The logical absurdity of "gay" marriage begs an obvious question. Why discriminate against all non-"gay" sexual deviants and honor marriage among only homos? What about all the other oppressed sexual minorities? Why only homos? Incest, pederasty, beastiality etc has as long and distinguished a pedigree as does buggery.

Seems unfair to me.

ccoffer may not want gay marriages but he points correctly at consequences of the slippery slope argument.

If the state can't make rules about relationships then anything goes.

ccoffer forgot polygamy.

I think the courts will legalize polygamy next anyway. How can a ban on polygamy be justified except by reference to religion or the will of the people as reflected in statutes?

And if relationships should not be regulated then surely neither should drug use.

A women's rights to control her own body - i.e. abortion - implies equal rights for both men and women to put drugs into their own body. After all, it is their body!

The courts will be forced to accept anything or fall back on the "compelling state interests" doctrine. A doctrine which makes it clear that law is what judges say it is.

I didn't forget polygamy. Thats a different kind of argument. Its not a sexual fetish.

Hmm... I dunno.

1. Exactly how many 'happily married gay couples' will there be?

2. Is the dislike and distaste of homosexual activity inbred (i.e. genetic/hereditary condition) or taught (i.e. environmentally linked)? This may give a better answer of how many anti-gay folks are around. And how likely it is to get them to change.

3. You will probably have to define your terms. What do you mean by gay-friendly vs anti-gay friendly? Republicans are traditionally quite open to 'big tent' policies, no?

"Incest, pederasty, beastiality etc has as long and distinguished a pedigree as does buggery."

- Incest (unless practiced between sterile relatives) has direct consequences on the health of the children, who are innocent parties who never consented, so I don't think it's comparable to homosexuality.

- Pederasty involves children, who are incapable of consent.

- Bestiality involves animals, who are also incapable of consent.

You mentioned fetishes. Is it permissible for the state to regulate them too? Under what theory? Why not masturbation?

"If the state can't make rules about relationships then anything goes."

Anything? Really? I've heard that before, but how? Allowing sex leads to allowing murder? You didn't explain.

All that aside, I'm not arguing for gay marriage; only an end to the acrimonious personal attacks which I think cost the GOP more votes than it gets.

Who benefits?

I'm all for gay marriage. If gays are stupid enough to get involved with an institution completely destroyed by straights I'm all for it. They can feel the pain! Equal opportunity and all.

Marriage today in America is a suckers bet for a man. Any man who does get married is an idiot that deserves everything coming to him. The system is designed to destroy men and advantage women.

Stay single. Stay free.

You forgot Churchill's rejoinder: "The Pope's divisions are seldom on parade." Meaning, in this context, that just counting noses isn't a very useful measure.

Which brings us to my next point: gays (like all subpopulations) are nonuniformly distributed. I think it is safe to say that the vast majority of them are living in urban areas in relatively blue states.

So even if there are a million or so conservatives among the gay population, it's not clear (to the extent that they live in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Washington DC) whether their votes are really worth chasing.

I expect what would really make the GOP think harder about conservative gays is whether they'd open their wallets for the party, as wealthy but liberal gays in (say) Colorado apparently have done, in an effort to turn around the legislature.

I honestly do not care, and more specifically, do not want to know what anyone does in their bedroom whether they are gay, straight, or some combination of the two.

I completely agree that children and animals should be entirely left out of sexual matters.

Now, if I could just figure out whether I'm republican or libertarian or classic liberal or simply confused...

Gregory: "Anything? Really? I've heard that before, but how? Allowing sex leads to allowing murder? You didn't explain."

There is nothing to explain unless you define murder as a relationship. I think most people would think of murder as an act and not a legal relationship.

But I never said sex leads to murder. You tried to put words in my mouth.

As you will read, I reject the consent test in deciding what shall be legal.

The state has laws about relationships. I assert those laws have no foundation except that society prefers them. I'll discuss some.

Marriage. Why the state ever got involved puzzles me. And now we see the state should have called that relationship a civil agreement in the first place and left marriage as a word for religion and the people to define.

But the state did take up the word marriage. That dragged religious rite into a legal system intended to be secular. And mischief and grief and contorted logic followed.

Legal marriage provides a way for divorce, property, and inheritance to be handled by civil law. And designates how children will be provided for.

Which brings us to children. Why does the state expect parents to care for their children? Home care isn't clearly cheaper than sending babies to state nurseries. Yet it is law. Why not abolish the kinship relation in law?

Are children are legally incapable of consenting to sex? Yes, that is true. But only because of an artificial legal construction. i.e. A child is a minor.

"minor" defines the childs relationship with society. And the definition is varied to what society wants. Minority doesn't depend on an innate quality of the child.

Animals can't give consent to sex? Actually they can. That is how they reproduce. And within limits they can be trained to have sex with humans. I suspect the animal regards it as rubbing. But who knows?

Again, a ban on bestiality is not dependent upon any question of consent. It is merely what society prefers.

Animals wouldn't consent willingly to die but we kill them. Yet we can only kill some: cows but not cats, generally any insect. The local laws can be amazing.

Once we hold that the state cannot determine what is legal in relationships then there is no other standard. The universe won't supply a perfect book of rules.

The state governs our dealings with our own body in suicide, drug use, some medical practices, and the broad general catagory of odd behavior (mental illness or incapacity.)

The state regulates our relationships - involvement of two or more parties. No human slavery, but animal slavery is fine. No animal sex, but (some and sometimes) human sex is fine. No sex with children for reasons cited. Marriage is fine but polygamy is not.

It all boils down to what society will permit.

I have no objections to gay marriage. And no advocacy of it. I don't expect the law to reflect what I prefer. Or to be fair.

