One-handed typing: the doom of mankind!

[elfs]

Justice Antonin Scalia, in his dissent from the ruling Lawrence v. Texas, said that the court's overturning its own opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick, "calls into question state laws against masturbation."

Remember, this isn't just Scalia spouting off here. His version of the constitution may be weird, but it's consistent in the notion that some things, such as sexuality and privacy, which aren't explicit in the constitution, are not to be dealt with by the courts but must be deferred to the states. On the other hand, religion, which is explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, is the province of the Court, which has the final say and sometimes defers to "the verdict of history." Anyone who remembers the Judge Bork case can remember his dissenting opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut.

As if that weren't bad enough, the religious right is now interested in "strengthening marriage," which include "addressing deliberate childlessness is marriage."

Isn't that special?

Comments

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

There's always the Gorean method: don't allow professional women to be hired until after they've had 2 kids. (Women of the caste of physicians were trained, but not allowed to practice until they had made the replacement ratio)

This would also get the childbearing done in the 20s when fertility is the highest, and the body is young enough to bounce back quickly. Trust me when I say there is a HUGE difference between recovery at 24 and recovery at 33.

Also, basic family-friendly corporate culture: 40 hour weeks (not 60 or 100), on site day care--including sick child care, paid health insurance, telecommuting. These have all been shown to save money and training time by retaining talented women.


And for intrepid_reason: I read recently the average IQ of women having children is 94. It's a truism that the better educated and more intelligent a woman is, the fewer children she will have.

(I'm an exception, but I have a strong sense of eugenic responsibility.)

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

I'm a libertarian, so I don't want to prohibit or limit freedom (within obvious limits: stealing, killing illegal). However, I have no problems with setting incentives such that the path of least resistance is for the smartest people to pop out kids around optimum child bearing age.

Put another way: if we don't like the current outcome of choices people make, how can we change the rules so that choices we'd prefer people make are the easiest, most rewarding, most pleasureable, most [...] ones for them to make?

The really hard part is that you may not know who's "smartest" until they're well past childbearing age, if you rely on "track record." This quickly leads into the debate about the efficacy of IQ tests and whether parental performance is predictive of the performance of their kids.