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Comment by yipopov | Hacker News Reader

Celibacy means you won't have any children. Same reason why a carrier of the Huntington's disease gene may choose celibacy instead of reproducing.

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Celibacy means sexual abstinence, not not having children. The latter is implied by the former, of course.

Not really, we're past requiring intercourse for reproduction.

Yes, but in the context of upholding traditional Christian moral standards that's not an option that's on the table, and neither is using contraception. Celibacy, or to be more precise, abstinence, is the only option.

You're talking about a very specific "Christian" society, which, you should bear in mind, has very few things in common with other Christian societies, like the orthodox for instance.

I know the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox do in fact practice things like abortion and contraception, but they are still highly controversial subjects and far from universally accepted in the hierarchy.

I still think it's a pretty fair generalisation of traditional Christianity and the vast majority of Christians (liberal western Protestants are a minority on the global scale, and even they don't universally accept abortion and contraception, take for instance Pastor Anderson)

Then perhaps I'm biased. Where I was raised (eastern orthodox), preaching in favour of contraception and abortion as divine mandate was/is seen as crazy. I certainly don't have numbers to compare.

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