If we should allow gay marriage because there’s a fundamental right to marry who you want,then why shouldn’t siblings be able to marry?

I’ve an interesting question that I’ve asked many friends, and none could come up with a solid answer.

But I just came across an interesting article by William Saletanin Slate Magazine that answers it sufficiently. It says that gay marriage is not about legislating moral behavior, but instead about protecting a class of people. If you accept that being gay is not what you do, but who you are, then sexual orientation is distinguished from sexual deviancy (incest, polygamy). Here’s what it says:

If DADT repealers are correct that sex is a matter of personal liberty and it doesn’t matter “who you love,” why shouldn’t that defense cover polyamory and sibling couples? Switzerland is proposing to drop its incest law on exactly this basis. In the United States, the lawyer for David Epstein, the Columbia professor recently charged with incest, asks why tolerance of “what goes on privately in bedrooms” shouldn’t extend to his client. “It’s OK for homosexuals to do whatever they want in their own home,” the lawyer notes. “How is this so different?” . . .

If homosexuality is an orientation rather than a preference or choice—if it’s a matter of who you are, not who you love—then it’s detachable from other kinds of sexual deviance. In fact, it isn’t deviant. A gay person can be just as faithful and monogamous as a straight person. And military rules of sexual propriety can apply just the same.

[Cross-posted at the Gay Law Report by Gideon Alper, a Georgia asset protection and domestic partnership attorney.]