Why should incest be illegal?

[The Don]

A non-consensual relationship is rape. Aren't you are supposed to use evidence to prove rape? I might be old fashioned though.

Given how manipulative abusers can be, I can imagine that they would be able to convince the person they are abusing that the relationship is consensual. Rape would be impossible to prove unless the victim is "de-programed"

We have laws relating to underage sex for similar reasons.

In both cases, (Western) society seems to have taken the view that protecting vulnerable people is more important than preserving liberties by assuming that all relationships of this type are abusive and/or the junior partner was unable to provide informed consent.

 

[Georg]

1. Birth defects - A law prohibiting related people from having children is different from a law prohibiting incest.

I got a problem with that. Would you force an incest couple to abort if pregnancy occurs, then?
The argument (possible birth defects) does not hold water anyway, in my opinion. As others have said, following that logic you´d have to outlaw pregnancies for older women as well. What about other persons carrying defective traits with a high probability to inherit them to their offspring? Make it illegal for them to have children as well?
My home country followed those politics some decades ago. Can´t say I like how it worked out (do I get a cookie for Godwinning the thread?).

The imagination of incest is very icky for me, yes. But so are a lot of other things. That should not be the basis for making something illegal, though.

 

[quarky]

I draw the line at a 60 year old woman having octuplets with her son.
That would be a 'no-no'.

Kind of weird even having this discussion.

On a side note;

I once read of an Australian aboriginal ceremony wherein the post-pubescent girls have sex with all of their uncles. Can't recall where I read it. It may be jive.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Because it opens the door to all sorts of abusive scenarios.

I notice you've carefully chosen one of the most innocuous-sounding (and one of the rarest) form of incest (between-siblings). How would you feel about father-daughter incest? How would you feel about brother-sister incest with a twenty-year difference in their ages? How would you feel about raising a girl specifically with the intent to marry her off to a family member so that the money stays in the family?

DrK -What do the poster's feelings to do with the question?

Many people of my generation and older have had to struggle to suppress feelings of disgust at the idea of homosexual marriage. That maybe says our culturally inculcated attitudes were out of synch with progressive thinking, but it says nowt about whether or not gay marriages are a good or a bad idea.

How we feel about such ideas should be based on evidence about their beneficial / harmful effects and costs to society, not the other way around.
Sure, the idea of sleeping with my sister makes me want to barf, but does that give me the right to prevent two siblings who feel differently?

I can see several negative aspects to the idea, some already mentioned by others, but there are pluses too- an example would be the ability of a sister who has lived with and kept house for her brother, to inherit his pension in the way a wife can. In fact any socio-legal aspect that applies to two men might feasibly apply to a brother - sister partnership, adoption for example.
Civil partnerships now give some of these rights. In fact I find a more interesting question is "In which areas, if any, should society prefer heterosexual marriage to other civil partnerships?

 

[PrincessIneffabelle]

I got a problem with that. Would you force an incest couple to abort if pregnancy occurs, then?
The argument (possible birth defects) does not hold water anyway, in my opinion. As others have said, following that logic you´d have to outlaw pregnancies for older women as well. What about other persons carrying defective traits with a high probability to inherit them to their offspring? Make it illegal for them to have children as well?My home country followed those politics some decades ago. Can´t say I like how it worked out (do I get a cookie for Godwinning the thread?).

The imagination of incest is very icky for me, yes. But so are a lot of other things. That should not be the basis for making something illegal, though.

For a better comparison to incest, we would not only have to make these pregnancies illegal, we'd have to make it illegal and/or subject to prosecution for them to get even married and/or have sex in the first place.

 

[ravdin]

DrK -What do the poster's feelings to do with the question?

Exactly! That hits the nail on the head.

The objections to this question more or less boil down to: yuck. Another objection is: think about the children, these people can't/shouldn't be raising kids!

Gay marriage opponents have pointed out that by redefining marriage to include same sex couples, we're opening a Pandora's box of other scenarios. I think that this is a valid point, and those of us who find these questions to be inconvenient have had a tendency to sweep them under the rug.

I don't see a mass movement of brother/sister pairings coming up, so this scenario doesn't pose a serious threat to our values. But I found many of the objections in the polyamory thread very familiar- we have to redefine marriage, it's not healthy for kids, the legal scenarios are messy. Or the worst reason of all: that particular bedroom scenario makes me sick to my stomach.

