It Must Be Prosecuted Because... Prosecution!

Previously, I noted positive news out of Germany about support for decriminalizing consanguineous sex between siblings. I wanted to take a look at how a couple of other news sources covered the story. Here's the news as it is presented at telegraph.co.uk by Justin Huggler.

Laws banning incest between brothers and sisters in Germany could be scrapped after a government ethics committee said the they were an unacceptable intrusion into the right to sexual self-determination.

“Criminal law is not the appropriate means to preserve a social taboo,” the German Ethics Council said in a statement. “The fundamental right of adult siblings to sexual self-determination is to be weighed more heavily than the abstract idea of protection of the family.”

Laws against consanguinamory are actually harmful to families, in many ways, including adults who are in consensual relationships some raising children together, feeling that they can't be completely honest and open with health care providers and being denied equal access to legal marriage when they feel it would benefit them; peaceful homes being disrupted and torn apart as adults are prosecuted for consensual sex and their children taken away; minors close in age engaging in normal adolescent experimentation with each other not being able to talk with parents or counselors about it... on and on it goes.

About one famous case specifically...

The family was forced to live apart after the courts ruled that there was a duty to protect their children from the consequences of their relationship.

And what were those consequences? Criminal prosecution! Don't you see how that works? The people PROSECUTING are telling lovers the problem with them being together is... that they could be prosecuted! Hmmm... how to remove the negative consequences... oh yeah... how about... NOT PROSECUTING THEM???

Two of the couple’s children are disabled...

You know, there are so many people who aren't close relatives with more than one disabled child. In fact, some of those people had known genetic disabilities before they had children, and yet they were still allowed to date, have sex, marry, and have children without being prosecuted. So, to be consistent, Germany would have to bring back a eugenics policy. That didn't work out so well the last time they tried it.

The Council said it based its recommendation on extensive research, in which it found many incestuous couples are forced to live in secret. 

Most of them are.

In one case, it found a woman was being blackmailed by the her father and ex-husband, who threatened to deprive her of access to her children unless she ended a new relationship with her half-brother.

That's another way criminalization hurts. It aids jealous blackmailers.

Around two to four per cent of Germans have had “incestuous experiences”, according to an estimate by the Max Planck Institute.

That is an underestimation.

Here is the news as carried by independent.co.uk.   


All the arguments for criminalization fail. Let adults have the love lives they want. Thanks to those who had the courage and good sense to support decriminalization. It would be great it if the recommendation was actually adopted into law.