The rights of children are supreme
Another non-debate lit up the news cycle in the last couple of weeks. Of all orphanages in the world, one in Ethiopia run by Maltese nuns, on the advice of the Archbishop Cremona, is giving babies for adoption only to married couples. Horror of horrors, cried some. Crass discrimination, shouted others. What about the rights of single people, some demanded. Being single myself I do tend to empathize with such rights. And what about the rights of gay couples others thundered. Being a human being I empathize with these as well.
The topic was raised by Alison Bezzina, a fellow blogger on this space. Newspaper followed it. Xarabank discussed adoption and in this context discussed the decision of this Ethiopian orphanage. Last Saturday the same topic was discussed during Andrew Azzopardi's programme on Radju Malta, Ghandi xi nghid. He phoned me for a comment.
My comment was as short as, I hope, was clear. Hang on a second, I said, before you decide to hang the sister who took the decision and Archbishop Cremona who suggested it. I do not think that one can speak of any fundamental human right to adopt. Married couples do not have such a right and less so do gay couples. On the other hand, children do have a right to be born and bred in the best family situations possible. Thus the rights of married couples, or single people or gay couples pale into insignificance when compared to the rights of children being given up for adoption. This is the heart of the matter.
The whole debate now vibrant in the media, particularly the social networks, unfortunately, had a cart before the horse mentality as it emphasises the rights of adults not children. The contrary should be the emphasis. Adoptions should only take place when they are in the best interest of children. Enough said.
I believe that – all things being equal – the first option for adopting should be given to married couples. Single persons should come second. I do not think that gay couples should normally be allowed to adopt children. I will only change my opinion if and when someone presents the results of reliable studies which show that the adoption in particular situations would be in the best interests of the children. If that were to be the case, I would have no problem with gay couples adopting children.
There is another aspect to this storm in a teacup. Is there any objective reason which should stop a privately run orphanage from making its own policy vis-à-vis the adoption of the children under its care? Are not those who run the orphanage those acting in loco parentis and thus have the duty and the right to decide what is best to those under their care? However, they cannot exercise their discretion in an arbitrary way. Even they have to be guided by what is in the best interest of the children in their care. Therefore they should not decide unless guided by experts in the field.
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M Xuereb
Mar 3rd 2012, 19:36
@ charles caruana
F-I-N-A-L-L-Y charles caruana, you get to argue that it is wrong to generalise! This is exactly what I hoped you would say. And it is exactly what the Curia did... Ball possession is entertaining, but there is nothing like a set-piece... Now you can argue against what you just said - it makes for good training :D
charles caruana
Mar 4th 2012, 10:08
If you think that is an adequate answer to my arguments, you have a curious knack for self-deception. I was referring to your penchant for generalising from single episodes and from your very limited personal experience, however emotional it might be. Since you seem to have run empty on arguments, I will rest my case, Ms Xuereb.
Antoine Vella
Mar 2nd 2012, 18:04
Some of the comments here are longer than the blog entry but with smaller fonts.
M Xuereb
Mar 2nd 2012, 15:36
@ charles caruana
Since you repeatedly address me personally, I will share a personal experience that might help us understand what kind of issues we are talking about here.
I once accompanied someone to Appogg to meet a social worker. While this person went inside to talk to the social worker, I waited in the waiting room and gave her baby a bottle. In the meantime, a c.8-year-old boy accompanied by a lady walked in. The lady went inside with another social worker while the boy waited in the waiting room. After staring at me for a while he asked if the baby was mine, to which I replied that the baby was of a friend of mine. Then he asked me if I had any children of my own, to which I replied in the negative. At that point he stood up, came closer and asked me "Would you foster me?". I asked him "Don't you have someone to take care of you?". "Yes", he said, "I'm fostered... that lady who went inside is my foster mother. But I am a very naughty boy and it might be that one day they won't want me any more."... He didn't care whether I was married, cohabiting or single. All that mattered to him was whether I could love him and care for him, even though he was naughty.
