Slate‘s William Saletan finds a rational basis for the incest taboo: it tends to destroy the family by upsetting the roles people play and the relationships they (are supposed to) have within it. So—he heaves a huge sigh of relief—there’s no slippery slope from approval or toleration of homosexuality and same sex marriage to approval or toleration of incest. Indeed, there’s no inconsistency between homosexuality and the family at all! If he’s right, conservatives have lost a powerful argument against same-sex marriage.
But wait: what about the roles and relationships? A man can be a father, but not a mother. A woman can be a mother, but not a father. To be sure, both are parents, but parenting isn’t generic, it’s gendered, and not just in the act of procreation.
But wait again: people assume these roles and enter into these relationships voluntarily (except for the kids, who regularly remind us that they didn’t ask to be born), and the roles and relationships have surely been redefined over the years. (For example, my mom ironed everything, and I mean everything, while in our household, everyone does—or doesn’t do—his or her own ironing. One thing has remained the same, even if the nomenclature has changed: I tell my kids that they’re universal remotes.) So if roles and relationships are voluntary and subject to redefinition, what’s the objection to a more, er, expansive definition of father, mother son, daughter, sister, or brother, assuming, of course, consent? If the roles can be redefined expansively enough to accommodate same sex marriage, why can’t they be redefined expansively enough to accommodate incest betwen consenting adults?
I don’t find a persuasive distinction in Saletan’s article. More precisely, he recurs to something like nature or essentialism when he wants to rule out incest, but seems to dispense with it in the case of same sex marriage. If the roles are naturally or essentially defined in the one case, why not in the other? And if they’re not naturally or essentially defined in the one case, then why should they be in the other?
I was on a slippery slope driving around Atlanta yesterday evening; Saletan stills seems to me to be on one this morning.
December 16th, 2010 | 12:50 pm
I read Saletan’s argument yesterday, and maybe I’m missing something (please correct me if I am), but by his logic, shouldn’t we outlaw divorce? Or adultery? Certainly these things are every bit as destructive to relationships as incest (and far more common).
I’m guessing Saletan would balk at outlawing divorce.
December 16th, 2010 | 1:20 pm
[...] William Saletan Is Wrong on Homosexual “Family Values” – Joseph Knippenberg, 1st Thghts [...]
December 16th, 2010 | 2:08 pm
This whole sad topic makes me think of the women I’ve known who told me they were sexually abused. None of them ever had a real relationship, though all of them wanted to, and they probably never will. They were ruined by men they should have been able to trust. And those men deserve to be punished.
December 16th, 2010 | 3:48 pm
Count on Saletan to thread a very fine needle and conclude with great self-satisfaction at his own cleverness. He has done the same for his pro-abortion and anti-marriage preferences. Engaging his casuistry is a fine intellectual exercise but of little use in adjudicating any controversy.
Why? Because the principle that he seeks to defend is ultimately indefensible. We are not sovereign over our bodies any more than we are sovereign over the laws of physics. Saying that we have “a right” to do what we will with our persons is like saying we have a right to float immune above the restrictions of gravity. It is the philosophical equivalent of “I Believe I Can Fly.”
Applied to any other area of knowledge, Saletan’s practice would be considered the methodology of a crank, but alas, in our political arena positivism has captured the imagination of one-half of our citizenry and legitimates itself through repetitive preponderance and cowed opposition. Positing one’s “values” has made itself immune to deliberation, reconsideration, or even mere questioning.
If we would engage Saletan’s conjectures, or any other leaky patches on the hull of leftist justification, we defeat ourselves before we begin when we agree to tease out the “consent,” “privacy” or even the “family integrity” canards on their terms. We would have to reapproach the shocking idea that the individual may not in fact do whatever he wills so long as it causes no harm to others. Such a fine libertarian principle has its limitations.
The principle is hardly ever questioned anymore because we would prefer to err on the side against tyranny and totalitarianism. Our hesitation bespeaks a lack of confidence in our judgment in the specific, as if to say, we must universally apply a generally good principle without exception in case we are tempted to follow our prejudices into exceptions that destroy the principle. We in effect allow someone to shout “fire” in a crowded theater because we don’t trust ourselves enough to tell the difference between incitement and political speech. We allow all manner of behavior because we have lost the ability to distinguish between the good and the evil, much less the salutary and the harmful.
Why single out Saletan? He is doing what our jurists have been doing since the Warren usurpation. It’s hardly fair to blame a fellow of above-average intelligence for indulging in the favorite party game of political thinkers today. I’ve figured out how to prop up the illusion one more day! Here’s how….
Saletan is a waste of time and energy to debate. The more we engage their frippery, the more emboldened they are to manufacture it. Let’s get down to the kernel of our differences, shall we? They are laboring to prop up an old artifice, the dream of Enlightenment Because I Say So. We begin in humility and in awe of the Lord God Creator of All Things. We are on different planets.
Babel crumbles to dust, and they are reconstructing the scaffold the very next morning, as if they didn’t notice the ruination all around them. Theirs is an obsessive-compulsive hatred of their own condition, a refusal to acknowledge their meager standing. It’s suicide by labor.
