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Overturning Roe and Obergefell Leads to … Cousin Marriage?
In a comment elsewhere, I was pondering the meaning of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. While liberals are having a tizzy about Justice Clarence Thomas’ comments about gay marriage and contraception, I think they might be looking at it the wrong way.
Obergefell requires all states and territories to recognize same-sex marriages from any and all states, to uphold them, and to provide for them as a function of due process and equal protection. Same-sex marriage cannot be banned.
If this is true, then cousin marriage laws must be overturned, based upon discriminatory practices and gender discrimination, as well as discrimination based upon sexual orientation.
According to Wikipedia (that font of knowledge!), nineteen states outright allow first-cousin marriage. California, of course, is one such haven. If someone wants to marry their cousin? CA is their place! Want to co-habit and have sexual relations? California, here we come! Strangely enough, states like Mississippi hold it to be out outright illegal and do not recognize out-of-state first-cousin marriages. Those wacky, backward southern states!
If Obergefell insists that same-sex marriages be recognized, all it takes is one gay cousin couple moving to any of the 19 states where it is illegal and we start to have some conflict. While Kennedy’s decision indicates that they must be held to the same standard as heterosexual couples, some of the laws only would apply to the heterosexuals and not the homosexual couples.
For example, some of these states have rules in place regarding marriage only if over the age of 55 (or 65) or one/both parties are infertile. This, of course, discriminates against those marriages that take place between a person with a penis and a person with a vagina. Those who cannot procreate are free to marry, as presumably homosexual cousins are, unless the state insists upon creating an undue burden upon otherwise healthy homosexual adults to have permanent medical procedures performed in order to marry. If they are held to the same standard, they simply must! Additionally, this calls into question the ability to have children as being a reason to withhold what is a right under equal protection. Since in vitro and donation of eggs or sperm is borderline commonplace at this time, what place does procreation truly hold within state laws, except as a placeholder for bigotry!
Thomas’ comments are much more frightening than even liberals know.
Published in General
As a practical matter, most states to which a couple moves will recognize a marriage performed out of state, even if the marriage would have been illegal in the state to which the couple moves. There are exceptions, though. I suppose a state might accept a cousin marriage performed out of state but not a brother-sister marriage or a father-daughter marriage. Other than same sex marriages, the matter has not really been tested much, in part because the issue doesn’t come up all that often. When after the initial marriage license, would the state be making any inquiries about the connections between the individuals? If a couple comes to a state as “married,” the state rarely has reason to question the details unless some specific issue comes up (such as in a divorce, or in a will contest or other estate settlement). Same sex status tends to be a bit more obvious to casual observation than does cousin status.
And maybe people do what this one Utah couple did, and work toward changing the law in their own state, rather than engage in a court battle. [I do not and never have practiced family law, but I hear about these things a bit in my lawyer news.] Besides cousins, differences in laws about who can marry also exist over issues such as if one person has a communicable disease, or the age of the participants, or the mental capacity of the participants, etc. So I’m sure conflict has arisen many times over recognizing out-of-state marriages, but apparently they have generally been resolved without having to create a national conflict over the matter.
I made the argument to someone once that obergefell legitimizes incest. Somehow, our woke world has not progressed to accepting incestual relationships between consenting adults. I find that quite odd.
Anyway, I pointed out the chief reason for laws against incest was the offspring, but if obergefell disagrees that children are a vital part of marriage and the only thing that matters is love and two consenting adults, then there is no argument against incest.
Luckily, the aversion to incest is so strong, he took the argument seriously and I think he changed his mind on the SSM argument.
In all seriousness, it took 48 years to go from Loving (1967) to Obergefell (2015). It’s only taken 7 to go from Obergefell to “Let’s hack off the genitals of kindergartners”. The end stages move fast.
Please read the wiki link I provided re: incest. I think you will find it very enlightening in that incest is legal in some states as long as the two are consenting adults over the age of 18. In other states, it is only illegal if they attempt to marry.
But please leave an explanatory note when your wife asks about your browser history.
Although, let’s point out very clearly here that there’s a HUGE difference between Loving and Obergefell. Loving was about racial equality and the ability to marry someone of a different race (as if it mattered). Obergefell is about love, but is about same sex love and marriage. Loving still had the opportunity for natural children and was in the interest of the state. Obergefell does not.
