There’s a reason why I reprint this essay now.
It’s not all that old. Pat Robertson asked this idiotic question not long ago. I responded in a reasonable manner, which you can see below.
But I think all these words are about to become antiquated. This particular idiotic question is one that is not going to have to be answered, in any manner, much longer.
But until then:
“Pat Robertson asked it on television. Senators ask this question in debates.
“WHAT IF SOMEBODY WANTS TO MARRY HIS DOG?”
Sigh. Do we really have to do this? Okay.
The question of informed adult consent aside, there are billions of people in the world and any number of them are strange by the standards of the rest of us.
There is a woman who married a bridge, another who married the Eiffel Tower. This is not hypothetical. These women exist. They had ceremonies that understanding friends attended. They are not stupid. They both know they are married to inanimate objects. They both know the objects cannot return their love. Nevertheless, they are wired differently from the rest of us, the internal definition of love exists differently for them than it does for us, and for whatever strange reason sparks their brain matter, they happen to be feel safe and loved and secure when in the presence of that bridge, that Parisian monument. The woman who married the Eiffel Tower spends some time on that Plaza every day, being “with her husband.” It hurts nobody. It’s entertaining to us that these ladies feel this way, but it doesn’t inconvenience any of us; it doesn’t endanger my marriage to Judi or yours to whoever, in any fashion.
Bridges and towers cannot give informed consent. But neither do they mind.
Dogs and horses cannot give informed consent. It can be said that they do mind. There is a case that forcing sexual relations on them is not only unnatural, but cruel. We protect them because they cannot give consent.
Men marrying their daughters —
— well, we call that incest and we know that it’s most often exploitation. We know that there are extreme cases (let’s say the brother and sister separated at birth, who first fall in love, then find out they’re related; similar things happening to parents separated from their children, who meet them socially without any clue to their true connection) where incest is NOT exploitation and where the people can claim, however much it disgusts us, that they are both entering into the contract with eyes open and in fully informed, fully empowered personal volition. However, these outliers do not reflect the vast majority of cases, almost all of which do involve abuse. The few exceptions are in fact such a statistical blip that, in every real sense, they exist only as thought experiments.
But let us assume that a vast sea-shift in human behavior led to millions, literally millions, of men and millions of their independent adult daughters wanting to marry one another.
This would require a tremendous alteration in human nature, of the sort that doesn’t parallel the history of homosexuality at all. As far as we can tell, it’s always reflected approximately the same percentage of the human species that it does now, subject to variations in culture’s acceptance or rejection. But let us posit that. Let us assume that twenty million American men wanted to marry their daughters, who without any intimidation of any kind, reciprocated this ambition. This is incredibly unlikely. But again, this is what we’re positing.
Why are we talking about it now?
Isn’t talking about it now rather ridiculous and theoretical?
Doesn’t it make more sense to suggest that we hold off the discussion of whether this would be good or bad for society until that actually happens? Knowing that it won’t?
And THEN return to the issue of gay marriage, which DOES involve millions and which HAS swept the states and IS legal for more than three-quarters of Americans and ISN’T so theoretical? Because otherwise, all this talk of men wanting to marry their daughters or dogs or what have you is just ridiculous?”
Yes. It is.
But there’s a reason why I reprint this essay today.
It’s about to become a relic…
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