Discredited, Invalid Arguments Against Full Marriage Equality
...And My Answers to Them
Almost always, bigots trying to justify their prejudice in denying full marriage equality or relationship rights use a few standard arguments that have already been discredited, invalidated, and do not stand up in court. Often, they are very much like the arguments that were used to prevent interracial couples from marrying.
Please feel free to cite this page and the argument number when dealing with those who want to deny full marriage equality. I plan to do that to save myself a lot of time.
NOT EVEN ARGUMENTS: 1) Labeling or describing something, even accurately, is NOT an argument. For example, saying "That's homosexuality!" does not make a claim as to why it shouldn't be allowed or why it should be discriminated against. 2) Stating an opinion, such as that something is "wrong" or "immoral" is not an argument, either. It indicates WHAT someone thinks, but not WHY. 3) Claiming to have made an accurate prediction that someone would want their rights, such as "I said this would happen!" isn't an argument. 4) Appealing to the very law in question, by saying "It's illegal!" isn't an argument (and, it isn't always true, either, depending on location.) The very thing being argued is whether something should be illegal or otherwise discriminated against. 5) Accusing the person arguing for equality of being in a relationship that is discriminated against is NOT an argument; what matters is that they are standing up for the rights of all, not why. 6) Saying consenting adults having their rights is child abuse is clearly not an argument!
Used Against Any Freedom to Marry
1. “It is disgusting.” Also known as the “ick” or “eww” factor, this explains why the person using the argument would not want to enter into the type of relationship or marriage or have the kind sex they want banned, but their own personal disgust is not a justification for preventing other people from doing something those other people want to do. Don’t want to have an (adult) intergenerational or interracial or same-gender or polyamorous or consanguineous marriage? Don’t have one. Some people are disgusted by the idea of heterosexual sex, or their parents having sex, but obviously this is not a justification to ban those things. Some people find prejudice and bigotry, a lack of marriage equality, disgusting. Meanwhile, the people in these relationships aren’t disgusted. How they love each other should be be up to them.
2. “It goes against tradition.” or "It goes against the law." So did the abolition of slavery and allowing women to vote. In reality, (adult) intergenerational, interracial marriages, same-gender marriages, polygamous or polyamorous marriages, and consanguineous marriages are nothing new. Some of these were entered into by prominent religious leaders and historical royalty. Regardless, a tradition of inequality is not a justification for continuing to deny equality. Unjust or outdated traditions or laws need to be removed.
3. “Not a lot of people want to do it” or “I don’t want to do it.” The second one is much like #1 above. The first is not a justification for keeping something illegal. If anything, it is a reason laws against these consensual adult relationships are wasteful and unnecessary. But we don’t deny minorities rights based on majority vote. Also, people would be surprised to know just how many people around them are in, or want to be in, or have been in, a relationship that is currently illegal or otherwise discriminated against.
4. “My religion is against it.” Again, if you don’t want an (adult) intergenerational, interracial, same-gender, polygamous, or consanguineous relationship or marriage, then don’t have one. But we should all have the freedoms of religion and association and in places like the US, we have separation of church and state, so this can’t be a justification for denying marriage equality or other relationships rights.
5. “It's not natural." Actually, yes, it is. Many people have been embarrassed by making this argument, because it is so easy to refute by a cursory survey of sexual, mating, and partnering habits of various animals. But invariably, the person saying that a relationship should not be allowed because they think it is unnatural constantly enjoys things that aren’t natural, from their smart phones to their toiletries to their food to their clothing to their transportation to their housing… on and on it goes. “Hey! You can’t ride a bicycle! It’s not natural!” See how ridiculous that is?
6. “This will hurt children.” This is usually said by people who themselves hurt children by denying rights to the parents of those children and telling the children that their parents are wrong for loving each other, perpetuating a stigma about the children and their families. Don’t want children of these relationships to be hurt? Then stop hurting their families
There is no evidence of this and numerous studies show that the only harm is from prejudice and a lack of marriage equality.
Adults having a relationship with each other, adults reproducing together, and adults raising children together are three different things. Adults can do any one of those without doing the other two, or any two of those without doing the third. Or, to put it another way, we’re talking about sex, relationships, and marriage, not about reproduction or adoption or parenting. Most sex does not result in a birth. Marriage is not about children as we don’t require people to reproduce, even when they get married, and we allow those who are unable or unwilling to reproduce to marry. Most people do not believe sex or marriage is only for reproduction. Most sex does not result in a birth. We don’t deny people their right to be together because they can’t or won’t reproduce. We don’t deny people their right to be together because they won’t be good candidates for adoption. We don’t test people on their parenting skills before we allow them to marry, but if we did, a lot of the prejudiced people who want to deny rights to others would fail, while many people who are still fighting for their relationship rights would pass with flying colors.
But as long as we're talking about children, let's note that many people claim it is better to raise children within marriage. How can we deny that benefit to the children being raised by people currently denied their right to marry? There are children being raised right now by people who want to get married, and yet are denied their right to marry.
Where does this knowing what is best for the children of other people stop? Should single parents lose custody? Should we compel pregnant women to get a specific kind of prenatal care?
7. “What’s next?” “Where do we draw the line?” Freedom for consenting adults. Who has a problem with that? What's wrong with letting consenting adults have the freedom to love each other as they want and agree? Rather than coming up with convoluted schemes for which groups of people will get which rights, why not support the rights of all adults? It’s really quite simple.
Used Against Polygamous* and Consanguineous** Marriage
Same-gender marriage is still banned in some places, but it is only a matter of time before most of those places catch up with the 21st century. The arguments above have recently failed to justify bans on same-gender marriage just as they failed to justify bans on interracial marriage, and neither they, nor the arguments below, justify banning any marriage (or relationship or sex) involving consenting adults.
8. “It isn’t the same thing as same-gender marriage.” So what? We’re talking about consenting adults who want to be together, and there’s no good reason to stop them. Some same-gender relationships and marriages are polygamous and/or consanguineous. A man should not only be able to marry another man, but two or more other men or his brother.
Strictly speaking, whether a marriage is same-gender or heterosexual is a different category than whether it is monogamous or polygamous; or exogamous or interracial, endogamous, or consanguineous. Some heterosexual marriages are monogamous, some are polygamous. Some same-gender marriages are monogamous, some are polygamous. Bisexuals may be in monogamous marriages or polygamous marriages. Some monogamous marriages are consanguineous, some aren’t. That monogamous/polygamous and exogamous/endogamous/consanguineous are different categories from heterosexual/same-gender is not a justification to deny the freedom to marry to consenting adults, or deny them marriage equality. Relationship rights belong to all adults.
It should be noted that when there is a poyamorous relationship, whether a "V" or a triad or more, at least two of the people involved are the same gender, even if they are no more than metamours to each other.
Something does not have to be immutable or inborn, like sexual orientation, to be legal. However, there are people (especially with Genetic Sexual Attraction) who are in consanguineous relationships who would swear to you that they couldn’t love anyone as much as they love their partner(s). They were born into their situations. There are people who are obviously unable to be monogamous, to the point of being willing to suffer loss of job, loss of reputation, loss of wealth, and figurative and literal loss of life, and they should not promise monogamy nor be pressured to pretend to be monogamous.
Some people simply are polyamorous.
That these other categories are not the same thing as same-gender marriage does not explain why there are still laws against them or a lack of relationship protections in the law.
9. “They’re abusive.” These types of relationships are are not inherently abusive. It is the abusive relationships in general that are more likely to make news, or come to the attention of therapists or law enforcement. There are many people in "forbidden" relationships that are lasting, happy, healthy relationships.
Abusive people are the cause of abuse, not a relationship or marriage. There are many same-age, same-race, heterosexual, monogamous, nonconsanguineous relationships and marriages in which someone is abused. We have several examples showing that outlawing consensual behavior correlates to an increase in problems as people try to avoid law enforcement and other authorities. Marriage equality will most certainly reduce abuse, as abuse victims can go to the authorities with much less fear. So the solution isn’t the status quo, it is in bringing the relationships out of the shadows, allowing them to be protected and made official, and prosecuting abusers. Abuse victims will be much more forthcoming.
Used Against Polyamorous Relationships or Polygamous* Marriage
10. “Polygamy or polyamory spreads sexually transmitted infections.” Unprotected sex with someone who is infected is how such infections may be transmitted. Twenty people could have group sex and a group marriage for fifty years and if none of them brings an infection into the marriage and they only have sex with each other, none of them will get a sexually transmitted infection. We do not deny people their freedom to marry based on which diseases they have. In most places, people can legally have sex with multiple partners anyway. Polyfidelity can be encouraged if polygamy is legalized and polyamory is no longer stigmatized, which would actually reduce disease transmission. Polyamorous people tend to be more careful about prevention, safer sex, and actually talking about the issues involved.
11. “It will be a legal/paperwork nightmare as our system is set up for couples.”That’s what the bigots said about same-gender marriage and the Americans With Disabilities Act and just about any civil rights laws. Of course it is easier for those who already have what they want to keep things as they are. But what about all of the people who are denied their rights?
Adopting the polygamous freedom to marry under full marriage equality will take much less adjustment than adopting the Americans With Disabilities Act, the Violence Against Women Act and many other laws necessary to for equal protection and civil rights. Contract and business law already provides adaptable examples of how law can accommodate configurations involving three or more people, including when someone joins an existing relationship or leaves a relationship.
12. “What about child custody and child support?”This is an especially flimsy objection to polyamorous (or polygamous) relationships. As we have noted before, adult relationships don't always involve raising children. Even so, nonmonogamous relationships between adults who are parents have always existed, and in most places, it isn't criminal to be nonmonogamous. So this issue is already being handled. Notice we could ask the same question about children from one night stands, donated sperm, surrogate mothers, affairs, brief flings, or supposedly monogamous relationships and marriages that end. What about children born to a woman whose husband wasn’t the man who impregnated her? All of these situations are entirely legal. A mediator, arbitrator, or court decides custody and child support disputes that aren’t resolved amicably. That would still be the case if polyamorous relationships had legal protections, including marriage.
13. “This will cause inheritance disputes.” This can’t be a reason for the continued denial of the polyamorous or polygamous freedom to marry. Again, if we're talking about children, not all polyamorous marriages will have children. But even with today’s restriction of monogamy-only for marriage, we see inheritance disputes all of the time. Widows and widowers who were married only once get in fights with their own children, who may fight with each other. Then, in some cases, there are children born outside of that marriage. There’s divorce and remarriage with or without stepchildren or making more children, there are people who were never married who have kids, there are childless people whose inheritances are disputed, "monogamous" and polyamorous people who had children with multiple people without having been married to any those partners, on and on it goes. If anything, legalizing polygamy would make it easier to sort out inheritance. There can be default rules in the law, and people can come up with their own documented, legal agreements.
14. “What about insurance/employment benefits?” There are many simple ways to deal with this. It is dealt with when an employee has more kids than the next, isn't it? It is not a good reason to deny the polygamous freedom to marry or polyamorous relationship rights in general. This is something the law and/or employers and unions can figure out.
15. “This oppresses women.” Gender equality and the right to be unmarried or to divorce are necessary components of full marriage equality. Anti-equality people often point to polygyny in certain cultures, past and present, where women do not have equal rights. However, this is not proof that polygyny, much less the larger scope of polygamy or polyamory, oppresses women. Women would be oppressed in those cultures with or without polygyny. If a woman wants to marry a man who has other wives rather than another man who is an unmarried man, and the other wives agree, why deny her that choice? If a woman wants to marry two men, or a man and a woman, or two women, she should have that right, too. Some women enjoy polygamy, including polygyny, and they should have the right to consent to the marriage of their choosing.
The law does not prevent a man from having relationships with, and children with, multiple women, but he can't legally marry all of them even if they all agree. The law does not prevent a woman from having relationships with, and children with, multiple men, but she can't legally marry all of them even if they all agree. Three people can have a loving, lasting triad, living together for years and years, but can't legally marry. What kind of sense is that?
Protections against gender discrimination, domestic violence, and child abuse should be the focus, not preventing consenting adults from marrying. Victims of abuse would be more likely to work with authorities to stop abusers if consensual relationships were not criminalized nor discriminated against.