I don't think we're doing ourselves any favors by dismissing our adversaries as religious nuts and ignoring their inconvenient questions.

 

[Georg]

For a better comparison to incest, we would not only have to make these pregnancies illegal, we'd have to make it illegal and/or subject to prosecution for them to get even married and/or have sex in the first place.

I know, and I agree. My comment was a direct answer to this:

1. Birth defects - A law prohibiting related people from having children is different from a law prohibiting incest.

which I interpreted to mean "incest is O.K., getting pregnant of incest is not", which is not logical and would simply cause a lot of practical problems as well.
As long as it´s about consenting adults, let them do whatever makes them happy.

 

[Z]

Forget making Incest illegal - make marriage illegal.

 

[bigred]

I decided to start this thread as a response to the "plural marriage" thread, but this is a serious question and not a parody. If we're to redefine marriage to include legally recognized gay pairings and polygamy, then why should, say, a brother/sister marriage be illegal?

Note that I'm not asking why it's a bad idea. I'm just asking why it should be illegal. Most of us cross culturally find the idea of marrying our siblings to be abhorrent and don't require legal sanctions to prevent us from doing it.

Also, in case you're wondering, I'll state for the record that I'm strongly in favor of gay marriage.

I agree. Why stop at gay marriage?

In fact, I think you should be allowed to marry pets. I'm quite serious. Who is anyone else to say whether a marraige should have to be between 2 human beings? People should be allowed to do whatever they want so long as they aren't hurting anyone else.

 

[Georg]

I agree. Why stop at gay marriage?

In fact, I think you should be allowed to marry pets. I'm quite serious. Who is anyone else to say whether a marraige should have to be between 2 human beings? People should be allowed to do whatever they want so long as they aren't hurting anyone else.

How to find out if the goat is consenting? Shemp, Marquis, could you help with that one?

 

[Z]

Sheep always consent; goats are a more difficult case. That's what the Marquis told me, anyway.

 

[bigred]

But they're hornier.

(ba dum tssh)

 

[Z]

But they're hornier.

(ba dum tssh)

D'oh!

 

[HansMustermann]

How would you feel about raising a girl specifically with the intent to marry her off to a family member so that the money stays in the family?

Funnily, in ancient Egypt that was very common. _Especially_ among nobles and royalty, where there actually was some wealth worth keeping in the family, but it wasn't quite unheard of in the lower classes either. Also funnily even when they weren't actually sibblings, calling your spouse "brother" or "sister" was the greatest sign of affection, and you don't need to be a genius to see where that comes from.

Honestly, they didn't seem to be worse off for it.

Yes, I suppose it does create a higher risk of manifesting recessive detrimental genes. (It doesn't actually _create_ those genetic disorders, it just means that a broken gene can be inactive when you have only one copy of it, but will be the only one you've got when you inherit one from each parent.)

But equally the case could be made that:

1. It prevents new harmful mutations from entering the family. If all your ancestors were sibblings who married each other and none of them had, say, haemophilia, there's a _very_ small probability that your children will if you marry your sister/brother. By contrast, marrying a woman from another family, introduces a higher risk even if she is healthy herself.

2. It helps get those harmful mutations _out_ of the gene pool, since it forces them to manifest and the affected people are less likely to breed.

3. Equally it can force _good_ recessive genes to manifest.

4. If you're going to forbid incestuous marriage to protect the kids from harmful mutations, how about also forbidding any woman with harmful genetic mutations in one of the X chromosomes to marry? She may look healthy herself and any daughters will _probably_ be healthy too, but any sons will only get one X chromosome from the mother, so they have a 50-50 chance of getting the harmful mutation.

See the haemophilia mentioned above for such a disorder that's encoded on the X chromosome. Queen Victoria is probably the most famous case of a woman who didn't have the active disease herself, but gave it through her offspring to a bunch of European royal families and may have contributed to the russian revolution happening.

 

[drkitten]

Funnily, in ancient Egypt that was very common.

So was keeping slaves, and inflicting the death penalty on the whim of the reigning monarch.

