Free Dartmouth
 
  home  
  join
7/22/2003 02:47:00 PM | Timothy

Incest is best?
Andrew Sullivan has an interesting citation of a marriage law in Arizona:
One of the lamest arguments against same-sex marriage is that it violates the principle that marriage is for procreation. Tell that to Pat Buchanan, who has no kids, or to the hundreds of thousands of childless couples who consider themselves rightly married. But there's even a statute in Arizona, a legal scholar/friend of mine notes, that takes this discrepancy further. It grants marriages on the grounds that at least one of the parties is infertile. Here's the statute (the cite is A.R.S. Section 25-101):
Void and prohibited marriages
A. Marriage between parents and children, including grandparents and grandchildren of every degree, between brothers and sisters of the one-half as well as the whole blood, and between uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews and between first cousins, is prohibited and void.
B. Notwithstanding subsection A, first cousins may marry if both are sixty-five years of age or older or if one or both first cousins are under sixty-five years of age, upon approval of any superior court judge in the state if proof has been presented to the judge that one of the cousins is unable to reproduce.
C. Marriage between persons of the same sex is void and prohibited.

Note how same-sex marriages are prohibited but explicitly non-procreative near-incestuous marriages are not. A similar discrepancy occurs in the Catholic Church, which allows marriages between the infertile or the post-menopausal but denies such marriages to gay people partly on the grounds of thier inability to reproduce. When John Kerry invokes reproduction, he needs to address this argument. So do all who agree (emphasis is Sullivan's).
While that's an interesting take on that marriage law, it is a little odd that Sullivan does not comment on a strange part of this law: it allows incest, but not same-sex marriage. Does anyone else find it interesting that the statue apparently says that incest is only banned when there is the possibility of children? Apparently in Arizona, the taboo against gay marriage is more deeply felt than the taboo against incest.



0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Dartmouth
The Free Press

Alums for Social Change
The Green Magazine
The Dartmouth
Dartmouth Observer
Dartmouth Review
Dartlog
Inner Office
The Little Green Blog
Welton Chang's Blog
Vox in Sox
MN Publius (Matthew Martin)
Netblitz
Dartmouth Official News

Other Blogs
Ampersand

Atrios
Arts & Letters
Altercation
Body and Soul
Blog For America
Brad DeLong
Brad Plumer
CalPundit
Campus Nonsense
Clarksphere
Crooked Timber
Cursor
Daily Kos
Dean Nation
Dan Drezner
The Front Line
Instapundit
Interesting Times
Is That Legal?
Talking Points Memo
Lady-Likely
Lawrence Lessig
Lean Left
Left2Right
Legal Theory
Matthew Yglesias
Ms. Musings
MWO
Nathan Newman
New Republic's &c.
Not Geniuses
Ornicus
Oxblog
Pandagon
Political State Report
Political Theory Daily Review
Queer Day
Roger Ailes
SCOTUS blog
Talk Left
TAPPED
Tacitus
This Modern World
Tough Democrat
Untelevised
Volokh Conspiracy
Washington Note
X. & Overboard

Magazines, Newspapers and Journals
Boston Globe Ideas
Boston Review
Chronicle of Higher Education
Common Dreams
Dissent
In These Times
Mother Jones
New York Review of Books
New York Times
Salon
Slate
The American Prospect
The Nation
The New Republic
The Progressive
Tikkun
Tom Paine
Village Voice
Washington Monthly

Capitol Hill Media
ABC's The Note
American Journalism Review
Columbia Journalism Review
CQ
Daily Howler
Donkey Rising
The Hill
Medianews
National Journal
NJ Hotline
NJ Wake-up call
NJ Early Bird
NJ Weekly
Political Wire
Roll Call
Spinsanity

Search
Search the DFP

www.blogwise.com
Powered by Blogger

The opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of Dartmouth College or the Dartmouth Free Press.