Republican Legislator Introduces Pro-Incest Bill!

It's all in the headline, folks.

National Review has a piece up titled "Howard Dean?s Incest Vote," that details how, 20 years ago as a Vermont state legislator, the yelping presidential also-ran voted for a bill designed to allow a 65-year-old woman marry her 85-year-old uncle.

"That's just one data point the Kerry campaign will doubtless want to consider in its calculations about what role to give the controversial former Democratic governor next week," intone the editors.

But the piece could easily have been given the headline I gave this post. After all, it was a member of the family values party that introduced the incest bill:

A Vermont legislator named Elizabeth Edwards introduced…[the] bill….Edwards, a Republican…figured that incest laws were primarily about preventing defective offspring, and her neighbors Ramona Crane and Harold Forbes were too old to bear children. "They're a super-neat couple who don't have any money, and they just have each other, and I think they should be able to get married if they want to," Edwards told United Press International for a February 23, 1983, story.

Hey guys, lighten up. It's not like Edwards was pushing gay marriage.