Alan Keyes: Gay Marriage Leads to Incest

Friday October 22, 2004

Republican Alan Keyes hates gay marriage. He really, really, really hates gay marriage. Keyes hates gay marriage so much, in fact, that he's willing to claim that adoptions by married gay couples would lead to incest.

Cheryl V. Jackson writes for the Sun Times:

"If we do not know who the mother is, who the father is, without knowing all the brothers and sisters, incest becomes inevitable," Keyes told the Marquette Park rally held to oppose same-sex marriages. "Whether they mean it or not, that is what will happen. If you are masked from your knowing your biological parents, you are in danger of encountering brothers and sisters you have no knowledge of."

If you think about it (which neither Keyes nor his supporters apparently have), the exact same thing can be said about straight couples who adopt. There's really no difference at all. The risk is there and exists at exactly the same level regardless of the sexual orientation of the adoptive (or birth!) parents. But again, to understand this one has to spend a few moments actually thinking about this matter reasonably rather than giving knee-jerk reactions based upon personal bigotry.

Wink at Parableman is one who has bothered to think about this and comments:

Keyes is not so much attacking gay parents so much as he is attacking all parents of adopted children (where the adoption is closed, i.e. the birth parents remain anonymous) and parents who have children through anonymous egg and sperm donation. Gay parenting per se has nothing to do with it. Gay marriage, even less.

What infuriates me is that Keyes is clearly holding the parents responsible for this hypothetical incest. (If he did not think this was the case, then even the most tortured reasoning could not provide him with a rationale for opposing gay marriage by means of incest.) By extension, since his argument really applies to all who have participated in closed adoption, he is accusing me of unknowingly encouraging incest. Suffice it to say that I do not appreciate this insult. The implication that I have done something wrong by adopting Spark even though I was unable to find out who his parents are infuriates me.

We must remember that Alan Keyes has been popular with the Republican leadership for many years and that he was hand-picked to run for the Senate in Illinois. Keyes' views cannot be considered complete aberrations or completely unconnected from official Republican positions. No, Keyes is exactly the sort of person that the Republican leadership in America approves of, likes, and wants to see in positions of power.

Read More: