Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Same-Sex Marriage vs. Cousin Marriage

Came across this photo on Facebook and did some informal research (Google) to learn that of the 50 states, 19 (including California, Alaska, New York, and Florida) permit restriction-free marriages between first cousins. This compares to just five states that recognize marriage equality. I'm not usually a big fan of this "if Brittany Spears can get married" strategy. It basically reinforces the notion that our equality only warrants consideration in the context of a comparison to another, even more inferior group. But nonetheless, this is pretty crazy. I think another fine example of just how wide the political and ideological spectrum runs in the USA.

2 comments:

  1. I'm completely in favour of legalising gay marriage, but I think your original instinct not to use this tactic was right. All you're doing is shitting on someone else. Have you ever heard a black person who lived through the civil rights movement reject gay marriage? Did you think it was ironic or small-minded?

    Why shouldn't cousins be allowed to marry? Is it because of the risk of having children with congenital defects? If so, do you also think that any people with heritable disease shouldn't be allowed to marry?

    Gay marriage should be legal because there is no good reason why it shouldn't be. That's what you should be saying. What happened to love being love?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would have thought that you would respond to comments, given that this blog makes it seem that you are passionate about the subject and given that you don't get a lot of comments.

    Frankly, I'm disappointed. I have commented before and you didn't bother to reply then either. I think I will probably stop reading this.

    ReplyDelete