Peter Singer Defends Consanguineous Sex

In his native Australia, Princeton Professor Peter Singer defended sex between close relatives (“incest”). Michael Cook was less than pleased, as he wrote here.

The Jerry Springer of modern philosophy was in good form when he addressed a packed crowd on Wednesday evening in the Great Hall of the University of Sydney.

Singer is an Ivy league Professor. He deserves some respect, not an apparent dig like likening him to Jerry Springer.

Most philosophers count themselves lucky if their mother appreciates their work. But Singer is regarded - by journalists, at least - as the most influential living philosopher. In fact, at Sydney Uni, he was introduced with the fulsome praise normally reserved for superannuated television stars: “If we had a collection of national living treasures, Peter would certainly stand tall amongst them.”

This means he can advance the freedom of closely related consenting adults to love, sex, and marriage.

Imagine a brother and sister, he said. They are on a summer holiday and decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. There’s no chance of offspring because she is using the pill and he a condom. It brings them closer, but they never do it again.

Is this wrong?

Of course it isn’t wrong. This happens much more than some people realize. And there are lasting, spousal relationships as well. These people are your neighbors, you coworkers, and quite possibly your family.

Singer then took show of hands and found that half of his listeners thought that loving, contraceptive incest was cool – which makes one-child families sound like a good idea for the next generation of Sydney Uni graduates, doesn’t it?

Why? The writer doesn’t give a single reason why the position is wrong, yet advocates, however jokingly, taking away the reproductive rights of those who hold it.

The other half thought that even ideal incest was wrong.

If they thought about it for more time, a lot of them would change their minds. Their objections have probably been answered here.

Look, he explained, our instinctive revulsion at incest is merely an evolved response which protected human communities against inbreeding.

Actually, I think it probably had more to do with a desire to form bonds between clans, rather than avoiding inbreeding. Men would give their daughters to another clan like she was some sort of property. And not everybody should be included in "our," as some people have no revulsion against consanguineous sex.

But such intuitions are not authentically moral reaction because they lack a rational justification. They are evidence of our bondage to obsolete emotions. These conferred a survival advantage when we lived as hunter-gatherers, but not necessarily in the 21st Century.

That’s a good way of looking at it.

I remind my readers that today, Valentine’s Day, you should remember that there are people who still don’t have the freedom to marry, including loving couples living as spouses but banned from marriage under the law because they are close relatives.