Tiger Droppings Indeed

I found this current discussion on a board for people interested in Louisiana State University (especially football). Their mascot is the tiger, hence the URL tigerdroppings.com.

Rex asked “Should incestuous marriage be legalized?”

Of course, our position here is that yes, consanguineous marriages should be legal as part of a policy of full marriage equality allowing an adult to marry any consenting adults.

Scoop displayed ignorance…

Yes. I think clubbed feet and low brow lines are sexy.

That is a bad attempt as Discredited Argument #18. First of all, the question was about marriage, not reproducing. But chances are, there are consanguineous ancestors in Scoop’s not-too-distant past, and Scoop has probably lusted over someone who is the product of immediate consanguineous parentage without knowing it.

H-Town Tiger chimed in with some sense…

Of course, why would it be anyone else's business?

Thanks!

KingwoodLsuFan…

No because incest pregnancies cause f'ed up kids.

Discredited Argument #18 again.

ShortyRob also has some sense…

Between adults. Yes.

Thanks!

KingwoodLsuFan…

The child would still live a tough life if the community is against incest.

That is an argument to eradicate prejudice, not against allowing people to love each other. Think about it. If some people started bullying the kids of nonconsanguineous heterosexual monogamists, would that be a reason to deny such couples the freedom to marry or their reproductive rights?

H-Town Tiger aptly replied…

yeah, well, it wasn't that long ago people said the same thing about mixed race marriages/kids.

I look at this way, its none of my business who other adults are sleeping with, so I don't care.

Thank you!

I wouldn’t pay a penny for the thoughts of Uncommon Cents, who wrote…

I mean if a 30 year old guy falls madly passionately and hopelessly in love with the 8 year old girl down the block, why should the state get involved?

Yes, because a 27-year-old and a 25-year-old getting married is no different than a 30-year-old and an 8-year-old, right?

fr33manator…

For as long as the social concept of marriage has been around, which is to say pretty much all of human history, there have been 2 basic restrictions across all societies. 1:male-female
2: non-consanguineous.

Now, let me clarify, that COUSIN marriage has a bit of leeway, but as far as your directly consanguineous marriages? ALWAYS taboo.

This is simply not true (it is also Discredited Argument #2.) Consanguineous marriages were discouraged in some places for some people so as to prevent insular family dynasties from forming among those who were not royals (threat to royal power and wealth), and when patriarchs wanted to arrange their child’s marriage to gain some sort of alliance with another clan. It isn’t true that there was a universal taboo on consanguineous marriages.

Same-sex marriages are more rare in history, but that has to do with church control of countries and the need to have child labor to help in the family business, pay tithes, and pay taxes.

These days, in the West and in many other places, people choose their own spouses, we have formalized adoption, surrogacy, reproductive technologies, religious freedom, and we don’t allow child labor.

The writer then goes on to a eugenics argument. However, reproduction with a consanguineous partner passes along good gene variants as well as bad ones. And since the bad ones are less likely to survive to birth or go on to a reproductive adulthood, it is likely that such reproduction can do more to advance human development rather than inhibit. We see this with animal breeding. I would be interested in knowing if geneticists can correlate a slowdown in human evolution/health improvements to restrictions on consanguineous sex?

So far, it is yet another discussion in which the people who want to deny a freedom to marry can’t provide a good reason why.