Incest is not the same as homosexuality, and should be treated as a separate issue, but, I would have no problem allowing it. Look at Japan. They have game shows dedicated to people having sex with their mothers, and all sorts of other taboo stuff. I'm not even exaggerating. I know first cousins can marry in a good amount of US states. If you are referring strictly to brother / sister, mom / son type immediate family relationships, you can preach that kids are irrelevant, but what happens when birth control fails? You are left with a retarded baby that has no chance of ever amounting to anything in life, doomed to live a life of suffering and constant work put in by others (if not aborted). This is something that cannot possibly happen via homosexuality. The issues are not even close to the same. There are no reproductive concerns with homosexuality. They can't reproduce, therefor no problems related to it can arise. The people that use the reproductive argument are fools that believe marriage is STRICTLY about family and kids. It's not, but you could destroy a life by banging your sister, so it is what it is. Perhaps they can work a compromise that brothers and sisters can marry as long as they sterilize them first. I think down the road this won't really be an issue, similarly to drugs. There will be no illegal drugs in the future. We are becoming a more open minded society, but certain folks up top are hellbent in keeping us living in the past.
By definition it's not 2 people getting married, so like incest, it should be a separate issue from homosexual marriage. Also, I would not be opposed to it, in the least. I'm about more rights, not less. Incest, polygamy, whatever, as long as you aren't causing harm or suffering to others, enjoy your life.
I think in this case the Federal Government has a problem with DOMA which was specifically written to discriminate against gay marriage. In CT where I live, the have Gay marriage. I don't see how the Federal Government can treat my marriage to my wife any differently than a Gay couple who are married in CT without being in violation of equal protection. The States should be able to do what they want as long as they don't define marriage for the sole purpose of discrimination against gays. That's why I think it would be appropriate to strike down DOMA and let the States legalize or not as their constitutents demand.
incest is simply about the choice of sexual partner, in its case a relative as opposed to someone of the same sex. yes, there are genetic concerns but, same as gay marriage, reproduction is not an issue of marriage, so that can't be used to eliminate their right to marry. and incest among same sex relatives has zero genetic concerns, so the genetic issue doesn't apply to them at all, in addition to having no place in the argument to begin with. two relatives can have sex and reproduce whether they are married or not; so the marriage does not instigate or preclude the act that is troublesome. beyond that, now we are getting into the individual's right to reproduce as they see fit, which we can then question whether the government should be involved in. I am not saying that the government should not be concerned with the genetic repercussion, but I also think the government should be concerned with the social repercussion of plenty of the pregnancy and child issues in the country now, that they can't regulate. this comes back to the broader argument similar to marriage -- either the government can dictate who should be having babies together, or they cannot at all. the government does not have the right to prevent two people with chromosomal or genetic conditions that significantly increase the likelihood of retardation in their children from having children, which is no different than incest. the difference is that incest is yucky, so people would not hesitate to want to prevent it under the guise of it being a genetic issue while saying two non-relatives who are likely to have children with genetic problems should have every right to do so. like homosexuality, it is an issue of the attitude against the act, because the arguments against it are not carried over logically to the same situations for non-relatives.
There is going to be protection for gay marriage nation wide at some point. It's an equal protection issue. Getting there is going to take some time though. As much as people are offended by gay marriage in some states they can't prevent it from occurring once it has become common and is no longer considered outside the realm of behaviors deserving of legal protection. People were offended by inter-racial marriage at one point but there are no laws against inter-racial marriage that would survive a federal challenge at this point if state legislatures passed them. I don't know if the court will strike down Prop 8. It is another step down the road in the process and it is possible the court will not intervene at this time. All of the above said, if the court upholds Prop 8 you have to wonder about the prospects a miscegenation law would have in front of the court at this time.
Inter-racial marriage is specifically illegal under our Constitution and was the reason laws against it were found Unconstitutional. Hard to see this as a strict equal protection only argument winning the day with this court because the States have clearly contracted marriage for a good reason. As far as equal protection the court could just as easily rule that the State offering marriage contracts to anyone should be illegal since it creates a new class of people with different legal status. We could just as easily all be filling as individuals if the court decides on equal protection. The Nuclear family is pretty much done in this country, do we really need the State to promote a nuclear family at this point?
