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[ChairmanPoo]

My mother did that. Three years old is stretching it a bit, though, I think.

[GlyphGryph]

I could see a three year old /helping/ with younger siblings, at least in small ways. It probably keeps the three year old out of trouble two - give them a one or a two year old to watch, and the right encouragement, and suddenly they themselves will not be causing any problems because they are so proud of keeping the younger sibling out of trouble.

And changing a diaper is well within the capabilities of a three year old, truth be told.

[Truean]

I didn't exactly know what the hell to think of this. The penguins are gay, have been a couple for years, and the zookeepers don't like it. Apparently, after it was pointed out they could save the species in a more simple, reliable, cheap, and ethical manner with artificial insemination, the Zoo has redfaced and gone silent.

a.) This proves once again that a slow news day is a reporter's biggest fear.
b.) The reader comments show a lot....
c.) To date, the gay penguins have utterly ignored the lovesick females following them around, despite the species endangerment/low numbers.... So apparently, "not if you were the last female on earth...." or pretty close.

[Criptfeind]

If the species is struggling should they not be using artificial insemination anyway?

[Virex]

I have to say that they did a better job with a gay penguin couple in Germany.

[RedKing]

And no offence to you, but this sort of thing has been considered standard for many, many years in many, many countries (for example, I just saw a documentary about Russia with an instance of such).  The oldest daughter becomes mother to her siblings, because it is indeed forced by circumstance.  If she doesn't help, then The Household Falls Apart and everything goes pear-shaped.

^^^^ This.

My family has the same kind of history. When mom is perpetually pregnant, it takes a toll on the body. The eldest children are crucial to keeping the household running. In the case of my maternal grandfather's family, it was compounded by my great-grandfather being a habitual abusive drunk and adulterer who was frequently absent and eventually just walked out on the family. The eldest son ran away from home at age 14, found work and sent money back home. The eldest daughters raised the younger children, to the point of even having their own names for them (which always confused the hell out of me as a kid, because to their dying day they would refer to their siblings with their name for them).

You see the same thing happen with kids whose parent(s) are drug addicts. There was a good piece on NPR a few months back about a young girl and her two younger brothers whose mother was a complete wreck of a heroin addict. By the time the girl was 2 (yes, TWO), she was not only changing her brothers' diapers but also feeding them and watching them to keep them out of trouble. Kids can mature hella fast if the circumstances are dire enough.

They eventually ended up in a good foster home, but the story was mostly about how the girl basically had PTSD. It was proving very difficult for her to let go and let someone else be the parent, and for her to just be a young girl. Oh, and she was freaking out because their mother was pregnant again. >_<

I'm always surprised how protective my 4-year old daughter is of her 20-month old brother. If they're on a playground together, she watches out for other kids that might run into him and knock him down. And even though she's an introvert, she has no shyness about getting in another kid's face if he/she (usually he) shoves her brother out of the way or something. The sibling bond can be a powerful thing.

[Truean]

Also, there is a gigantic billboard on the highway reading: "Homosexuality is a sin, but Christ can save you."

Why don't these people do that whole "feed the hungry," thing with their money instead of the whole "harass the gays," thing.... [sarcasm=Clearly Jesus said, "go forth and bug the crap out of people...." [sigh] [/sarcasm]

Also the Supreme Court will hear the health care law. Naturally, the conservative majority 5-4 court will have people saying there is a liberal bias, though clearly the number 5 is larger than the number 4.... It seems despite the recent massively conservative rulings, the only acceptable number of liberal leaning justices, minority though they may be, is 0....

[rhesusmacabre]

An Anglican newspaper claims gay rights campaigners are like nazis:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/08/anglican-newspaper-defends-gaystapo-article

Having forcibly – and understandably – rectified the Versailles-type injustices and humiliations foisted on the homosexual community, the UK's victorious Gaystapo are now on a roll. Their gay-rights stormtroopers take no prisoners as they annex our wider culture, and hotel owners, registrars, magistrates, doctors, counsellors, and foster parents … find themselves crushed under the pink jackboot.

