Gay Marriage would Upend the Traditional Marriage

@MontereyJack,

Inbreeding works just fine. Sometimes you have to do some ruthless cullling, but that's an accepted part of some breeding programs.

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@parados,

OMG. So, that means we are ALL going to end up wanting sex with animals??

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@MontereyJack,

I always thought the TRADITIONAL problem with incest was that you wouldn't be able to expand your empire/holdings if you kept within the family. To build your estate, develop alliances for wars, etc. you've got to develop allegiances outside of the family/village/castle/country. Hadda marry outside of the circle to be financially successful.

Traditional taboos against incest make financial sense more than anything else. If you bribe the priest enough, he can turn it into a nice moral taboo for you.

Sort of like not eating crustaceans/pork in the desert. The stuff'll be rotten before you can eat it - best to make it a moral hazard - the fear of the gods will put you off bad meat before a bellyache will.

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@parados,

parados wrote:

He did ask where is logic was wrong.

But maybe it's just his thinking.

Frankly, I don't think agarwal's logic is wrong at all -- so long as one assumes that the prohibition on incest is premised on a desire to prevent incestuous unions from reproducing. Everyone has been so eager to pounce on a-a as a homophobic bigot, though, that only Monterey Jack actually (albeit belatedly) addressed that premise.

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and found it wrong.

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@joefromchicago,

If the argument had been about offspring from incest, then I would agree with you.

I think you are filling in much of an argument that wasn't made in the first place.

(As an aside, I believe Wisconsin allows first cousins to marry if they are over 65.)

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@agarwal-aarti,

agarwal-aarti wrote:

Because incest is not an issue in gay marriages -- that means it would be illogical not to allow marriages say between two sisters, two brothers, and even likes between a mother and a daughter. So should all incest related restrictions which are applicable to heterosexual marriages not apply to gay marriages?

Of course not! Incestuous couples cannot legally marry because the state expects a higher rate of hereditary illnesses from their offspring. Because same-sex incestuous couples don't have this problem, the state has no reason to outlaw them.

agarwal-aarti wrote:

If the above mentioned restrictions do not apply to gay marriages, then it would be discriminatory to keep applying those to heterosexual marriages.

Not necessarily. The principle of non-discrimination requires that the government treat people in similar circumstances similarly. But if one class of people can produce genetically defective offspring and the other can not, they are not in similar circumstances, and the principle doesn't apply.

agarwal-aarti wrote:

My point is that gay marriages is a drastically different concept than traditional marriages.

Then I think your point is wrong, because I don't see how. I also don't see how incestuous marriages, if legal, would be drastically different from non-incestuous ones. According to standard marriage vows, marriage is about being there for one another for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, until death do us part. How would same-sex couples or incestuous couples be incapable of exchanging those vows and keeping them?

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@Thomas,

I enjoy their use of the words "traditional marriage" as if it has extra value or consistency. The facts are, it doesn't.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Not necessarily. The principle of non-discrimination requires that the government treat people in similar circumstances similarly. But if one class of people can produce genetically defective offspring and the other can not, they are not in similar circumstances, and the principle doesn't apply.

A moment's reflection would show just how wrong you are. You certainly would not approve of a law that prohibited people who have the likelihood of passing on inheritable diseases (e.g. Tay-Sachs, hemophilia) from getting married, just because they're in a class that "can produce genetically defective offspring." Furthermore, you wouldn't approve of a law that prohibited gays from marrying because they're in a class that can't produce genetically healthy offspring. The distinction you propose, therefore, is simply another form of invidious discrimination. We cannot prohibit one class of people from entering into incestuous unions solely on the basis of their reproductive capacity. If we want to prohibit heterosexuals from entering into such unions, we'll have to find a reason that applies to homosexuals as well.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

A moment's reflection would show just how wrong you are. You certainly would not approve of a law that prohibited people who have the likelihood of passing on inheritable diseases (e.g. Tay-Sachs, hemophilia) from getting married, just because they're in a class that "can produce genetically defective offspring."

In addition to what I said in my last post, there is a further distinction: If a carrier of hemophilia makes a son with his mother, the chances are at least 50:50 that the son will have the disease, because one of the mother's relevant chromosomes carries the gene. But when the makes a child with a non-relative, the child is unlikely to have the disease. That's because the partner has to carry the gene, too, and the chances of that are much lower than 50:50.

That's the problem with incest: it is very likely to bring out any diseases that travel on recessive genes.

