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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1894 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 31, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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When a gay couple has a baby, how rude is it to ask which one is the biological parent?

I think it depends how phrase it and how well you know the couple. Maybe don’t say it like “So, whose sperm was it?” when you’re holding the baby.

Is there a reason you want to know though?

Is there a reason you want to know though?

What a weird question. Child legitimacy and family lineage has followed us around for millennia fueling scandal and intrigue. I mean, this hypothetical child will be born a bastard. Taking an unnatural approach such as two men bringing in a child to the household is bound to cause tensions in a culture that has only recently begun insisting this is perfectly okay.

I mean, this hypothetical child will be born a bastard.

A troublesome prospect if the child wants to inherit his noble father’s land and title. But AFAIK the adoptive parents are what matters legally so if the gay couple is married, I don’t think it counts as a “child out of wedlock”.

Although does anybody care about this in any developed western country? My parents weren’t married and that’s the case for >50% of children where I live. Nobody will seriously use the word “bastard” in that way unless they’re a medieval history enthusiast.

Taking an unnatural approach such as two men bringing in a child to the household is bound to cause tensions in a culture that has only recently begun insisting this is perfectly okay.

I think we’re a bit past the point of worrying about what’s natural and what’s unnatural in our hyper connected post industrial society where we’re utterly reliant on thinking rocks. Homosexual penguin couples have adopted and raised chicks (although eventually divorced), so if anything gay adoption is more natural than antibiotics and social media.

If you think this is weird did you know in Iceland, citizens use a dating app that lets them know if they’re related to the person they’re seeing, out of fears of incest? It’s due to the extreme homogeneity of the population, but there’s a twist to it. There was a study specifically on the Icelandic population that showed that the healthiest and most reproductively successful couples there are third and fourth cousins (which only share < 1% of the same genetic makeup).

One argument in support of that reproductive logic is it may reduce a woman's chance of having a miscarriage that’s caused by immunological incompatibility between a mother and her child. Some individuals have a Rhesus factor on the surface of their RBC’s during a second pregnancy and she and the fetus could have incompatible blood cells (which triggers the mother's immune system to treat the fetus as a foreign intruder, causing a miscarriage.).

Still though. The idea is gross. There are a lot of very attractive women in my extended family. I have a cousin in my family who’s a gorgeous girl and we’ve been tight ever since we were growing up, but she was adopted at birth. Even then the idea is disgusting to me.

I have a cousin in my family who’s a gorgeous girl and we’ve been tight ever since we were growing up, but she was adopted at birth. Even then the idea is disgusting to me.

I think being close since childhood is the factor here? That’s definitely how the disgust evolved, a fourth cousin you only met as an adult is not going to cause the same response as an adoptive sibling.

a fourth cousin you only met as an adult is not going to cause the same response as an adoptive sibling.

I think you got carried away with the example here. I'm pretty sure even explicit anti-cousin-marriage laws/norms don't prohibit relations between fourth cousins.

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