Ambrya wrote:
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.
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.
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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?
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.
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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.
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).
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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?)
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.
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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.
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...
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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.
Two words: "home schooling". I never said private school. You made an assumption. You do that alot, don't you...?
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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.
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.
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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.[/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?
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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 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 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?
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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.
Not a lot of church groups putting up sexy billboard Ambrya. Not sure where you're getting this one...
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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.
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.
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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.
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...
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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?
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?