Those who have been there can talk with convinction, as you observed earlier on. Those who haven't, need to take time to listen to the experiences of those who have. You might be surprised to discover how many children who are brought up outside a traditional married couple household for a variety reasons are actually doing very well and would not change their parents for anyone else in the world.
charles caruana
Mar 3rd 2012, 09:38
@ M Xuereb
One swallaw does not a full spring make. My heart goes out to that child, so desperately unhappy in his foster home that he begged the first stanger he met to take him in, and I undstand your emotional reaction to the situation. But is this a typical or normal circumstance where an 8 year old child is asked to make his her choice? How really exemplary is it? What we are talking about here involves far reaching ethical principles and major policy decisions that could negativlely affect the lives and prospects of thousands of children, who everything being equal, deserve the best upbringing that a caring society can give them. However much you try to question or deny the normative value of what you call 'a traditional married couple household', all history, culture, nature, serious scientific research and the millenial experience of humanty all over the world has shown that children thrive best when born or adopted by a man and a woman in a stable union. Recognising and dealing with the present crisis of marriage and family ( all symptoms of a spiritually and culturally sick society) and dealing with it does not mean elevating other de facto truncated forms of family life into social and legal norms or encouraging them as ideal households for children. Children are not to be used as experimental subjects in new forms of social engineering - period. Just peruse the literature suggested by Mr Mario Pace in various threads on this subject and you will see how dangerous it is for children to base this issue on merely your limited personal experience. There are vast areas of experience which you also need to listen to and ponder, Ms Xuereb. Perhaps you might then talk with less conviction then and generalize less.
M Xuereb
Mar 2nd 2012, 07:52
@charles caruana
Those who argue that young children have a right to choose should watch Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007) for an illustration of how young children would choose (http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0952640/). Older children are always consulted but younger children are too young to decide on their future and that is why there are agencies such as Appogg and those who run orphanages who assign the children.
If we had to consider how children would choose if they had the ability to do so, we have to also consider that young children are generally unprejudiced - unlike some adults. Fact is that when children are brought up by loving parents, whether single or a couple, married or not, they would not change their parents for anyone else in the world. This is one of the most beautiful things about a healthy parent-child relationship. Just like parents who love their children would never think that, had they been allowed to choose their child they would have chosen someone else, children who are loved would never think that had they been allowed to choose their parents they would have chosen someone else. The moment a loving parent looks at his/her child - whether adopted or not - for the first time, that child becomes the most precious soul in the whole world and this feeling is in all likelihood mutual.
charles caruana
Mar 2nd 2012, 10:24
If you think I was referring to babes and infants when I referred to children being consulted, you have been watchng too many episodes of Alvin and the Chipmunks. But I am glad you did finally bring up the subject of children's after it has been pointed out to you.
I agree with you that 'young children are generally unprejudiced - unlike some adults.' That is why when they show a natural preference to be brought up by a mum and dad in a stable union their preference should be listened to and respected, not considered as precociuos discrimination or social brainwashing, especially by those adults clamouring for their non-existent right to adoption. About the loving bond between parents and children, who is questioning its absolute need and presence, whether the child is adopted or not? But again you are eliding the argument, which is that love is not just a wishy washy sentiment that justifies handing over children to anyone whosoever who wants to make them objects of his/her/ their love. Love has its order, its reasons, its responsibilites, its consequences and yes its 'descriminations', using the word in its older more positive and authentic meaning of prudent choice between best, better and worst, healthy, indifferent and downtright unhealthy, not its distorted modern and negative reduction to exclusive rights language. There is a scale of values, a hierarchy of choice that should not be flattened by a blind and fashionable egalitarianism ready to do away with all distinctions that millenia of child nurturing all over the world in the absolute majority of cultures have edified into near universal norms. All trendy chatter about the radical redefinition of such basic human realities as marriage, the family and sexual complimentarity is often just radical chic that risks vandalising preciuos human institutions and social health. Chilren are not and cannot be experimental subjects for such adventures in social engineering.
charles caruana
Mar 1st 2012, 16:19
@ M Xuereb
Though claiming not to be an expert, you write with the conviction and certainty of one. Are we living in an expertocracy, or a democracy? Are our ethical principles and practices to be dictated by experts, however professional they claim to be? ‘Guided’ does not mean determined, nor conditioned, nor limited – it means no more than a well informed opinion about a very specialized area of study, which rarely carries over in other infinitely more complex spheres of human life that involve ethical and social intricacies well beyond the very narrow and specialized interests of the expert. And we do know how, in such areas as psychological, medical and sociological research, the experts keep changing parameters of research and ‘scientific’ conclusions. Twenty years ago, most expert sociologists were scientifically and statistically convinced that religion would soon disappear with the onslaught of secularization. Now the same experts have exploded the secularization theory after having been mugged by the reality of resurgent global religion. And there are thousands of experts, scientific and philosophical, who can demonstrate that the embryo is neither a person nor a human being – does that justify abortion? By all means let us consult experts but we cannot make fetishes of them..