However, I should also point out that I know a number of lovely gay families that either adopted (men) or had children via specialty clinics (women). They’re lovely people and they’ve raised good children. I daresay I even know gay conservatives that want to get marred and have kids one day. Theoretically, having intact families is in the interest of the state.
Having a family (of whatever appearance) is very, very different from stunting normal growth in children and chemical castration of adolescents. While there’s a slippery slope in a lot of liberal ideologies, I really cannot stress enough that gay marriage is not the same as (fill in the blank atrocity here). We really should keep that clear. Conservative opponents smear us (and sometimes rightly so) with comparing humans to animals and dehumanizing people. Let’s try not to throw in with that here and confuse the issue more.
I feel like it is probably offensive enough that I’m discussing gay marriage and cousin marriage/incest in the same breath.
We often have given our consent to actions as reasonable people and believed the Left when they said, “Give us this and no more.” There is always more. The alphabet people will not be satisfied until every single letter has had its grievances “affirmed” and codified.
And yet the laws AGAINST it are because of the byproduct of those unions.
Also, because there’s universal revulsion at incest. Across the world. Particularly with close relationships. Cousins weren’t always considered close, but after looking at the Tudors, Habsbergs, etc I think folks started to change their minds.
You draw your line where you wish — I use the one provided by nature and tradition. That was the only defensible one, for obvious reasons. All of the rosy-sounding justifications for gay marriage can be– and will be — applied to every other redefinition of the same term. Time and propaganda will tell. Gay marriage is absolutely the door to other sorts. Now it’s just a matter of opinion and a moment of political supremacy.
Actually, the “universal” revulsion at incest is an inbuilt reflex, behavior without which we would not have made it this far. Animals (anecdata notwithstanding) share the same aversive reflex without reason. However, a debased culture or witty arguments about “h8” can assist people to overcome their hangups. The aversion to incest is powerful, but hardly universally honored, and certainly not to the same degree, even between the states — much less across the world.
My great grandparents were first cousins. Some might say that fact explains a lot.
The Church in Ireland would not marry them, and so they hightailed to the Liverpool area where my Grandmum was born and soon after they decamped for yes, LA! The land of fruits and nuts as some, like that early “free love” devotee Frank Lloyd Wright, would later say. My Grandmum was still a devout Catholic who graduated from USC Magna Cum Laude around 1918 I think.
That revulsion is a byproduct of centuries of moral law against it that finds foundation in Judaism and was promoted by the Roman Catholic Church and is the foundation of the very real Hajnal line separating Eastern and Western Europe so distinctly.
But here’s the thing, related people who grow up together imprint on each other (westermarck effect).Something about being raised in the same home as part of the same family marks immediate family members as off limits for future coupling. Remove that and raise them outside their blood family units, and experience demonstrates that related people who are unaware of their relationship form romantic relationships. It’s happened with sperm donors and their offspring, with secret bastards and legitimate kids.
Can you see a potential issue with the left’s obsession with handmaid style baby making for all the sterile couplings they are promoting? Exactly how long do you expect incest to remain the sin qua non and the bridge to far in sexual ethics when the entire system they are promoting is designed to raise children separate from their biological groups?
Edited to add:
https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/attraction/what-is-genetic-sexual-attraction-and-is-it-real/#:~:text=Genetic%20sexual%20attraction%20is%20a%20term%20used%20to,relatives%2C%20so%20the%20term%20is%20still%20fairly%20new.
There’s been some evidence to show that people that are genetically similar to you smell unappealing.
Only if raised together. This does not hold if the meet as adults.
I’ll remember that the next time I’m on an elevator.
The actual study I remember reading actually had to have to do with more than that. Something about our sense of smell and similar genetics. We actually have pretty profound senses of smell. But this is something I read a decade ago on dead tree so there’s not much else I can do to support what I remember reading.
Have you seen what happens when lesbians with kids divorce? I know of an example requiring lots of prayer. OMG, I thought no-fault divorce among heterosexuals with kids was bad enough (as Drew Klavan says, parents blow up their kids’ planet — except these lesbians’ kids were already living on a planet worthy of SMOD).
Tragic. You (we) just can’t celebrate abnormal behavior and expect that there won’t be dire and life-destroying consequences.