16. “Some men will be left out as polygyny increases.” This is based on the assumption that in a culture with gender equality, polygyny would still be more plentiful than polyandry. Anti-equality people, based on this assumption, insist that this will result in unmarried men devolving into criminals.
The mistake here is assuming that the second, third, etc. wives in a polygynous marriage would have wanted one of those unmarried men rather than legally sharing the man they did marry, and that the unmarried men would in turn want to marry them. Some of those men may want to marry men, or not marry at all. Why not allow people to marry the person or people of their choice? Why try to force people to settle? Also, the system is not closed. There are billions of people in the world and more and more people are reaching the age and status of eligibility every second.
There was a study attempting to link polygny to criminal behavior in unmarried/unpartnered men based in part on nineteenth century frontier America. Things have changed a little since then. And guess what? Married men commit crime, too. Most of the men in prison have been married, were married or had at least one girlfriend at the time they were convicted.
Maybe men in the hypothetical polygynous community who don’t get married are violent people. Is it better that they have a wife to beat instead of committing crimes on the street? I don’t want to be the one who tells a woman she can’t marry the man/men or woman/women she wants; rather, she has to marry a less desirable man so that he can take his aggression out on her.
The warnings that polyamorous or polygamous freedom to marry will result in an increase of violent gangs of unmarried men committing crimes falls flat when one considers the overwhelming data revealing both that 1) Men in the US are getting married for the first time later than ever, and 2) Crime rates in the US have decreased.
17. “This will hurt children.” See #6. The study mentioned in #16 also said that children from polygynous families have "considerably lower" survival rates, but the data is from nineteenth century frontier areas and places in Africa where diseases and genocide are significant problems. The study doesn’t address polyandry, same-gender polygamy, polygamy consisting or multiple men and women, and other forms of polyamory.
The other claim is that adolescent boys are driven from polygynous (again, just polygynous and not any other form of polyamory) societies, but there are many adolescent boys driven from their heterosexual monogamous homes because they are gay, or boys who run away for the sake of personal freedom, rather than deal with familial or peer pressure to adhere to certain rules and expectations. Or they can’t stand their “monogamous” parent’s new girlfriend or boyfriend.
A polyamorous relationship generally means a child is going to have more supervision and additional role models in a cooperative environment. How is that supposed to be inferior to having bickering parents and stepparents from supposedly monogamous marriage? It is legal to reproduce and raise children alone, or with others in the home who aren't monogamous spouses. A woman can live with both fathers of her children, but can't legally marry both even though that is what everyone wants? Why deny polyamorous people protections, including marriage?
Used Against Consanguineous** Marriage
18. “This will hurt children.” See #6. Some bigots try to justify their prejudice against consanguineous sex and marriage by being part-time eugenicists and saying that such relationships inevitably lead to “mutant” or “deformed” babies. This argument can be refuted on several fronts. 1. Some consanguineous relationships involve only people of the same gender. 2. Not all mixed-gender relationships birth biological children. In a consanguinamorous relationship, adopted or step-parented children are not going to suffer in comparison to nonconsanguineous relationships. 3. Most births to consanguineous parents do not produce children with significant birth defects or other genetic problems; while births to other parents do sometimes have birth defects. 4. We don’t prevent other people from marrying or deny them their reproductive rights based on increased odds of passing along a genetic problem or inherited disease. It is entirely legal for people with obvious or hidden serious genetic diseases to date, have sex, marry, and have children. Why should healthy consanguineous lovers be denied their rights?
It is true that in general, children born to consanguineous parents have an increased chance of these problems than those born to nonconsanguineous parents, but the odds are still minimal. If a natural talent or gift runs in the family, the children will also be more likely to inherit and manifest that beneficial result as well. But there are increased odds of problems with births to older parents, too. There's no stigma assigned to that. These days, older women having children is actually especially celebrated, at least in the US. There is certainly no law against it.
Unless someone is willing to deny reproductive rights and medical privacy to others and force everyone to take genetic tests and bar carriers and the congenitally disabled and women over 35 from marrying or having children, then equal protection principles prevent this from being a justification to bar this freedom of association and freedom to marry, let alone reproductive rights.
Anyone concerned about these things should have genetic testing and counseling. People who are not close relatives can pass along health problems, too. But there are people born with problems who have made great contributions to the world, and genetically healthy people born to close relatives are common enough that we all know some, whether we know their true genetic parentage or not, and whether they know it or not. It is that common. I personally know children from such relationships who are healthy and bright; adorable children and attractive adults.
19. “It ruins, confuses, or distorts family relationships.” First of all, this does not apply to adoptees who reunite as adults, or people who resulted from gamete or embryo donation. They already have families.
People only say this about sex and marriage. They don’t say it about friendships, working together, or any number of additional relationship dimensions family members might have with each other, or at least this objection is not enshrined in law, as it is with laws that deny marriage equality. It is as if these people think sex and marriage are bad things and about doing bad things to the other person(s). Are those who oppose equality frustrated? Are they doing sex wrong?
Many people have many relationships that have more than one aspect. Some women say their sister is their best friend. Why can’t their sister be a wife, too? When someone gets married, nobody from the government asks if this will ruin their friendship or their business, and it should not ask if it will ruin their fraternity, either.
Some people do also apply this to same-gender relationships. Friendships, these people say, become potential sexual relationships; it confuses relationships because men are supposed to be friends and not lovers, they say. If that is the limitation people want to place on themselves, they can. They should not be able to place such limits on other consenting adults.
When people are functioning socially in their biological roles, sex would create an additional bond. For some who are not functioning socially in those roles (as is often the case with Genetic Sexual Attraction), that bond may not exist in the first place and this is a way to form one. It should be up to them what kind of a relationship they're going to have.
People who are related through birth, adoption, or marriage (stepfamily) may or may not get along. They may be cruel towards each other or they can be best friends. The law can't force adults to love each other, regardless of their relation, and it shouldn't stop them from loving each other however they mutually agree.
20. “There is a power differential.” Power differentials in consanguineous sexual relationships do not provide a good reason to deny the rights of lovers to be in these relationships and to marry, if that is what they want. The power differential allegation applies least of all to siblings or cousins who are close in age, but even where the power differential exists, it is not a justification for denying this freedom to marry.
There is a power differential in just about any relationship, sometimes an enormous power differential. One person is more emotionally needy than another. One earns more than the other. One is more educated than another. One has more friends and family than another. One has more life experience than another. On and on it goes. A 21-year-old woman can consent to group sex with three 40-year-old cage fighters she just met, or sex with an older man who boarded in her family home for most of her life, or the President, or a married billionaire sultan, but not her half-brother or her genetic father who she first met a year ago and has been falling in love with? To question if consent is truly possible in consanguineous relationships is insulting and demeaning. If someone her age can consent to join the military, operate heavy machinery, or be sentenced to life in prison or even to death for their actions, how can we say she can't consent to love another adult the way she wants?
There are sober, functional, healthy adults who consent to consanguineous sex with an older relative, and many of them want to marry. It shouldn’t be illegal or questioned, unless you would do the same to any intergenerational relationship between adults.
21. “There are so many people outside of your family. Go marry/have sex with one of them, instead. It creates friendships between families.” There are plenty of people within one’s own race, too, but that is no reason to ban interracial marriage. I have many friends outside of my family to whom I’m neither married nor married to a relative of theirs. On the other hand, don't we all know unrelated married couples who actually drive their relatives apart from each other? Let adults marry the consenting adult(s) of her or his choice.
Telling someone who is happy with their lover that they should dump that person (or even be prosecuted for being with that person) and should be denied their right to marry because there is someone else they can be with instead is an arrogant and usually, very much a cruel intrusion into someone else's life. How would the person who says this like it if someone told them they had to drop their lover (if they have one) and go find someone else, even though they are consenting adults who want to be together and are happy together?
There are people in consanguinamorous relationships who could never find as much love and happiness with someone else, and trying to force them to do so isn't fair to anyone, including the person for whom they "settle."
22. "It is sick! These relationships are dysfunctional!" This is almost always a thinly disguised variation of #1, #3, or #19. There are many mentally healthy people in healthy, functional, consanguinamorous relationships. See here for more.
For more analysis of invalid anti-consanguinamory arguments see this entry by Jane and this one as well.
*Polyamorous relationships that lead to marriage may take several forms that fall under “polygamy,” including group marriage, polygyny (one man, multiple women), and polyandry (one woman, multiple men).
**Marriage between close relatives.
Ten Myths About Sibling Consanguinamory
Updated July 27, 2011 (#16)
Updated throughout September 19, 2013
Updated June 21, 2014 to add #22
Updated February 7, 2017 to add NOT EVEN ARGUMENTS and links to Jane.
...And My Answers to Them
Almost always, bigots trying to justify their prejudice in denying full marriage equality or relationship rights use a few standard arguments that have already been discredited, invalidated, and do not stand up in court. Often, they are very much like the arguments that were used to prevent interracial couples from marrying.
Please feel free to cite this page and the argument number when dealing with those who want to deny full marriage equality. I plan to do that to save myself a lot of time.
NOT EVEN ARGUMENTS: 1) Labeling or describing something, even accurately, is NOT an argument. For example, saying "That's homosexuality!" does not make a claim as to why it shouldn't be allowed or why it should be discriminated against. 2) Stating an opinion, such as that something is "wrong" or "immoral" is not an argument, either. It indicates WHAT someone thinks, but not WHY. 3) Claiming to have made an accurate prediction that someone would want their rights, such as "I said this would happen!" isn't an argument. 4) Appealing to the very law in question, by saying "It's illegal!" isn't an argument (and, it isn't always true, either, depending on location.) The very thing being argued is whether something should be illegal or otherwise discriminated against. 5) Accusing the person arguing for equality of being in a relationship that is discriminated against is NOT an argument; what matters is that they are standing up for the rights of all, not why. 6) Saying consenting adults having their rights is child abuse is clearly not an argument!
Used Against Any Freedom to Marry
1. “It is disgusting.” Also known as the “ick” or “eww” factor, this explains why the person using the argument would not want to enter into the type of relationship or marriage or have the kind sex they want banned, but their own personal disgust is not a justification for preventing other people from doing something those other people want to do. Don’t want to have an (adult) intergenerational or interracial or same-gender or polyamorous or consanguineous marriage? Don’t have one. Some people are disgusted by the idea of heterosexual sex, or their parents having sex, but obviously this is not a justification to ban those things. Some people find prejudice and bigotry, a lack of marriage equality, disgusting. Meanwhile, the people in these relationships aren’t disgusted. How they love each other should be be up to them.
2. “It goes against tradition.” or "It goes against the law." So did the abolition of slavery and allowing women to vote. In reality, (adult) intergenerational, interracial marriages, same-gender marriages, polygamous or polyamorous marriages, and consanguineous marriages are nothing new. Some of these were entered into by prominent religious leaders and historical royalty. Regardless, a tradition of inequality is not a justification for continuing to deny equality. Unjust or outdated traditions or laws need to be removed.
3. “Not a lot of people want to do it” or “I don’t want to do it.” The second one is much like #1 above. The first is not a justification for keeping something illegal. If anything, it is a reason laws against these consensual adult relationships are wasteful and unnecessary. But we don’t deny minorities rights based on majority vote. Also, people would be surprised to know just how many people around them are in, or want to be in, or have been in, a relationship that is currently illegal or otherwise discriminated against.
4. “My religion is against it.” Again, if you don’t want an (adult) intergenerational, interracial, same-gender, polygamous, or consanguineous relationship or marriage, then don’t have one. But we should all have the freedoms of religion and association and in places like the US, we have separation of church and state, so this can’t be a justification for denying marriage equality or other relationships rights.
5. “It's not natural." Actually, yes, it is. Many people have been embarrassed by making this argument, because it is so easy to refute by a cursory survey of sexual, mating, and partnering habits of various animals. But invariably, the person saying that a relationship should not be allowed because they think it is unnatural constantly enjoys things that aren’t natural, from their smart phones to their toiletries to their food to their clothing to their transportation to their housing… on and on it goes. “Hey! You can’t ride a bicycle! It’s not natural!” See how ridiculous that is?
