Parasondox said:
Hi. I'm Para. Not that Para. The other one. I shall be your public speaker today and I will assure you that I will not send a dick pic this hour. Actually dick pics are sooooo 2014 ago. The new craze is belly buttons. Inny and outty. So send them if you please 
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*Please don't send me pics of your belly buttons.
Family is important. Family is what molds us and supports us like a training bra. It's what humanity and the rest of the animal kingdom hold onto in life.
*Vin Diesel voice* It's about family.
Families come in different shapes and sizes. They could be the alleged normal structure of, man, woman, kids, pet, roaches, or they are those we look up too, trust, care for, the ones that aren't blood relatives but damn well sure that you will back them through thick and thin.
So, why the fuck in the Western world if someone does something a bit taboo, a threesome, swinging, being gay, giving a homeless person money, it breaks "family values" and the sort.
Ted Cruz (if I say his name three times in the mirror at night, I will be visited by Satan telling me that he is offended when he is compared to either Trump or Cruz. Poor Satan, he has had a bad rep for over 2000 even years.) and other politicians and powerful figures keep banging on about must hold these values when opposing the what they seem as, no right. When gay marriage was annsidedd to be legal in the US, Fox News loses their fucking minds and saying how this will end marriage. *****, please!! Marriage was flawed since its conception.
Anywho, back to family. How important is it to you?
Do you get annoyed when someone tries to bring up family values that is seems one sided because a single parent or two moms or two dad's or multiple partners in a family isnt seen as a "family" thing.
Yeah, it's things I have seen and heard in recent years that has me thinking about it.
Honestly I don't fully agree with the small primer of family values you have. I have a few gripes about it in general.
First off, "family values" is one of those concepts that lacks clear, uncontested definition but is widely in use anyway. This means that different people will use it in sometimes very different ways. To a christian, family values is more a placeholder for christian values about things like sexual morality... while to non-christian conservatives it might be more about promoting a safe, stable environment for children to grow up in (and oftentimes the general belief that that is most likely to be achieved in "natural" families of father, mother and children).
Secondly off... "alleged normal" doesn't really cover the reality of the situation that (what is commonly known as) the nuclear family IS the norm (i.e. normal) for a vast majority of people around the world and throughout history and different cultures. While I agree that a modern family can very well exist outside of the norm and still be legitimate as a family unit one must admit that the norm is Male-Female-Children with optional extensions like grandparents. In many ways this has an obvious evolutionary root for us as a social K-selection strategy species (K-selection means a species with few children and long parental care as opposed to r-selection wich has many offspring and little parental care like rats). Wether or not you think this norm should also be a value in the cultural sense is a different story imho.
Third, what you have to understand about christians is that in their culture (and yes, their culture should be respected in the same way you respect the culture and religion of muslims, hindus, jews and world views of that sort) view marriage as a bond ordained by God directly and thus it is inconceivable that there be something recognized as "marriage" that happens outside of that frame.
Naturally, the concept of marriage is not exclusively christian one from a scientific perspective but then again christians view the world through a different lens than seculars. That means that the concept of marriage actually has a different meaning to you than it does to them. Where you might view it as a promise to attempt a life together by two (or more) sexual and emotional partners a christian would define it as that holy bond between two people as ordained by God. Then the concept of gay marriage (as opposed to other forms of (semi-)contractual partnership).
The idea of marriage is not flawed since it's inception, our ability to define it in a modern context of competing value systems is. The idea of people forming a lifelong bond regardless of financial, medical or emotional changes is one to cherish as it provides a safety net for the individuals to not end up lonely (loneliness for a social species as ours is probably one of the most unbearable states of being imaginable) as well as form a stable framework for the procreation of the species.
To me personally, the idea of family values is a fairly conservative but secular one. I think a family is a social unit that has the express intent of creating a stable environment for raising children. That means that from my viewpoint a couple without children does not constitute a family but rather a partnership. So the next question is: What kind of environment is necessary for raising children "the right way"? I guess that is a topic that is extremely inviting to debate but I think that in most cases it is best for children to be raised by their biological parents in a stable unit (i.e. parents get along, live together and don't form other partnerships). Ofcourse this also presumes that the parents in question are mentally and financially capable of raising their child(ren). To me personally this does not exclude (stable) gay couples or otherwise adoptive parents but the simple fact that such families are a deviation from the norm is a source of insecurity and instability for many children in those situations makes it so that they are less preferable to "biological" family units. Considering though the ammount of children that cannot be raised by a stable biological unit they do serve an important role in society as "backup families" assuming again they are competent as parents in the first place.
In this it probably shows through that I am not a big fan of people willingly having children outside of a stable environment. In practice this includes people who have children the normal way but to not intend to form a stable unit as parents. This can include mothers who get a sperm donor and fathers who use a surrogate mother because they didn't find a mate. This opinion rubs a lot of wrong people the wrong way because they claim those people have a "right" to be a parent... but nowhere have I ever heard a source citing that right nor have I ever heard a decent argument in defense of it. Contrasting, there are many decent arguments to make for a child to have a right to a stable childhood.
Ofcourse this is not an attack at single or divorced parents. I'm not saying that collage families or single parent families are incapable of producing a loving and stable environment for a child... but decades of research has shown time and time again that stable, two-parent families are the best predictor for future happiness, ability to create and maintain lasting relationships and succes in overcoming challenges and achieving goals.
So am I pro-family values? I sure am. Do I have the same view on what they are or should be as Fox news? Fuck no. Should we all think about ways to reconcile the christian conception of marriage with the secular one in order to leave the current state of things where christians feel attacked in their religion and gay people feel suppressed in their freedom? I sure think so, and family values is potentially a big part of that discussion.
Sorry for the long post. I seem to have rambled.
addendum:
Family is something else than friends. The tendency for some to call their friends family is another way of saying you have left your family and substitute their place in your life by your friends. I have many great and loyal friends, most of whom I have a better personal connection with than I have with my biological brother... but blood is thicker than water and I know that beyond all other ties of loyalty I can count on my brother and he can count on me because we share blood. I deem this an outgrowth of the evolutionary fact that siblings are genetically closer than strangers and therefore their survival also ensures the survival of your shared genetic material... and that is in the end all we are... vessels for the propagation of genetic material in a competetive environment.
As for taboo things and sexually deviant (statistically speaking) behaviour... sex outside of a stable environment creates the oppertunity for children who are born outside of stable invironments who in turn are more likely to become destabilizing elements in society (often by way of stunted psychological and emotional development). Also, stable parental units that engage in sexually deviant behavior are also at risk of destabilizing the existing stable environment for their child(ren). Historically, homosexuality has been (partially due to prevalent social values rejecting it) a very unstable type of relationship as well. This may be part of the reason why many people still view homosexual couples as inherently unstable.
