That rumbling you hear is the grave-spinning of all of Spain’s Catholic kings and queens. Or should they now be called Spain’s Progenitor As and Progenitor Bs?
"Spain has taken another step in its journey from conservative to liberal bastion by creating new birth certificates to avoid discrimination against same-sex couples.
"According to an announcement in the Official Bulletin of State ‘The expression "father" will be replaced with "Progenitor A," and "mother" will be replaced with "Progenitor B."’
"The head of the national Civil Register, Pilar Blanco-Morales, told the newspaper ABC that the change took account of a new law on same-sex marriages passed by the socialist government in July."
No matter what Spain decides to call fathers and mothers, even legislative fiat won’t change the biological fact that two Progenitor As and two Progenitor Bs cannot create a child without the biological material of the opposite Progenitor. In other words, there still must be a Progenitor A and a Progenitor B to make a Baby C.
Gee, the more you learn about Spain, the more that sharia law in Andalusia sounds like it would be an improvement.
These people are so afraid of the concept of Mom and Dad that they can’t even use the words?
It is not hard to envision a law making it illegal to use the words “mother” and “father” in private speech.
How freakin’ Orwellian.
Ah but there’s method in the madness, y’see. When Spain gets to legalizing polygamy in the near future (I mean, why not?) the only amendment to the birth certificate will be addition of “Progenitor C”, “Progenitor D” and so on. The template is already nearing completion!
Bizarre.
That’s just like the legislation being proposed in California which would basically remove all gender-specific identifying terms from textbooks.
There was a story yesterday about the “liberal” baby bust (http://tinyurl.com/zj964). Turns out your way of life and philosophies die out when you don’t have children to pass them on to. Which means that someday all the “progenitors” will have no offspring, and that “moms” and “dads” will.
The Law of Unintended Consequences
That’s why the libs are so hot to maintain control of the schools.
They may not want to raise their own kids, but they badly want to educate yours. That way they get to indoctrinate people without all the tedious diaper changing and trips to the dentist.
I’m sure that, at bottom, they see this baby deficit as somehow unfair, so their forcibly de-programming our kids just helps balance things out a bit.
How patriarchal and retrogressive of the Spanish government. Mothers unambiguously relegated to subordinate rank under the demeaning rubric of “Progenitor B,” while males retain their privileged A-level status.
A case could be made that, where possible, “Progenitor A” should designate the actual bearer of the child, due both to that person’s obviously greater role in the whole business, and also because that is the most obviously establishable relationship.
“Progenitor B” would then refer to the presumptive other parent, typically the father (if known), ideally the husband (if any) — though in some cases the gender-free appellation would undoubtedly be posited of other Partners.
Bad post SDG. Now you’ve given them more ideas.
SS Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, ruego por nosotros!
Yeah, that occured to me, too. Now every Dad in Spain can claim to be the “Alpha Male”.
Even the alphabet is a hotbed of bourgeois mentality. The vowels always in the minority, and of course, Y is singled out for being “different”.
In a truly egalitarian society, all letters would be the same.
Brave New World By Huxley- “mother” and “father” were considered dirty words. Of course, in that book, no one raised children at all.
Some have read “Brave New World” and thought it was a travelogue. They want to go there and take the rest of us with them.
How about “spermifer” and “ovifer”? Callilng them equally “progenitors” might lead to the mistaken notion that the two actually were in physical intercourse with each other. The “progenitation” might have actually occurred “in vitro”–a glass petri dish (otherwise known as “Progenitor C”).
On the other hand, the technician who retrieved the donated sperm might be Progenitor C. If a different technician collects the ovum, that technician would be Progenitor D. If a third technician, distinct from the others, mixes the sperm and egg in the petri dish, then that third technician is Progenitor E, and the dish is Progenitor F.
A possible fourth technician might implant the newly progenitated child into the womb. That technician would be Progenitor G.
If the womb belongs to a surrogate, she would be Progenitor I.
So, “spermifer” and “ovifer” would seem to eliminate the confusion.
Still … how many mommies and daddies does Jennifer really have?
Fr. Stephanos, you bring up an excellent point, regarding the need for more sophisticateed metadata standards with respect to children, parents and birth. I’ll offer the following parallel:
Item: Dubliners
Original creator: Joyce, James
Electronic creator: Doe, James
Date of original publication: 1922 (?)
Date of electronic creation: 1998
Item: baby
Orignal progenitor a: A
Orignal co-progenitor: B
Technical progenitor: C
Date of original conception: **
Date of techinical implantation: **
Clearly, allowances must be made for developments in metadata standards across the whole swath of our cultural existence. After all, we are making such progress…agggghh.not. not.not.
SDG wrote what I would have. But we’ll know that true equality doesn’t exist in Spain or other countries using Romantic languages until they purge their speech and writing of all feminine and masculine gender differences. 😉
SDG, they couldn’t use the phrase “…due to that person’s obviously greater role….” The word “person” is sexist. Perhaps they could say “peroffspring”.
Is Spain TRYING to turn itself into the West’s legal laughing stock? They have a fantastic legal tradition there, but this new governament, well, they look like idiots to the intelligent world.