Yet another right wing domestic terrorist attack.

So you concede that you didn't read the discussion before commenting? Taken alone his statement was, in the context of the discussion it was false.

To add to my edit above, what is the chip on my shoulder?

I did read the discussion. You were being your usual confrontational self, looking for a problem with the statement despite it being factually correct. We've been over this before - and as before, I have no desire for a long-winded personal argument. So I'll leave it there.

"Usual confrontation self". A 17 year experienced litigator being confrontational, fancy that! That's nothing to do with a chip on my shoulder, which implies a grudge. What is my grudge?

Clearly I am saying that the sentence was correct, the wider context not. Are you wriggling again, because it seems like you are? Are you claiming that the IRA codes were fool proof and did not result in risk or causalities. I know someone, who for security reasons I can't detail, who has a very different take from you, but suffice it to say that said person was no stranger to Long Kesh.

Dayton please publish this scrapbook of yours.

How?

Okay I'm ready to post the argument I made.

Provided everyone agrees to the following ground rules for discussion:

1) There can be no request for links. The whole point of gul making his initial request was that as I said I have no evidence available.

2) There can be no response to my arguments that are basically "No it isn't" or "No it doesn't".

Nor can any response consist of anecdotal evidence. You can't say "Well I know a couple that doesn't apply to" because I can simply say "I know 50 couples it does apply to".

3) No response can be made that the issue of "marriage" should not be involved as the whole point is "premarital sex" anyway.

4) No personal attack upon me, any member of my family.

Agreed?

I'm good with #4 and #1 is self-explanatory, but it your argument can't stand up to refutation or contrary opinion, it isn't much of an argument, is it?

Flippant dismissals without reasoning are not worthy of hearing. And I don't want to use anecdotal evidence myself so why should anyone else?

Who says the dismissals will be flippant?

I suspect that, as in most discussions here, you'd prefer to silence your critics rather than refute them.

Dayton, either make your argument and hope that it stands on the merits, or chicken out by demanding special rules. None of what you've listed meets RedRoom standards except for the request that nobody ridicule your family. Even if people say they agree, there is nothing to prevent them from violating the agreement. If you believe in the strength of your position, then put it to paper (so to speak). Otherwise, we'll just conclude you have nothing.

No it doesn't.

Very well: In no particular order:

1) Premarital sex weakens many marriages (not all). Say you have two people who decide to get married. Each has had three previous sex partners. Two of those three for each was outstanding in regards to sexual relations. But the two are merely "average" or "barely adequate" together, yet they love each other and wish to marry. Having sexual relations inferior to what they've both experienced before will naturally be a stressor upon their marriage from the beginning.

2) It promotes a lack of restraint, self control, and self denial. All three of those are traits that people (especially young people) need in abundance to succeed later in life.

3) It gives young people a false impression of maturity that they do not actually have.

4) Referring to older people. It makes condemning riskier sexual behavior more difficult. For example, a 40 year old single mother having sex with her 45 year old boyfriend naturally is going to have great difficulty criticizing and being taken seriously when she tries to stop her 15 year old daughter from having sex with her 20 year old boyfriend.

5) Raises the chances of unplanned pregnancy and spreading disease dramatically. Oh sure people will naturally respond that you can prevent both. But in the U.S. alone there are hundreds of thousands of unplanned pregnancies annually as well as STDs spread.

So it seems that preventing both by medical means hasn't worked out all that well.

6) Sex tends to keep couples together. This means premarital sex can keep deeply flawed relationships going. Even abusive ones for that matter. Because most young people have a lot of trouble leaving a sex partner (unless it is for another sex partner) than they do a relationship with a person they've never had sex with.

Not really a reason, but related to that above.

All the above as reasons not to have premarital sex, it must also be mentioned that premarital sex offers NO positives to offset them.

How did we get on this Victorian tangent?

Link please.