Thanks especially to the green light from a permissive New Labour government, the gay Wehrmacht is on its long march through the institutions and has already occupied the Sudetenland social uplands of the Home Office, the educational establishment, the politically-correct police. Following a plethora of equalities legislation, homosexuals are now protected and privileged by sexual orientation regulations and have achieved legal equality by way of civil partnerships. But it's only 1938 and Nazi expansionist ambitions are far from sated.

They seem to trying to offend as many groups as possible.

[Darvi]

Welp, trolls and Godwin go hand in hand after all.

[sluissa]

Also the Supreme Court will hear the health care law. Naturally, the conservative majority 5-4 court will have people saying there is a liberal bias, though clearly the number 5 is larger than the number 4.... It seems despite the recent massively conservative rulings, the only acceptable number of liberal leaning justices, minority though they may be, is 0....

I'm not sure what to think about the new health care act... There are parts I like. Parts I don't. Parts I think go in the complete wrong direction.

Part of me wants this to pass, because it is better than what we have... But part of me wants it to fail so we can go back and do it right. But I fear that if it fails, then we'll never get another chance... If it passes though... will we keep going in the wrong direction?

[Leafsnail]

They seem to trying to offend as many groups as possible.

Are they?  It looks like a good bit of bashing gay people only to me.

“The twisted truth is that gay men have been at the heart of every major fascist movement that ever was – including the gay-gassing, homo-cidal Third Reich. With the exception of Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the most high-profile fascists in Europe in the past thirty years have been gay.”

What the hell am I even reading.

Other than the unbelievably misplaced Nazi language it seems to just be the old "we should be allowed to discriminate wah wah wah".

[rhesusmacabre]

Yes, that's the prime motivation, but when you start comparing people to nazis you also offend the victims of the actual nazis, and it's difficult to believe they don't realise this.

[RedKing]

An Anglican newspaper claims gay rights campaigners are like nazis:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/08/anglican-newspaper-defends-gaystapo-article

Having forcibly – and understandably – rectified the Versailles-type injustices and humiliations foisted on the homosexual community, the UK's victorious Gaystapo are now on a roll. Their gay-rights stormtroopers take no prisoners as they annex our wider culture, and hotel owners, registrars, magistrates, doctors, counsellors, and foster parents … find themselves crushed under the pink jackboot.

Thanks especially to the green light from a permissive New Labour government, the gay Wehrmacht is on its long march through the institutions and has already occupied the Sudetenland social uplands of the Home Office, the educational establishment, the politically-correct police. Following a plethora of equalities legislation, homosexuals are now protected and privileged by sexual orientation regulations and have achieved legal equality by way of civil partnerships. But it's only 1938 and Nazi expansionist ambitions are far from sated.

They seem to trying to offend as many groups as possible.

Ummm...New Labour? I'm pretty sure that the Tories were in charge last I looked. Unless they're trying to say that this all started during the Blair government (their Reichstag moment, as it were).

Also, they're mixing metaphors. The Long March was Mao Zedong and the Communist Chinese, not the Nazis. So if they've occupied the Sudetenland, where's the Austrian Anschluss? Who becomes their Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Gaydrich?

(Yes, I believe the best way to deal with stupid historical analogies is to take them reductio ab absurdum.)

[MonkeyHead]

Have those campaingers not heard of the "you automatically lose if you compare your opponents to a Nazi" rule?

[Truean]

I can't comprehend, and am not sure if I want to, how gays wanting some sort of basic acceptance is anything like a nazi.... I suppose this "infringes" upon people who insist it is their right to exclude us, but only in the same way it "infringes" on shop owners who put up "whites only," or "colored not served here" signs.... People shouldn't be allowed to do either.

One of the basic rules of property law is the ability to exclude others from what you own, yet without limits, this becomes unworkable. Especially as we move towards everything being property and all property being owned with the ability to exclude, you move towards a mechanism of banishment from society.... Do I need to say what this is anything like....