Treating Love As Worse Than Murder

It is bad enough that some people do not make a mental distinction between consensual sex between close relatives and assault or abuse by a close relative, putting it all under the same label, but when the law does it, it leads to injustice, and that injustice can be made even worse by criminal sentencing requirements. Two different people have recently illustrated this.

IchigoRadiance left a great comment after another entry here.

According to Wikipedia, Consanguinamory can get you 25 years. Also according to wikipedia, the sentences of rape are not uniform, but tend to average around 11.8 years. But the actual time served tends to be around half at 5.4 years

Who thinks it makes sense to send consensual lovers to prison at all, never mind sending them to jail for longer than rapists?



IR is very effective at going over the problems with criminalizing consanguineous sex.

If it really was about the rape, then the charges would be combined as consanguineous rape or incestual rape. But even that falls apart. It would suck if I got stabbed and robbed, but I would feel even worse if it was a family member that mugged me. And yet, there is no law for consanguineous mugging or whatever you could call it. And certainly they don't call mugging a family member incest.

It really is is senseless.

As people who love each other get sentenced to longer than a rape charge, and longer than a murder charge, the law seems to encourage people to be as sleazy as possible. In for a penny in for a pound.
It's always disheartening to know that if you have a happy relationship with a family member,and you get caught, you are eligable for more time than some guy who severely raped his victim and murdered them.

Yes, so let's consider a real possibility. Two adults who are closely related have consensual sex. Let's say one is younger and physically smaller than the other. Maybe a third person knows, or maybe the lovers have a falling out, and the smaller one threatens to report the sex as a crime. The other person could potentially come out ahead by murdering the third person or the former lover. Even if convicted for the murder, this convict might spend less time in prison and wouldn't have to register as a sex offender, as they would if they had been convicted of having consensual sex.

Our favorite fiction writer wrote some compelling nonfiction about this on her website...

Per Wikipedia, in the following states, if you are convicted of incest, be it rape or between consenting adults, the sentence is LIFE imprisonment. Here are possible sentences for first-degree murder in those states.

Alabama – Death penalty, Life without parole, or Life with parole in 25 years
Florida – death penalty or life without parole
Georgia – Life in prison, in some cases parole within 25 years
Louisiana – Mandatory sentencing: 15-50 years
Mississippi – Death, Life without parole, or Life with parole in 25 years
North Carolina – Death or Life without Parole
South Carolina – Death, Life without parole, or not less than 30 years in prison
Tennessee – Death, Life without parole, or Life with parole eligibility after 35 years

Did anyone else notice that in six of these eight states it is possible to go to jail longer for consensual sex than for first degree murder?

She then goes on to tackle Discredited Argument #18.

So we are looking at a birth defect rate of 7-9% for the product of siblings in healthy, childbearing years and 6-8% for women over forty. Last I heard, late in life parenting was on the rise and no one was trying to stop it.

If you haven't done so already, buy her fiction that includes these themes.

Consensual sex is not abuse. Stop wasting resources trying to keep consensual adults from marrying each other, loving each other, or playing with each other, and instead redirect those resources towards protecting people against predators.

See also:

Consanguinamory and Reproduction

What Genealogists Know