What you've said isn't correct. I remember once hearing of a man who was happily married despite having lots of premaritical sex beforehand. Having premarital sex was the point. And you're a bit of a prick, so you're wrong.

No links may be requested. Moderator agreed to it above.

Anecdotal evidence is not allowed. As for every example you bring up I can simply bring up others to counter it.

gul's request. Post #280.

Give me a damn link Dayton!

Post #308.

Surely you people aren't going to seriously discuss whether promiscuity and infidelity have moral dimensions. Having read at least one book by a woman written in the last 200 years, and seen one episode of a soap opera, I can assure everyone that there are a lot of moral dimensions to it. Ask any divorce lawyer.

Or what?

That assumes that sex is a huge part of their married life. I'd argue that while it's a really, really great part of being married, it's certainly not the only thing (or even a primary one) in a marriage. If it was, why do really old people still get married when they can't have sex due to physical limitations or aren't inclined to have it?

It's not just premarital sex that promotes that stuff and restraint, self control, and self denial are not guarantees of success later in life. There's abundant evidence of that.

Not a bad point, but I'd argue that if people abstain from premarital sex because their religion tells them to, that also gives a false sense of maturity.

It's one thing if you don't want to drink (or eat shellfish, or whatever) because you just don't want to. It's idiotic not to do so because some book of fables tells you to.

Difficult, but not impossible.

I drank underage and have used drugs off and on since then as well. It didn't stop me from successfully keeping my kids from doing those things until they got old enough.

And, in your scenario, the 20-year old boyfriend would be in prison for statutory rape (unless 15 was the age of consent, which wouldn't surprise me in Arkansas or other parts of the South).

That's a good point.

Maybe, but marriage itself (especially highly religious unions) also tends to keep deeply flawed relationships going. "We can't get divorced 'cause the Bible is agin' it!"

I'll offer one that's irrefutable: it gives couples an opportunity to find out if they're sexually compatible before they take the big step of getting married.

If you find out on your wedding night that your spouse really, really likes having pets involved in the sex act, it's too late.

Oh the infamous "sexual compatibility" argument.

Are you going to seriously argue that couples can determine that by having sex together, once? ten times? a hundred times? Because one thing I do know is that it can take YEARS! And for that matter changes continually over the course of their life time for most people. For that matter is highly influenced by circumstances including illness and injury.

Knowledge is better than ignorance.

If you're arguing against that, then you're a fool.

Tropical fish can especially problematic - or so I've heard anyway.

Aren't you making a false assumption of equating experience with knowledge?

Welcome to Daytonforge.

What examples, for example?

Experience, by definition, provides knowledge.

Speculative and easily refuted by counter example. I think at best you might argue that such a circumstance offsets the benefit of familiarity. But then, if both have had multiple previous partners, it's highly likely that they tried sex with each other before deciding on marriage. If so, they probably could have figured out whether it would be a problem.

Evidence? That's an opinion, one not held by others. You might say the same about eating pizza or enjoying soda. You'd be wrong then, too, because it is the things that are really good but not essential that help us to understand restraint.

Maybe, but only if that is the message older people are giving them about sex.

In some ways the same answer as given in issue 3. It depends on the message they receive from their parents and other authorities. Kids are by no means guaranteed to see it that way.

This afflicts married couples too, so yes, it's a problem, but you have not demonstrated a causal relationship, especially when the control group exhibits the same result.

@shootER nailed this one. There are all kinds of reasons that people stay together who shouldn't. Sex, co-dependency, religion. These are flaws in the respective people's psyche, not really something inherent to whatever reason they happen to grab.

Wrong. It was an important element of how my wife and I came to know and understand each other. Could we have dated without sexual activity? Yes. But it would have diminished the overall experience for no beneficial reason. Sex is a normal and important part of human interaction. The biggest reason that it can cause harm to some people is because too many insist on maintaining outdated taboos. We need to see it as something similar to exercise, eating, and learning -- all important elements of being human, and not something to restrict with arbitrary rules.