‘Guided’ is the wrong word – advised would have been more accurate. Fr Joe knows quite well that we have other higher sources of 'guidance' such as revelation and faith, in conjunction with reason (in its broad philosophical sense, not just in its strictly scientific sense only} are the sources of our ethical principles and moral values. He also knows that it has its own expertise in humanity and its needs, as Pope John Paul once said.
In Church run orphanages, as long as they are operating within the parameters of a just law, no ‘professional’, however expert he is in his field, can determine its principles and policies of adoption, based on its own vision of what is in the best child’s interest. I stress ‘just’ law, because in England the experts and professional have prevailed on the state to enact laws that impose on Catholic orphanages the onus to give in adoption children to gay couples. This flies in the face of Catholic moral principles about what is in the best interests of children. Many had to close down, because principles come before laws, political convenience and professionals. The ultimate victims were obviously the children.
And why is it that people like Alison Bezzina and M Xuereb never or rarely mention children’s preferences, what kind of family they would like to brought up in? Or would their preferences be considered discriminatory too? Or perhaps the effect of social brainwashing, as the brilliant Peppi Azzopardi suggested, so we should expose them to the many and increasing family forms to make their choice more liberal – married couple, unmarried partners, single men, single women, two gay fathers, two gay mothers, two fathers and one mother, two mothers and one father, fraternal polyandry, kibbutz style parenting and on and on. After all, in a society where the idea of any norm is actively combated, where are the limits? If the concept of the ‘best’ is drowned in the din of adult adopters’ rights, what chance have the voices of children to express their ‘right to be born and bred in the best family situations possible.’
Finally Fr Joe, there are plenty of ‘reliable studies’ that indicate gay sex as perfectly natural, both in the human and the natural world. And yet the Church, while condoning the gay orientation, has not changed its moral condemnation of it as an ‘objective disorder. I ask, is the Church’s stand against homosexual adoptions a personal opinion, or an ethical principle?
Mario Pace
Mar 1st 2012, 16:19
Another factor contributing to the instability of male homosexual households, which raises the possibility of major disruption for children raised in such households, is the significantly reduced life expectancy of male homosexuals.
In 1990, Wayne Tardiff and his partner, Allan Yoder, were the first homosexuals permitted to become adoptive parents in the state of New Jersey. Tardiff died in 1992 at age forty-four; Yoder died a few months later, leaving an orphaned five-year-old.
Obituaries, The Washington Blade (July 16, 1992): 23.
A study in the International Journal of Epidemiology on the mortality rates of homosexuals concludes that the “life expectancy at age twenty for gay and bisexual men is eight to twenty years less than for all men.”
Robert S. Hogg et al., Modeling the Impact of HIV Disease on Mortality in Gay and Bisexual Men, International Journal of Epidemiology 26 (1997): 657.
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/3/657.abstract
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2005/jun/05060606
"AIDS Rate 50 Times Higher in Homosexual Men"
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2009/aug/09082609
No wonder they aren't allowed to donate blood.
"The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center has abandoned a long-held homosexual activist contention by declaring on billboards posted throughout Southern California that HIV/AIDS is a 'gay disease.'"
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2006/oct/06100404
Mario Pace
Mar 1st 2012, 16:23
Studies indicate that the average male homosexual has hundreds of sex partners in his lifetime.
• A. P. Bell and M. S. Weinberg, in their classic study of male and female homosexuality, found that 43 percent of white male homosexuals had sex with five hundred or more partners, with 28 percent having 1,000 or more sex partners.
A. P. Bell and M. S. Weinberg, Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 308, 309; See also A. P. Bell, M. S. Weinberg, and S. K. Hammersmith, Sexual Preference (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981).
• In their study of the sexual profiles of 2,583 older homosexuals published in Journal of Sex Research, Paul Van de Ven et al. found that “the modal range for number of sexual partners ever [of homosexuals] was 101–500.” In addition, 10.2 percent to 15.7 percent had between 501 and 1,000 partners. A further 10.2 percent to 15.7 percent reported having had more than 1,000 lifetime sexual partners.
Paul Van de Ven et al., “A Comparative Demographic and Sexual Profile of Older Homosexually Active Men,” Journal of Sex Research 34 (1997): 354.
• A survey conducted by the homosexual magazine Genre found that 24 percent of the respondents said they had had more than 100 sexual partners in their lifetime. The magazine noted that several respondents suggested including a category of those who had more than 1,000 sexual partners.
