After Homosexuality...

Do you remember how opponents of homosexuality said that legalizing homosexuality and homosexual marriage would open the door for the legalizing of other evils, such as polygamy, bestiality, and incest? Do you remember how advocates of homosexuality and homosexual marriage would often dismiss this claim as absurd, suggesting that homosexuality was in a different category, that we could open the door part way without opening it the rest of the way? Jeff Jacoby has an article today about how close we are to opening the door wider to include incest. He writes:

If this had happened to a gay couple, the case would have become a cause celebre. Hard time as punishment for a private, consensual, adult relationship? Activists would have been outraged. Editorial pages would have thundered. Politicians would have called for the prosecutor's and judge's heads.

But Allen and Patricia Muth are not gay. They were convicted of incest....

I wrote about the Muths' case shortly after their conviction, asking why social liberals were not up in arms over it. Where were the people who always insist that the government should stay out of people's bedrooms? That what goes on between consenting adults is nobody's business but their own? That a family is defined by love, not conventional morality or deference to ancient taboos? The voices of "diversity" were nowhere to be heard. Patricia and Allen Muth were one "nontraditional" family it seemed no one cared to defend.

But then came Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court's decision in 2003 that the Constitution protects the freedom of Americans to engage in "the most private human conduct, sexual behavior," when it is part of a willing relationship between adults....

Armed with Lawrence's sweeping language, Allen Muth appealed his conviction....

Dissenting in Lawrence, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that the decision "effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation." It was a prediction the majority made no effort to refute.