One of the wierdest law still to exist on this planet is the law against incest. Even the US is not excempted from it. Just as is the case of homosexuality, incest is a personal affair, and I believe its not for the law to meddle in personal affairs. Each individual should have the right to choose how to lead his/her personal life.
Incest may be a taboo based on long lived traditions of religious superstitions, but wheres the rational base to legalize this taboo in the 20th century?
The non-legal stances on incest are usually rooted in the following theories:
Incest is immoral:
Answer: Morality varies from person to person. Just as an individual may have a different faith, so can an individual have different morality. You cannot just impose your own morality on others. You can teach them. But you cannot force them by law. Even if the majority has a particular morality, its not right to force it on others, just like its not right to force the faith of the majority on the minority.
Those against incest fear that their family may be influenced by such immoral activities of others:
Answer: Well it may. If in a state the majority of the people think incest is wrong, then such activity or its discussions may be banned in the public sphere. But why in the private sphere? How do you have the right to sneak into what other people are doing in private, something that is not directly involving you or disturbing anyone, and take legal actions against it? If your family gets involved in such practices by learing from what others are doing in private then its entirely your and your family’s fault. Your family shouldn’t have sneaked into other people’s “private” activities or you should have taught them your stances on the matter well. But for that you cannot ban other people’s private activities.
Incest often involves force: Who said? forced sex with anyone falls under rape. Incest is a union of close relatives. Forced incest will fall under rape. What about mutually consented incest?
Incest involves pedophilia: Does it? What about incest between mutually consenting adult siblings? Pedophilia is pedophilia, not incest.
Incest is unhealthy: Well, the taboo of incest dates back a long way before the modern scientific techniques of genetics were available.
Definitely the unhealthiness of incest is not the reason why its a taboo.
The ancient egyptians used to practice incest without any sign of having unhealthy kids. So did the arabs also have a certain level of incest (between first cousins), with no sign of having unhealthy kids. If incest did produce unhealthy kids, then incest between first cousins would produce atleast to some extent a disabled kid if not as severe as the offsprings of siblings. There should be a trend of unhealthiness from distance to closer in the family. Or should we have to believe that God allowed it upto cousins, then he put an imaginary barrier. Incest is unhealthy is a theory put forward by some taboo backed psychologists and doctors (remember, not all), just as there are medical supporters for and against circumcision. The real case is that: incest may be a bad choice for families having genetic diseases, because the disease is definitely going to the child, as both parents’ genes may have the same disease as they are from the same family. A partner from outside the family may not have the disease, reducing it to only 50% probablity of the child having the disease. Its ok if the incestous partners don’t have a genetic disease or if its not that severe. It may even happen that there is a similar genetic disease in a distant partner. It can’t be a logical reason. Its not like you have incest and God will give you a handicapped child.
Incest makes people interact less with people outside the family: Who said? Can’t you interact with someone you are not married to? Or would you force people to interact and have sex outside the family? Shouldn’t interaction be a choice? This is exactly the reason why incest taboo grew up. In ancient times males where very choosy about virgins. The taboo was the best way to prevent their prospective wives loosing viginity with the people with whom they dwelt before marriage. This is an expression of the masculine posessive attitude towards women of other family. Again incest taboo is not logical in protecting virgin women for husbands. Premarital taboo was proper for that. Incest actually ensured that brothers or fathers never even get to marry the girls in their family, and keep them open for any male who may wan’t them.
Incest spoil family relations: It does? Well it really depends how you look at sex. A brother and a sister, after they both are grown up, and they marry, and then have sex, what relation is destroyed? The brother and sister relation? Who said a brother and a sister can’t have sex after marriage or be husband an wife? Why can’t you take it that way? You see, it all depends on individual perspective. And again, remember its personal. Such private relationship is is not to be threesomed by the state.
It is suprising to notice the taboo being legal even in the US and then even in this century, a taboo that was some sort of a religious superstition or patriarchy of the early days and which spread over the whole world through trade routes and religious scriptures. There are bigger problems being ignored in the public sphere, such as sexual offences and blackmails, vulgarity/obsceinity in the public domains affecting young kids, and exploitation of female sexuality through pornography, which many people in the public feel offensive. Rather personal and private issues like homosexuality and incest which are not bothering anyone are being concentrated upon based on mere tradition.
A taboo backing plot is all over, brainwashing people in subtle ways people don’t realize to protect the anti-incest law. The government should rather protect individuals who are threatened by such taboo for their private activities, just like every individual should be protected for his her faith. But look what the state is doing!
Well. You see. What you just said is offensive and I would like to receive the attention of the mods. Anyways, I am not an incest supporter, and I personally think its immoral, but I believe its not supposed to be “illegal” for my own personal thoughts. It has to have a rational base.
You seem to be involuntarily poisoned by the taboo backers like many people are (don’t mean to offend you, just citing an example). Keep up the spirit of intellectual discussions, and don’t get personal. Thanks.
I didn’t read the post, however I would have to agree with you on that.
Although incest may be something I find disturbing and something I would never choose to do, there shouldn’t be a law against it.
The fact that the majority of us think its immoral, the fact that [in the words of Rounder] ‘incest is unhealthy for any of the offspring due to the higher possibility of receiving homogeneous alleles for any number of deseases’, and the fact that western society laws are practically based on christianity is why it is illegal and why it, dare I say, wont ever be accepted.
I honestly don’t care if you nail your sister, I was half joking around. It is a question that is up for some debate if you plan on having a child you are putting the child at risk. What risk is acceptable? Should we make laws for it? I don’t think we would say 90% retardation rate is ok… is 75? … 50?.. Can we just let em shag like jack rabbits as long as they are using birth control? I dunno… don’t care either. There are plenty of laws that are more erroneous then this one.