“Sex Survey Results,” Genre (October 1996), quoted in “Survey Finds 40 percent of Gay Men Have Had More Than 40 Sex Partners,” Lambda Report, January 1998, 20.
• A study published in the journal AIDS in 2003 found that among homosexual men in the Netherlands, the “rate at which men with a steady partner acquire casual partners” averaged eight per year. Homosexual men without a “steady partner,” on the other hand, were found to “acquire” an average of 22 casual sex partners per year.
Maria Xiridou, et al., “The contribution of steady and casual partnerships to the incidence of HIV infection among homosexual men in Amsterdam,” AIDS 17 (2003): 1031.
http://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF08L45.pdf
Maria Borg
Mar 2nd 2012, 14:07
"A study published in the journal AIDS in 2003 found that among homosexual men in the Netherlands, the “rate at which men with a steady partner acquire casual partners” averaged eight per year. Homosexual men without a “steady partner,” on the other hand, were found to “acquire” an average of 22 casual sex partners per year"
My Goodness, is this Science or Fiction? Homosexuals with steady partners "acquire casual partners" at a rate of 8 per year, that's 280 sexuals partners in 35 years and those without steady partners acquire an average of 22 sex partners per year, that's 770 in 35 years. Promiscuity Galore! If allowed to adopt children, they surely would have something to teach them about the virtue of fidelty!
"AIDS Rate 50 Times Higher in Homosexual Men"
That's scary Mario. A couple of weeks ago I was watching Xarabank. It was about a maltese gay porn star. HIV positive and has also contracted Toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis is a disease that people get after playing with the toilet. And now, these people want to lay their hands on children.
Mario Pace
Mar 1st 2012, 14:06
Counter arguments to Bezzina's and lots of other studies.
http://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF08L45.pdf
"A number of studies claim that children raised in gay and lesbian households fare no worse than those reared in traditional families. However, much of that research fails to meet acceptable standards for psychological research; it is compromised by methodological flaws and driven by political agendas. The deficiencies of studies on homosexual parenting include reliance upon an inadequate sample size, lack of random sampling, lack of anonymity of research participants, and self-presentation bias.
On the other hand, there is an abundance of evidence to demonstrate the dangerous consequences of homosexual behavior and the unstable nature of homosexual relationships. And despite the weaknesses of the research focused specifically on homosexual parents, there is significant evidence that their children suffer, particularly in the area of sexual adjustment."
Mr Joseph Carmel Chetcuti
Feb 29th 2012, 23:48
I wonder what is the Church's position on bisexuals? What if you have two married bisexuals? Does that make them 'less better' parents than two heterosexual parents?
Mr Joseph Carmel Chetcuti
Feb 29th 2012, 23:46
Attitudes such as those contained in Borg's blog demonstrate the Church's disjunction with today's world. Catholic priests continue to offer solutions to today's problems on the basis of what they think these solutions should be rather than what they really are. The fact is that gay men and lesbians are parents and continue to be parents, foster and adopt children and will continue to foster and adopt children whether they do so openly as gay men and/or lesbians or closeted in pretended heterosexual relationships. Sadly the Church has yet to catch up with not only modernism but also postmodernism. Mind you this is the same Church that argues against men and women defining themselves primarily on the basis of their sexualty and yet is only too willing to object to gay men and lesbians adopting children precisely because of their sexual identity. What logic!
Mario Pace
Feb 29th 2012, 16:22
"No simple, single cause for sexual orientation has been conclusively demonstrated, but research suggests that it is by a combination of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences...Research over several decades has demonstrated that sexual orientation ranges along a continuum, from exclusive attraction to the opposite sex to exclusive attraction to the same sex."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_orientation
Imagine this "continuum" as a shade of two colours, black and white. The biological makeup determines our shade. This means that some children would become homo or hetero independent of the environment but some other children, those who are 'of the grey shade', would become gay or straight depending on the environment and the upbringing. If children of the latter type happen to be adopted by same sex couples, they would inadvertently become homosexuals too like their adoptive parents. And we do not want that to happen. That reason alone is more than enough to be against same sex adoptions. But I don't want to judge those few countries that allow same sex adoptions. Different countries have to cater for their different circumstances. For instance, in a country where the choice is between gay adoption or children dying of hunger, it is justifiable to allow the lesser evil.
Mario Pace
Mar 1st 2012, 15:01
There is growing evidence that children raised in such households headed by homosexuals are more likely to engage in sexual experimentation and in homosexual behavior.
