Still exclusive

Peter Sean Bradley on today's Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage:

Persons afflicted with "multiple sex partner attraction," "intergenerational sex attraction" and "dead sex attraction" complain that they have thus far been left out of equal protection promise of Massachusetts Constitution.

Peter's right. The Court said, "We construe civil marriage to mean the voluntary union of two persons as spouses, to the exclusion of all others.” Fine. But why two? What's the big deal about marriage being limited to two people? Isn't that intolerantly exclusive of others?

John Derbyshire points this out: "I see nothing in your "construal" to prevent me from marrying my sister, for example. Is this actually OK in the state of Massachusetts?"

The problem is this: despite whatever Andrew Sullivan (and those of like mind) thinks, once the procreative aspect of sex (and implicitly, marriage) has been discarded, there is no logical reason to oppose the sorts of things which Peter alludes to in his comment. The "ick factor" is irrelevant, in that it not only is non- (or might even be anti-)intellectual, gay & lesbian sex used to (and for many, still does) fall under this category, and Sullivan et al dismiss it for what it is: shoddy.

Unfortunately, when these things are said, one is accused of all sorts of hateful things, as the comments in my SVU post below illustrate.