Talk:1431: Marriage

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 15:37, 8 October 2014 by 199.27.128.117 (talk)
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Okay, that was the hardest explanation I've attempted so far. Cheeselover724 (talk) 04:42, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Graphs tend to be hard. On that note, the transcript was tricky and probably needs work. Athang (talk) 05:14, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
Hope you don't mind, I just about completely rewrote the transcript, attempting to indicate the structure of each line and the visual effect I thought was intended -- Brettpeirce (talk) 11:41, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your efforts. This of course raises questions about what's next. Let's hope we can question sincerely and this does not become a troll.

How about adoption of children by single persons (authorized in France, where else) ? By same-sex couples (authorized in France because the same law applies to marriage and adoption) ? Can anyone (even Randall) gather data and produce a graph ?

Adoption normally gives a home with proper parents to a child that lack them by accident.

Notice that every human person living or dead has exactly one mother and one father because of the Gamete mechanism (even if one or even both parents are sometimes unknown or the person is raised by other people). United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child article 7 mentions "The child (...) immediately after birth (...) shall have the right (...) to know and be cared for by his or her parents."

Now consider people technically fertile but whose situation is not a traditional couple (they may be single or same-sex couple). In the US they can buy a child specifically produced to be adopted (I know in my town two French gay men that bought two children in the US). Depending on the situation, children are produced using gestational surrogacy or Assisted reproductive technology.

Those children are produced to be deprived of one of their parents. That violates United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, right ? Is that a progress ? How to solve that ?

Let's try to remain close to this XKCD graph and the question: what's next and what to think of it ? Open to your constructive questions and comments. --MGitsfullofsheep (talk) 11:44, 8 October 2014 (UTC)


So you're saying that adoption (from gay or straight couples) violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? That all sperm donation should be banned? Diszy (talk) 12:17, 8 October 2014 (UTC) Also, the US has not ratified the UNCRC so this discussion is moot. You can't hold them to the rules if they blatantly declare that they don't follow them.Diszy (talk) 12:25, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply Diszy.
> So you're saying that adoption (from gay or straight couples) violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?
No, I'm not saying that. The case of babies produced and sold, even after many debates, seems somehow wrong in a way that has nothing to do with sexual orientation of parents.
When a child has no suitable genetic parents (they are dead or abusing) I understand that adoption is clearly compatible with UNCRC article 7.

When a child is produced to be deprived of one parent, I find it debatable. Or maybe we can save the logic by considering that the genetic parent "resigns" their responsibility, which falls back to the previous case.

> That all sperm donation should be banned?
I'm not discussing if it should be banned, but you raise an interesting point.
Technically, a spem donor is a genetic parent that "resigns" (can anyone find a better word) their responsibility as parent since they are not planning to honor it (some do, afterwards). Does it violate UNCRC article 7 ? My understanding is: things are blurred by the "as far as possible" wording.
> Also, the US has not ratified the UNCRC so this discussion is moot.
moot - "of little or no practical value or meaning;
interesting only from the point of view of theory:"
Thank you for this piece of information. So this can't be used to demonstrate that US legal system is inconsistent.
> You can't hold them to the rules if they blatantly declare that they don't follow them.
I didn't know that.
Again I'm not discussing good and bad or whatever, rather logical consistency. This is a math-geek-language discussion place, isn't it ?
There's one way countries who have ratified the UNCRC could claim it's okay.
They could claim that the "parents" in article 7 are not genetic parents but the persons who are willing to raise the child. Though that's another possible way to make a consistent logical model, I'm pretty sure that's not what the UN had in mind when they wrote this.
Thank you again for your feedback.
--MGitsfullofsheep (talk) 15:04, 8 October 2014 (UTC)


It's interesting to think about the differences between interracial marriage versus gay marriage. In the latter situation an entire class of people aren't able to obtain the only type of marriage that would likely appeal to them, whereas I think interracial marriages are more "fungible" (definitely not the right word) in that a person who engages in an interracial marriage may not have a strong preference for interracial marriages over intraracial marriages. So in banning interracial marriage, they impacted specific individuals, but there wasn't a well-defined class of interracial marriage pursuers who were denied the right to marry. I think this is relevant because in the case of gay-marriage, most people in the wronged class (people who want gay marriages), and many people outside of the wronged class, all support the right. With interracial marriage on the other hand, I would be curious to see if it was mostly whites that opposed interracial marriage, or if large percentages of whites, blacks, and other minorities also disapproved of interracial marriage.

173.245.54.194 15:21, 8 October 2014 (UTC)XkdcPoster