Matthew Franck writes today about how we have lost the moral vocabulary to even talk about what’s wrong with incest.
natural hierarchies, duties, and trusts are shattered by incest, even between “consenting adults.” But the recent discussions of this matter reveal how decayed is our moral vocabulary for considering it, how nearly lost is any understanding that our various loves have their natures and purposes, which must be respected if those loves are to conduce to our happiness. Only such decay can account for the failure to grasp that a man cannot be a father to his lover, or a lover to his daughter….
Whatever the fate of Professor Epstein, his case forces us to choose between alternative courses of reasoning regarding the morality we embody in our law. Do we believe in the “autonomy of the person,” as a constitutionally protected freedom to live as though human relationships were clay in our hands, to be molded as our desires imperiously demand? Or do we believe that sexuality, love, and family are things that constitute us, possessing their own natures and purposes and calling us to answer to them? On our choice between these two understandings, much of our future happiness depends.