I am so tired of the whole “cool pope” thing with Francis. It’s 100% PR.
And I think an organisation covering for pedophiles and murdering kids in their schools have no moral high ground and it is definitely unfit to lecture anyone on human dignity.
Eat a bag of dicks Francis
Francis,
Calamari is just the tips.
Exactly. There people are a threat, not role models.
The Vatican said Pope Francis had approved the document, which also reaffirms its condemnation of surrogacy, saying the practice represents “a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child”.
“A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract,” the document says. “Every human life, beginning with that of the unborn child in its mother’s womb, cannot be suppressed, nor become an object of commodity.”
The ethical problems with surrogacy are real, but they’re not about the child. They’re about income inequality and putting adult women through a physically traumatic, dangerous, and possibly life-changing experience for money. If we were able to use artificial wombs for “surrogacy” (I know, it’s technically not the same thing), I think people would see it as nothing but a new type of fertility medicine.
My cousin did it because she wanted to help someone have a child. She didn’t do it for the money. When it’s a financial transaction, I see the issue.
It also helps LBGT couples who can’t have children get them. I don’t see an issue even if there is money involved if it is clearly not coerced.
The issue is ensuring its clearly not coerced, which is effectively impossible in practice. Unfortunately it’s one of those things where once you allow people to be paid for it, it’s gets really, really dark, really, really quickly.
I don’t think it’s impossible at all. If the surrogate knows the person or people who want the child personally, it’s almost certainly not coerced even if money changes hands.
Exactly. My cousin liked being pregnant but they already had five kids. Yes; she was paid but the money was token. It paid for medical care, food, etc. to her it was about helping someone.
Im not sure I can be so confident just because the surrogate knows the couple. If anything that would make me more worried about coercion. That could easily add MORE pressure for a surrogate to take on the pregnancy if that surrogate knows how important it is to the couple.
My coworker had to use a surrogate to have a kid because of her infertility issues. I promise you, there was no coercion. When you regulate things it’s much easier to ensure everyone is consenting. The problems happen when you ban shit and drive it underground.
That’s amazing, I’m glad your coworker was able to find someone and get to be a parent.
I’m sorry if I came across as advocating against surrogacy. I don’t nearly know enough to have that strong of an opinion on it in either direction. All I wanted to get across was that making sure there’s no coercion is hard. Not impossible, but hard. There were some really sweeping statements under this post that felt like they were oversimplifications and I wanted to consider the nuance.
I don’t know how I feel about it overall (surrogacy, not gay people getting to have children, that’s beautiful), but it’s hard to be confident there’s no coercion when money is involved. The money itself can be coercive especially if the surrogate is particularly in need of the money. I’m not sure it can always be “clear” it’s not coerced.
In the U.S., where medical care is expensive, I think money to cover that should be expected.
Absolutely! And more to cover other expenses like maternity clothing, any comfort items to manage the pregnancy, additional dietary needs, and probably some more to help account for how traumatic a pregnancy can be and the body changes it causes.
I’m absolutely not advocating that a surrogate shouldn’t get paid. Just that it’s hard to separate payment from coercion in even the best situations.
plenty of unwanted people out there to adopt, no need to make more
Do you know how hard it is for a gay couple to adopt in the U.S.?
Separate from any discussion about surrogacy, that’s fucked and our adoption system should be way more accepting of gay couples than it is. There’s no reason it should be so hard.
Espically since religious groups run the show to facilitate a sort of human trafficking
LBGT
Lesbian, Bay, Guysexual, Trans
Believe it or not, the letters can go in any order.
Not appreciating utterly hilarious ‘guysexul’ pun and going “well ackchully” instead
Believe it or not, there are women in this world who love being pregnant and want to help couples have kids. There are laws around it and reputable clinics make sure everyone is consenting.
So the vatican can fuck off with this outdated way of looking at the world. In fact, if you consensually want to sell your body in any way, we should be allowing it with regulations, be it surrogacy, egg donation, or sex work. Make it safe and make it a choice.
How about you work on your age-of-concent-fluidity problems first.
Then there’s spreading HIV in Africa (and other parts of the world) by preaching against using condoms. How many millions have died of AIDS because the Catholic church told them or their partner not to wear a condom?
It’s insane at how influential the Catholic Church is with their followers considering how far spread out their followers are. They have to be the most influential organization ever, right?
Tbh the problem is not not wearing condoms, is allowing the virus to still exist. I say we need some purge by fire to get rid of that dangerous virus. /S just in case
There wouldn’t be many people left if all the pedos got removed.
The Vatican is still covering up little boy rape, right?
They’re definitely covering for little girl rape too
I say diddling kids is a threat to human dignity.
That’s where you and the pope will just have to agree to disagree.
idk, seems like forced birth and pedophilia are bigger threats to the dignity of the woman and the child than surrogacy
The Vatican has described the belief in gender fluidity as “a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God”
Better update the bible in English to refer to god as “they” instead of always using male pronouns, then.
I mean, no update needed:
Then God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
- Genesis 1:26-27
This passage uses a plural for God and refers to the image of God as male and female (likely a remnant of when it was a divine couple before the reforms, but still).
This “dominition over other living beings” thing is an antique mindset that caused so much damage to the environment.
