Let's Get Real About Solidarity

Bridgette P. LaVictoire didn’t quite get to promoting full marriage equality when she responded to antiequality remarks publicly made by Archbishop Timothy Dolan. She did stand up for the same-sex and polygamous freedoms to marry.

LaVictoire got it right when she wrote…

Let us make something very clear here- the ‘nature’ of marriage as being defined as being between a man and a woman is something fairly new in the world, and is something pushed by Christian based cultures such as those found in the West. Many cultures had marriages which were not based on the one man-one woman dynamic, but that is part of the problem, is it not?

Men like Dolan are not just homophobic bigots, they are ethnocentric bigots. They do not believe that any other culture or religion engages in marriage of any type. That is easy to see. Islamic cultures have marriage between one man and up to four women. The Celtic cultures had, under Brehon law, marriages without gender specificity. A man could marry another man, a woman another woman, a man could marry two or more women, a woman could marry two or more men.

But then she went on to throw consanguinamorous people under the bus…

There is no actual movement to allow incestuous marriages,

You can’t see it, but I’m waving my hand in the air. So are other people.

and an easy counter to that is to hold up King Charles II of Spain as a really good reason for why incest should not be allowed. After centuries of inbreeding, Charles II was so deformed and congenitally stupid that he made a horrendous ruler. When they opened him up to do the autopsy, they found that his internal organs were badly twisted. Simply put, incest has real consequences for the next generation.

Ah, Discredited Argument #18.

Both homosexuality and polyamory (to cover both polygamy and polyandry) as recognized marital forms have no issues what so ever. Cultures have had such marriages and not collapsed, but if you look at the slow degradation that was done to the Egyptian pharaohs over the centuries due to brothers and sisters marrying, you see why incest is bad.

Every ancient civilization has collapsed or been reformed. Blaming consanguineous sex for the collapse of ancient Egypt is as dubious as blaming gay sex for the fall of Rome.

Rather than throwing people under the bus, let’s confront the bigots with “What is wrong with letting any consenting adults marry?” Force the bigots to defend their stance and explain why any grown man or woman shouldn’t be able to marry the adult(s) of their choice, even if one or more of them is a close relative. They won’t be able to.