Again 1. Half Joking 2. the british monarchy’s preponderance of hemophiliacs in the "lets keep it in the family days " wasn’t a coincidence
Oh, I don’t disagree. I believe laws that cannot be enforced are quite useless to be honest. I doubt there are many who would really care if they found someone was in fact, doing the deed with their family members. Suprised perhaps, to the like of almost any revelation on ones sexual doings.
Let’s legalize incest, but force abort fetus’s with defects. That way when the 1 in a billion incest child’s homogenous allels produces a positive result we won’t have to hate it for it’s 999,999,999 defective incest brothers and sisters.
Yeah one in a billion… there solid evidence backing up that ratio… Plus if there really was incest on a large scale, the more generations = the more fucked up you get. 1 in a billion… you just come from the lab wiz kid?
Ditto what Rounder said about the genetic side of things - that aside, and even just looking at a none-productive sexual sibling/sibling relationship…
…Psychologically too insular to allow an outgrowth of the self, regarding the self as a basic functional by-product of social interaction. How can you ever shed your ego-skin and grow, if the memory of you your sister carries locks you into it 24/7…? We are neotenic enough without going the whole hog and banging our sisters.
Far more healthy to derride and bully her for being a ‘big girl’ like any other mentally robust brother.
the24thletter, you live in Dhaka? Are you aware that the Dhaka is an ancient mythical monster, as well as the ‘Lord of time’ on Prince of Persia?
That aside, there was a mother and son accused of incestuous acts towards each other in the local paper. Most people i know laughed, some thought it was weird, others we’re too buisy painting there nails. The son was a work-shy loser who lived with his mother at the tender age of 31. The two of them often spent the night sleeping in the same bed, through sheer loneliness, to watch television or put a film on to fall asleep to. One night, apparently, they had sex or his mother gave him a blowjob or he played with her bits im not sure. Infact i cant even remember how it ended up in the paper, possibly he complained about it; over an infinite number of reasons im sure a mother and son could have.
Its there business alone, the incestant people involved. Between you and your sister for example. The problem with incest is its prone to abuse, such as father to daughter etc. This is why laws on it should remain.
I worked in a lab, theres nothing wizard like about lab workers. Infact, there lives are deprived. Unless you a big fan of Babylon 5 and can have endless conversations about the Vorlon.
Incest produces retarded children is a myth as i said. Incest to some extent will be found in every place and every time. Being a very liberal nation, the US patriarchal policy makers knew that just like homosexuality, incest may take root strong due to over liberalism. That would mean the destruction of the very core values of the patriarchal heritage. So they created up the myth that incest porduces retarded children. The anti taboo backing and brainwashing in US is strong.
And even if incest produces retarded children, they don’t have the right to prevent any couple from making love, whatever type of children the union produces.
As we see, majority of the people’s personal morality is that incest wrong but that personal morality or religion should not be forced into another person’s private life. Its like forcing all the minorities to be christian because the majority is christian. Law should only bother about conflicts between people, not consented private activities between individuals. It can be forced into the public domain, but not in private lives. May be they can ban exposure or discussion of incest in public.
So the three reasons: incest is unhealthy, incest is unchristian, and incest is a minority practice cannot be valid reasons to ban it from personal lives. Stop private smoking first. lol.
Anyways incest is not illegal in all countries. Even I myself don’t stand for incest but I believe those who wish to practice homosexuality or incest in private life, they shouldn’t be taken to the jail for it. Its quite of a mediaval witch hunt.
Umm, that’s why you force abort defective fetus’s.
Unfortunately incest is outlawed so it’s not an easily studied topic. That leaves me as the foremost expert on incest outcomes, as I am the only one to ever posit that incest can be productive, thus overcoming social bias and actualizing my truely scientific-self.
Incestuous relationships that produce offspring have a greatly higher instance of mongoloidism, scientifically backed, so I don’t know where your information comes from, other than the fact you sound like a closet molestor. Not to mention the plethoric battery of other diseases attributed to it.
Secondly, and if Harbinger is around he can confirm, the emotional damage created stands an overwhelming chance of destroying the possibility of individual esteem development, as the confusion created for the victim, puts them in the mind of being responsible for an action that is perceived as inherently wrong.
Laws are moronic in my perspective, because they are always created from iconoclastic social morals, and have nothing to do with the application of justice.
From a “civilized” perspective, victims and offspring of incestuous relationships do not become productive members, and further the degeneracy for latter generations.
Personally, incest/rape/pedophilia should be resoundingly met with the exact same ending: Slow, agonising, public death … start at the genitals and work your way around, day by day, until they expire. It fits the “crime”.
I agree. You might as well stick with “self-pleasuring” if you want to follow this path. You’re going further and further into your family circle and into yourself when you breed too close. Nature didn’t intend this. It defeats the Evolutionist process of mixing genes.
Actually, inbreeding can be very beneficial, from a evolutionary perspective.
Just at it might concentrate the negative genes, so too might it concentrate the desirable ones. Inbreeding is, after all, how we domesticated other animals.
While genetic diversity suffers, there is no reason to think that inbreeding is always ‘bad’. Indeed, in populations of animals that are inbred, you see less, not more, cases of deleterious genes. Why? Because those that have those genes die out and you are left with a ‘cleaner’ population.
For humans right now, such a process would be rather messy . . . but sequencing is getting cheaper and cheaper, and faster and faster. No reason why it wouldn’t be a viable option soon.
Nice try scooter, but the chemicals responsible for retardation, primarily hyperaminoaciduria and disulfiduria, are at least five times more likely to develop in the fetus of incestuous procreation. It has nothing do with morality in this instance.
