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Current mood:  refreshed Category: News and Politics
Incestophobes are having a field day with Mackenzie Phillips's brave decision to come out of the closet as an incestual. In her new book, High on Arrival, the former "One Day at a Time" star details a ten-year consensual sexual relationship with her father, Papa John Phillips, the leader of the sixties vocal group The Mamas and the Papas. "I have to say that I loved my father, and I still do," Phillips told a stunned Oprah Winfrey. "Someone needs to put a face on not only nonconsensual incest, but consensual incest, and I know that I can't be the only one who's lived through this."
Michelle Phillips, Papa John's second wife and a member of the Mamas and the Papas, maintains, "The whole story is disgusting." "Everything about this is gross," contends Arizona Republic columnist E.J. Montini. "If the story that Mackenzie Phillips tells is true--that her father first abused her and then she became a willing participant in incest is true--that's gross.... The fact that a story like this fascinates us (and, come on, it does) is gross." Other web commentators advertised their intolerance through such primitive expressions as "ewwww," "yuck," and "sick."
Hate is not a family value. Who is anybody to judge Mackenzie Phillips and Papa John? They were consenting adults. Celebrate diversity. Love makes a family, yet the family that makes love is the family that is stigmatized, persecuted, and forced into the closet. Stop pushing your morality into other people's bedrooms.
Incestuals are born that way. Given all of society's hang-ups and hatreds, who would choose this lifestyle? It's genetic, a fact buttressed by the reality that so many incestuals are related. From Lot to Cleopatra to Caligula to Papa John, inbreeding runs in the family. Incestuality is nature, not nurture. That's science.
But too many reject science for the outmoded prejudices of the past. The American Psychological Association treats incest as if it were a mental illness. The Uniform Code of Military Justice makes incest grounds for discharge, forcing incestuals in the armed forces to deny their identity and undermining general readiness by kicking out qualified soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. The laws of every state ban incestuous marriages, imposing humiliating blood tests and strict licensing requirements upon connubial kinfolk. The criminal justice system jails incestuals and breaks up their relationships. It's no wonder that Papa John dreamed of emigrating from the supposed "land of the free" to the land of Fiji. "We could just run away to a country where no one would look down on us," Papa John suggested to his daughter-lover. "There are countries where this is an accepted practice. Maybe Fiji."
Maybe they would have been accepted in Fiji, but never in puritanical America. It's 2009, and no elected official dares come out as an incestual for fear of losing office. In a move reminiscent of its early refusal to play black recording artists, MTV stubbornly blocks "I Kissed My Dad and I Liked It" from its airwaves and won't cast incestuals on any of its reality shows. Schools resist Incest-Outcest Alliance groups and balk at assigning such inclusive texts as Heather Has a Daddy-Husband and My Sister Is My Aunt.
This occurs despite the fact that incestuals endure lifetimes of hardships--drug addiction, suicide, depression, failed relationships--because of society's rejection of them. They are hated for loving. Between Papa John and Mackenzie Phillips, there is nearly a century of drug abuse to demonstrate the destructive power of the incest taboo.
The modest proposal of the mother-father-sister-brother-loving community is to make the incest taboo taboo. Mackenzie Phillips's decision to come out of the closet will certainly induce others to do the same. The Oedipal love that dare not speak its name will shut up no longer.
And with awareness will come acceptance. Supportive bumperstickers, marriage equality, an end to outbreeder sex-police targeting inbreeders, campus "safe spaces," incest pride marches, and corporate sensitivity training will be the signs that the campaign from out of the closets and into the streets has made headway. When all this is accomplished, our world will be transformed from one in which the incestophobes who now hatefully condemn incest without fear of repercussion will be reduced through social pressure to criticism of the most oblique and satirical sort.
Society is sick.
4:04 PM
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