A study in Developmental Psychology, found that 12 percent of the children of lesbians became active lesbians themselves, a rate which is at least four times the base rate of lesbianism in the adult female population.
Tasker and Golombok, Adults Raised as Children in Lesbian Families, 213.
M. Bailey et al. found that 9 percent of the adult sons of homosexual fathers were homosexual in their adult sexual behavior: “The rate of homosexuality in the sons (9 percent) is several times higher than that suggested by the population-based surveys and is consistent with a degree of father-to-son transmission.”
Bailey et al., Sexual Orientation of Adult Sons of Gay Fathers, 127–128.
With respect to actual involvement in same-gender sexual relationships, there was a significant difference between groups.…None of the children from heterosexual families had experienced a lesbian or gay relationship. By contrast, five (29 percent) of the seventeen daughters and one (13 percent) of the eight sons in homosexual families reported having at least one same-sex relationship.
Tasker and Golombok, Do Parents Influence the Sexual Orientation? 7.
R. Green et al. writing in Archives of Sexual Behavior, reported that the few experimental studies that included even modestly larger samples (13–30) of boys or girls reared by homosexual parents found “developmentally important statistically significant differences between children reared by homosexual parents compared to heterosexual parents. For example, children raised by homosexuals were found to have greater parental encouragement for cross-gender behavior [and] greater amounts of cross-dressing and cross-gender play/role behavior.”
Richard Green et al., Lesbian Mothers and Their Children: A Comparison with Solo Parent Heterosexual Mothers and Their Children, Archives of Sexual Behavior 15 (1986): 167–184.
In the American Sociological Review, authors Judith Stacey and Timothy J. Biblarz alluded to the “political incorrectness” of their finding of higher rates of homosexuality among children raised in homosexual households: “We recognize the political dangers of pointing out that recent studies indicate that a higher proportion of children of lesbigay parents are themselves apt to engage in homosexual activity.”
Judith Stacey and Timothy J. Biblarz, “(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter,” American Sociological Review 66 (2001): 174, 179.
http://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF08L45.pdf
Alison Bezzina
Feb 29th 2012, 11:32
For some weekend reading - here's an APA meta study, covering over thirty year of research in gay parenting http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/parenting-full.pdf
Antoine Vella
Feb 29th 2012, 13:31
This APA report seems less than objective ("the pink triangle was used by the Nazis", so..you know. ..if we're against gays adopting babies, we're little better than Nazis)
Can we know if the authors are also gay? It's relevant because it would surely constitute a bias.
Mario Pace
Feb 29th 2012, 23:50
"Homosexual Parenting Studies Are Flawed, Report Says"
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,29901,00.html
"Dozens of studies about kids raised by gay parents were mischaracterized for political reasons so as not to draw the ire of homosexual activists or encourage anti-gay rhetoric, a new report suggests.
The report, by sociology professors at the University of Southern California, says that, contrary to earlier assertions, children of same-sex parents exhibit significant differences when compared to children raised by heterosexual couples."
M Xuereb
Feb 29th 2012, 10:58
Fr Joe, you last sentence sums it all up: "They should not decide unless guided by experts in the field". With all due respect, Mons. Cremona is no expert in the field, you are no expert in the field, I am no expert in the field and all those non-professionals who have voiced their opinions just because this is the next hot issue are no experts in the fields. The adoption process in Malta is a regulated process that involves many experts in the field, and in related fields. These experts assess every case on its own merits, and their yardstick is always the best interest of the child. Accordingly, they determine whether applicants make suitable parents and approve them for adoption or otherwise. Whoever is involved in this process as a professional or has first-hand experience of it as an adoptive parent, knows that this is a very thorough process. How an opinion expressed by non-experts in the field can override the recommendations made by the professionals is beyond reasoning.
Note also what the Archbishop said on Xarabank. He explained that he expressed his opinion with the religious person who runs the Orphanage, but who falls under the Ethiopian Church, and hence not strictly under his control. But he expects that from then onwards, all children from this Orphanage will be placed with married couples only. But he has no control over what happens with local orphanges as those fall under Appogg.
Compare this to what the professionals representing Appogg and the Foundation for Social Welfare Standards said on the same programme. They certainly seem to know what they are talking about and fully aware of what they are dealing with. Why can't we leave it up to them to do their job as professionals?
Mary Mills
Feb 28th 2012, 20:54
Fr Borg: good to hear an opinion (short on argument, that's true) expressed unambiguously.
