• Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more

How do you justify gay marriage without justifying incest?

billydkid said:
Then what, exactly, are they in it for? What purpose on God's green earth does it serve? It looks like nothing except the perpetuation of beauracracy. How that is beautiful I have no idea. If you mean by "evolve", grow incessantly, I would agree.
Click to expand...

It helps them to sort things out when things go wrong - when the marriage dissolves or a spouse gets sick or dies. There are rights and obligations you take on when entering a marriage. If you want the state to back up those rights, you register your marriage with them. Outside of that you are free to create whatever kind of relationships you want. Just don't expect the state to agree it's a marriage when your ass ends up in court.
 
thesyntaxera said:
The problem I am seeing with this argument is that the numbers of people who actually engage in willful incest are incredibly low. I would say that if a couple of family members wanted to engage in incest one would also need to question why they want to do this in the first place. Chances are most of these individuals are suffering from other issues, probably mental in nature, and these issues are probably affecting their reasoning process. That alone should be a reason to not justify incest. It is common knowledge that nearly every incestuous relationship produces, not only genetically damaged children, but emotionally damaged individuals.
Click to expand...
Given that the increased risk is about 4%, I'm not sure your common knowledge is, well, common. [citation needed]

Gay marriage on the other hand has never, as a direct result of two homosexuals engaged in a willful union, produced anything but a typical couple who happens to be gay...no genetic defects, no emotionally scarred victims...nothing.
Click to expand...
Well, given that I have yet to hear of one producing children with no outside genetic material (I can feel the wit homing in with a transsexual gay marriage now, just don't) your point is noted and irrelevant.
 
thesyntaxera said:
The problem I am seeing with this argument is that the numbers of people who actually engage in willful incest are incredibly low. I would say that if a couple of family members wanted to engage in incest one would also need to question why they want to do this in the first place. Chances are most of these individuals are suffering from other issues, probably mental in nature, and these issues are probably affecting their reasoning process. That alone should be a reason to not justify incest. It is common knowledge that nearly every incestuous relationship produces, not only genetically damaged children, but emotionally damaged individuals.
Click to expand...

So are you claiming that everyone who marries their cousin is emotionally dammaged? That could well be crinimal incest.

There are so many variables that catagorizing them is impossible, and as it only goes by blood relation not any actual historic relationship, it is impossible to say.
 
Loss Leader said:
$40.00 in my state. And 2.3 million people got married in 1999 in the US. That's $81,200,000.00. Compare that to the 2008 federal budget of $2,900,000,000,000.00. So, that 81 million is ... not much at all. I don't think the government is in it for your forty dollars.
Click to expand...

Federal != state

And yes, the $81 million isn't even all that much for some of the larger states, if they took the whole thing. However, at a city/county level, that's a few more hires.



Government is in it because they have to pick up the pieces when people want a divorce. There is some utility here, as there is for requirements for unique VIN numbers, titles, and license plates for cars, with respect to theft.

But that doesn't mean the government isn't gonna start charging you $100 per year to give you a little peel-off sticker.
 
I justify gay marriage without justifying incest in much the same way that I justify gay marriage without rebuilding a 1936 Chevrolet coupe.

I perform the former task without performing the latter task.
 
ponderingturtle said:
So are you claiming that everyone who marries their cousin is emotionally dammaged? That could well be crinimal incest.
Click to expand...

Not exactly. I am claiming, from my experience in mental health work, that in all the cases of incest I have seen or heard about the people involved obviously had other problems that would need to be factored in, and that every time incest was committed it had a negative effect on both of the people involved...granted these are people who are conditioned by modern western society to think that it is wrong to begin with...There are probably plenty of instances in history where it has worked well for some...

There are so many variables that catagorizing them is impossible, and as it only goes by blood relation not any actual historic relationship, it is impossible to say.
Click to expand...

Well, that is what psychiatry as an area of research does. It is impossible to say with absolute certainty, but you sure can look at statistical data and get a pretty decent picture painted for you...in this case.
 
thesyntaxera said:
Not exactly. I am claiming, from my experience in mental health work, that in all the cases of incest I have seen or heard about the people involved obviously had other problems that would need to be factored in, and that every time incest was committed it had a negative effect on both of the people involved...granted these are people who are conditioned by modern western society to think that it is wrong to begin with...There are probably plenty of instances in history where it has worked well for some...
Click to expand...

I imagine the general populace has plenty of problems that should be "factored in"...well, factored in if one actually wants to be consistent.

Should "factoring in" be a prerequisite to all marriages, or just incestual ones? Perhaps just homosexual ones? How about everyone under 20, considering many who want to marry may be influenced by other problems?