6. “This will hurt children.” This is usually said by people who themselves hurt children by denying rights to the parents of those children and telling the children that their parents are wrong for loving each other, perpetuating a stigma about the children and their families. Don’t want children of these relationships to be hurt? Then stop hurting their families
There is no evidence of this and numerous studies show that the only harm is from prejudice and a lack of marriage equality.
Adults having a relationship with each other, adults reproducing together, and adults raising children together are three different things. Adults can do any one of those without doing the other two, or any two of those without doing the third. Or, to put it another way, we’re talking about sex, relationships, and marriage, not about reproduction or adoption or parenting. Most sex does not result in a birth. Marriage is not about children as we don’t require people to reproduce, even when they get married, and we allow those who are unable or unwilling to reproduce to marry. Most people do not believe sex or marriage is only for reproduction. Most sex does not result in a birth. We don’t deny people their right to be together because they can’t or won’t reproduce. We don’t deny people their right to be together because they won’t be good candidates for adoption. We don’t test people on their parenting skills before we allow them to marry, but if we did, a lot of the prejudiced people who want to deny rights to others would fail, while many people who are still fighting for their relationship rights would pass with flying colors.
But as long as we're talking about children, let's note that many people claim it is better to raise children within marriage. How can we deny that benefit to the children being raised by people currently denied their right to marry? There are children being raised right now by people who want to get married, and yet are denied their right to marry.
Where does this knowing what is best for the children of other people stop? Should single parents lose custody? Should we compel pregnant women to get a specific kind of prenatal care?
7. “What’s next?” “Where do we draw the line?” Freedom for consenting adults. Who has a problem with that? What's wrong with letting consenting adults have the freedom to love each other as they want and agree? Rather than coming up with convoluted schemes for which groups of people will get which rights, why not support the rights of all adults? It’s really quite simple.
Used Against Polygamous* and Consanguineous** Marriage
Same-gender marriage is still banned in some places, but it is only a matter of time before most of those places catch up with the 21st century. The arguments above have recently failed to justify bans on same-gender marriage just as they failed to justify bans on interracial marriage, and neither they, nor the arguments below, justify banning any marriage (or relationship or sex) involving consenting adults.
8. “It isn’t the same thing as same-gender marriage.” So what? We’re talking about consenting adults who want to be together, and there’s no good reason to stop them. Some same-gender relationships and marriages are polygamous and/or consanguineous. A man should not only be able to marry another man, but two or more other men or his brother.
Strictly speaking, whether a marriage is same-gender or heterosexual is a different category than whether it is monogamous or polygamous; or exogamous or interracial, endogamous, or consanguineous. Some heterosexual marriages are monogamous, some are polygamous. Some same-gender marriages are monogamous, some are polygamous. Bisexuals may be in monogamous marriages or polygamous marriages. Some monogamous marriages are consanguineous, some aren’t. That monogamous/polygamous and exogamous/endogamous/consanguineous are different categories from heterosexual/same-gender is not a justification to deny the freedom to marry to consenting adults, or deny them marriage equality. Relationship rights belong to all adults.
It should be noted that when there is a poyamorous relationship, whether a "V" or a triad or more, at least two of the people involved are the same gender, even if they are no more than metamours to each other.
Something does not have to be immutable or inborn, like sexual orientation, to be legal. However, there are people (especially with Genetic Sexual Attraction) who are in consanguineous relationships who would swear to you that they couldn’t love anyone as much as they love their partner(s). They were born into their situations. There are people who are obviously unable to be monogamous, to the point of being willing to suffer loss of job, loss of reputation, loss of wealth, and figurative and literal loss of life, and they should not promise monogamy nor be pressured to pretend to be monogamous.
Some people simply are polyamorous.
That these other categories are not the same thing as same-gender marriage does not explain why there are still laws against them or a lack of relationship protections in the law.
9. “They’re abusive.” These types of relationships are are not inherently abusive. It is the abusive relationships in general that are more likely to make news, or come to the attention of therapists or law enforcement. There are many people in "forbidden" relationships that are lasting, happy, healthy relationships.
Abusive people are the cause of abuse, not a relationship or marriage. There are many same-age, same-race, heterosexual, monogamous, nonconsanguineous relationships and marriages in which someone is abused. We have several examples showing that outlawing consensual behavior correlates to an increase in problems as people try to avoid law enforcement and other authorities. Marriage equality will most certainly reduce abuse, as abuse victims can go to the authorities with much less fear. So the solution isn’t the status quo, it is in bringing the relationships out of the shadows, allowing them to be protected and made official, and prosecuting abusers. Abuse victims will be much more forthcoming.
Used Against Polyamorous Relationships or Polygamous* Marriage
10. “Polygamy or polyamory spreads sexually transmitted infections.” Unprotected sex with someone who is infected is how such infections may be transmitted. Twenty people could have group sex and a group marriage for fifty years and if none of them brings an infection into the marriage and they only have sex with each other, none of them will get a sexually transmitted infection. We do not deny people their freedom to marry based on which diseases they have. In most places, people can legally have sex with multiple partners anyway. Polyfidelity can be encouraged if polygamy is legalized and polyamory is no longer stigmatized, which would actually reduce disease transmission. Polyamorous people tend to be more careful about prevention, safer sex, and actually talking about the issues involved.
11. “It will be a legal/paperwork nightmare as our system is set up for couples.”That’s what the bigots said about same-gender marriage and the Americans With Disabilities Act and just about any civil rights laws. Of course it is easier for those who already have what they want to keep things as they are. But what about all of the people who are denied their rights?
Adopting the polygamous freedom to marry under full marriage equality will take much less adjustment than adopting the Americans With Disabilities Act, the Violence Against Women Act and many other laws necessary to for equal protection and civil rights. Contract and business law already provides adaptable examples of how law can accommodate configurations involving three or more people, including when someone joins an existing relationship or leaves a relationship.
12. “What about child custody and child support?”This is an especially flimsy objection to polyamorous (or polygamous) relationships. As we have noted before, adult relationships don't always involve raising children. Even so, nonmonogamous relationships between adults who are parents have always existed, and in most places, it isn't criminal to be nonmonogamous. So this issue is already being handled. Notice we could ask the same question about children from one night stands, donated sperm, surrogate mothers, affairs, brief flings, or supposedly monogamous relationships and marriages that end. What about children born to a woman whose husband wasn’t the man who impregnated her? All of these situations are entirely legal. A mediator, arbitrator, or court decides custody and child support disputes that aren’t resolved amicably. That would still be the case if polyamorous relationships had legal protections, including marriage.
13. “This will cause inheritance disputes.” This can’t be a reason for the continued denial of the polyamorous or polygamous freedom to marry. Again, if we're talking about children, not all polyamorous marriages will have children. But even with today’s restriction of monogamy-only for marriage, we see inheritance disputes all of the time. Widows and widowers who were married only once get in fights with their own children, who may fight with each other. Then, in some cases, there are children born outside of that marriage. There’s divorce and remarriage with or without stepchildren or making more children, there are people who were never married who have kids, there are childless people whose inheritances are disputed, "monogamous" and polyamorous people who had children with multiple people without having been married to any those partners, on and on it goes. If anything, legalizing polygamy would make it easier to sort out inheritance. There can be default rules in the law, and people can come up with their own documented, legal agreements.
14. “What about insurance/employment benefits?” There are many simple ways to deal with this. It is dealt with when an employee has more kids than the next, isn't it? It is not a good reason to deny the polygamous freedom to marry or polyamorous relationship rights in general. This is something the law and/or employers and unions can figure out.
15. “This oppresses women.” Gender equality and the right to be unmarried or to divorce are necessary components of full marriage equality. Anti-equality people often point to polygyny in certain cultures, past and present, where women do not have equal rights. However, this is not proof that polygyny, much less the larger scope of polygamy or polyamory, oppresses women. Women would be oppressed in those cultures with or without polygyny. If a woman wants to marry a man who has other wives rather than another man who is an unmarried man, and the other wives agree, why deny her that choice? If a woman wants to marry two men, or a man and a woman, or two women, she should have that right, too. Some women enjoy polygamy, including polygyny, and they should have the right to consent to the marriage of their choosing.
The law does not prevent a man from having relationships with, and children with, multiple women, but he can't legally marry all of them even if they all agree. The law does not prevent a woman from having relationships with, and children with, multiple men, but she can't legally marry all of them even if they all agree. Three people can have a loving, lasting triad, living together for years and years, but can't legally marry. What kind of sense is that?
Protections against gender discrimination, domestic violence, and child abuse should be the focus, not preventing consenting adults from marrying. Victims of abuse would be more likely to work with authorities to stop abusers if consensual relationships were not criminalized nor discriminated against.
16. “Some men will be left out as polygyny increases.” This is based on the assumption that in a culture with gender equality, polygyny would still be more plentiful than polyandry. Anti-equality people, based on this assumption, insist that this will result in unmarried men devolving into criminals.
The mistake here is assuming that the second, third, etc. wives in a polygynous marriage would have wanted one of those unmarried men rather than legally sharing the man they did marry, and that the unmarried men would in turn want to marry them. Some of those men may want to marry men, or not marry at all. Why not allow people to marry the person or people of their choice? Why try to force people to settle? Also, the system is not closed. There are billions of people in the world and more and more people are reaching the age and status of eligibility every second.
There was a study attempting to link polygny to criminal behavior in unmarried/unpartnered men based in part on nineteenth century frontier America. Things have changed a little since then. And guess what? Married men commit crime, too. Most of the men in prison have been married, were married or had at least one girlfriend at the time they were convicted.
Maybe men in the hypothetical polygynous community who don’t get married are violent people. Is it better that they have a wife to beat instead of committing crimes on the street? I don’t want to be the one who tells a woman she can’t marry the man/men or woman/women she wants; rather, she has to marry a less desirable man so that he can take his aggression out on her.
The warnings that polyamorous or polygamous freedom to marry will result in an increase of violent gangs of unmarried men committing crimes falls flat when one considers the overwhelming data revealing both that 1) Men in the US are getting married for the first time later than ever, and 2) Crime rates in the US have decreased.
17. “This will hurt children.” See #6. The study mentioned in #16 also said that children from polygynous families have "considerably lower" survival rates, but the data is from nineteenth century frontier areas and places in Africa where diseases and genocide are significant problems. The study doesn’t address polyandry, same-gender polygamy, polygamy consisting or multiple men and women, and other forms of polyamory.
The other claim is that adolescent boys are driven from polygynous (again, just polygynous and not any other form of polyamory) societies, but there are many adolescent boys driven from their heterosexual monogamous homes because they are gay, or boys who run away for the sake of personal freedom, rather than deal with familial or peer pressure to adhere to certain rules and expectations. Or they can’t stand their “monogamous” parent’s new girlfriend or boyfriend.
A polyamorous relationship generally means a child is going to have more supervision and additional role models in a cooperative environment. How is that supposed to be inferior to having bickering parents and stepparents from supposedly monogamous marriage? It is legal to reproduce and raise children alone, or with others in the home who aren't monogamous spouses. A woman can live with both fathers of her children, but can't legally marry both even though that is what everyone wants? Why deny polyamorous people protections, including marriage?
Used Against Consanguineous** Marriage
18. “This will hurt children.” See #6. Some bigots try to justify their prejudice against consanguineous sex and marriage by being part-time eugenicists and saying that such relationships inevitably lead to “mutant” or “deformed” babies. This argument can be refuted on several fronts. 1. Some consanguineous relationships involve only people of the same gender. 2. Not all mixed-gender relationships birth biological children. In a consanguinamorous relationship, adopted or step-parented children are not going to suffer in comparison to nonconsanguineous relationships. 3. Most births to consanguineous parents do not produce children with significant birth defects or other genetic problems; while births to other parents do sometimes have birth defects. 4. We don’t prevent other people from marrying or deny them their reproductive rights based on increased odds of passing along a genetic problem or inherited disease. It is entirely legal for people with obvious or hidden serious genetic diseases to date, have sex, marry, and have children. Why should healthy consanguineous lovers be denied their rights?
