Dear Mary...

"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote in message nk.net...
If we can redefine marriage to include same-sex couples we obviously can
also redefine it so that informed consent is not requirement.

If by "we", you mean the people of the US, then you are merely stating
the obvious. It might take a constitutional amendment or two, but
there is, in theory, a process for doing it. You don't even need the
"if" part. Just this alone is true, in a technical sense:

We can define marriage so that informed consent is not
a requirement.

And my response is: So what? There are many things you can do that
you won't do, right?

The real issue is whether or not the legal argument used to justify
the marriage of two men can also be used to justify nonconsensual
marriage. That is, if we make gay marriage legal, will there be a
SCOTUS case that will allow nonconsensual marriage. If you think
that's true, then you are in black helicopter land, and there's no
point in saying anything more.

On the other hand, more problematic is whether or not an argument for
gay marriage could be used to justify marriage between siblings. That
is a lot less clear, and has been debated between legal scholars of
all persuasions in the blogosphere.

Note that I'm not arguing in favor of gay marriage. I'm only saying
that trying to claim that legalizing gay marriage might lead to
legalizing nonconsensual marriage is silly. There are other, more
persuasive, arguments against gay marriage.