True, but Genesis also says that humans were made to tend the Garden of Eden, so others argue, based on that and a few other passages, that humans are supposed to care for the Earth.
As usual, the Bible can be interpreted any way you want it to. You can use it to defend murder and use it to condemn murder. The same book.
Or it can be interpreted as the royal “we.” Regardless, he’s called “he” pretty much everywhere else afterwards.
The royal ‘we’ develops later on, likely in part because of the Bible.
And yes, there are references to ‘he’ or ‘Father’ but it’s important to keep in mind (a) Hebrew is a binary gendered language with no neutral ‘Parent’ as an option, and (b) there’s extensive evidence of revisionist misogyny in the Old Testament where you go from a woman prophet leading the Israelites to a “Queen Mother” being deposed and major religious reforms that include banning the worship of the women for their goddess who was evidenced as married to Yahweh before those reforms.
This is pretty academic in my opinion. Modern Jews and Christians view their god as a ‘he’ regardless of what it says in an archaic version of Hebrew.
It reminds me of the ‘was there a real Jesus’ debate. It doesn’t matter beyond an academic discussion. The Jesus Christians worship was a literal god who performed miracles and came back from the dead. He was a fiction.
The academic matters.
Arguably more than the fiction.
Yes, it’s true that many, many people believe very strongly in the fictions that arose around the realities that the academic cuts closer to.
But reality matters.
I’m sure we might agree that it would be absurd to say that the stories of Homer, because of how they are treasured by audiences in their own right, should invalidate the importance of better learning the historical realities on which they drew.
There was a history. That history is not what was canonized in the Torah. It was not what was canonized in the New Testament.
And at least to me, that history is much, much more interesting than the fantasies and propaganda which eroded it.
It will not change anyone’s beliefs. Faith is belief in the face of evidence, not because of it. Telling believers that “actually, in Genesis, God is referred to as both male and female” will not matter one bit to them because that’s not the god they believe in and it will never be the god they believe in.
It’s not necessarily for them. They aren’t the center of the universe, even if they believe it to be so.
Other people who care about evidence and history and reality might be interested in the fact that originally there was a claimed prophet and leader of the Israelites who was a woman named ‘bee’ around the time there was an apiary in Tel Rehov importing queen bees from Anatolia as the only honey production in “the land of milk and honey” where inside the apiary was one of the earliest four horned altars (later appearing as an Israelite altar feature) dedicated to a goddess for example.
I could care less if an Orthodox conservative religious person believes that’s true or not. Archeology tells us unequivocally that the apiary and altar were true, and that’s valuable context for untangling the folk history that was being reshaped by later hands.
Attack and dethrone god
Lucifer tried!
Let this be a reminder to you that organized religion only accepts social progress when they get dragged to do it under risk of becoming irrelevant. This Pope’s previous winks to the LGBT community were the bare minimum that the Catholic Church has to do in order to not to continue losing followers (and their wallets) in some countries such as Spain and Ireland. The moment a much less mainstream concept, such as gender fluidity, gets brought into the table, it’s free game for them again.
Aaaaand…. Human dignity calls the Vatican archaic and obsolete.
Wouldn’t depriving someone of their right to their preferred identity be considered a threat to human dignity?
It’s not their “preferred identity.” It’s their identity.
They are not their “preferred pronouns.” They are their pronouns.
It’s not their “chosen name.” It’s their name.
They don’t “identify as.” They are.
(I know you’re an ally, just wanted to point these things out for all the allies to use slightly better wording.)
I get what you are saying
but for chosen name I have to disagree. I, a cishet man, have a chosen name that my friends call me. it goes beyond a nickname, if I get called my birthname by friends I get weirded out and feel on edge. However, family and coworkers call me by my birth name and thats perfectly fine for me
My family is southern; everyone has a different name than their birth name. It is either picked or assigned by others.
That Is what I tell people about trans people. Just call them what they want to be called, just as you want to be called what you want to be called. It’s not that hard.
And that is fine for you, and for anyone who refers to it as their chosen name, whether they are trans or cis.
But when someone else mentions that Name is a trans person’s “chosen name”, what a bigot’s brain says is “well, I choose to call [them] Deadname which their mom gave [them].”
[with incorrect pronouns here]
I know that I’m 9 days late but thank you for the tip.
In Vatican it wouldn’t.
Right to preferred identity?
Does that mean people have to see me the way I want them to?
Frank, if you want to find threats to human dignity, look at your child molesting priests and your bishops covering for them. Until then, you’re in no place to judge.
All top level religious leaders are generally awful. Especially if it’s Abrahamic.
If you think Buddhists are exempt, read about the Tibetan Buddhist monarchies.
Also, theocracy needs to die.
Ah yes, recknognizing that human beings come in many different forms is the “threat to human dignity”, and definitely not the practice of trying to aggressively (even violently) shoehorn others into neat, convenient categories. 🙄
You know what the real threat to human dignity is? Not respecting other peoples choices.
The only threat to human dignity here is child-rapists being considered the experts on morality.
Conservatism is a vile plague and religion a tool of conservatism. There is no greater threat to humanity than conservative religious people.
Yes, because living your desires as your true self is no way to find dignity. And surrogacy?! Like…what.
