Laws Applied to Consanguineous Interactions Being Reconsidered

Incest laws are being reconsidered in various places, and that has made some news. As we have argued and demonstrated many times on this blog, consensual sex and relationships should never be criminalized or discriminated against, and should not be lumped together with assault/abuse/molestation, which is something completely different and that laws should treat very seriously.

At ozarksfirst.com, Laurie Patton writes about what is happening in Missouri.

When children are sexually victimized, the crime is usually committed by a relative or someone else close to the victim.

Of course. This is like saying people are much more likely to get into automobile accidents within a certain distance from home. That is where they are most of the time.

But, in Missouri, incest is a class D felony listed among family crimes in a different section from sex crimes.

Now, some lawmakers hope to rewrite the criminal code to include incest as a factor in sex crimes against children.

As long as that means abusers will not be able to continue to abuse, that's a good thing.

Johnson, the Child Advocacy Center Executive Director, says an investigation is more difficult when the offender is a relative.

In some cases, one reason that is true is because witnesses are involved in consensual, but still-criminalized relationships and as such do not want to cooperate with law enforcement. Missouri lawmakers should take this opportunity to remove criminalization and discrimination against consensual adult relationships, so that resources can be concentrated on prosecuting abusers.

At al-monitor.com, Mohammed Othman wrote "Palestine needs stronger laws against incest."

Article 155 of the Mandate Criminal Code Ordinance, No. 74 of 1936, in force in the Gaza Strip, states: “Anyone who goes to bed, in an unlawful manner, with an unmarried girl over 16 years of age but not yet 21, or aids or helps another to go to bed with her illegally, with the girl being a descendant of him or his wife, or when he is her guardian, or entrusted with her education or care, shall be considered to have committed a felony punishable by five years’ imprisonment.”

Lawyer Fatima Ashour said that the article is deficient in many aspects. She told Al-Monitor, “The text of the applicable law states that raping a female relative is punishable by five years in prison, while it stipulated that the penalty for raping a non-relative girl is 14 years. It is as if its aim is to encourage the raping of relatives; not to mention that it only addressed the rape of a young unmarried relative, without allusion to the rape of an adult married one.”

At what age is someone treated as an adult by the broad legal system? That is the age they should be free to share love, sex, residence, and marriage (or any of those without the others) with any and all consenting adults. And people of any age should be protected from abusers.

Finally, here's a report at aftonbladet.se from Elisabet Höglund that Sweden is considering making the laws less hostile to consanguinamory. The translation was provided by Google.

Sexual intercourse between siblings , that is, incest or "incest" as it was called in the past, has been one of the liveliest debate topics on Facebook in recent weeks. The background is a statement in 2010 by the Social Democratic parliamentary woman Monica Green from Skaraborg. A brother and sister in their 20s Kalmar had been charged with having sex with each other and risked being sentenced to a year in prison. Monica Green argued that it should be allowed for anyone, even siblings having sex with each other and that incest should be decriminalized.

Monica Green was right.

If we in Sweden right now debating incest , it's nothing compared to what the Danes have done this past year. Just over a year ago suggested the Danish parliamentary party Enhedslistan, bringing together the Left and the environmentalists, that sex between siblings should be allowed. This debate arose then a Danish siblings accused of having had sex with each other, thus a direct parallel to the Swedish case. 

The fact is, it happens everywhere.

The reason that incest condemned for thousands of years, the genetic damage to a child conceived by two siblings with identical genetic makeup can get.

Ah, Discredited Argument #18. And thousands of years ago there was no such understanding of genetics.

Legalize love. Prosecute abuse.