It is true that in general, children born to consanguineous parents have an increased chance of these problems than those born to nonconsanguineous parents, but the odds are still minimal. If a natural talent or gift runs in the family, the children will also be more likely to inherit and manifest that beneficial result as well. But there are increased odds of problems with births to older parents, too. There's no stigma assigned to that. These days, older women having children is actually especially celebrated, at least in the US. There is certainly no law against it.
Unless someone is willing to deny reproductive rights and medical privacy to others and force everyone to take genetic tests and bar carriers and the congenitally disabled and women over 35 from marrying or having children, then equal protection principles prevent this from being a justification to bar this freedom of association and freedom to marry, let alone reproductive rights.
Anyone concerned about these things should have genetic testing and counseling. People who are not close relatives can pass along health problems, too. But there are people born with problems who have made great contributions to the world, and genetically healthy people born to close relatives are common enough that we all know some, whether we know their true genetic parentage or not, and whether they know it or not. It is that common. I personally know children from such relationships who are healthy and bright; adorable children and attractive adults.
19. “It ruins, confuses, or distorts family relationships.” First of all, this does not apply to adoptees who reunite as adults, or people who resulted from gamete or embryo donation. They already have families.
People only say this about sex and marriage. They don’t say it about friendships, working together, or any number of additional relationship dimensions family members might have with each other, or at least this objection is not enshrined in law, as it is with laws that deny marriage equality. It is as if these people think sex and marriage are bad things and about doing bad things to the other person(s). Are those who oppose equality frustrated? Are they doing sex wrong?
Many people have many relationships that have more than one aspect. Some women say their sister is their best friend. Why can’t their sister be a wife, too? When someone gets married, nobody from the government asks if this will ruin their friendship or their business, and it should not ask if it will ruin their fraternity, either.
Some people do also apply this to same-gender relationships. Friendships, these people say, become potential sexual relationships; it confuses relationships because men are supposed to be friends and not lovers, they say. If that is the limitation people want to place on themselves, they can. They should not be able to place such limits on other consenting adults.
When people are functioning socially in their biological roles, sex would create an additional bond. For some who are not functioning socially in those roles (as is often the case with Genetic Sexual Attraction), that bond may not exist in the first place and this is a way to form one. It should be up to them what kind of a relationship they're going to have.
People who are related through birth, adoption, or marriage (stepfamily) may or may not get along. They may be cruel towards each other or they can be best friends. The law can't force adults to love each other, regardless of their relation, and it shouldn't stop them from loving each other however they mutually agree.
20. “There is a power differential.” Power differentials in consanguineous sexual relationships do not provide a good reason to deny the rights of lovers to be in these relationships and to marry, if that is what they want. The power differential allegation applies least of all to siblings or cousins who are close in age, but even where the power differential exists, it is not a justification for denying this freedom to marry.
There is a power differential in just about any relationship, sometimes an enormous power differential. One person is more emotionally needy than another. One earns more than the other. One is more educated than another. One has more friends and family than another. One has more life experience than another. On and on it goes. A 21-year-old woman can consent to group sex with three 40-year-old cage fighters she just met, or sex with an older man who boarded in her family home for most of her life, or the President, or a married billionaire sultan, but not her half-brother or her genetic father who she first met a year ago and has been falling in love with? To question if consent is truly possible in consanguineous relationships is insulting and demeaning. If someone her age can consent to join the military, operate heavy machinery, or be sentenced to life in prison or even to death for their actions, how can we say she can't consent to love another adult the way she wants?
There are sober, functional, healthy adults who consent to consanguineous sex with an older relative, and many of them want to marry. It shouldn’t be illegal or questioned, unless you would do the same to any intergenerational relationship between adults.
21. “There are so many people outside of your family. Go marry/have sex with one of them, instead. It creates friendships between families.” There are plenty of people within one’s own race, too, but that is no reason to ban interracial marriage. I have many friends outside of my family to whom I’m neither married nor married to a relative of theirs. On the other hand, don't we all know unrelated married couples who actually drive their relatives apart from each other? Let adults marry the consenting adult(s) of her or his choice.
Telling someone who is happy with their lover that they should dump that person (or even be prosecuted for being with that person) and should be denied their right to marry because there is someone else they can be with instead is an arrogant and usually, very much a cruel intrusion into someone else's life. How would the person who says this like it if someone told them they had to drop their lover (if they have one) and go find someone else, even though they are consenting adults who want to be together and are happy together?
There are people in consanguinamorous relationships who could never find as much love and happiness with someone else, and trying to force them to do so isn't fair to anyone, including the person for whom they "settle."
22. "It is sick! These relationships are dysfunctional!" This is almost always a thinly disguised variation of #1, #3, or #19. There are many mentally healthy people in healthy, functional, consanguinamorous relationships. See here for more.
For more analysis of invalid anti-consanguinamory arguments see this entry by Jane and this one as well.
*Polyamorous relationships that lead to marriage may take several forms that fall under “polygamy,” including group marriage, polygyny (one man, multiple women), and polyandry (one woman, multiple men).
**Marriage between close relatives.
Ten Myths About Sibling Consanguinamory
Updated July 27, 2011 (#16)
Updated throughout September 19, 2013
Updated June 21, 2014 to add #22
Updated February 7, 2017 to add NOT EVEN ARGUMENTS and links to Jane.
Great job with this!! I think you hit the nail on the head on the main arguments that people make. The one I can't stand is the "ick" one, that just because everyone else considers taboo relationships "icky", people conform to the notion that them "icky people shouldn't be together. D:
ReplyDeleteI like you explained the "How would that affect the children part." People worry about what the children will think, let's say, knowing that their mom or dad are actually brother and sister. But, if you really stop and think about this, if it was normal to marry your brother and sister, there would be no question regarding this. I would assume that the children DO NOT mind that the fact that their parents are brother and sister, but they DO mind that people make a big deal out of it or bully them because of THEIR PARENTS' relationship. And only through other people would they possibly start to feel like there is a problem with their parents' relationship. Prejudice is a learned behavior... So, it's not the parents' relationship in question, it's how other people treat the children BECAUSE of the parents' relationship.
LOL the other thing that annoys me is when some say "Well there are other people outside of your family" or "there's other fish in the sea." REALLY? So, those types of people think that a couple that REALLY loves each other should go out and go find a "normal" relationship because it's what everyone else does, putting aside the fact the couple deeply care for each other and may not find another love with someone else? For someone else to say that I would find it insulting. Would they like it if I came over there, out of the blue, and said that I don't like their relationship with their partner and they should just go find someone else, I mean, there are plenty of fish in the sea!?
I remember in my English class, I had a teacher once who was referring to a book, I forget the name, but she made the statement to the rest of the class that incest was very very bad. And she wasn't talking about just back then, or in the story, she was talking about "now." I was really offended because I knew that some incest couples are just misunderstood. I was about to raise my hand and say "What about consensual incest couples?" I wasn't going to be rude about it or call her names or anything, that doesn't help or solve anything and only leads to more prejudice and bigotry, I just wanted to clarify something. Unfortunately, I hesitated, worrying about what the rest of the class would think and what the teacher would think...Ugh...society's pressure. I DO regret not speaking out against that prejudice and making it known that they are just misunderstood, but I know that I can't go back and change that and I can only hope that i will have the courage to stand up for them the next time, as I would want someone to stand up for me if I was the victim of said prejudice. :)
Oh by the way, I'm following this blog! :P
Awesome! I could have written a lot of this myself! (In fact, I recognize a couple of your arguments.) I know it's embarrassing when you're afraid to stand up. It happens to me too. Even though there is so much homophobia, there are still places - physical places - in the world where you can congregate with like-minded people, where your politicians support your views. Not so for us here. We're prophets crying out in the wilderness. It's very intimidating to risk complete ostracization not even for an act or a preference, but just for supporting other people's rights to that act or preference.
DeleteI am going to take issue with this common misconception.
Delete"It is true that in general, children born to consanguineous parents have an increased chance of these problems than those born to nonconsanguineous parents, but the odds are still minimal. If a natural talent or gift runs in the family, the children will also be more likely to inherit and manifest that beneficial result as well. But there are increased odds of problems with births to older parents, too. There's no stigma assigned to that. These days, older women having children is actually especially celebrated, at least in the US. There is certainly no law against it."
I have read at least five well documented studies from universities in the USA, Canada, and Australia.
NONE of them say that consanguineous parents at the level of siblings or half-siblings have a greater statistically significant incidence of serious birth defects than the POPULATION at LARGE.
What they do say is that say is that consanguineous parents at the level of siblings or half-siblings have a very slightly greater statistically significant incidence of serious birth defects than the CHERRY PICKED CONTROL GROUP.
In these studies the control groups excluded all other women and couples with known risk factors for birth defects. Being over 40; inner-city dwellers; living near highways, lead mines, and smelters; persons with jobs that deal with chemicals, radiation, or heavy metals; smokers; the obese; diabetics; ***people with a family history of genetic disorders***.
(That last one is almost the ***end-all, be-all*** because consang reproduction can only pass along a pre-existing defect it doesn't create them. If the potential parents knew they carried a dangerous genetic mutation there could be no more genetic birth defects.)
By the way, while there was a slightly greater statistically significant incidence of serious birth defects than the CHERRY PICKED CONTROL GROUP there was not over the POPULATION at LARGE as reported by the government health authorities in all three nations.
Thanks for everything, Vegan. Based on how well-written your comments are, you were probably quite the English student!
ReplyDeleteI have a relationship with my sister as well, we are the same age (14)and we have a plenty fine time with it. We all ways get ridiculed for it but one day I looked it up and it turns out that if a family line does NOT inbreed within 10 generations it increases there chances of HAVING deformed kids. BUT, this study also shows that inbreeding more than that can be dangerous. So as is with everything, it must have a delicate balance.
ReplyDeleteYou see nothing wrong with this? This is insanity.
DeleteThanks for this site. You're doing a great job, and have a lot of great information. We need people like you to bring this issue out of the dark and into the light.
ReplyDeleteThere's a few things in life you can't control, one is who you fall in love with, another is what family you're born into. So if two people from the same family are in love and wish to marry, why shouldn't they? If they are denied this right it is discrimination on the same level as that which was practiced on black people before the civil rights movement. Because it denies them something based solely on the circumstances of their birth, which they had no control over.
In the interest of honesty I will admit I'm here because for years I've wanted to develop a relationship with my sister that I hope will become sexual. We are very close and had some very intimate moments growing up, and that created a fire in me that still burns for her today. And she knows it, she said on several occasions that she knows I like her and what we did when we were younger. At times she would even use my desire for her as a way to get me to do things. But she never once expressed a wish to put an end to the sexual nature of our relationship. If anything, she saw to it that it continued, and it was always her who started every thing that happened, probably because she was older and a lot less shy about sexuality than I was.
Nothing has happened with us for a few years, but we're still close, and she is always very touchy and even flirts with me on occasion, but playfully. A few weeks ago she asked me how her butt looked in the jeans she bought, and this St. Patrick's day she asked me to be the judge of how sexy her outfit was before she went to the bar. So there is still something between us, and I think that one day maybe our relationship could be rekindled. But if it was we would have to hide it because society has this belief that incest is sick and wrong. Well for thousands of years most societies didn't have a problem with slavery. Society also used to consider homosexuals sick and wrong, but that's changed recently. So society's opinions don't mean a lot to me.
It's also illegal, but I couldn't care less because any law that prevents consenting adults from doing what they want with each other, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else, is unjust and should be abolished.
I love my sister and would like nothing more than to express that love completely, including sexually. She's the only woman I've ever loved, and the only woman who ever loved me. And that’s why I want to take that next step into the ultimate expression of love. I want to be as close to her physically as I am emotionally and spiritually, I want to be inside her body as much as I am inside her heart and soul.
And if people think that’s wrong because this woman is also my sister, they’re the ones with the problem, not me.
Anonymous, thanks for your comments and support. I wish you the best. Keep me updated on what happens.
DeleteHave you thought about making a move?
DeleteMost women put themselves in that position with men they only trust.
I have an elder sister who loved me since I was a baby with passing of time we came more closers and when I was 16 and she was 19 we became sex partners and did it all these 30 years when ever got a chance, it is the most intimate relation I ever got.
