Written by Peter Heck

Every time this comes up, and every time I choose to write about it, I can already predict the emails and the responses I’m going to get: “How dare you compare those behaviors!”  “This is comparing apples and oranges!”  “These things aren’t at all the same and it’s sick to compare them!”

So before I write another word, let me try to preempt that by making this abundantly clear: I am asking a question in this article, I am not making an accusation.  This is about me asking a group of people who have told me repeatedly that their concept of human sexuality is far more moral and just than God’s.  I don’t agree with them, but it’s what they repeatedly tell us all.  So if that’s the case – if they know better than the God of the Bible – then what I’m about to ask should be easy to articulate.

Here’s the story that prompts my question:

Two cousins who say they are in love with each other have created an online petition calling for the state of Utah to allow them to get legally married. “My first cousin and I have been in love with each other our whole lives but we are prohibited from marrying in the state of Utah where we live,” Angela Peang writes in the petition. “We believe that the law is outdated and it needs to be changed so that we can socially legitimize our love.”

Angela goes on to explain that she and her first cousin Michael Lee have loved each other romantically for a long time, dating back to childhood.  She writes,

“We just always played a lot,” Peang remembered of her childhood interactions with Lee. “We went into a closet and we were kissing and dancing together. It just felt really natural.”

That wasn’t the only time.  As they got older they were caught kissing by family members and were kept apart from that time forward.  Both of them married other people, had families, and ended in divorce.  They have now reconnected, and are wanting to have their marriage recognized in the state of Utah.

So here’s my question to those who have for years called me a bigot for having moral boundaries on the institution of marriage: is this okay?

Yes, this is incest.  It’s the textbook definition of it.  But why is that wrong?

1.)  These are consenting adults.

2.)  It is clear that their attraction is real and they desire to be together.

3.)  They both acknowledge they didn’t “choose” their feelings, it was “natural.”

4.)  While some might object on the basis of what could happen to potential children, that issue is unrelated to their love.

Obviously one could make the argument that incest is illegal in Utah.  But that’s what I’m asking: why is that okay?  Why is it not discriminatory?  Why is this not an infringement on the right of consenting adults who love one another?  Why is this not bigotry?  Why is this not an affront to #LoveIsLove.

I’m not equating LGBTQ individuals with incestuous individuals.  They all have different and disparate attractions and identities.  I am asking why incestuous people can’t use these same arguments effectively to protect their relationships?  LGBT behavior used to be illegal too.  Gay marriage used to be illegal too.  But #LoveWon, didn’t it?

Why has it not yet won for the incestuous?  It’s a serious question and one that the cultural revolutionaries who harshly judged and shamed those of us who had moral boundaries for the institution of marriage must be the ones now forced to answer.

This article was originally published at PeterHeck.com.