The famous wordsmith James Kilpatrick taught me to check out old printed editions of dictionaries to detect changes in the definition of a word over time. Multiple dictionaries printed in the 1950s and 1960s legally define “incest” as the crime of cohabitation, marriage or sexual intercourse outside of marriage, between parties who are too close in degrees of consanguinity or affinity as defined by state law. Consanguinity is a genetic or blood relationship between people, such as a mother or father and their biological son. Affinity is defined as a non-blood relationship or kinship, such as those formed through marriage, but they can include specified religious kin also.

More recent dictionaries simply define incest as sexual intercourse between parent and child or between siblings or half-siblings. The drift in the popular and legal definition of incest appears to have been driven by the Freudian psychological theories popular during the sexual revolution of the 1950s through 1960s. One of these Freudian theories said sons were made gay by an incestuous mother.

Burroway’s argument about the difference between the “age-of-consent” to sex and the lower legal age to marry in some states ignores the fact that all sex outside of marriage used to be outlawed by cohabitation, fornication, adultery and sodomy laws. State laws had no need for a redundant “age-of-consent” law until fornication was decriminalized. In fact, when Oregon eliminated these blue laws in the early 1970s, a conservative legislator successfully demanded the age-of-consent be raised to age 18. Other states chose to keep a lower age for marriage so that adolescent girls with an unplanned pregnancy could marry and not have to give birth while out-of-wedlock. Boys who refused to marry the girl they knocked up could be charged with statutory rape.

The fixed age-of-consent laws that were passed after fornication was legalized led to a new legal problem. A 19-year old college student who had consensual sex with his 17 year-old freshman girl friend could be charged with rape. The difference in age between the participants has been added in many state laws to solve this problem.

The definitions of “pedophilia” and “pederasty” are also highly variable throughout history. The American Psychiatric Association’s official DSM-IV definition of pedophilia is a sexual attraction to a prepubescent child, which they define as “generally age 13 years or younger.” A previous edition defined the age as 11 years old. Sexual attraction to adolescents by itself is not a mental disorder because ephebophilia (also called hebephilia or hebophilia) is considered common because it is often depicted in heterosexual pornography.

Pederasty most often refers to the ancient Greek practice of sex between men and adolescent boys. This is why I see John’s claim to have been referring to “pederasty” instead of “pedophilia” as being an inadequate defense.

I am almost ashamed to admit a certain glee in seeing John successfully use the same emotional political tactics that anti-gay groups have been using. Perhaps this is the only way to fight back against emotional politics. Not all voters respond to logic and reason.

In Baker v. Vermont (1999), the Vermont Supreme Court cited first-cousin marriages as an example of a relationship Vermont will legally recognize although some other states will not. In other words, the first state to provide marital rights (albeit under the name of civil union) to same-sex couples did so based on a court decision that “compared” SSM to first-cousin marriage. Did I miss the outrage back then from Aravosis, Ben and others who are convinced that such a citation *inherently* is offensive to gays?

Or how about Lambda Legal’s Lewis v. Harris brief, in which Lambda FAVORABLY cited exactly the same case about a 16-year-old’s marriage (Wilkins v. Zelichowski)? http://data.lambdalegal.org/pdf/252.pdf

Sorry, but given that these cases have been cited by people who are HELPING states progress toward marriage equality, I call BS on the claims that citing these cases must be inherently offensive.

Also, the religious bigotry toward Mormons is not cool. You know a specific Mormon who is a homophobe — bash him all you want. But there are Mormons who are not hostile to equality. Making assumptions about W. Scott Simpson based on his being a Mormon shows religious intolerance and prejudice.

It only discusses age and kinship in context of discussing the different definitions states apply to what is allowed. The brief goes no further than that. And, as far as I can tell, the only reason it is mentioned is because they are trying to show that Section 2 of DOMA, the section that allows states to disregard same-sex marriages performed in other states, is legal and not all that groundbreaking, by claiming that states all along have rejected other marriages performed in other states that does not meet that states’ eligibility requirements. I dispute that, of course, but that is the full extent to what the brief was arguing when it brought up kinship and age. Nothing more.

The pregnancy exception you talk about is used for shotgun weddings, still common in PR as of 10 years ago. The attitude is changing quite fast though. I know of several girls (including 2 cousins of mine, one on each side)who got pregnant and did not marry immediately, as would have been the custom up until less than 10 years ago. One of them refused to marry the father’s baby, went to school, got her doctorate and THEN married someone else.

I think the new generation of parents, some of them who were forced into marriage are challenging the rigid custom that forced them to marry too young and divorce not long afterwards.

I know for a fact that the church (at least the catholic church) is refusing to do shotgun weddings. This is also a change from the last 25 years. I also know of people who got pregnant and married in the church only to have their marriages annulled years latter citing lack of consent. Among those there is a noted musician and singer.

Glad I could help.