Of course you meant laws against interracial marriage violate the Constitution, specifically the Civil War amendments, and that is a distinctly different situation than an equal protection argument based on social behavior rather than immutable characteristics. In fact it really should be an essential point of civic awareness for all Americans to know that laws based on racial distinctions are subject to the highest degree of scrutiny by the courts. That puts such laws on a different level, and arguments equating race based laws with others are not only without merit, but show a lack of knowledge on hte subject matter that is rather embarrassing. I also feel that the equal protection argument here is not dispostive, and in fact has questionable merit. The reason is that the subject matter concerns behavior, and is not based solely on immutable characteristics. (Arguably it is not really about immutable characteristics, at least not primarily.) Laws addressing immutable characteristics other than race are not subject to the same degree of heightened scrutiny, but are certainly subjected to review at a higher standard than laws that regulate social behaviors. Gay marriage proponents want to skip the analysis that views the question as involving social behavior, and argue that sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic. At best for their argument it is a mixed question. But there should be no doubt it involves the regulation of social behavior.
Choice really is the issue. In the case of someone wanting to marry their parent or whatever, there are still many many opportunities to find someone else to love... unless you are going to argue that there is one and only one person out there for each person to love. If gay marriage is removed as a choice, a gay person has no other opportunities. It's not like they can say, "Gosh, I guess I should just be heterosexual now." There is no choice there.
but studies on attraction don't agree with the assertion that it is a choice. if some sick fuck is attracted to his relative, who are we to tell him he should choose someone else just because that other person will be of the opposite sex but not a relative? that isn't any different than arguing that someone attracted to the same sex should choose to someone of the opposite sex.
The hell it isn't different. And you can't drop "studies on attraction" and then not post the studies. Are you telling me there's not a difference between saying you shall not have your attraction to a specific person recognized (i.e. a family member) and having every potential person you'd be attracted to removed from any possibility of recognition? That's just nuts. It's be one thing if incest meant you were ONLY capable of being attracted to family members. It's not.
There are too many issues with incest to make it an acceptable form of procreative union. There are huge power and suasion issues also. With incest definitively off the table due to moral, societal and legal restraints the worry about parents effectively enslaving their children are also gone.
and here is where your argument is going to fall completely apart. if your argument is based on having a choice, then bi-sexuals, who have a choice of choosing gay or straight marriages, should only be allowed to marry the opposite sex without any claim of discrimination or violation of rights, because they have a choice to be attracted to someone of the opposite sex. or do you want to reconsider your qualification of choice? if the common sense based on your own experience of attraction doesn't dictate to you that attraction is not a conscious choice but something you experience, then google "is attraction a choice" and enjoy. but even challenging that claim is ridiculous on your part, unless your life has been absent of physical attraction to any other human being.
No. Let me be clear here. The issue is not Marriage, which was a term over 5000 years old, adopted by a government. If it was the argument over rights, would be about rights and forcing the GOVERNMENT to adopt a religious nrutral term, like civil union, for all, amd then once the civil oaperwork is obtained, the religious institutions perfoming the ceremony, could prepare ther certificates accordingly. This is about a small cadre trying to use the canard of the right to self define. Strike the word marriage, from all civil documents and replace it with legally valid documentation, and confer all privledges civilly, This argument is not about equal rights, its about the subversion of a word, and thats ridiculous.
Cappys wrong for the simple fact, that government made the mistake. But they arent being asked to change. religion is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage How many wives did Abraham have? Think about it. Yes, marriage is a societal custom that has defined familial status for thousands of years. No, marriage has not been about one man and one woman for all that long in the greater scheme of things. In terms of US history? Well, there were the Mormons... It's not as cut and dried as you think. Conservatives have this wonderful way of assuming and then asserting that things have always been the way that they envision things should be right now. Usually things were a lot more confused than that back in the good old days. I always wonder if people like Michelle Bachman are really jonesing for watching their kids and grandkids die of smallpox and scarlet fever, and of dying themselves at the appropriate age of late 40's at best for most people, or if they've just forgotten that life was like that before big government and clinics and emergency rooms and medicare and medicaid came along.
You entirely missed the point. Who we are attracted to is not a choice. But clearly we don't go trying to marry everyone we are attracted to, nor are we attracted to one and only one individual. That is, incest is not based on attraction to one family member and ONLY that family member. You are not locked into being attracted to only one individual. You are, however, more or less locked into which sex you are attracted to. So initial attraction is not a choice. But it's not a life sentence, either, nor does it dictate a requirement to marry. THAT is the choice. For same sex couples, they have effectively had all of their potential marriage choices removed from the pool based on who they are attracted to. This is not the case for people involved with incest. I think you must being arguing for the sake of arguing if you're really trying to equate the two in terms of this topic.
