So, a professor at Columbia has been charged with some kind of incestuous relationship, and everybody was apparently a consenting adult, and so we are, again, face to face with the public incoherence of our rudderless sexual ethic. How is it possible, given all that we as a society have already granted, for us to say no to the next lust that demands recognition? The logic of what we have already allowed not only demands that we leave this guy alone, but it may even require that he be given a tag for his rear view mirror granting him special parking privileges.
He who says A must say B. You cannot reason with lust. You can either mortify your ungodly lusts (Col. 3:5), or you can begin a never-ending process of trying to appease them. But our horseleach lusts have two daughters, as it turns out (Prov. 30:15).
If there is a law of God over us, then there are limits. If there is not, then there are not. You cannot banish the God who alone gives sexual limits a liberating coherence, and yet still keep those limits. And you cannot expect the ick factor to protect us, because lusts specialize in battering down the ick factor. Lusts just love taboos. Taboos are the air that they breathe.
Now as long as the ick factor is still somewhat functional, our pretty boy preachers will not say a word about it, because it is clearly “unnecessary.” Nobody is advocating that, they will say. But as soon as somebody influential does start advocating it, and it becomes necessary to say something, do you think that the relevant pulpits of the land will magically fill up with sons of thunder? I wouldn’t bet too much on that happening.
So those who can follow an argument need to come to grips with how this will play out for them. Do you object to a guy bonking his sister? You, my friend, are clearly filled with hate.