DeleteVery well written - you put a lot of thought into this and covered every issue that we face. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteFirst off, excuse any potential linguistic error as I'm Swedish.
ReplyDeleteKeith, you are just wonderful, you know that? AT FREAKING LAST somebody sees sense and stands up for equal human rights, and for that I can only give you huge amounts of credit. Most people say incest is gross. You know what I find gross? This pseudo-moral society keeps tossing at people is gross, still bowing before a 2000-year old script is gross, love is NOT. THEIR thoughts do NOT give them the right to dictate the lives of OTHERS. If two adults are consenting to having sex (and particularly if they love each other), seriously, that's all that matters.
It was the same story with gays in the past: they were all gross and f*cked and needed to burn in hell but now “Oh, perhaps it isn’t that gross”. Voilà , they’re now allowed to marry in many places and are even encouraged to be open about their orientation. I say incest is no different is this sense, it’s just another phenomenon diverging from what’s most common, but the taboo of which is yet to be overcome. It’s already begun thankfully: Switzerland is now considering legalizing incest which is another step towards a more democratic society. It’s already taking the right course and I hope it won’t stop.
I'll tell you something: even my own sister has turned out to have romantic feelings for me. This I found out through her blog before confronting her about it. Did I tell her to go and burn in hell because she's betrayed God? HELL NO!!! I couldn't do that. Why? Because I love her (not in the same way but the fact remains), she's the best, and if she feels that way there’ s obviously a reason and she simply can’t help that. The fact is, I made it very clear to her that what truly broke my heart was that it’d actually occur to her that I would do such a thing as “tar and feather her before running her over on a rail” as she wrote in the blog. This shows deeply social propaganda affects others.
Bottom line, what you’re doing is great. You are extremely brave for having the guts to contradict the common social opinion, and I must say: keep doing what you’re doing and I swear you will make some huge difference.
Thank you so much, Mr. Oldenberg. It is nice to be appreciated. I hope your sister knows she is not alone and nothing is wrong about her feelings.
DeleteWhen people go, "Well, if we normalized it, wouldn't everyone be doing it? And what if they were rejected! It would ruin the family!", I'll just show them your comment. This is exactly how it would work:
Delete-"I'm in love with you romantically."
-"I understand, and I'm flattered, but I can't reciprocate your feelings. However, I'll always love you as family."
-"Now I feel stupid."
-"Don't, you aren't. You can't control who you love. I still respect you and your feelings, but I don't feel the same way. Don't be ashamed."
-"Thank you. I think I can move on now."
Done! There! Wow, so traumatic, right?
There is a reason for these laws.. Bigots are not the problem.. Incest is formed when a parents or family members seduce the child into thinking sex with a family member is right. Remember this child looks up to it's parents and family to teach them what is right and wrong and at a young age they do not know any better. As Adults they choose their own life style, but if their childhood was full of incest, they don't know who to rely on but the person who had told them this act was right, when it is really agasint they law, but I do support gays.
ReplyDeleteSo then you'd have no problem with siblings close in age, or anyone, including an adult child who was not raised by the parent, getting together? Because your objection only deals with parents raising children. We already have laws against child abuse and child neglect, which "grooming" constitutes. A parent should raise their children to be independent adults. If, they have done so, and the child (as an adult), wants to be in a consanguinamorous relationship with their parent, the law should not interfere. That adult can have sex with ten complete strangers in one night, legally. It is ridiculous to bar them from choosing to be with someone they know and love.
DeleteBut the parent is legally married to his or her wife or husband, not the child. It would be basically a slap in the face to any wife or husband that discovered their partner ingaging a sex life with their child. You can love your father or mother, but making love to them is unthinkable. Parents are our gaurdians, not our lovers. That's what god intended a family to be and some huge family orgy.
Deleteand not some huge family orgy.
DeleteAnonymous, not every parents is married, or in a closed marriage. I do not advocate cheating on this blog, but I do support polyamory and other forms of ethical nonmonogamy.
DeleteClearly, being an adult and making love to a parent is NOT unthinkable. It happens every day.
We're not talking about an orgy. In almost all cases of consanguinamory, we are talking about ongoing relationships, often ones that are monogamous or involve polyfidelity. Your comment is the same as if I said two unrelated people have sex amounts to some huge orgy.
And finally... you are free to follow your god. Do not impose your religion on anyone else.
I'm the opposite...I do NOT support "gays",but I do support the possibility of closely related consenting adults of opposite sexes forming and maintaining sexual relationships that are neither rape nor cheating.
DeleteThere are 2 issues I could see with legalizing polygamy:
ReplyDelete1. Immigration
This could make it awfully easy for a bunch of people to just get married to one US citizen to get on the fast track to citizenship. While this may be relatively innocuous if they're just coming to work, consider what if some group of people were trying to get citizenship in a hurry for some nefarious purpose such as distorting electoral results. Hypothetically hundreds or potentially thousands paid under the table for their "service" could get married to one US citizen, register to vote and cast their vote and throw a local election one way or another.
2. Immunity From Testimony
What will we do when we try to indite a mob boss and it turns out we can't get any witnesses because he had the foresight to get married to everybody who works for him?
Anonymous, thanks for not simply writing "I don't like it!" Yes, immigration and immunity are issues that would have to be deal with. They fall under #11. Realizing civil rights has always involved some adjustments, but the adjustments must be made. Marriage and adult relationships in general are fundamental rights under equality, privacy, and freedom of association. We can't deny civil rights just because they may inconvenience someone or necessitate changes in how our government operates.
DeleteYou're a sick fuck you know that? All of your answers hold the same tendencies as psycho-religious fundamentalist fucktards that preach their ideas as factual--you're an unwarranted idiot that should seriously just go die. I'm not for your polygamous immoral lifestyle, nor am I religious or adhering to traditional values, but I am for death to those stunt progressivism; you seriously just need to get shot in the head and have your brains blown outt.
ReplyDeleteSo... how do you really feel? You don't support marriage equality?
DeleteNothing's more progressive than shooting political dissenters within a movement. I guess that makes Stalin a paragon of progressive virtue.
DeleteAh! and and I thought only my daughter's boy friend holds such a healthy opinion. Certainly he does not support equall marriage for all and his ikk feeling can cause other people some serious damage.
Delete1. I heartily support all your points, except for the maybe somewhat cavalier acceptance of the risk of genetic disease in children of first degree relatives.
ReplyDelete2. Most (all?, almost all?) of the excess risk of genetic disease as a result of close consanguinity of healthy parents apparently comes from the increased chance that both are unwitting carrier of one or more of the same bad autosomal recessive genes.
The following presentation may be of interest:
http://www.perkinelmer.com/pdfs/downloads/CST_COG_2011_Next%20Gen_Dinwiddie.pdf
It appears that a wide-ranging and inexpensive pre-conception screening for carrier burden of bad autosomal recessives is technically very close.
But in the present unenlightened situation the powers that be (in the medical profession) will want to interpose themselves I believe ("for our own good").
3. The presentation above shows the carrier burden of any of 595 bad autosomal recessives (the least rare ones I presume) for a sample of 104 unrelated healthy individuals.
There is a lot of variation. Some carry 0, some carry 9; the average is 2.8.
If a woman carries one of these the chance that her parent, sibling or child carries the same one is 50% or more (depending on the prevalence of inbreeding in her family). Based on the sample above the average person then shares on average at least 1.4 bad autosomal recessives with a first degree relative.
Each bad autosomal recessive gene gives a 25% risk of a bad outcome if both partners have a copy (75% chance of a good outcome: 50% chance that the child will be a carrier too plus 25% chance that the child will not be a carrier).
Sharing two gives a risk of (1 - (0.75^2)) * 100 = 44% of a bad outcome.
Sharing N gives a risk of (1 - (0.75^N)) * 100 % risk of a bad outcome.
Therefore, based on the sample, the chance of a bad outcome as a result of shared autosomal recessive genes when a woman has a child with her father / brother / son is (1 - ( 0.75^1.4)) * 100 = 33%, provided there is no (other) inbreeding in her family, and in the absence of other information.
4. The risk of 33% is overstated because it includes the chance of a resulting miscarriage.
5. The risk of 33% is understated because it neglects the existence of very rare bad autosomal recessive genes not in the 595 and the possibility of increased sharing as a result of family inbreeding.
6. Also ofcourse, the sample of 104 is small and the measurements less than 100% accurate.
7. Because of the apparently large variation in carrier burden of individuals there is a large variation in genetic disease risk to children of first degree related couples. While the risk for the average couple may be 1 in 3, some couples may have children and none with problems and other couples may have children and all with problems. The latter couples tend to be in the news I believe.
8. A chance of 1 in 3 that a contemplated child will have a genetic disease seems too great to take imho.
Thank you, Anonymous for your thoughful input. Of course your objection only applies to inbreeding. There are some "ifs" in there that do not apply to all. Also, as I noted, we do not prevent people with known genetic problems from reproducing, so it hardly is justifiable to prevent people who have been screened to be healthy from having sex. Time and time again, I have seen or read about healthy children born to siblings, half siblings, and parents with their adult children. There are health, happy, bright, adorable children from such relationships I have seen. Your concerns are definitely something that she be taken into account by someone when considering whether or not to have children, and many consanguinamorous couples do choose not to have biological children together for that very reason. But that should be a personal decision, not an excuse to have laws against consensual adult sex or marriage.
DeleteCorrection: "595" in above should be "446".
ReplyDeleteAnd they seem to be selected not only on prevalence but also on the severity of the result of a match.
As I said - there appears to be wide variation. There must be couples of first degree relatives with any number of healthy children and the same with only children with problems.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the average chance that a child of first degree relatives is healthy is about 2 in 3.
To find out where in the wide range such a couple falls is best done through an all-encompassing pre-conception screening - when available - and not through having children.
My main point was actually the notice that almost-all-encompassing pre-conception screening is coming soon.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI don't want to sound like a bigot but .... since you know about this kind of stuff
How do people who find out that their partner is engaging in a sex life with their child react ? Is it one of jealousy ? Or concern ? Anger ? In that case, are they angry with their child or their partner ?
Also, there was a part of your blog I did not understand. You say that there are people with genetic sexual attraction who say that they can't love anybody like they love their partners but can't be monogamous . You say it could possibly end their lives. I don't understand what you mean. Could you explain please ?
Also, could the fact that I don't like the idea of my parents having sex mean I like my mom. I mean my mom always talks about how she had dreams of me before I was born. She says she feels a bond with me that she has never felt with anybody else. Like she was born to meet me. I know plenty of mothers say things like that. But when my mom talks about such things as if we were lovers.
I agree with most of the things you have written except polygamy. I think everybody should be exclusive to their partners gay, lesbian, straight. But, ...that's just me. I won't try to impose my values on everybody else and will respect your opinion.
Lastly, are you married ?
I believe in destiny and in soulmates. I believe in true love and love after death. I don't think that family members "can't help feeling attracted to each other because of genetics". I think there's a deeper meaning.That love is spiritual and that soulmates are sometimes born in the same family. So, to all you bigots out ther, it's not just a question of "finding somebody else". It's not like shopping for a couch. We all have only one true love and it means the whole world to us. You can't just "find somebody else" like they don't mean anything to you. I honestly believe that we only have ONE TRUE SOUL MATE.
Thanks for your thoughtful consideration, questions, and contributions.
Delete1. Different people will have different reactions to their partner engaging in sex with their child (adult child... I'm not talking about rape or molestation). Some of that depends on what kind of relationship one has with one's partner. Some relationships are open, some are closed. Most open relationships have certain rules. Someone with an agreement of monogamy is going to be upset by their partner having sex with ANYYONE else, right? If someone has discovered that their partner is cheating on them with their child, the best next step depends on several factors. If this is something you are dealing with, email me.
2. I do say that some people couldn't be monogamous "if their life depended on it." What I means is some people can't be monogamous despite knowing they could lose their spouse, their children, they home, their job, their money, etc. etc. Such people should never promise monogamy and should not be expected to be monogamous.
3. Many people don't like the idea of their parents having sex. One reason could be jealousy. I have no idea if that is the reason in your case.