The only prerequisite should be reasonable good mental health granting informed consent. The types of marriage partners should be a completely separate issue.
 
DoubtingStephen said:
I justify gay marriage without justifying incest in much the same way that I justify gay marriage without rebuilding a 1936 Chevrolet coupe.

I perform the former task without performing the latter task.
Click to expand...
Well, I don't do any of those, so I guess I shouldn't attempt to justify gay marriage at all?
 
thesyntaxera said:
Not exactly. I am claiming, from my experience in mental health work, that in all the cases of incest I have seen or heard about the people involved obviously had other problems that would need to be factored in, and that every time incest was committed it had a negative effect on both of the people involved...granted these are people who are conditioned by modern western society to think that it is wrong to begin with...There are probably plenty of instances in history where it has worked well for some...
Click to expand...

ANd as you started from a mental health field that would seem to be a highly biased starting point.

I agree that changing from a parental relationship to a sexual relationship is likely to be bad for most people. But why is it that if they are adopted, or a step child it becomes all nice and legal? Also say half siblings raised appart would be covered while they don't have the history that would seem to be different from the prior relationship issues, but legaly covered

Incest laws seem to be very bad at targeting the things people are actualy worried about.

Well, that is what psychiatry as an area of research does. It is impossible to say with absolute certainty, but you sure can look at statistical data and get a pretty decent picture painted for you...in this case.
Click to expand...

Maybe, but homosexuality was defined as mental illness for a long time and I am sure many of the same arguements where marshalled. I don't know about the quality of the evidence used though.

I am not claiming that it is not correlated with problems in I just don't find the arguements against it being illegal to be a good way of preventing what people are actualy concerned about.
 
Beerina said:
Federal != state

And yes, the $81 million isn't even all that much for some of the larger states, if they took the whole thing. However, at a city/county level, that's a few more hires.
Click to expand...


Except the $81 million figure is nationwide. There are 19,429 city governments in the United States. So that works out to ... $4,169.02 per municipality. That's not a few more hires. That's not even one more hire. That's about enough for one part-time kid to do a few hours of paperwork a week. Strange, that's exactly the amount of work that granting marriage licenses entails.


But that doesn't mean the government isn't gonna start charging you $100 per year to give you a little peel-off sticker.
Click to expand...


You live in a democracy. If the government charges you a fee for something, it is because you and those around you voted people into office to charge that fee. If you don't like it, vote for someone who will repeal it. Lord knows, in any given election there are enough of them.
 
Last edited:
ponderingturtle said:
ANd as you started from a mental health field that would seem to be a highly biased starting point.
Click to expand...

Or one based on first hand knowledge of the consequences. Bias hardly has anything to do with it. Find me one incestuous couple that doesn't fit that description and we can talk.

I agree that changing from a parental relationship to a sexual relationship is likely to be bad for most people. But why is it that if they are adopted, or a step child it becomes all nice and legal?
Click to expand...

Because they aren't actually committing incest. There is no kin relationship other than one found on paper. Sure the dynamics are weird, but not as weird as me doing my biological mother, for instance, and I would imagine that the legal status of it probably hinges more on the genetic and psychological factors than anything else.


I am not claiming that it is not correlated with problems in I just don't find the arguements against it being illegal to be a good way of preventing what people are actualy concerned about.
Click to expand...

Well, it's not something you can prevent. The laws are there to deal with it when it does happen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest
 
Beerina said:
Sexual child abuse has nothing to do with what adults choose to do behind closed doors, much less marriage.
Click to expand...

This isn't an issue that only applies to consenting adults. If two adult family members want to do it, they are going to despite the legal implications, which probably wouldn't be anything. The legal implications only really seem to be invoked when there are children involved, either through molestation, or as offspring.
 
I would say this about incest. The relationship that close relatives have allows predatory relationships if we allow them to have sex. Your typical relative knows much about you (much more than other people) and how to deal with you. In addition the type of relationship of a relative can be one of subservience or dominance depending on how you are related which would allow for predatory behavior. Allowing sex between relatives allows for much self serving manipulation that wouldn't be present in relationships with people who weren't related.
 
EGarrett said:
This is the only logical difficulty I see when I'm arguing gay rights with people. I've said in the past that there is no logical argument against gay marriage, and that's pretty much true, but looking deeper into the justification for gay marriage (people have the right to pursue happiness as long as it doesn't harm others or harm the functioning of society...and homosexuality does not harm anyone, whereas bestiality, pedophilia and incest are harmful to the animal, the child or the offspring).

The only problem is, how do you respond when your opponent points out that you must support incest as long as they don't have children?
Click to expand...

Maybe we can just run them over in the crosswalks and call it justified!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom