Rut and Ruin

If the deliberate infliction of pain on a helpless victim constitutes an attack, then family values constitute one of the few remaining socially acceptable forms of sexual assault. By the act of bringing their offspring into existence, fathers and mothers inflict suffering on those offspring. By bringing their offspring into a global economy based on competition and deprivation, parents in the present day also ensure that their offspring will inflict suffering on others, since two persons cannot occupy the same space or consume the same resource. Certainly since 2015, as it has become increasingly clear that no action will be taken over the climate crisis except to worsen its consequences, no informed or educated person can claim the slightest moral excuse for conceiving children. To glorify breeding while faced with clear and present global disaster is to tout the trumping of reason and compassion by the brute urges of rabbits and rats. Granted, most of the new lives will include pleasure as well as suffering; but even a few breeders might consider it a little strange to justify a date-rape by citing the quality of the preceding dinner.