4. I am not married. I have a girlfriend. We have are not physically monogamous as we have good friends with whom we play.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI'm new to this website. I just read your comment on you not being physically monogamous with your girlfriend. Not that it's any of my buisness or anything but don't you feel jealous or hurt or anything ?
I have a few questions regarding polygamous marriages. What kind of rules do people with open marriages have ? Wouldn't it be easier not to get married if you don't want to be exclusive ? I mean think about it - how would your wife be any different from any of your other partners ?
You say that some people couldn't be exclusive even if their lives depended on it. Are you talking about compulsive cheating ? Or are you talking about the jerks who keep hurting their partners just to show they can ?
Thank You.
Many polyamorous people do experience jealousy at one time or another, but then so do people who try to be monogamous.
Delete"Open" relationships and "polyamorous" relationships are not synonymous. There are many polyamorous people in closed relationships involving three or more people.
Rules... different people have different rules. Polaymorous people tend to support mutual, honest agreements. As along as everyone in the relationship has been informed of what is going on and what the boundaries are, then it is up to any individual to either negotiate a change if desired or to leave.
As far as marriage, I'm not married. But I fail to see why it would be "easier not to get married" if one is poly. Marriage does not require monogamy.
When I say people couldn't be monogamous even if their lives depended on it, I'm not just referring to "compulsive" cheating or jerks. There are other possibilities. I'm talking about people who could never be happy depending on one other person for the rest of their lives for their emotional, social, and physical needs. Most people don't live that way, even people who get married once. Even if they never have sex with another person after marrying, they've likely had sex partners before.
Thanks for your questions.
Hey,
ReplyDeleteExcuse my English, I'm from India.
In an ideal world, marriage equality should happen.
But this is not on ideal world. Far from it.
In India it's not that uncommon for uncles and nieces, and second or first cousins to marry. But these marriages do not happen for love. They happen so that families can keep the properties to themselves. There are even certain villages where people get beaten up if they marry ouitside the village.Also, these couples are seldom in love and are together just for the sake of their property.
Maybe, I'm immature, but I believe that marriage should only happen for love. Only when two people who want to grow old with each other and can't bear to be apart . Everyone should be with their soulmates.
This would compound the problem severely. Also, do you propse to have different licences for monogamous and polygamous marriages ? If they are the same, someone can promise monogamy to their spouse but have many other secret partners. It would no longer be called adultery and the spouse would be called a prude !
Who would you live with ? Even in polygamous marriages, don't you need seperate licences for open and closed marriages ? How would you propose to handle division of property if one person in a four-way marriage to their kids ? How would the property be bought ?
Also, there can be many social implications once consanginuous marraiges are no longer a social taboo, the most important one being that children would be looked at as sexual rivals by their parents. I would hate it if my dad looked at me like a rival for my mom. There would be times when people would need to talk to their spouses about the nature of their relationships with their kids(imagine the awkardness). People would find somebody within the family for want of a lack of options.
I want to support you but there are these and so many other problems that would arise in the real world.
Also, just out of curiosity, apart from tagging, how is you "girlfriend any different from your other playmates ? Don't you want to make her feel special ? Do you love her ? I hope you find love and happiness soon !
May God Bless You.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. Your English is much better than my grasp of any other language!
DeleteI do not think anyone should be forced to marry. I think all marriages should be by the consent of all involved, and while love is good reason, I do not impose any test on motivation, except that I am against fraud.
I propose that there still be standard forms for marriage, with some basic standard options, only with more choices. It should be up to the people marrying what kind of marriage they are forming in terms of beneficiary status, decision-making power should one become unable to communicate, and matters of that sort. As long as all involved consent, that is what matters. We have business laws that have dealt with multiple parties joining, splitting, etc. that can be adapted for these purposes.
I do not support cheating, whether it happens in a monogamous agreement or a polyamorous one.
Living arrangements are up to the people involved. In a polygamous marriage, they may all want to live together. Some might want to live in a different home.
I do not support preying on children or grooming children. Those things should remain illegal.
I have found love and happiness. My girlfriend and I make each other feel special all of the time. We have a bond and agreements and share in ways that are different than we have or do with others.
You write as though there are no problems NOW. Allowing an adult to share love, sex, residence, and marriage with ANY consenting adults will solve more problems than it could cause, including that I'm sure it will actually reduce abuse because abuse victims will not be as afraid to work with law enforcement to stop abusers.
Hello. The previous anonymous said, "Also, there can be many social implications once consanginuous marraiges are no longer a social taboo, the most important one being that children would be looked at as sexual rivals by their parents. I would hate it if my dad looked at me like a rival for my mom. There would be times when people would need to talk to their spouses about the nature of their relationships with their kids(imagine the awkardness). People would find somebody within the family for want of a lack of options"
DeleteHe proposes a valid argument. Everything he said. Family would no longer be a forbidden area. It would be normal for family to be in relationships. And say if more than one person wanted the same person in their family? I know you don't support that, but that would be bound to happen. People get jealous and competitive and it causes gaps. People do that all the time in traditional settings already. People already compete against their friends for other people. And that shouldn't happen since it causes hurt, but it does! So family for family? A brother competing with his other brother for his sister? A mom and her daughter for the dad? I'm not saying this would happen to every family who participated in incest. But since it would be socially accepted and people would be more willing to do it, then those problems would arise! Cause we're humans. :l I don't want to deprave people of their rights, but those are actual problems that would happen. Isn't family a place where you're not supposed to worry about that? Wouldn't that be the same as the family who always fought? Cause now they're on edge on who could get what they want.
I am an only child by the way. I'm weird because I don't exactly support incest but the bro-sis ones are kinda kinky. I guess its just the access and how close you are that is hot. But at the sametime, it makes me uncomfortable for the most part though...but I wouldn't stomp someone in the ground for doing it. just saying and questioning.
Thanks, Anonymous. Relationships aren't always going to be perfect. I do support polyamory, so it is possible that a person could have more than one lover. Most people are not attracted to their close relatives to the extent they'd want them to be a sexual partner. It isn't like there is going to be some big increase in intrafamilial sex. There is plenty going on already, but a big increase should not be expected. Protections for minors would be in place, too, as would protections against abuse.
DeleteCan I ask you something ? DO you believe in soulmates ?
ReplyDeleteThat depends on what you mean by the term. I do not think EVERYONE has a soul mate. I recognize that there are people who seem perfect for each other and destined for each other.
DeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteI'm from India too. You seem incredibly polite and thank people even for negative comments. God Bless You for that.I need a forum to rant and this seems like the perfect place.
Consanginuous marriages : As someone said, there are places I know where you would have to mobilise a campaign to marry outside the family. The way I look at it, if you're not marrying for love and you have to pick between two people, then you should pick the one outside your family. Otherwise, the genetic diversity does get damaged.
That being said, I don't think it should be illegal.
Regarding polygamous relationships, I know they are very common in our scriptures, but in most of these relationships, the initial spouses end up feeling neglected however much you harp it will reduce abuse.
There are a couple more points I want to make here.
I propose that if you're going to legalize all kinds of marriages, the licences for open and closed marriages, and within these marriages monogamous and polygamous should have different licenses. They have different rules. Regarding division of assets, inheritence, definition of adultery, they are different things.
Do you support my idea of seperate licenses or do you propose we have some kind of "One-hat fits every head kind of approach" ?
Lastly are you in your twenties or thirties ?
Also, are you sure your girlfriend enjoys your playing activities ? Girls sometimes will only say they are because they would be afraid of being seen as conservatives in face of your radical view ? No Offense.
I have plenty of respect for what you do. You're like some kind of super-hero fighting bigots from all around the world.
May God Bless You Again !
Thank you for your feedback and comment.
DeleteRegarding "different licenses," a standard form could allow for a few different basic options, and people can submit their own written agreements, like prenuptial agreements.
I am still in my 30s.
My girlfriend was well aware that I am polyamorous and what my involvements were before we became a couple. It was her questions about that aspect of me that set the stage for us getting together in the first place. More often then not, she is with me and participating when I am with someone else. I suspect she enjoys this even more than I do. What we have with each other is love. What we do with our friends is play. We care for our friends, too, but the relationship with them is not the same as it is between us.
I have no problem with your license argument but with so many rules and so much red tape around everything.... regarding the sexuality, monogamity or polygamity, opened or closed nature of their relationship, the divorce laws, the inheritence, the owning of property, parenting options and many other things,
ReplyDeletewon't marriage be reduced to a buisness deal ?
Discount the reason of divorce. I'm an old-fashioned person, I believe that when our planet does become perfect enough to allow marriage equality, divorce will become redundant.
You're right, we shouldn't question the motivation of marriage altough the romantic in me still wishes that love was the sole motivation. Even in The Twenty First Century, a very small percentage of couples marry for love and even fewer stay for love.
Consider a marriage of five bisexuals registered in a closed marriage.If one of them seeks a divorce thinks could get really messy from alegal perspective.
There are a few things I would like to ask :
1. Do you want the legal system to recognise the difference between an open and closed marriage like it would for monogamous and polygamous marriages ?
2. What if a spouse wanted security against the other spouse getting married again ? This is the reason different licenses are needed. And if a couple after an extended period of time wants to make it polyamorous, they should be able to change it. Same thing if a polyamorous couple wants to become monogamous .
3.Lastly, in polygamous marriages do you support the idea of having partial spouses. for example if a couple wants to bring an additional person into the marriage, another woman could be got in at about 10 percent of the total importance. (you know instead of 30)Since they don't want to bring in the same level of commitment. It's all consensual of course and the extra woman would have full freedom to look for another spouse or get a divorce. One principal couple and tertiary extras.
Would you support this ?
I think full marriage equality will actually decrease divorce, as people will not longer feel pressured to enter into marriages that do not suit them. You have to understand I am in the US and writing from that perspective. Arranged marriages are far and few between here. And, frankly, in the US, legal marriage is mainly a concern about legal and financial benefits and next of kin. So it is mostly a "business" arrangement from the legal perspective already.
DeleteMany US states have no-fault divorce and the state laws do not care whether or not a marriage is open or closed. I do not think the actual sexual activities of adults are any business of the government.
To your second question, the original marital agreement can contain a provision of the marriage being monogamous, with a determined separation agreement should that be changed. Certainly a monogamous marriage could be changed later by mutual agreement.
As to your third question, the individuals involved should be allowed to determine how things will be handled. All of this has been worked out in business law.
Several of the comments above have asked about, implied, or assumed the need for separate legal provisions for mono and poly or open and closed marriages. While I agree with your response to them in principle, I think that there is an even simpler way than adding different check boxes on the marriage license for these options. Consent is the key to ethical nonmonogamy, and many financial and business agreements similarly require all parties to sign off on charges to the partnership. Essentially, all marriage licences could be considered blind to the open/closed status of the marriage until such time as one or more parties propose adding an additional spouse. At such time, all current members of the marriage could legally grant or withhold consent to welcome a new partner by signing or refusing to sign the amended marriage license. This leaves the partners' status a matter to be discussed amongst themselves rather than adjudicated by law.
DeleteYes the existing divorce laws enable a wife to take half a man's property, even after just a short period of marriage. In hypotheticalcase where a man had legally married five women, and each one decided to divorce him, one after the other, how much would he have left, if he started off with US$10 million?
DeleteThe first wife would take $5 million. The second would take $2.5. The third would take $1.25, the 4th would take $625,000. And the 5th would get only $312,500, only enough for a half decent mobile home!
But then, if each woman had had a child or two with the man, he would also have to pay child support for each child as well as alimony, until they finished high school or university. As a lot of men end up bankrupted after just one acrimonious divorce, the very cunning men would want to marry only girls from rich families, or ones who didn't mind living in poverty if the marriage turned sour. At present there is nothing to stop polyamorous people having their own legal civil contracts made up and I have not heard of a single case of a group of people being jailed for sharing the same bed, hetero or otherwise.
Do you support the idea of having a partial spouse. For instance, a partial spouse would not be living in the same house as the prinicpal couple or be entitled to the first share of life insurance and will not be the first emergency contact ?
ReplyDeleteOr do you think that in a marriage, they shouldn't be marriage if there cannot be 100 percent commitment ?
I figured since you're such a radical, why stop now right ?
