I wonder how many readers of this column would object to the legal recognition of incestuous relationships, including states allowing a person to marry one of his/her first cousins or even a sibling.

I do not refer to those relationships in which one person forces another to engage in sexual relations with a family member. I speak of two people who just happen to share the same lineage and want to share a legal, romantic attachment to each other. They want to openly declare their decision to spend the rest of their lives with a member of their family. They want the same benefits as those currently legitimately married, including health benefits for their “significant other,” ability to file joint tax returns and so forth.

Should those people currently reading this column and everyone else in society oppose legalization of such types of relationships? Should we deny them this level of recognition and the ability to establish formal partnerships with those with whom they claim to have fallen in love?

I presume many people would scoff or shudder at the idea of a brother and sister living together as husband and wife. I do not doubt many people would find the notion of siblings or cousins having a consensual, sexual relationship to be revolting, perverted or reprehensible. To those who react indignantly to the proposal to legalize incestuous marriages, I question how many of them favor legal recognition or even marriage for homosexual couples.

How does one justify advocating the formal recognition of one type of sexual behavior while scorning another? After all, both incest and homosexuality have occurred in numerous societies with varying degrees of acceptance by the other members of those societies. Animals engage in both types of relationships, so they must be natural, as one might suppose. Does anyone else out there see the hypocrisy of the legal acceptance of homosexual relationships while denying those involving incest?

I want to point out why governments at all levels should not sanction homosexual relationships. The institution of marriage was established as a legal union from which children are born. Marriage is and has always been a contract, which binds a man and a woman to mutually raise any children they procreate.

A society benefits when parents provide for their own children and it suffers when parents are negligent. Marriage is a formal mechanism to establish order in the lives of children. Two members of the same sex cannot produce a child of their own.

Homosexual relationships contradict the purpose of a marriage; therefore, a state has no legal reason to recognize them. The issue of whether homosexual couples love each other just as heterosexual ones remains irrelevant. The movement pushing for homosexual marriages is concerned with trying to equate homosexuality with heterosexuality. The efforts of homosexuals to legalize their unions are an attempt to convince themselves as well as the rest of society that their chosen lifestyle is wholesome and worthy of acceptance.

Anyone who proposes the possibility that male homosexuality is an attempt by a man to compensate for an emotionally distant, abusive or nonexistent relationship with his father, is immediately attacked by the homosexual activists. The same type of belligerent viciousness greets anyone who discusses the correlation between homosexuality among females and sexual abuse by males, especially family members. Homosexuality should be viewed as a futile means to deal with traumatic or unfulfilling relationships, just as some people turn to alcohol abuse, narcotics usage or other such activities.

I have heard the arguments on why homosexuality is “normal” and should not be viewed any differently than heterosexuality. The homosexual activists base their arguments on the notion that because some animals, such as dogs, engage in homosexual activity, such acts must be based on nature, not perversity.

In reality, any animal behavioral expert who has not been blinded by the homosexual “rights” political movement would reply that homosexuality among animals like dogs occurs when an animal wants to demonstrate dominance over others, or simply the animals are rutting with no members of the opposite sex around with which to copulate. Such behavior is also found among prisoners for the same reasons.

Besides, animals engage in other behaviors like eating feces of other animals and sniffing the rear ends of others. Should a society deem those types of behaviors among humans as acceptable because animals do? I certainly hope not.

John La Fleur, State News community columnist, can be reached at johnclafleur@lycos.com.