I like to think that we've made some moral advances in the past six thousand years.

 

[drkitten]

DrK -What do the poster's feelings to do with the question?

You can't reason a person out of a position they haven't reasoned themselves into.

I submit that, under law, prevention of harm is a perfectly legitimate reason to outlaw something, which is why we have things like mandatory safety equipment on airplanes and ingredient labels on food. And laws against child abuse, and laws against incest.

 

[The Don]

As long as it´s about consenting adults, let them do whatever makes them happy.

Earlier I posited:

Given how manipulative abusers can be, I can imagine that they would be able to convince the person they are abusing that the relationship is consensual. Rape would be impossible to prove unless the victim is "de-programed"

I still feel that this is a valid reason to prohibit incest

 

[HansMustermann]

You can't reason a person out of a position they haven't reasoned themselves into.

Not only that's an ad-hominem, I find it a somewhat poor one. I can assure you that at least I for one have no feelings or personal interest whatsoever on the topic. I don't even have a sister I could marry, mom is well past menopause, and generally the only even possible match is an ugly cousin.. who's already married anyway.

I don't see why it's necessary to "reason yourself into a position" or have any feelings whatsoever about it, to take part in an intellectual exercise. After all, I think most of us don't have any feelings for or against dowsing either, but here we are anyway. It's not any hatred of them or their job, it's just matching claims to evidence.

I don't see why the same standard shouldn't be applied to any other topic. Which brings me to...

I submit that, under law, prevention of harm is a perfectly legitimate reason to outlaw something, which is why we have things like mandatory safety equipment on airplanes and ingredient labels on food. And laws against child abuse, and laws against incest.

If there is actual provable harm done, let's hear about it. But speculations about feelings and other posters' feelings are not it.

Again, see dowsing. Some people obviously feel strongly about it, but that doesn't make it true. Or see religion. A majority of the world's population feels actually more strongly about atheism than about you being another religion, but that doesn't mean we should have apostasy laws. Likewise, just because some people have a strong feeling about incest, doesn't mean we should legislate either way.

I note that you haven't addressed my 4 points about the actual genetic problems, which would actually be relevant to the idea of protecting people. Do you aggree or disagree with those points? If you show me the harm being done, or why we shouldn't apply the same standard to women with X chromosome problems, I'm actually quite easy to convince.

You only offered a vague thing about morals evolving in 6000 years. Well, some did, some didn't, and not always for the better. E.g., we still think that "thou shalt nor murder" is a good idea. (Even if you're an atheist.)

Or conversely the same 6000 years and in the same general region (meaning not just Egypt itself) you move from essentially "believe in whatever deity you will" of the old Egyptians to fundamentalists who'll try to kill you for apostasy or just for being the wrong islamic sect. Or the same 6000 years move you from a culture where Egyptian women were actually rather free by ancient standards, to one where extremists will want to kill one for being raped, or for not wearing a burqa, or for having a job of her own instead of being a man's slave. The same So just because precept X happened 6000 years after precept Y, doesn't mean X is automatically better than Y.

I'd say the same applies to the topic at hand, or indeed any topic whatsoever. Give me a good reason why our morals are better, not just the claim that if it's 6000 years later it must be better.

 

[Georg]

Earlier I posited:

Given how manipulative abusers can be, I can imagine that they would be able to convince the person they are abusing that the relationship is consensual. Rape would be impossible to prove unless the victim is "de-programed"

I still feel that this is a valid reason to prohibit incest

Why would you limit your reasoning to incest? Would that not apply to any kind of abusive relationship? If so, then why single incest out? I mean, every marriage could be the result of such a relationship, or not?

 

[Georg]

I agree. Why stop at gay marriage?

In fact, I think you should be allowed to marry pets. I'm quite serious. Who is anyone else to say whether a marraige should have to be between 2 human beings? People should be allowed to do whatever they want so long as they aren't hurting anyone else.

Not every country can be as modern as Sudan, but it´s a start:


Sudan man forced to 'marry' goat

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his "wife", after he was caught having sex with the animal.

and it even worked out:

"We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together," Mr Alifi said.

until

The best-known goat in Sudan has died months after being "married" to a man in the South Sudan capital, Juba, the BBC has learned.

I hope they had a good time.