A week ago, I was against polygamy, but now you've turned me(i'm only 16). You must have removed so many prejudices through this website.
Wish you and your girlfriend all the best. Hope you two(and only you two) make each other very happy. Sorry just joking there.
God Bless You.
Thank you for your kind words. I think the terms should be up to the people involved. So if their agreement calls for different homes, different percentages of beneficiary, etc., that's fine.
DeleteThe Thief: watch out Homosexuals cause I'm dangerous muh haw haw haw haw so here I am on youtube
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qZImMB-yKA
I will never except Marriage equality cause liberal people are nothing but corrupted kinda people. it's evil I tell
ReplyDeleteya . . evil
Thanks people. I am enjoying that Same-sex marriage is a big successful but I'll keep that in my own Opinion believing that same-sex marriage isn't ok
ReplyDeletelol Good one Vault Dweller :) I can't believe that gays are getting stronger. What the hell!!
DeleteThanks guys I really appreciate your agreements. I don't blame the guy above my comment who doesn't agree marriage equality. right now a lot of people who oppose marriage equality aren't too happy about the approval of same sex marriage, this sucks :( oh well gay marriage sucks anyway lol
DeleteLOL now there some interesting comment. Thank you Vault Dweller, you made my day saying that Marriage equality are disgusting.
ReplyDeleteFuck the liberal people. They are nothing but a mindless stupid zombies that ruined everything.
ReplyDeleteI am still sondering why you haven't deleted the last three comments. I have no problem with their opinions but their language is....undesireable to say the least.
ReplyDeleteI support marriage equality. I don't like it when two siblings in love with each other are not allowed to have a relationship. They are asked to try to find love with others. When you're in love with someone, can you just find somebody else ? And even if you could, would you want to ? When two people are in love with each other, we don't advise them to try and find love with somebody else, so why these double standards ?
That being said, I don't like it when people get married within their families out of prejudice. I am an Indian so arranged marriages are a norm. There are many cousins and uncle/neices who marry each other. I am against this as it is bad for the genetic pool. It's also as if they are trying to say that other families aren't good enough for them. If it isn't for love, why should people marry their uncles, aunts and cousins.
Another issue I have is the social sideffects this could have. People could start marrying their mothers and sisters out of peer pressure once it becomes normal(much like people lose their virginities).
Lastly, wouldn't it be awkward for a man to tell his wife that he is uncomfortable with her relationship with her son ? It might not be sexual but the possibility may occur and he may end up looking like a prude to his wife and kids.
Hope you and your fiancee are doing fine . Does she have a blog ?
I agree with you vault dweller oh and this is for you
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkKkHmFOfKE
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteSince, you freaks don't think society/government has the right to define marriage, why do you think they have the right to define adulthood? Why can't a 12 year old girl and 40 year old man get married? Who is government to say a 12 year old is too young to consent? what about a 9 year old? a 4 year old? You FREAKS are the only ones able and allowed to say what is right or wrong or improper or not.
ReplyDeleteIs there something you want to get off our chest there, Anonymous?
DeleteThis blog is about CONSENTING ADULTS. Our broad legal structures have deeply imbedded distinctions between adults and minors. However, it would not be a difficult or extreme change for the legal concepts of CONSENTING ADULTS having the freedom of association and freedom to marry including EVERYONE who is a consenting adult. For example, in the US, we have the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Courts recognize that amendment about equality applies to all adults, but does NOT apply to allowing adults to prey on minors.
This is all very interesting. To all people who say "oh, that's disgusting" have indtantly lost your argument. Once your argument turns into insults, it shows you can't argue your point, therefore it is invalid. You wouldn!t eat a load if worms, because to you that is disgusting. But it isn't illegal, and the same should apply to incest. As far as marriage goes, marriage is a religous act, so it would be difficult to work everything out. But society has overcome harder tasks, so make of that what you will. This is an excellent argument you've made here Keith, so you've got my support, and the support of many others too, I'm sure!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Anonymous! People with no religion get married in the US every day. There are ceremonies performed by judges, a justice of the peace, etc.
DeleteHello everyone, really happy to find proper incest blog. I am twins with my sister. We both are single 27. I am from pakistan. I really had deep feelings for my sis as I dont find other girls attractive except my sis. To some extend she is also interested to me as she finds ways to rub her body with me, I touched her breast accidently n she never mind that at all. I am confused if she really having incest feelings or not. I need to check it before taking step
ReplyDeleteThese feelings are not a year or two ago. Since childhood I am attracted to her. As brother n sister we are best to each other. We share everything with eachother even something not telling parents
How can I move ahead.
I heard incest in twins brother sister is really common and
and... what?
DeleteThanks for commenting, Anonymous. Well, first of all, I would bring up the subject with her in a way that is not pressuring her and that will not embarrass her. Perhaps you can mention that you were reading up on twin brother & sisters who have close to each other than anyone else, even to the point of being lovers. If you talk about it in that sense, where it could appear you are talking about other people and not yourselves, it could give her a chance to react positively or negatively more comfortably. I would make sure she wants the same thing before ever "accidentally" bumping into her breast again.
Secondly, if she has mutual feelings for you, I'd get out of Pakistan, where my guess is the two of you could be publicly stoned to death, and take her to India, where a love like yours would not be illegal.
Not possible for us to move out of country.
DeleteBringing up a subject is very great idea. Wat movies or animation I can recommend her to get her into this about incest.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteGame of Thrones, you could bringit up during a scene between cersei and jaime lannister
DeleteI agree with this 100%, and have felt this way about love and relationships between consenting adults long before coming across this blog, though I could never have argued the point so deftly.
ReplyDeleteThis is probably the best blog I've seen on consenting adults with GSA, it really makes me happy to read.
ReplyDeleteOn that note, I'm in a consenting relationship with my father and its making us both very happy....its unfortunate that we have to hide it due to certain laws, but I really can't say that any other man has ever made me more happy or comfortable. Its easy for people to become confused or disgusted by this, as we see it incest is the ultimate taboo; I can only hope that people can get around the 'ew' factor and see it for what it really is.
People in love.
Keep on with the good work. :)
Anonymous, thank you for your kind words. Congratulations on you love. If we're not in contact already, please contact me via email or Facebook. Of course, you are welcome to comment more around this blog.
DeleteIncest is legal in India ?
ReplyDeleteI'm not an attorney, but from what I personally understand, yes, consensual adult incest is legal in India.
DeleteI'm doing research on the topic of sexual freedom. I see you support the de-criminalization of all sexual relationships between consensual adults.
ReplyDeleteWhat would happen if the person happens to be ONLY attracted to underage teens or children? How about if they are attracted to house pets or animals? I'm talking about pedophiles and zoophiles.
If you're up for a challenge, I can use arguments from other websites to defend such practices while you try to disapprove of them. This should give you an idea of why some people are disgusted by your rationale.
Anonymous, I am here to defend basic freedom of association between adult humans. My arguments are based on the well-established legal concept of consenting adults. The legal system does not generally recognize the ability of minors or other species to enter into agreements. My arguments are not based on one person's desires without consideration for anyone else.
DeleteAlthough I am very much against abusing children and minors, I'm not here to spend my time defending laws protecting them (and I do not see those laws as under threat), so if you're looking for a debate on those, you're not going to get it from me.
Ok then. I just want to point out a contradiction in your logic.
DeleteIn your counter-argument to power-differentials being a reason to deny relationships, you stated this:
"'There is a power differential.' Power differentials in consanguineous sexual relationships do not provide a good reason to deny the rights of lovers to be in these relationships and to marry, if that is what they want. The power differential allegation applies least of all to siblings or cousins who are close in age, but even where the power differential exists, it is not a justification for denying this freedom to marry."
There is a power differential in just about any relationship, sometimes an enormous power differential."
Ok, we can't prosecute adults for having a relationship with someone who is not of the same intelligence, age or social/economic status, regardless of how large the power differential is. But then I read this excerpt from another page of yours.
"First of all, regardless of laws, I see nothing wrong with any kind of physical affection, contact, or companionship between any consenting adults or minors who are close in age, as long as existing vows to others are not being violated. This includes..."
Ok, now you claim that it is OK for minors to have sexual relationships with another minor of similar age. Now your positions on Power-differential and Romeo-Juliet laws really start to intrigue me. However, you overlook the fact that Romeo-Juliet laws were made to PREVENT the existence of power-differentials in relationships. I have a feeling you'd lobby against laws preventing employers from having sex with their employees, right? This must mean that it should be ok for an adult and a adolescent/pre-pubescent to have sexual relationships as long as there is no harm and both parties agree.
As of now, it looks like minors can legitimate consent to some degree of sex and that power-differential is not an issue if both parties give legitimate consent.
But in your section "Against Abuse", you condemned such relationships using this logic.
"I vehemently condemn rape, sexual assault, and coercion against anyone of any age, and I vehemently condemn adults and significantly older minors molesting or having sex with minors. Child abuse is unacceptable. Forcing children into “marriage” with adults is unacceptable."
Why is this wrong? I am assuming that it is because an adult or significantly older minor has a power advantage in a relationship with a younger minor, because if no force or coercion, deceit, or blackmailing was involved getting a child to agree to some form of relationship bonding, it would still be condemned by you. You can't say that children cannot consent to sex, because they can consent to each other according to you.
Consider taking the time to change some of your positions.
There is no contradiction.
DeleteWhen I wrote about power differentials, I was referring to consenting adults.
A legal adult and a minor child are in completely different situations socially and in our broad legal structures. Thus, it is not problematic for a 21-year-old to consent to sex with a 50-year-old and laws that say otherwise are in conflict with our broader legal structures. However, laws that say a 10-year-old can't consent to sex with a 30-year-old are very much in line with our broader legal structures.
Again, this blog exists to argue for the rights of consenting adults. If you disagree with that, we can have an argument. If you want to advocate or other matters, you can have your own blog.
I'm not specifically here to advocate anything. However, I don't focus on telling people what my other motives are or if I even have any. I still think you have a contradiction.
Delete"A legal adult and a minor child are in completely different situations socially and in our broad legal structures."
In some states, minors as young as 12 are allowed to have abortions without their parents notifications. Some districts are contemplating on lowering the voting age to 16 or lower.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/03/takoma-park-voting-age-lowered_n_3007487.html
In California, it is plausible for a 15 year old to obtain a drivers license. The Age of Criminal responsibility is well within the tween years of many Western Countries. Northern Ireland's age of Criminal responsibility is 10. There is also a lobby to reduce the drinking age to 16 or 18.
In Germany, it is legal for a 14 year old and a XX(X) year old adult to engage in sexual intercourse as long as no manipulation was involved. However, the age of majority in Germany is 18 the last time I checked.
Not only are the differences in social status between Juveniles/Teenagers and Young Adults smaller than you claim it to be, but some civilized Western countries do not follow your notion that the ability to consent to sex is granted at legal adulthood.
I do not have a contradiction. I recognize the laws are inconsistent when it comes to minors. For example, in many places in the US, a 16-year-old can legally marry and have sex, but can't, like many married couples, take video during sex or share that video with friends. But I have to have a focus with this blog, and that focus includes consenting adults,
DeleteYou will keep contradicting yourself until you stop accepting/suggesting/acknowledging close age sexual intercourse between minors as inculpable.
Delete"I see nothing wrong with any kind of physical affection, contact, or companionship between any consenting adults or minors who are close in age"-you
"I vehemently condemn adults and significantly older minors molesting or having sex with minors"-you
Don't you think these excerpts should be modified? They don't sound like they advocate for sexual intercourse between consenting-adults only. If you don't want to because you disagree then tell me this:
What's the big difference in legal status between an 11 year old and a 4 year old other than a significant power differential?
I am not contradicting myself. Children are a special category. Most therapists do not consider it abusive when minors close in age experiment.
DeleteAnonymous, you are confusing consent and 'power differentials'. That is why laws against rape exist. Thanks.
DeleteThank you for making this site even tho I have no interest in having consanguineous relationship I am glad to know that I'm not the only person that believes consensual sex is consensual sex regardless of other factors. Hopefully more people like you will help bring an end to pointless destruction of families.
