Still No Good Reason for Laws Against Consensual Incest

Danz123 in London asked at The Student Room, “Should incest be legalised?”

As regular readers here know, we say adults should be able to pursue love, sex, and marriage with any consenting adults, including close relatives. Consanguineous sex should not be a crime, and consanguinamory should be celebrated. Only abuse and assault, including child abuse, should be a crime when it comes to incest.

OK, so I know this subject has been debated, and a few threads have been made on it, but I came across this argument for legalising incestuous relationships, and I want to see how people who think it shouldn't be legal respond to this:

"People seem to assume a 100% probability that any children will have a severe genetic defect from an incestous relationship.

A litlle research will show that the closest possible relation will increase the defect rate 7 to 10 % above the backgound rate. Now, couples every day, with known genetic disorders or known carriers, try to have children that may have as much as a 50% chance of getting that defect. NOTHING is done to stop them, and in fact many applaude their "conviction" to TRY and have a good one.

So, if the reason is possible defects then either the law is wrong or it is based on something else.

I believe it is based on the "ewwwww", "gross" factor that is the knee jerk reaction most people have. Its true there is a psychological finding called the Westermarck Effect that contributes to that, but for those that arent affected, and there is no under age people involved then and its all consensual, who does it hurt?

You may not like it, but that shouldnt make it illegal."

Danz123 did a good job. Some allies chimed in. The “no” side consisted of the typical bad arguments, most common being “eew.”

Psyk, example, invoked Discredited Arguments #18 and 20.

Novis had an all-too-common non-argument…

It's disgusting and wrong. End of.

This is nothing but prejudice. As is what rob6709 wrote…

You can throw every argument under the sun for it at it me. End of the day, in my opinion it's immoral.

Okay then. That is not rational.

robstening wrote what he thought was an argument…

Liberalising incest law essentially says to the world "you can sleep with whoever you want".

And the problem with that is…? If adults consent to have sex with each other, some stranger should not have a say.

Stratos made sense…

You cannot simply say something is wrong because it is disgusting, can I say that fish is wrong because it's disgusting, no I can't because I understand that it's my preference nothing more, I don't have the right to impose my preferences on other people because they don't hold more value.

Thank you!

yellowpurpleyellow…

No it shouldn't be legalised. I can't even imagine how it's possible anyone could look at family like that :/

That’s Discredited Argument #3.

Finally, stevie2 made the following claims that I neither confirm nor deny…

1. Islam teaches that muslims are not allowed to have "normal" sex before marriage. Other sexual practices, ie anal, oral and masturbation etc are regarded as laman (spelling?), a minor sin.

2. If a daughter is born as the result of muttah marriage (short term marriage for the purpose of prostitution - money being exchanged to pay her for the act), the father can marry and have sex with her, as islam does not regard his female child as his daughter if its the result of prostitution marriage. Note the muslim divorces the woman, ie the old saying I divorce you three times shortly after the sexual act has taken place.

If your going to play the "thats only a certain sect of islam/I/we dont do/believe that" game, I know others sects use different names for it, for example, 'travel' marriage.

Anyone want to add to or clarify any of that?

In yet another long discussion, we see there is no good reason to deny consanguinamorous people their rights.