


So. Would you agree that if we took children away from their parents and raised them in a special "kids only" city that they'd be less likely to be victims of violence? After all, most violence occurs to children, not in school, but in their own neighborhoods. Especially those in poor neighborhoods full of violent criminals. They would be less likely to be victims of violence if we did that wouldn't they?

Would you advocate that we do that? I'm pretty sure I could drag out statistics that would show a dramatically reduced rate of violence to children if we put them in a separated environment. I'm pretty sure we could improve education quality and test scores as well. And it would prevent all those "bad parents" from hurting their kida as well. Child molestation (which occurs almost 90% in the family of the child) would be almost eliminated overnight. Heck. I could probably show how this will have ten times the positive impact on our children then the stupid vaccination you are arguing for.

Would you advocate it? Why not? You said you'd do "whatever the fuck was required to protect them sexually. Why not protect them from violence in the same way? Or do you only really care about making sure kids are able to safely have sex, but you don't care if they are mugged, kidnapped, or killed on the street?


I know that someone's going to cry "slippery slope" on this one, but I'm not quite using that fallacy. I'm not arguing one is the consequence of the other. I'm saying that both use the same logic to arrive at their results. The argument you are using to remove the parental rights in the case of a shot in the arm is exactly the same as the argument you could use to take that child away from the parent and put it in a "safe" environment. It's really just a matter of degrees.


My point is that a parent's rights should only be removed in those cases where we can absolutely prove they've violated them with regards to the child. You are arguing that we should reduce those rights in situations where there's only a broad social issue at stake. You can't show that this parent in particular has made a choice that is deliberately harmful to his child. You can't even prove in general if the approach to parenting the parent is using is wrong. Yet you want to blanketly mandate that the parents not be able to excersize their parental rights without even establishing that you are right, much less that they are wrong.

That's the problem. When you remove the litmus test of proving that the parents choice is directly and maliciously harmful to the child, you can then justify a whole range of things using the exactly same logic.




Point proven then. I can show you numbers of lives my "kid-town" would save as well. In fact, I'm betting it's vastly larger then your number. That by itself is not a justification for doing it though.

And it never should...