DOMA and Prop 8. Both History.

[kandrathe]

So who are you to know it is really consensual?

This is the key phrase.

Who am I to know if it is? I don't have to. We don't start from totalitarianism, and work backwards, slowly granting people the freedom to do ordinary things. The assumption is that everyone should be, by default, free to do as they please. The burden is on those who would ban a thing. You have to show that it causes serious harm to others, and also that a ban is the least harmful solution.

More than assumption. In the US, the gist of Constitutional law is that freedom (civil rights) is innate, where no person or government can bar your from the freedom (which is yours, and not bestowed upon you by any government, or person).

If a contract is entered into through coercion it is found to be null and void by a court of law when the petitioner claims and proves the contract to be thus invalid.

In most ceremonies, the vows are pretty high level summation of the implied contract, and a requirement of the ceremony is usually that both parties are entering the contract of their own free will.

The marriage between cousins that is happening a lot between Morrocon immigrants in western-Europe is something we are trying to ban or to discourage. I am sure if you ask them, 99% of the women who get married like that will TELL you it is consensual but everybody knows the pressure and threats of family members play an important role.

I am not a paternalist. People will make bad choices for a thousand different reasons - and choices that you see as bad, but they see as good, or better than the alternatives. I do not feel it is my right to stop them, whereas it is their right to live a free life. I do not see the need to tell people that their education was not "reasonable," or that they have "serious cultural difficulties." I don't feel the need to tell Moroccan immigrants that they can't marry their cousins. And I certainly don't feel the need to pass laws to that effect. If a marriage is coerced, or fraudulent, then there is already legal redress for that - and I'm all for making sure Moroccan people have full and safe access to the law. But I don't assume people are being coerced, and I certainly don't ban everything on the off chance they might be.

Also, I would make the distinction between the sex, and the marriage contract. We've (mostly) determined as a society that young people (mostly less than 18) are too young to make both the consensual sexual and contract decisions.

But, marriage (and its advocates) confuse the sexual decisions with the contractual decisions. Once consensual sex is unbundled from marriage, what remains to marriage is the contractual obligations. No one, barring the fundamentalists, are attempting to squeeze that genii back into the bottle. Addressing who is proscribed legally from entering into a sexual relationship (for their own protection), resolves any issues that might arise in a marriage contract.

If you don't approve of 1st cousins, siblings or underage persons to marry then work to change your laws. For example, in the Netherlands, incest is legal between adults -- are they allowed to marry? I know in Britain, and the US there is usually some restrictions on marriage due to consanguinity. But, this has nothing to do with Moroccans, right? they are just taking advantage of the freedoms your society has granted.