Month: April 2003

Lotta discussion of incest lately, in the context of Senator Santorum’s unwise remarks. Two observations.

First off, there is a potential qualitative difference between incest and homosexuality, and it has to do with imbalanced power relationships. The chances that an incestuous relationship embodies an unhealthy dominant/submissive relationship of some kind seems to me to be fairly high. Even if we’re not talking parent/child, the chance of an unhealthy sibling relationship is still sizable. The inherent risk of a psychologically unhealthy incestuous relationship merits separate legal treatment.

(No offense meant to healthy incestuous relationships. And there goes my chances of holding office.)

Second, if “it’s hard to provide a good distinction between consensual adult homosexuality and consensual adult incest,” then one ought also to mention that “it’s hard to provide a good distinction between consensual adult heterosexuality and consensual adult incest.” That is, after all, an equally valid logical result of the argument Volokh is making. Oddly, nobody seems to want to phrase it that way — it’s easier to lump incest and homosexuality together. Which is the same implication Santorum made.

PETA offered the town of Hamburg, New York a cool $15,000 to change its name. To Veggieburg. Well, no; on rereading the article they actually offered the town $15,000 worth of non-meat patties. For the schools.

“Ham” is old Saxon for “banks,” you know. Or anyhow, you know now. Hamburgers are named after the town. Clearly PETA should be campaigning to change the name of the meat product, as naming the vile meat after a town is a slur on the noble history of the place. Town yes! Meat no!

Well! We’re holding children under sixteen at Gitmo. That kind of stings. These kids, like other prisoners at Gitmo, are being held without benefit of either US law or the Geneva Convention. Let’s assume that the case for the legality of this has been made. I still can’t help but wonder why the US government is willing to put aside those two bodies of law. The real test of morality is not what you do when you have no choice — it’s what you do when you do have a choice. Apparently, when we have a choice, we sometimes decide not to grant civil rights. Even to kids.

“I have never, that I can recall, heard the subject of a permanent base in Iraq discussed in any meeting,” he said. “The likelihood of it seems to me to be so low that it does not surprise me that it’s never been discussed in my presence to my knowledge.”

“He” is Donald Rumsfeld. Dude. Not even considered? Not even thought about it? Everyone else in the world has mentioned it, and you didn’t even talk about how to answer the question when it came up? I mean, senior military officials have thought about it.

Yeesh.