Seminal Watercooler – First Cousin Marriage vs. Gay Marriage |
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| By: Jim Moss Monday January 4, 2010 7:00 pm | |
I hesitate to even bring this up, because associating homosexuality with incest and other forms of "deviant sexuality" is a particularly nefarious tactic of the homophobic crowd. But these two maps should raise eyebrows on both ends of the spectrum:
What do you think? Should gay marriage be legal in all 50 states? First cousin marriage in none? Both types everywhere? What’s on your mind tonight?
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15 Comments
How about a map of where LGBT have housing and job protections instead of riding the marriage hobby horse into the ground again? It is time to give it a rest.
How about consenting adults can assemble as they see fit, without the state sanctioning specific relationships over others, including polyandry and polygamy.
Let’s get the damn government out of choosing winners and losers in who copulates with whom, thanks very much.
The problem is that there are enough people for whom preserving the status quo is important to their sense of being who cannot be persuaded through thought based argumentation. Many will not take a logical argument on this issue as you or I would.
Advancing the same sex marriage campaign requires the difficult on-the-ground work that empowers queerfolks from communities which oppose same sex marriage to make the person to person connections that characterize successful social movements. It is not glamorous, no gala dinners are involved, just patient empowering of people who are “not very important.”
These entitled mostly conservative queens who have forced marriage down our throats for the past 20 years, with tremendous peripheral damage to queer and het progressive politics alike I might add, expect to be able to show up, cut a check and get what they want.
How many more defeats will it take for them to learn this and change their approach?
There is scientific evidence that first cousin marriage has a higher probability of genes carrying disabilities. So, what’s your opinion of the mild form of eugenics that prohibits first cousin marriage on that basis? Given all the work to include the disabled in society, is it still appropriate to try to prevent disability in the first place? Interesting Q.
No such scientific evidence with gay marriage however. So think they are 2 separable issues. Not that the intellectually challenged won’t conflate them. So good topic for discussion.
According to this site, an additional seven states allow for first-cousin marriages but establish minimum age-limits for that.
Odds Against Gay Marriage Grow With Setback in Trenton.
Great, another loss in a solidly blue state.
Ours is a movement led by dominant masochists.
Jim, I’d not read your bio and thought you were queer, not a married hetero Christian preacher.
Perhaps you might want to take a moment to contemplate the logic of a heterosexual Christian minister running point on lesbian and gay marriage equality against the backdrop of the brutal torment which Christianity has visited on queers.
And then you might want to give some thought to the power dynamics that comparing the lesbian and gay campaign for marriage rights to incest brings on. Perhaps that case should be made. But if it does damage, its no skin off yer hetero ass.
Why not put your need to power over others less powerful than you aside for a moment, and respect and empower queers to chart our own course, okay? It is bad enough that rich fags have purchased our agenda towards marriage and the military and led to a 20 year losing streak. We don’t need heteros fucking things up further, okay?
Thanks for hearing me out, I’d hope that your need to express power over others weaker than you for your vision of their own good as concerns sexual issues, like you’ve just demonstrated, is kept in check around your kids. We know how you preachers can be when it comes to that. Have a nice night.
What a mouthbreathingly stupid comment, Marcos.
Marcos – You need to check your own prejudices. You read that I happen to be a heterosexual Christian minister, and then you projected onto me a whole bunch of assumptions and suppositions. Read my history of wiriting here and on the the old Seminal site (http://www.theseminal.com/author/jim-moss/), and you’ll get a clear understanding of what I stand for.
Seriously, way out of line.
Christian = Flat Earther
Why take them seriously?
Ok thats scary
Agreed I think love comes first even if its gay cousins but what about the kids families with genetic problems inbreeding and having kids is where I would draw the line.
I’ve been absent from Firedoglake for a while but I just saw this post. I’ve posted a few diaries on cousin marriage here (1, 2, 3). From a Judeo-Christian religious perspective, there is no comparison between gay marriage and cousin marriage. Homosexuality was seen as an abomination, that’s the exact word that is used, whereas cousin marriage is clearly allowed, though the Catholic Church banned it in later times for social engineering purposes.
From a logical and therefore non-religious perspective, though, I think we can also do better than a comparison between these two topics. Homosexuals are often innately predisposed to be that way, but nobody is predisposed to marry a cousin. Instead, comparing cousin marriage bans to anti-miscegenation laws makes more sense.
I really resent people calling cousin marriage “incest.” Whether it’s considered incest or not is subjective, so effectively that’s an insult. It’s like calling gay marriage “sodomy.” Please get a clue.
Those states are actually included in the above chart. See the Wikipedia article for the best map.