Posted on 08/28/2005 10:01:18 PM PDT by goldstategop
"I believe severe punishment is required in this case," the judge said at Allen and Pat's sentencing in November 1997. "I think they have to be separated. It's the only way to prevent them from having intercourse in the future."
Allen and Pat were lovers, but a Wisconsin statute enacted in 1849 made their sexual relationship a felony. The law was sometimes used to nail predators who had molested children, but using it to prosecute consenting adults -- Allen was 45; Pat, 30 -- was virtually unheard of. That didn't deter Milwaukee County Judge David Hansher, however. Nor did the fact that the couple was genuinely in love and didn't understand why their relationship should be a crime. Allen and Pat didn't "have to be bright," the judge growled from the bench, to know that having sex with each other was wrong.
He threw the book at them: eight years for Allen, five for Pat, to be served in separate maximum-security prisons, 25 miles apart.
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. Although they didn't meet until Patricia was 18 -- she had been raised from infancy in foster care -- they were brother and sister, children of the same biological parents. They were also strongly attracted to each other, emotionally and physically. And so, disregarding the taboo against incest, they became a couple and had four children.
When Wisconsin officials learned of the Muths' relationship, they moved to strip them of their parental rights. The state's position, upheld in court, was that their "fundamentally disordered" lifestyle made them unfit for parenthood by definition. "A child raised by incestuous parents," it argued, "is a child raised in a home that mocks even the most rudimentary conception of family." Allen and Patricia's children were taken from them. Then they were prosecuted for incest and sent to prison.
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.
"The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in striking down the Texas law under which John Lawrence and Tyron Garner had been convicted of homosexual sodomy. "The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government."
Armed with Lawrence's sweeping language, Allen Muth appealed his conviction.
The taboo against incest may be ancient, and most Americans may sincerely regard it as immoral or repugnant. But Lawrence was clear: "The issue is whether the majority may use the power of the State to enforce these views on the whole society through operation of the criminal law." If the Supreme Court meant what it said, Muth argued, his and his sister's convictions for incest were every bit as unconstitutional as the Texas men's convictions for sodomy.
Earlier this summer, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Muth. But it did so on the strained and narrow ground that since Lawrence had dealt specifically with homosexual sodomy, it could not be invoked retroactively to overturn a conviction for incest. The opinion was written by Judge Daniel Manion, a Reagan appointee, and as legal scholar Matthew Franck observed, Manion must have been "desperate to avoid the plain consequences of the [Supreme] Court's recent precedents on sexual liberty."
But those consequences cannot be outrun forever. What Judge Manion declined to do, another judge may embrace. (Or perhaps the high court itself will: Muth has until Sept. 20 to file an appeal from the Seventh Circuit.) There is simply no principled escape from the logic of Lawrence: If the Constitution forbids the states to criminalize private sexual conduct between consenting adults, lovers who happen to be siblings can no more be considered lawbreakers than lovers who happen to be men.
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.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
The state has a legitimate interest in protecting the welfare of children, and any children conceived in an incestuous relationship are at an elevated risk of having both major birth defects and other subtler physical defects. That by itself ought to be enough to maintain a ban on incestuous relationships.
These people don't need prison, they need some serious psychiatric help.
---Allen and Pat didn't "have to be bright," the judge growled from the bench, to know that having sex with each other was wrong.---
And evidently you don't have to be bright to be a judge either.
The law, according to lawrence, does not consider mere breeding. (even according to the ABA's model divorce code, adult activity defines the relations NOT the mere accessory of producing offspring)
Thus, according to the left SEX for recreation is all that matters.
"The state has a legitimate interest in protecting the welfare of children, and any children conceived in an incestuous relationship are at an elevated risk of having both major birth defects and other subtler physical defects."
What about when one of them is infertile? Or when they're of the same sex?
And what about people with genetic diseases that have children ? They're not put in prison even though their children have a higher risk of getting the same genetic disease.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
What's next? "A Boy and His Dog"?
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
This statement is only valid if the parents (or their parents) are also the product of incest..
The only other contributing factor would be if there were specifically identifiable genetic or physiological defects that had been passed down to the parents / grandparents that could be passed to the offspring..
In other words, it has to be more than a "singular" occurance within a familial group, it has to be an accepted practice..
The taboo against incest requires more than one generation.. then and only then is it valid..
This couple's children stand about the same prospect of birth defects or other physical defect as anyone else..
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
The feeling I got was that most of them thought incest (and bigamy) should be legal, but in the case of incest, certain restriction (sterilization or guarantee that the child would be aborted if it had defects, or other guarantees about finanical committement) would be applied.
The left doesn't have any kind of problem with incest, they just don't get emotional about it, and to be honest, I would rather not get them motivated into pushing it, after what happened with this Lawrence case.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
I don't think it says in the article that they didn't know they were related, they knew and had a relationship anyway if I read it correctly...
From the article, it seems like they didn't know each other until 18, but they did know they were related to each other.
How they found out they were related or what the circumstances are, I'm not sure, but obviously, they did know.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
The problem with the left isn't that they don't think this activism has no effect on the family structure, its that they think its a good effect, which is frightening.
They honestly believe that gay couples and gay marriage and gay adoption are positive things, your real far left folks would push to encourage it.
Their interpretations of reality and their views of consequences are very different (and pretty much insane) to what real reality actually is and what the real effects actually are.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
That said, the phrase "Love them like a brother" should never be taken in the contex it was here.
I don't get it, why would one perversion be allowed yet not another? I mean it's only fair right?
Sickos.
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