Professor charged with incest

Ziggurat said:
Read the thread.
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Are you referring to those unsupported claims you made about incest causing psychological damage?

ETA: In your post you specify blood relationships, what about ant-incest laws that apply to non-blood relationships?

Do you think gang bangs and other various pornographic activities and acts of sexual humiliation are psychologically damaging? Should we have laws against them as well?
 
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ThunderChunky said:
Are you referring to those unsupported claims you made about incest causing psychological damage?

ETA: In your post you specify blood relationships, what about ant-incest laws that apply to non-blood relationships?
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I think they're mostly pointless.

Do you think gang bangs and other various pornographic activities and acts of sexual humiliation are psychologically damaging?
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I don't know that this is true, but we can take it as a given for the sake of argument.

Should we have laws against them as well?
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No. The two situations are not equivalent. The dividing line in the case of pornography is subject to creep, and empowering government to make what are ultimately subjective decisions about what side of the line a particular falls on creates a real possibility for abuse. This is a genuine slippery slope problem. The costs outweigh the benefits. But the dividing line for prohibiting immediate family incest is pretty damn clear, and its stability across both time AND place is an excellent demonstration that it is not subject to creep. The costs associated with prohibiting the pornography you mention simply don't exist in the case of incest prohibition. This has been true for all the "parallel" examples used to argue for permitting incest that aren't really parallel at all.
 
Ziggurat said:
But the dividing line for prohibiting immediate family incest is pretty damn clear...
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If a married woman conceives a child through in vitro fertilization, donor eggs and her husband's sperm, and later has sex with that child after the child is grown, is it pretty damned clear that that act is illegal incest?

I think the point where I am inclined to disagree with you is not about the desirability of eliminating incestuous relationships. I think incest is pretty creepy, and minimizing it is indeed a benefit. The question is that cost and benefit relationship you keep talking about. What are the real benefits and what are the real costs?

For example, I have known one couple that I am extremely confident was engaging in an incestuous relationship. They were both over 18 at the time. They were raised together as siblings. They had the same mother and different biological fathers. I considered them fairly bizarre people, especially the male, before I realized they were sleeping together. The fact that they were sleeping together convinced me that there was something seriously wrong there.

So, with such a couple in mind, what are the costs and benefits of anti-incest law? Although they were not deterred from their relationship, others probably were, so it cuts down on the number of such relationships, probably. That's a benefit. It forced them to be clandestine about their affair. That's a cost if you ask me. Any time people are forced to lie about their relationships, it creates stress. That's bad. Furthermore, it actually might create a situation where one member of the couple has leverage over the other, blackmailing them or some such. That's bad. It also cuts off the sort of normal social support network that people in unhealthy relationships usually have access to. Let's be real. When chatting with her girlfriends about their lovers, she couldn't say, "I'm not sure if I should stick with my brother...." That sort of support network really is important and a very useful aid to people in deciding whether or not to continue relationships.

Meanwhile, if their relationship had been discovered, they could have gone to jail. That's a very high cost, wouldn't you agree? As bad as their situation might have been, prison would have been much, much, worse. Of course, prosecutors might decide to use "prosecutorial discretion" for one or both, but really that's barely different from "selective prosecution", which gets convictions thrown out.

Finally, the existence of the law establishes a precedent that says that we can criminalize consensual sex of any form if we show that there is some benefit.

So, we add up the benefits: Fewer incestuous relationships, versus the costs, which consists of forcing people into the shadows in their relationships, plus establishing a precedent for government control.

It's not absolutely clear where I would come down on weighing costs versus benefits, but in this case I lean toward the "it's none of the government's business" side of the equation.
 
caniswalensis said:
Except for bonobos. A bonobo will nail anything that comes near them in a most casual manner.

"Time for breakfast!" Says mom. "Good morning mom!" says the young bonobo as he glides into the breakfast nook, velvety-smooth.

"Daddy, I am frightened" Says little paula. "No need to be dear, come sit on my lap until you feel better." Dad says as he opens his robe.

"Hi Sis" Says bongo. "Shut up and do me" Replies sis.

I could do this all night, but you get the idea.

Bonobos are complete whores with no boundries at all.
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This may have addressed, but according to the book "Our Inner Ape", the mother bonobo will reject the advances of her son after a certain age to avoid conception (at least that's why we think she does this). It makes sense. Also, I think that the majority of the sexual contact between bonobos isn't "sex" but simply genital stimulation. I don't know what kind of difference that makes, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
 
qayak said:
Ummm, not quite. (Have you ever thought of writing Monkey Porn?) :D

The one pairing that doesn't happen with Bonobos is mother-son. In fact, mother-son pairings are pretty much non-existent among primates.

This makes sense because the father in most cases is not known but the mother always is. Plus, many primate species have another mechanism preventing inbreeding and that is that one sex or the other migrates. The migrating sex meets unrelated mates and the resident one gets new mates coming into the group.
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If I had just read a little farther...anyway, yeah.
 
