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.
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