‘I have even heard doctors warn someone against dating someone else with a similar condition.”
When I spoke about hereditariness, I was actually thinking about the problems involved with going out with someone who has something that also runs in your own family. If both sides have something, there is likely to be a much greater risk of the kids having it.
The story from Tanach is from the Navi. The child was Menashe who was a really big Rasha. I think his father was Chizkiyahu Hamelech. The problem was that he didn’t want to have kids and men have a chiyuv to have kids.
In our case, we are talking about someone who has several suggestions and decides to go out with the one who has no known hereditary conditions as opposed to the one who has a genetic condition that he/she is not sure that he can handle.
Thanks a lot for your validation, Lightbrite. You are probably right that people are upset about the stigma, but I think that people should also not stigmatize people who don’t want to go out with people who have certain conditions. There can be very valid reasons for this.
No one is perfect and no one can expect to marry someone perfect. Each person has to think about what is right for him/her and what he/she can handle, and no one should judge another’s decision.