Ziggurat- I'm curious about one aspect of your stance:-
How do we know who is genetically related and who is not, until we test them?
I'm pretty confident who my mother was. I know (and have no reason to doubt) who she tells me my father was. But without an actual DNA test, I have no way to prove my sister is related to me at all. (I have only my mother's word for it.)

It appears that what anti incest laws do is not make close biological pairing illegal, but make certain social relationships illegal as a basis for further social relationships.

This seems to be a rather odd way of preventing genetic problems. It may prevent certain familial social problems. Or it may cause them. I'd need proof of either.

Given the lack of genetic certainty and the absence of evidence re social damage, I find it hard to see how you can be so sure the benefits of such laws outweigh the disadvantages.
 
EatatJoes said:
This may have addressed, but according to the book "Our Inner Ape", the mother bonobo will reject the advances of her son after a certain age to avoid conception (at least that's why we think she does this). It makes sense. Also, I think that the majority of the sexual contact between bonobos isn't "sex" but simply genital stimulation. I don't know what kind of difference that makes, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
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I think all my hot ape-on-ape scenarios still hold up, regardless.

As for the difference between sex and mere genital stimulation, how many people out there would want to engage in genital stimulation with their parents & siblings? I think the answer to that question demonstrates the difference. that is to say, not a lot. :D
 
Soapy Sam said:
Ziggurat- I'm curious about one aspect of your stance:-
How do we know who is genetically related and who is not, until we test them?
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We don't need genetic tests. Birth certificates suffice. As I've pointed out before, we don't need the law to select perfectly. Nothing about anti-incest laws are in any way peculiar in this regard. If a few people are listed as being related despite not being related, and therefore can't legally have sex despite wanting to, that's really not a problem I consider of any real significance. How often do you really expect that to happen, though?
 
In other news, the professor still has his Facebook page up and has a young woman with the same last name as his friend.

a. I always wonder why total shame/humiliation wouldn't lead someone to immediately delete public access to information about oneself. (According to the article he changed his Facebook marital status to unmarried after the story broke, so yes, he must have logged on.)

b . I wonder why she didn't de-friend him. (Regardless of who "she" is--why would anyone want to have the stank of this scandal rubbing off on them?)

Anyhoo, off topic. :covereyes
 
Zig,

How long have you had that sig line? I find it rather ironic in this context.
 
Cainkane1 said:
I wonder if the daughter is normal? Could she be mentally retarded? Why did she allow this to go on? How long did it go on? Why?
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Exactly my questions as well.

I heard hundreds and hundreds of stories from people when I worked at a Crisis Center for sexual assault victims. Never did I hear anyone speak of incest in any possible way but negative. Of course that doesn't prove that it never happens, but it does lead me to question her state of mind.

Julia
 
imagineaa said:
I have some anecdotal evidence then. I was brainwashed as a child to not have a blood transfusion. And I know of many, many others like me.
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I was pointing out that we can't just say of anyone who does something we ourselves wouldn't do that they must have been brainwashed because nobody would choose that themselves because we wouldn't.

I don't like shrimp, but I don't suspect all who do eat it were brainwashed into liking them. I simply accept that, without evidence to the contrary (ie, electrodes implanted in their brains, manuals of Big Shrimp brainwashing techniques, etc), there simply are some people who have different tastes than I and who are apparently willing to actually consume nasty little ocean bugs with wavy legs.

Similarly, my mother cannot imagine being an atheist herself, therefore she believes both her children are not really atheists, we're only pretending to annoy her. She is unable to imagine the other point of view and therefore cannot credit that it's legitimately arrived at.
 
wasapi said:
Exactly my questions as well.

I heard hundreds and hundreds of stories from people when I worked at a Crisis Center for sexual assault victims. Never did I hear anyone speak of incest in any possible way but negative. Of course that doesn't prove that it never happens, but it does lead me to question her state of mind.

Julia
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Well, you wouldn't hear someone speak positive of sexual acts at a Crisis Center for sexual assault victims, now would you?
 
Meadmaker said:
Zig,

How long have you had that sig line? I find it rather ironic in this context.
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A few months, I think.

Prohibiting incest hardly constitutes a tyranny, but even more importantly in this context, the primary beneficiaries of this prohibition are NOT the people who would want to violate it. So if you thought it was ironic, you really missed the point.
 
Incest always seemed to me that someone was being exploited. That a stronger parent or sibling was taking advantage of a weaker more vulnerable person. Some people especially girls in a younger sister older brother or father daughter situation may be intimidated into doing what the male sibling or father wants them to do. To me this is why father daughter brother sister incest is more common than say mother son incest although in the latter it may be a dominant mother who gets the situation going.

One person feels powerless and to me thats just wrong.
 
Cainkane1 said:
Incest always seemed to me

..snip..

One person feels powerless and to me thats just wrong.
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Which is the problem. You're on the outside, looking in at other people's relationship, and trying to guess how they feel about things, based on your own life and your own feelings. That doesn't always work.
 
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