ReplyDeleteDear Keith,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your blog. I am a practicing Catholic and your blog shows the logical consequences of changing the traditional definition of marriage in a way that no other site does. May God bless you in your work.
Anonymous, it is logical for all adults to have their rights. I am not sure what you mean by "traditional definition of marriage'" since marriage traditions have varied from place to place and time to time. For example, in many places, polyandry is traditional.
DeleteBy "practicing Catholic" do you mean you regularly confess to a priest, refrain from the use of contraception, refrain from masturbation, and avoid all sexual activity that leads to ejaculation of semen outside of a vagina? Of course these are very personal questions, but if you think it is your business to interfere in the relationships of others, then you should be willing to answer some questions about your own.
Hi I just wanted to let you know a recent DNA breakthrough will allow defects in children to be fixed: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/exclusive-jawdropping-breakthrough-hailed-as-landmark-in-fight-against-hereditary-diseases-as-crispr-technique-heralds-genetic-revolution-8925295.html
ReplyDeleteI think that this article successfully shuts down the main arguments of an uneducated and irrational person
ReplyDeleteAs per genetics it is safer for mother to have children by her biological son, and daughter to have children by her biological father but sister should not have children by her biological brother as it increases the risk of having deformed children. Better sister and brother enjoy sex together with taking care not to become pregnant.
ReplyDeleteWhy? A brother and sister have every right to reproduce just as everyone else does?
DeleteCould you please define 'bigot'?
ReplyDeleteThere are many English dictionaries available online.
DeleteI can't believe it I read this blog for more than 2 hours straight...including all these comments and replies.. I'm so glad that I am not the only one who thinks consensual incest love or sex is fine.. as we are humans we have desires too, to make and express love too. Its completely fine, if you are not hurting each other sentiments.. And for marriage equality, I completely agree with your points you put here.. though there will be some problems but hopefully we will find the solutions. I was in an incest relationship with my twin- sister a few years ago had sex only twice or thrice though and then I stopped.. I started to feel regret about it a lot not because I had sex with her but because I cared about her and I thought I was committing a crime, I thought maybe it will ruin her life in the future.. But thanks to this blog I found. It just give me some relief. I still love my sister and still care for her. She is the best girl I've ever known and she rocks. I hope if there will be marriage equality in the future happens I will definitely support it. thank you admin I love you so much.. :)
ReplyDeleteAnonumous, thanks. I'm glad this blog has been of benefit to you. If you haven't done so already, get in touch. I can be reached at fullmarriageequality at yahoo dot com
Delete"3. Most births to consanguineous parents do not produce children with significant birth defects or other genetic problems; while births to other parents do sometimes have birth defects. 4. We don’t prevent other people from marrying or deny them their reproductive rights based on increased odds of passing along a genetic problem or inherited disease. It is entirely legal for people with obvious or hidden serious genetic diseases to date, have sex, marry, and have children. Why should healthy consanguineous lovers be denied their rights?"
ReplyDeleteAnother point to be made is about Uniparental Disomy. Especially if we take into account genetic imprinting. And consider that this can happen in non-consanguineous heterosexual relationships, as well, after all.
"Unless someone is willing to deny reproductive rights and medical privacy to others and force everyone to take genetic tests and bar carriers and the congenitally disabled and women over 35 from marrying or having children, then equal protection principles prevent this from being a justification to bar this freedom of association and freedom to marry, let alone reproductive rights. "
Exactly. If they wanted to do that they would have had to bar my maternal grandparents from marrying. Why? Because my own mother and her youngest sibling's oldest child (my cousin) each have a cancer that developed IN UTERO. But there is no genetic test that would determine who would or would not get it with absolute certainty, especially at the time of my grandparents' marriage but not even now. Which would mean they would have to block EVERYONE from marrying. Yeah, I'd have to say to people like them, "Good luck with that." and, "Not exactly what you were aiming for, eh?".
There are a lot of interesting points here and, I mean no offense, a lot of non sequiturs. I came here looking for some insight into whether or not incest and polyamory ought to be legally approved across the board, and, though nothing quite addressed my specific questions, I did come out with a much better understanding of my own beliefs to the point that my questions were answered at least partly by myself. For this, I'm grateful to the author of such a list of arguments and counterarguments.
ReplyDeleteMy original questions about incest revolved around the potential for abuse and the eventual re-formation of tyranical political factions. My main concerns for polyamory are regarding the increased risk of a leader or group oppressing those in close connection with their group (as with the lost boys and unwilling women within the FLDS faith). I've no doubt that, as the blogger here states, there are many good examples of incestuous and polyamorous relationships that shouldn't be denied marriage. The blogger is quick to point out that bad examples obviously exist within what's legally and culturally accepted as well, but there's unfortunately no scholarly peer-reviewed information here to convince me that the risks of legalizing incest and polyamory across the board are worth the relatively few known good examples of these kinds of relationships.
I do believe that potentially healthy, incestuous and polyamorous relationships are more common than we see in the media, and the law ought to hold no prohibition against the genuine love of incestuous or polyamorous individuals who wish to marry, but to say that incest and polyamory ought to be legalized without some safeguard against the pitfalls of each is like using an acetylene torch to make a grilled cheese sandwich: both excessive and dangerous. The agruments in the blog (and others I've seen) point repeatedly to the justified dangers of heterosexual monogamy. A stovetop, even at the right temperature, can burn your sandwich, yes, and it also might not handle tasks that require the heat of an oven to bake your turkey. Current laws poorly handle spousal rape cases, for instance, like a stovetop burner might handle a casserole.
Forgive the food analogies, please. I'm a little hungry.
I don't think it was the blogger's intention to justify abusive relationships in order to allow the good ones. The writer argues points, rather, that oppose abuse, insisting that, with decriminalization, individuals in abusive incest or other relationships might be more likely to seek help from the authorities. Still, I'm disappointed there's not at least one evidentiary, peer-reviewed, journal article provided for such a claim. I can understand such literature may be hard to come by.
Without any scholarly material to show the risks are equal to nonconsanguinous, heterosexual monogamy, the most I can support, personally, is what I've already supported. Individuals in polyamorous and incestuous relationships that wish to be married should be allowed only after careful and impartial investigation by a forensic social worker. The same ought to be the case for those who, with parental support, wish to engage in willing pedophilic relationships. When there's enough data, PERHAPS such investiagtion and/or close monitoring might become unnecessary for future groups and couples, but, after careful consideration, I'm convinced it would be a worthwhile precaution given the present culture and seeming lack of reliable research.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. We do support laws against abuse in various forms. Someone can report suspected abuse to social workers and police, who can then investigate, but just as police would not automatically assume adults in an interracial or same-gender relationship are in an abusive one or are abusing any children in the home, neither should the assumption be made when it comes to polyamorous or consanguineous relationships between adults. It should not be a matter of them being presumed guilty until proven innocent. The presumption of innocence should be applied equally.
DeleteNo truer words spoken. I'm consanguinamarous, and used to have a brilliant and loving relationship with my dad. We've been apart now for a few years because we broke up... due to fear of being discovered and because he thought that it might be 'wrong'. I've always been more attracted to family than to non-family. I'm actually quite comfortable with my sexuality and wouldn't change it even if I could. Is still love him so much and hope that one day he comes home to me. We've both had others, and neither of us have had any lasting success in relationships. He was abused by my mother throughout their marriage and he stayed because he thought he 'should' with me and my siblings being young children. That's made him skeptical about love for a start. I came along for him once I'd grown up and shown him that I was interested, and we had a beautiful and passionate relationship, but he still has guilt because he thinks he shouldn't have been so weak. If our society accepted us for who and what we are, we would be together and not wandering aimlessly. I know in my heart, I could never love another as I loved him (and still do), all others have paled in comparison. Without the family dimension, relationships to me feel almost hollow, like friends with benefits. It's about time we did have equal rights then stories like mine would be far less common.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, thanks for sharing that. I'd very much like to communicate with you more about this. Please email me at fullmarriageequality at yahoo dot com.
DeleteMankind has evolved beyond the era where sex was practised for procreation, to where it is practised for mutual enjoyment between consenting adults, giving pleasure to both and satisfying in the spiritual and physical needs of both.
ReplyDeleteFor me there was nothing more beautiful than the first time my sister and I made love, and we were bound together not only physically, but also spiritually. With my penis deep inside her vagina, we laid still like that for quite a while, just embracing the sheer eroticism of being coupled. And when we eventually completed the lovemaking act by enjoying a simutaneous orgasm and my semen poured into her body, it was a moment neither of us will ever forget.
Lovemaking between siblings do occur. In many cases, it is a passing phase to satisfy curiosity in sexual matters whilst growing up. For others, it is a deep and long lasting relationship with two people who are in love. In the case of me and my sister, we never wanted to marry or have an offspring; it was a case of doing something which is natural and of which neither of us are ashamed. We have no regrets and no hangups. When we meet (both are happily married now), or talk over the telephone, we would reminisce about a wonderful time in our lives when we made love almost daily for a period of three years.
Thanks, Anonymous. If you haven't done so already, please contact me at fullmarriageequality at yahoo dot com
DeleteI agree with most of the points you present in this article, as well as the rest of the writings on your blog. The only part I do have a problem with is the point about power imbalances in relationships. There is currently no legal framework for preventing relationships with various kinds of power differentials, as you have implied, which means that it is still a weak argument against consanguinous relationships, but I do believe that a significant power differential in any relationship can lead to questions about consent and increased possibility for abuse. As you said, legalization of multiple types of relationships can make it safer for abuse to be reported.
ReplyDeletetldr; I think that power differentials in relationships are a valid concern (wherever that differential comes from) and people should be careful about such relationships, but this is not specific to relationships between people who are related, nor is it something that can be fixed by outlawing certain relationships (because as I said, an imbalance can come from many different sources)
How do you know? Seriously. How do you know? Unless you have proof of something, its just an opinion. Show me proof that its disgusting. Show me proof that its not natural. Oh yeah. Thats right. You cant show me any proof! You cant show proof because there is no proof! End of story!
ReplyDeleteLet me give you some "truth juice"!! You have no proof! So if you dont have any proof then why are you arguing about this with me? Whats the point of arguing if you dont have any proof? What do you have against me? Is it because im different then you?
ReplyDeleteI have proof? Why dont you have any proof? Thats right. Because its not true. If there is no proof then there is no reason there shouldnt be full marriage equality for all.
ReplyDeleteIf someone is arguing with you and they dont have proof then their arguing is based solely on emotions. So ask them why they care? You have no proof of what you are saying so why do you care? Its because you dont like what im doing. Right. Sorry. Just because you dont like what im doing doesnt make it ok to deny me my rights.
ReplyDeletei do support polyamory but i do not support mononormativity cause mononormativity glorifies anti-polyamory plus its polyphobia. in reality monogamy is not natural cause were not designed to be monogamous except either single or polyamorous. too much arguments out there about single, monogamy, and polyamory. nobody decides who to love but we decide who to love ourselves. its time for international court to legalize all forms of polyamory relationships in this world.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine told me not long ago that during some part of the Sasanian period, people were fined for not marrying a relative. The reference he provided was Berkowicz. If this is true or not, I don't know and so far I have not found the Berkowicz book. But it makes sense to me that sometimes things do go in the extremes of the opposite direction. If a country does start to be getting too 'mongrelized' people might tend to feel that the essential culture holding a country together is being eroded to the point where it is in danger of being replaced by more dominant and cohesive imported cultures. In such a situation, what would be more natural than encouraging less inter-marriage, especially when the new migrants are mostly marrying their own cousins and attending only their own temples, synagogues and mosques. The intention behind banning incest might have been to encourage maximum population growth and national strength and expansion, but such goals seem rather questionable in these days of global warming, over-population, rapid species extinction, and the multiple threats to existence from such things as A.I. imperialist wars, air, land and sea pollution, and new diseases spreading by jet airliners.
ReplyDeleteSorry I spelled the name wrong. 'Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire' is by Eric Berkowitz. He is mentioned in the wikipedia article on incest.
ReplyDeleteHey Keith, you forgot some arguments here:
ReplyDeleteLet's Ditch The Double Standards! -Jane Doe
https://consanguinamory.wordpress.com/2016/08/24/lets-ditch-the-double-standards/