It is currently illegal in the United Kingdom for consenting adults who are close family members to have sex. This is absurd; we should legalise incest.
Agreed! Have enhancements for rape, sexual assault, and molestation by a guardian. But consensual sex between adults should not be a criminal matter.
By far the greyest issue here is that of procreation. If two adults choose to have sex, that’s their own affair, but do they have the right to risk the health of their children? That’s a hefty gamble to take with someone else’s life. As such, there is some justification to the idea that a closely-related couple should be legally prohibited, not from having sex, but from having children.
Please see Discredited Argument #18.
What is simply unjustifiable is that it is not illegal for people with serious heritable diseases to procreate, which is exactly the same thing. Yet how many of you would be comfortable making it illegal for an epileptic or haemophiliac to have children? That strays dangerously close to eugenics, but if that’s your position, fine. However, you can’t have it both ways: either legalise incestuous procreation, or criminalise procreation for those with hereditary diseases.
But in cases without procreation, the issue could not possibly be more clear-cut: we have no right to put consenting adults in jail for humping.
Or making love, for that matter.
The sole, single, solitary argument against this is almost painfully bad: “Yuck.” The thought of family members doing it disturbs me. Make it illegal.
That’s Discredited Argument #1.
The refutation of this argument is reassuringly simple: “Screw you.” (And I mean this very precisely.) What do you or your feelings have to do with it? The Law is not there to prevent you being disgusted. The State is not there to give you a warm, fuzzy sensation inside.
He goes on to make a moral case for legalizing consanguinamory, and I agree. If adults are happy together, it is immoral to try to force them apart. Consanguinamory can be the right thing to do, depending on the people involved.
Thank you, David Leon!
There is no inherent problem with close relatives breeding. Human DNA has flaws & defects. When siblings or other close relatives breed they have a Slight Increase in the Chance of those defects. 'Slight' & 'Chance' being the key words here.
ReplyDeleteIt's alright to spout off statistics that there is something like a 50% chance of ANY type of birth defect when relatives mate, but what they don't tell you is that (by the same definition of Defect) the average everyday couple having children have at least a 45% chance of the same defects. It's like saying the person who buys 42 lottery tickets will win & the person who buys 40 tickets will not.
Furthermore, the statistics include everyday normal defects, like epilepsy or haemophilia and probably even hay-fever and lactose intolerance.
Many ancient cultures had sibling marriages. For quite a long period of time in Ancient Egypt, the most common marriages among Pharaohs were with siblings. It was considered the right of both Royalty & 'Gods' to do so. Even these days, royal families all marry their cousins. For millenia the right to breed with close kindred has been reserved for royalty.
That, in itself, should make a person wonder...
Thank you, anonymous. The old saying goes, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. If the risk percentage for a birth defect for parents not closely related is 3%, and for closely related parents it is 6%, that is a "dramatic" increase of 100%! It is "twice as likely" and all of that. But the flip side, that isn't emphasized, is that there is still a 94% chance things will be fine. There are beautiful, healthy, intelligent, happy people in this world whose genetic parents were siblings or parent-child, and it is obviously false and insulting to say that consanguinamorous parents "will" have disadvantaged children. The only disadvantage most of these children have is the bigotry of the people who profess to be concerned.
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