Alison Bezzina
Feb 28th 2012, 16:34
@Fr. Joe - you're responsible for what is possibly the fastest blog I've ever written...
Preference IS discrimination - http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120228/blogs/preference-is-discrimination.408940
Andy Farrugia
Feb 28th 2012, 17:57
arem hej; ma x'biza!
Jessica Debattista
Feb 28th 2012, 21:54
So while I juggle between your blog and Fr. Joe’s trying to weigh two different opinions and keeping an open mind so as not to be persuaded one way or the other I am prepared to say my say - I agree with Fr. Joe that children have a right to be with the people who can better give them the best possible upbringing.
I suppose that a married couple would win over a single person!
It is becoming bad enough for a married couple to give a proper upbringing in a society that is creating so much pressure due to the fact that the woman is ever more joining the work force. I would say that a single person would make it doubly more difficult to raise a child in such a society.
As to gay couples adopting, I have mixed feelings. I think that lesbians would stand a better chance than homosexuals. The maternal instinct cannot be denied and I can envisage lesbains raising children but try as I might I cannot envisage homosexuals doing the same.
Lesbian couples are already resorting to in vitro fertilization to have a child. One wonders if it would not be more acceptable to adopt rather than the former process!
Franco Farrugia
Feb 29th 2012, 21:38
@ Jessica Debattista - With the years accumulating, you still have not, madam, learnt one of the most important lessons that life gave me: that you cannot generalise anymore; that what is to you 'normal', or 'usual' or 'average', is not the same to the person next to you, and that many things in life are contextual and relative.
Hence your statement ... and with 'an open mind', wow! Ara kieku your mind is 'closed', what would come out..... 'I suppose that a married couple would win over a single person!' So, according to your words of wisdom, a married couple involving at least one person who is violent, vicious, brings about tension and stress within the family s/he in, are better at nurturing children than a peaceful, law-abiding, lowing single individual - even if a homosexual or a lesbian, following your train of thought. But words of wisdom, eh!!!
Or: 'As to gay couples adopting, I have mixed feelings. I think that lesbians would stand a better chance than homosexuals. The maternal instinct cannot be denied and I can envisage lesbains raising children but try as I might I cannot envisage homosexuals doing the same.'
But you are really wise, Mrs Debattista! Very wise! Your wisdom is so.... so encompassing. I have no words to express how impressed I am by your wisdom. Sweeping statements, galore. Talking off your hat! As if there aren't men around, able to have a 'manternal instinct' as much as, and even more, than the woman next door.
So, please, in conclusion, stop 'trying' to envisage this and that, and give us all a break from your wild sweeping statements that smell of the 16th century! Try as you might to disguise them, yours are nothing better than such!
And do you want yet another proof of how pathetic your statements are? Right: your conclusion - which can easily apply even to married couples, and not to single lesbians only!
Jessica Debattista
Mar 1st 2012, 09:30
@ Franco Farrugia:
Why are you so vicious towards me Franco? Can’t you post anything decent in my regard?
Aren’t we here contributing to the same blog because we are both seeking answers to questions that neither of us is “wise” enough to answer. We can only speculate for neither of us is an expert. We are both entitled to our views and when the subject is as sensitive as this, we are bound to step on somebody’s toes.
So what will you have me do? Shall I wait for your opinion about anything that appears on this blog and then deign an answer accordingly thus assuring myself that I will be spared your mean attacks?
Franco Farrugia
Mar 1st 2012, 09:39
@ Jessica Debttista: Once again, you need to be told that if you make your opinion public - 'a freddo', since you speak about 'supposing' - then, you have to expect people to criticise those opinions that you share. If you are not prepared for this, just don't write.
Jessica Debattista
Mar 1st 2012, 14:21
@Franco Farrugia: “....you have to expect people to criticise those opinions that you share. If you are not prepared for this, just don't write.”
“Suppose” = think that something is true or likely, but without proof.
“Envisage” = see as a possibility. (Oxford dictionary)
Hardly words that can be described as “generalizing” or “sweeping statements”.
So what’s your problem?
I do not mind people criticising my opinions. That is how normal human beings interact. It is intimidation that puts a damper in an argument.
Franco Farrugia
Mar 1st 2012, 18:51
@ Jessica Debattista: Moi, intimidating YOU or anyone, for that matter? Huh! Further comments are superfluous.
Victor Rodenas
Feb 28th 2012, 16:18
What is the view of the Vatican on all this? This is a pertinent question that all should know.
Please choose the reason of your report below: