I'm the straight anonymous, not the later posting gay one. And since the question has been posed (not by me) I will have you know I'm reasonably hot and my wife is a total piece of ass who turns heads everywhere she goes, so bite me.

Hmmm. Why was I smug in my first post? Look at all the breeder responses:

1) You were too smug in your post and that invalidated your argument

2) You're too ugly to breed

3) You're selfish

All of these are illogical ad hominems -- and false ones at that. Breeders have no arguments. Just attitudes. Why was I smug? Because I could have predicted those responses with apodictic certainty.

I especially love the selfish argument. Selfish? Uh, no I'm not. No one who knows me would call me selfish. I promise you. And you don't need children to find out what love is like. There's approximately 6.6 BILLION motherfuckers out there, all of whom would love to be loved. You don't need children. You can be loved by your friends, your wife, and your existing family members. And you can be liked by many more.

You want to know who reaks of desperation? People who can only find love from their own children, who, in most cases, will love them automatically.

I'm not sugggesting any Pol Pot policy. I'm not even necessarily suggesting any legislation. But at least we can try to change social norms.

If you have very little family then go ahead and breed. If you can get your love elsewhere, then get it elsewhere and don't burden the planet unnecessarily.

awesome-o said, "That is your typical anti-"breeder" interpretation and it illustrates how self-absorbed you are quite nicely. You can't even imagine it is about the love you feel and give which is unlike any other."

Wow, awesome-o. The first thing that strikes me about your post is how unsmug it is!

The second thing that strikes me about it is how off-base it is! I never gave a detailed description of what was involved in the acts of loving I described. I, of course, meant the entire experience going both ways and interacting so as to create an exploding spiral of ultimate goodness.

I know all about love awesome-o. You don't know anything I don't. You just feel it strongly and toward a diffeent person. Maybe you don't love your wife much. I don't know. Maybe I've displaced the love I would have had for my children onto my wife. If so, so much the better!

Who are you quoting?

I have to say it seriously creeps me out that you are creeped out by a perfectly legitimate and reasonable comment that I made. You have some kind of sick mind I guess.

OK awesome-o, I will grant you that there may be something special about mother love. But as a man, I was doomed never to know about it anyway. I also doubt that it is categorically different than other kinds of love, perhaps more intense and unconditional.

But that is not enough to persuade me I must roll the dice and be forever committed to a life with children just in case. I also don't know what its like to be a junkie in love with his heroin, but I feel no need to find that out either even though I'm sure its intense and unconditional.

I'm sure mother love is great. So is wife love and parent love and sibling love and humanity love. I've noticed there are a lot of mothers who seem to value the chance at husband love more than their own kids so it may not always be universally the case that mother love is so compelling. And there are great costs that go with mother love that also have to enter into the calculations. For one, your kid could be born handicapped. For another, your kid could turn out to be an asshole. But no matter what, your kid is going to shut down a lot of your options -- options which are just as morally respectable and worthy as being a parent.

it's our consumption habits which are the problem in this country

But those concumptio habits are a fact. You can't just say oh its not the kids its the consumption habit. The environmental load is a function of both normal consumption level AND population size. As long as people in the U.S. consume like they do, then each American kid counts for that many more in terms of environmental effect.

yep, and yet people keep doing it. People even do it again after they've done it once, which might tell you something.

You know what it tells me awesome-o? It tells me that the drive to reproduce is very powerful.

any choice you make in life is going to shut down other options.

Ah yes, awesome-o. But few options will shut down so many other options and so irreversibly as having children.

I just object to your belief that I am destroying the planet by having a child.

YOU having A child is fine with me. But I have cousins who pump them out like rabbits. Kid after kid after kid. In fact my cousins have popped out so many rugrats they've probably added a kid or two worth of my own genes to the population. All well cared for, mind you. But putting pressure on the world's resources and at the rate of well-funded American kids at that. I'm not talking about some starving mother in Darfur whose kid will live a short life of low consumption.