Expecting the law to be fair is the slippery slope I referred to. Fairness simply cannot be defined. When hard pressed every person defines it to serve his own goals. So if the law must be fair there is no law; the slippery slope provides no footing.

Public nudity laws show us a good slippery slope. We don't take public nudity very seriously, and judges don't either, so they try to be fair. Fun follows.

Public nudity is a legal crap shoot. Is it symbolic speech, sometimes symbolic speech, OK at the beach, or only at some beaches, at Marti Gras, in gay parades which avoid Muslim neighborhoods, any gay parade, modeling, art exhibits, entertainment? You tell me!

Appearing nude in public is certainly illegal. Yet we don't know what a magistrate will do when someone is hauled in.

Why?

Because the judge jumps onto the slippery slope in trying to be fair and take a break from the boredom of traffic cases.

Equality is the less vaporous sister of fairness.

Equality is safer than fairness as a legal basis. But even equality has surprisingly little firmness. Should it apply to individuals or groups? For groups who decides membership?

When convicts are served equal meals is that equal treatment? One may hate beef, another chicken.

Are any two schools equal? Or the teachers in them? Does unequal treatment in the past justify compensation today? How long in the past?

Do handicapped parking places promote inequality? Are they a compelling state need? How did society manage to function before that need was recognized?

Those Handicapped Parking Spaces illustrate what really is going on. They are provided because society prefers it so. They are not provided to be fair. They are not provided to treat people equally. They are not provided to allow the state to function.

Yo, K...

It wasn't me who said it. Try redirecting your comment.

Eric,
You are off. Pederasty involves old men and young men. If you are seriously going to argue that a 16 year old is incapable of agreeing to sex, you have instantly forfeited any hope of being treated seriously. I was a 16 yr old once, and I was nothing but a solid mass of sexual consent at that age. My bet is that you were as well. I despise leftist inspired legalisms.

As to beastiality, how the hell would you know whether or not an animal can consent to sex with a human?

None of that matters anyway, because it has nothing to do with the legal construct of consent. The homo-activist claims the right to "marry" as a matter of natural rights. It is the desire of the homo to fabulously live out their deviant lifestyle with public blessing that underlies the entire movement.

After you describe the moral distinction between incest and homosexuality, I'll be on board with your bright idea. By the way, most of the common myths about birth defects resulting from incest have been proven false.

So lets hear it for incest! Woohoo!

p.s. Can a 16 year old consent to reckless driving?

"You mentioned fetishes. Is it permissible for the state to regulate them too? Under what theory? Why not masturbation?"

The absurdity of this argument is a very large target.

Marriage is a matter of recognition, not of regulation. The difference between a man being allowed by the police screw his fist(or a woman her cucumber) and having a state issued license to "marry" the same is pretty stark.

Compulsion combined with a fetish does not create a public need for affirmation of either.

K, that was an interesting and thoughtful comment. My concern in this post was not so much what the state will permit so much as what the GOP's attitude towards gays ought to be. (The role of the state in making "rules about relationships" is of course immensely complicated and beyond this post. It can and does make rules about relationships; that is why we have courts.)

CC, a 16 year old is not a child, so that's not pedophilia. In many states, 16 year olds are legally capable of consent to sex. (That's not a leftist inspired legalism, but a reflection of the reality of physical maturity.) Children are not legally capable of consent, and it is abusive to take advantage of them sexually, as well as a violation of their parents' rights. (Multiple harm, multiple victims.)

BTW, I used "pederasty" as I use the term pedophilia. My dictionary defines it as "sodomy with a boy," which I consider to be synonymous with pedophilia.

However, if you're talking about, say, a 21 year old having sex with a 16 year old (as opposed to a child), then homosexual sex is homosexual sex. Having an age of consent is legitimate by any reasonable standard, and I don't think it is a leftist inspired legalism. (Personally, I think it is wrong for an older man to have sex with 16 year olds, even if it is legal. In this post I meant to discuss adults in the ordinary and usual sense of the word.)

Animals cannot consent to sex, any more than they can consent to anything. "How the hell would you know whether or not an animal can consent to sex with a human?"

Try asking one. Having sex with animals is in my opinion animal cruelty, and is in any event no way comparable to two adult human beings consenting to sex. (I'd call the cops on anyone I saw screwing a dog, and I've posted about this repeatedly, btw...) There is harm done to the animal.

Incest is practiced by a very small number of people, most of whom would never admit it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest

Consensual adult incest is very rare, found almost exclusively between kin who were separated early in life and therefore did not experience early association and the related development of the natural adaptation for incest avoidance.

I was trying to be practical in my discussion (which involves mainly numbers and not morality) and I just don't think incest rises to the level of serious consideration. (Woohoo? How many incest votes are there?)

Can a 16 year old consent to reckless driving?

Well, I suppose he could consent to anything, including robbing a liquor store. Consent is not the begin-all and end-all, and I never said it was. It is, however, one element -- and a very powerful one -- in determining whether one person has been a victim of another.

As to personal drug use, no, I wouldn't regulate that either. But states (not the federal government) have the power to pass these laws; like the sodomy laws I would support their repeal. (And I think it would have been better for the country had the states gotten rid of the sodomy laws one at a time, as they were doing.)

"You mentioned fetishes. Is it permissible for the state to regulate them too? Under what theory? Why not masturbation?"

The absurdity of this argument is a very large target.

Marriage is a matter of recognition, not of regulation. The difference between a man being allowed by the police to screw his fist(or a woman her cucumber) and having a state issued license to "marry" the same is pretty stark.

Compulsion combined with a fetish does not create a public need for affirmation of either.

WTF?

I thought I was addressing someone else. My apologies, Eric.