[Draft]Problem Children

[Drasnia]

Title: Problem Children

Description: After the legalization of same-sex marriage, an unexpectedly high number of homosexual couples have filed for marriage licenses. By some estimates, this policy decision and subsequent shifts in attitudes towards relationships may lead to a decline in the @@DEMONYMADJECTIVE@@ population.

Validity: same sex-marriage legal

[option]"This could be a disaster!" exclaims your normally mild-mannered Minister of Demographics. "We can't risk letting our population of @@POPULATION@@ fall. Imagine the loss in tax revenue, @@LEADER@@@. We wouldn't be able to afford expensive steak dinners – I mean, afford maintaining our roads. No, we need to make sure that this never happens. Criminalize same-sex marriage now before the problems gets out of control."
[effect]same-sex marriage has been banned
[stats]bans same-sex marriage

[option]"We can fix it!" shouts an over-enthusiastic junior minister trying to get your attention. "Instead of criminalizing gay marriage, give tax breaks to straight couples who have babies. And to ensure we're treating gay couples equally, we should do the same for gay couples who adopt children from foreign countries. That way everybody no matter their orientation has an incentive to bolster our dwindling population."
[effect]college students adopt a child to make ends meet

[option]"You're going about this all wrong," scoffs population control expert @@RANDOMNAME@@ as @@HE@@ smiles at the birth estimates that have worried your ministers. "Our population of @@POPULATION@@ is actually too high. If we encourage people to have more children, we're only going to put more strain on the society. Instead, the government needs to encourage people to have fewer children, perhaps through some nice tax incentives to childless couples and opening up government-run abortion clinics."
[effect]government-run abortion clinics offer family discounts
[stats]legalizes abortion if banned beforehand

I know there are already some issues about gay marriage, but I wanted to give it a unique spin that isn't about morality or religious belief and that might legitimately worry a player that believes it should be legal and make them face an actual dilemma. Thoughts, ideas, critiques?

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Hmm...

I'm feeling a big logic gap here. How does letting homosexual people marry reduce the number of children they produce? Surely it is being homosexual that discourages them from breeding?

[A Humanist Resurrection]

Surely it is being homosexual that discourages them from breeding?

I would strongly question this assumption, too. If anything, I would expect equal protection/benefits to increase the number of same-sex couples starting families.

At any rate, given sin-enhancing properties of science/medicine, the particular genital combinations involved are no longer relevant to actual reproductive capacity.

[Drasnia]

Hmm...

I'm feeling a big logic gap here. How does letting homosexual people marry reduce the number of children they produce? Surely it is being homosexual that discourages them from breeding?

You're probably right. I should probably clarify that the legalization has made it much more acceptable socially to be in a homosexual relationship thus reducing birth rates. Also, I originally had a speaker say that it's only speculation and a knee-jerk reaction very limited data but I didn't think it fit in the narrative. Would something like that also help?

[A Humanist Resurrection]

I should probably clarify that the legalization has made it much more acceptable socially to be in a homosexual relationship thus reducing birth rates.

This still doesn't follow. Why are same sex-couples inherently less likely or inclined to reproduce? Does legal same-sex marriage suddenly turn everyone gay?

At the very least, the issue as is needs a "that's homophobic bull" option.

[Trotterdam]

1. Banning gay marriages wouldn't usually mean that gay people start having more straight sex instead, unless they really want children, in which case...
2. Artificial insemination is a thing. A bit harder if you're male (finding a willing surrogate mother is harder than finding a sperm donor), but in either case well within reach for anyone who wants it. Unless you ban it, of course.
3. Even in the worst-case scenario, I can't see it having that big an effect on birth rates, and as you point out in the third option, it's rather debatable how much population growth is even good or bad in the first place. What's the problem here?

[Australian rePublic]

Nice issue but let's see

1. This would be a problem for rich countries. Poor countries see people genrally wanting to have more and more chi, dren, further contributing to the poverty of the nation
2. Why do you assume it's only gay couples who aren't having childre? Strait couples are having less children too, as are people who never marry. And let's not even mention abortion...

[A Humanist Resurrection]

2. Why do you assume it's only gay couples who aren't having childre? Strait couples are having less children too, as are people who never marry. And let's not even mention abortion...

Too many women running around getting pregnant just so they can abort and not have kids?

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Different approach:

Have the issue as a whole be about population not growing as fast as you might expect.

Then have options stating various causes for this and suggestions for fixes, with various validity criteria.

One of these can be your homophobic sort (or even a bitter homosexual man who felt forced marry a woman and have children out of social compliance, though this should be tragicomically implied through actions rather than stated) complaining that if people weren't "given the chance to choose to be gay, they'd marry and have kids, like they're supposed to."

The other options could be other suggestions for population growth faltering - insufficient food (Malthusian), falling fertility (pick your poison theory), mortality too high (McKeown), need a higher ratio of women (harem theory).

And so on.

[The Free Joy State]

Hi Drasnia.

I do have to agree with much that has been said.

I think declining birth-rates is an interesting issue, but it's a mistake to attribute it solely to same-sex marriage. Many heterosexual individuals and couples are choosing to delay having children, have fewer children, and describing themselves as "child-free by choice".

Please don't abandon the draft, but do think about everything that's been said to you and (like CWA suggested) widen the draft to encompass the wider sociological/ecological context.

Option 1 could be: virulent homophobe "if we'd never allowed gay-marriage, these people would be married and having kids, like they're meant to..."

Option 2: "the problem is that too many women are busy focusing on their "career"; send them home where they belong and tell them to do their duty for @@NAME@@..."

Option 3: "with all this pollution, there are too many people who can't reproduce..." (a la The Handmaid's Tale) and so on and so forth.

You could still keep your People's Republic of China option "What do you mean? Our population's growing too fast."

Just my two cents.