There's lots of discussion in the blogosphere about the legality of various sexual relations. My recent entry on bigamy and sodomy digressed into bestiality and necrophilia.

Why not cover all the bases?

Andrew Sullivan argues that the distinction between incest and homosexuality is that the former is a choice and the latter is an inherent characteristic of a person. I think his argument is basically bunk. Even if sexual orientation were completely determined and had no element of choice, sexual behavior obviously does.

Basically, even if you can't help who you're attracted to, you decide who to pursue and consent to sleep with. A priest may ostensibly be heterosexual, but he chooses not to have sex (at least some of them do).

Anyway, back to incest. At first I planned to argue that no, incest should be illegal because it may result in a genetically-damaged child. But that would mean outlawing sex between anyone with a genetic defect, or propensity for genetic diseases, and so on.

So I thought about it some more and decided in order to be intellectually consistent, I basically have to argue for the legality of consensual adult incest. Yeah, it's gross, but many adults derive sexual pleasure from some pretty weird, gross stuff. And as long as everybody involved is in agreement, and not endangering anyone's life, I figure there's no reason to have a law against it.