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@Thomas,

You mean apart from where you say that you would create a distinction between incestuous gay unions and incestuous straight unions and where you later say you wouldn't? I don't know. Apart from that I suppose you're being totally consistent.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

You mean apart from where you say that you would create a distinction between incestuous gay unions and incestuous straight unions and where you later say you wouldn't? I don't know. Apart from that I suppose you're being totally consistent.

Let me try again: I think it's possible to sort types of couples by the probability of their producing offspring with hereditary diseases.

Incestuous gay couples are guaranteed not to produce such offspring.
Non-incestuous straight couples are somewhat likely, but not very likely, to pass on hereditary diseases to their children.
Other things being equal, incestuous straight couples are at least one order of magnitude more likely than non-incestuous ones to pass on hereditary diseases to their children. (The exact multiplier depends on the frequency of the gene for the disease in the general population.)

Therefore it's possible to create a classification based on the risk of passing on hereditary diseases, and based on a threshold of what's an acceptable risk. If it were up to me, all three kinds of couple would be eligible to marry. But if the state was to set the threshold between the second and the third bullet point, that would be consistent, too.

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And isn't it Tay-Sachs that's pretty much confined to Western Euroopean Jews? So we should prohibit them from intermarrying within the faith, is that the plan?

What about Arlo Guthrie? ALS killed his dad, Woody. The chances of him passing it on to his kids is, I'm told, 50-50, no matter who the mom is. That's on a par with some rare kinds of incestuous unions. Should he be prohibited from marrying at all, then?

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@MontereyJack,

Another one is sickle cell anemia that's traced to African lineage.

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@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

What about Arlo Guthrie? ALS killed his dad, Woody. The chances of him passing it on to his kids is, I'm told, 50-50, no matter who the mom is. That's on a par with some rare kinds of incestuous unions. Should he be prohibited from marrying at all, then?

He and his wife should be treated on par with incestuous couples whose offspring has the same risk. In my view, this means we ought to legalize incest. I'm not saying that a law prohibiting Arlo Guthrie from having chidren would be justified. I think it wouldn't. All I'm saying is that it would be consistent and non-discriminatory. (Why am I rejecting it if it's consistent and non-discriminatory? Because it violates the fundamental freedom to procreate, and because there's no compelling public interest to justify it.)

The rationale for outlawing incest rests on two pillars, both of which are rightly eroding elsewhere in our laws. The first is a traditional "ick" reflex in our society, similar to the one surrounding homosexuality. We have exposed this reflex as bigotry in practically every other context. The second pillar is eugenics---the prevention of hereditary diseases from spreading---which we as a society have come to reject as well. The legal prohibition of incest can no longer withstand much rational scrutiny.

The original poster, agarwal-aarti, may well be correct in suspecting there's a slippery slope here, But he's wrong to think that something terrible awaits us at the bottom of that slope. If gay marriage leads us to discard even more bigoted discrimination, bring it on!

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Gay Marriage would Upend the Traditional Marriage

is it just me, or is this headline hilarious

i mean i don't want to get all anal or anything, but i'd love to get a missionary's position on all this

and have you heard the new vows, something old, something new, something borrowed, something blew

and hey, what's the deal with airline peanuts

thank you, you've been a wonderful audience, i'll be here all week and don't forget to tip your waiters and waitresses

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What about the contemporary ability to identify disease in utero? Does that not negate objections based on hereditary defect? Does not the opiton to abort (which is legal) mean that one can so easily avoid hereditary disease as to make that objection nugatory?

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Let me try again: I think it's possible to sort types of couples by the probability of their producing offspring with hereditary diseases.

Of course there is. But you can't condition one's civil rights on one's ability to procreate. That's the argument that's used against gay marriage. I'm surprised you're willing to use it against some forms of straight marriage.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

Of course there is. But you can't condition one's civil rights on one's ability to procreate.

Of course you can, if the civil right in question is the right to procreate. The point of prohibiting incest and incestuous marriages is to deny certain couples the right to procreate. Same-sex couples cannot procreate, so the rationale for these prohibitions doesn't apply.

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@Thomas,

I don't think that's the whole point.

The point of prohibiting marriage between an 8-year-old girl and a 30-year-old man is not to deny them the right to procreate. The point of prohibiting that marriage is because the girl is unable to give informed consent.

I think that weighs into the equation with incest, too. I think that the taboos re: incest have evolved via both genetics/ unconscious elements (because babies are more likely to be healthy if their parents are not closely related) and via societal elements like what ehBeth cited. At this point, I think a major societal element is that consent is muddied when one person has significant power over another. (Such as a father and a daughter, even if the daughter has reached the age of consent.)

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Gay Marriage would Upend the Traditional Marriage

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