It’s “The Truth Will Set You Free” replaced by Arbeit Macht Frei. The National Socialists could lie with the best of us human beings, but their lies are no match for the prince of them, no match for the demonic lie that has guided our history for centuries now.
December 16th, 2010 | 5:25 pm
“If he’s right, conservatives have lost a powerful argument against same-sex marriage.”
LOL. The slippery slope argument from homosexuality to X or from anything to X is hardly powerful.
If you have a problem with homosexuality discuss it on its own merits. No need to try and connect it to something that is wholly unrelated to homosexuality.
It’s like saying I have a problem with Roman Catholicism and then talking about how bad Mormonism is to prove something against Roman Catholicism.
December 16th, 2010 | 6:29 pm
Jon, in your hypothetical example of a bad argument, if the problem you perceive in Catholicism would reasonably lead, as demonstrated by logic and precedent, to the even worse problems you see in Mormonism, then that would actually a pretty good indictment of Catholicism.
You would certainly still need to address the initial problem “on its own merits,” but positing a significant, directly-related subsequent problem is also a legitimate plank in the hypothetical argument.
December 16th, 2010 | 9:13 pm
H.
I see a problem with the slippery slope on logic grounds. On precedential grounds, it seems to exist, as E. Volokh has demonstrated, but goes where and as far as 5/9 SCOTUS members want it to.
On logic grounds, everything is sui generis and every analogy, which by nature are not duplicates (therefore) contains an internal basis for refutation, provided a meaningful distinction can be made between every A and B being compared.
And the entire thrust of WS’s article seems to do that.
JK writes:
“So if roles and relationships are voluntary and subject to redefinition, what’s the objection to a more, er, expansive definition of father, mother son, daughter, sister, or brother, assuming, of coruse [sic], consent? If the roles can be redefined expansively enough to accommodate same sex marriage, why can’t they be redefined expansively enough to accommodate incest betwen [sic] consenting adults? [JR -- I suggest using Firefox which puts a red line under spelling errors.]”
The ENTIRE THRUST OF WS’S ARTICLE ANSWERS THIS.
“For example, my mom ironed everything, and I mean everything, while in our household, everyone does—or doesn’t do—his or her own ironing.”
Well gee, your family has just changed “traditional gender roles.” That leads to incest! That’s basically what the slippery slope argument amounts to.
December 17th, 2010 | 4:17 am
Interestingly, incest was not a crime in England & Wales until 1908 and the new law was opposed by some in the legal and medical professions who preferred the existing method of administrative detention of perpetrators under the Mental Deficiency Acts as “moral defectives.” It was simpler, cheaper and avoided any demoralising publicity
December 17th, 2010 | 9:51 am
Choose a position and then find an argument that supports it. Approach life that way and we’re always unpleasantly surprised at the consequences.
December 17th, 2010 | 2:38 pm
What King said.
Once one gets into hairsplitting over the true definition of logical terms and the use of spell check…well…end the discussion.
Homosexuality is a nasty filthy habit and should be discourage, like we do smoking and spitting on sidewalks. A society which accepts littering, for example, shouldn’t be suprised to also find sidewalks covered in spit. Isn’t that common sense? Similarly, isn’t common sense to see that tolerating homosexual acts and other disordered sexualities would have similar effects?
December 17th, 2010 | 2:54 pm
I apologize to all grammarians! Amusing myself in an airport and typing on an iPhone.
December 18th, 2010 | 10:19 am
“Similarly, isn’t common sense to see that tolerating homosexual acts and other disordered sexualities would have similar effects?”
Do you really think that tolerating homosexuality will encourage homosexuality?
I am not attracted to other men. Period. I don’t really care if it is encouraged or if it is outlawed. I am simply not interested.
Do you think that homosexuality is so attractive that it is merely social disapproval that makes it unattractive? If so, then I assure you that most heterosexuals don’t think that way.
December 22nd, 2010 | 8:42 am
I always chuckle to myself when someone says ‘there’s a slippery slope from X to Y’. Why?
It’s a fallacy! You’re explicitly *telling me* your argument is fallacious!
December 30th, 2010 | 5:05 pm
I objected to the way Saletan ruled out unethical procreation as a reason incest is wrong, as though the mere possibility of avoiding pregnancy through contraception somehow would make it OK to have sex with your sister.
I also don’t get why he thinks we have to identify a single reason that it is wrong which would apply to every case and to nothing else, rather than accept that there are many reasons why it is wrong, even if sometimes not all of the reasons apply to every case.
The fact that it would be unethical to have a child with your sister or mother is one of the many reasons why incest is wrong, and it’s very relevant to the marriage debate, too. It is why we don’t allow siblings to marry each other. Marriage would be approving of them conceiving offspring together, there has never been a marriage that was prohibited from procreating together but still allowed to marry (those cousin compromises in five states are badly considered compromises, but even they allow the cousins to procreate, it wouldn’t be a crime)
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