Mainstreaming incest

http://michaeljkruger.com/here-is-the-inevitable-next-step-in-our-cultures-quest-to-redefine-marriage/

Celebutants

Recently, I was debating a "progressive Christian" (for want of a better term) who hurled the Josh Duggar scandal at me. I'm of two minds about commenting on this scandal. I don't think it has any intrinsic significance. However, one might use it to make some general points:

i) I don't keep tabs on what 15-minute celebrities of reality shows say or do. Indeed, I avoid informing myself about the private lives of 15-minute celebrities. The fact that somebody is famous for being famous doesn't make his beliefs or lifestyle any more important than men and women who live and die in obscurity.

The only folks taking a serious interest in the antics of celebutants are folks who are just as vapid as the celebutants they obsess over. Airheads of a feather flock together. 

ii) Christian faith is faith in Christ, not faith in Christians. Christian faith is putting faith in Christ, not putting faith in fellow Christians. If a professing Christian is a hypocrite, that's irrelevant to the Christian faith.

iii) I had to do a bit of Googling just to write this post. The Duggar parents are famous (or infamous, depending on your viewpoint) for having 19 kids and counting. 

Historically, that's not unusual. Before the advent of modern contraception (and abortion on demand), mothers often continued having babies until they hit menopause or died in childbirth. 

By contemporary standards, the Druggars are a freak show, but historically, that was the norm. The main difference is that, in the past, due to high child mortality, most kids didn't survive into adulthood.

iv) I assume the Duggars agreed to do a reality show to help finance their domestic expenses. It's very expensive to raise 19 kids. Of course, that turns your private life into a fishbowl.

v) It wouldn't surprise me if their squeaky clean public image isn't the whole story. We generally put our best face forward in public settings.

vi) I've read claims that the Dugger parents belong to the "Christian Patriarchy movement." I don't know if that's true, and I don't know what that means, specifically. I don't care enough to research the issue.

I'm a complementarian, but that can be taken to extremes. TGC recently did a post on hyper-headship:

http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2015/04/28/hyper-headship-and-the-scandal-of-domestic-abuse-in-the-church/

vii) I don't have a firm opinion on the size of families. 

a) On the one hand, so long as parents provide for their kids, it's none of my business how many kids they choose to have. 

b) On the other hand, above a certain number, parenting suffers. Above a certain number, you can't individualize in childrearing. It's a choice between more time for fewer kids or less time for more kids. It also depends on spacing pregnancies. 

So childrearing gets subcontracted to older siblings or grandparents. In a sense, that's not fair to children.

If, however, the parents had a smaller family, some kids who lose out through lack of parental attention would never exist in the first place. Arguably, you have more to lose by not existing. So there are tradeoffs between a lesser and a greater deprivation.

viii) I think contraception is morally permissible and morally responsible. I reject abortifacients. 

ix) I don't know that Josh Duggar is a hypocrite. Being raised in a Christian family doesn't make you a Christian. If, moreover, you were indoctrinated in a legalistic theology, that can be even more reason to rebel or misunderstand the Gospel.

x) Some Christians have turned tables on the critics by pointing out that liberals generally give a free pass to Woody Allen and Roman Polanski. So the charge of hypocrisy rebounds. 

Mike Huckabee has pointed out that the law protects disclosure of many actions on the part of minors. That, too, draws attention to liberal hypocrisy. When policemen shoot a teenager, liberals accuse them of shooting a "child."

So we certainly see double standards in the attack on Josh Duggar. 

xi) However, the sisters whom Josh is accused of molesting might have a very different take on the situation. 

David French accuses the parents of stalling tactics to play out the clock on the statue of limitations. 

xii) Mind you, a person can be a cad without being a hypocrite. And it was certainly a mistake for the Family Research Council to make Josh its executive director. That illustrates the dangers of a celebrity culture infecting Christian organizations. 

Same-Sex Arguments Further The Case For Incestuous Marriage

A commenter at Slate who supports same-sex marriage presents some arguments against incestuous marriage:

State has legitimate interest in preventing consanguination because it can lead to and propagate genetic diseases….

Incest often involves someone who can't give consent or is coerced into consent. State has an interest in preventing that.

Not all incestuous marriages would biologically produce children or not involve consent, so he has to use qualifiers like "often". But if we can withhold state recognition of incestuous marriage based on what would often result from those marriages, why can't we also distinguish between the opposite-sex relationship and the same-sex relationship based on the opposite-sex relationship's often biologically producing children? It seems to me that the common argument used by advocates of same-sex marriage - to the effect that biologically producing children can't be used to distinguish between the opposite-sex relationship and the same-sex relationship, because not all opposite-sex couples biologically produce children - is inconsistent with the arguments those same-sex marriage advocates commonly use against incestuous marriage. If opposite-sex relationships can only be defined by what's universally true of them, then shouldn't the same standard be applied to incestuous relationships? To be consistent, same-sex marriage advocates ought to abandon these arguments they've been using against incestuous marriage. On what grounds would they oppose incestuous marriage, then?

We base laws on generalities rather than universals in many contexts (what's generally the best speed limit for an area, etc.). From a practical standpoint, allowing all opposite-sex couples to marry is the most efficient way to handle the child-bearing issue. Elderly people sometimes have children, but usually don't. Since even elderly people have the potential to produce offspring, though usually only minimal potential, an efficient way to handle the child-bearing issue is to have the state recognize the marital relationship of all opposite-sex couples. It would be impractical to have the state doing things like giving people fertility tests to determine whether their relationship will be recognized by the state as a marriage. By contrast, there's nothing impractical about making the judgment that same-sex couples can't produce children. Even though elderly opposite-sex couples only have a minimal chance of producing offspring, that's still sufficient grounds on which to distinguish their relationship from a same-sex relationship.

Besides, biologically producing children isn't the only reason we have for distinguishing between opposite-sex and same-sex relationships. Opposite-sex relationships promote the unity of the genders in a way in which same-sex relationships can't, and we have good religious grounds for opposing same-sex relationships, for example. The child-bearing issue tends to get the most attention in these discussions, but it's not the only issue involved, and even that issue can't be dismissed as easily as same-sex marriage proponents suggest.