Update on Iowa Case of Apparent Persecution

We previously covered this the last time there was an update. The state of Iowa, and especially the authorities in Clear Lake, have apparently wasted taxpayer resources to persecute someone for having consensual sex. That's the only logical conclusion, based on the information provided, which isn't much. Though the defendant is apparently no threat to anyone, his picture and name get featured in the news. Here's an example from northiowatoday.com...

A Clear Lake man who pleaded guilty to incest has been sentenced to probation.

Probation. Now, imagine for a second this was an assault. Probation would be outrageous.

Now, consider that this was likely a matter of consensual sex, because probation is too outrageous for an assault case. It's outrageous that he was prosecuted for consensual sex.

Allegedly, Russ had engaged in sexual contact with a person he is related to; court records didn’t elaborate.

That's not acceptable. Nobody should be arrested for private "sexual contact." How is anyone supposed to believe that anything even happened? How did police get involved? Did an uninvolved person call the police?

Under Iowa law, a person, except a child, who performs a sex act with another whom the person knows to be related to the person, either legitimately or illegitimately, as an ancestor, descendant, brother or sister of the whole or half blood, aunt, uncle, niece, or nephew, commits incest. Incest is a class “D” felony.

This is absurd. Let consenting adults be together how they mutually agree.

At sentencing this week, judge Annette Boehlje gave Russ 5 years of probation. A 5 year prison sentence and a $750.00 fine were suspended. He must pay $632.00 in court costs.

So he has a fine and a threat of prison held over his head.

A no-contact order with the victim was extended.

Victim. If there is was consensual, there was no victim. If this was not consensual, it was not sex, but rather assault. Ordering no contact between adults who had consensual sex is ridiculous.

Mary Pieper at globegazette.com reported...

A no-contact order with the victim has been extended for five years, according to Cerro Gordo County District Court records.

Russ was accused of performing a sex act with a person he knew was related to him in December 2014, according to court documents.

The lack of information is appalling. It would be possible to include more without revealing the identity of the other person. Was this a GSA case? Something awful was done by law enforcement here. Either an abuser is pretty much getting away with it, or, more likely, a citizen is being persecuted for no good reason. There is no good reason to deny adults their freedom of association in this way. The only reason for the court to get involved is legally marry adult lovers.

Consanguinamory Blogs Updating Regularly

Jane Doe's Consanguinamory blog is offering new content all of the time, and in this entry she dismantles anti-consanguinamory prejudice from a news column like a controlled demolition. Those who want to defend discrimination do NOT want to get into an argument with Jane!

Another Wordpress blog to check out is Supporting Consanguinamory.

Reminders:

Another great new site that has a blog is Friends of Lily. The companion Tumblr is here.

A new Tumblr blog has been started by someone in a GSA-initiated half-sibling relationship.

Comment and/or send the bloggers messages if you can, to let them know what you think.

Survey Being Taken on Experience With Consanguinamory

If you've ever been in a consanguineous relationship or have had experience with consanguinamory, meaning anything from fleeting experimentation to lifelong romance or anything in between with a close relative, please consider responding to Jane's effort to collect information on these relationships.

Ridiculous Restrictions on Consanguineous Relationships in Literature

Should online suppliers of literature such as novels and short stories, including erotic stories, ban stories with these scenarios?

• A man marries his half-sister, a woman so beautiful she is desired by a king. The man and his half-sister have a son together.
• A king marries and older woman; they are unaware of their genetic relation as mother and son until later.
• A husband, wife, their three sons and three daughters-law repopulate after a catastrophe, meaning first cousins and possibly closer relatives must have sex.
• A man and woman are commanded by a deity to have sex to reproduce and populate a planet, meaning that siblings and possibly parents and adult children will be having sex with other and having children together.
• A woman is attracted to a young man she doesn't realize is her grown son. She attempts to make out with him.
• Two sisters get their father drunk and each have intercourse with him, and each get pregnant.
• A young man is captivated by a video of his twin sister, saying out loud that she's beautiful. Later, they share a passionate kiss.
  

If those stories are to be banned, then we've just banned Abraham & Sarah (Genesis), Oedipus Rex, Noah and his family (Genesis), Adam & Eve (Genesis), "Back to the Future," Lot & his daughters (Genesis), and "Star Wars" Episodes VI and V.

And yet, there are sellers of literature who do ban consensual adult incest (consanguinamory). It's ridiculous, but that's how strong the prejudice against consanguinamory can be. I guarantee the revenue these businesses would gain from selling stories with consanguinamory would outweigh the revenue lost from anyone choosing to boycott as a result. It is not a good business decision for these media outlets. It's catering to the bigoted and uptight.

Whether the Bible, Greek mythology, or Game of Thrones, our stories have always had  consanguineous relationships because they've always been a part of life. Someone could not write an honest, inclusive depiction of some Egyptian or Hawaiian royalty (or many other historical figures) if consanguineous sex couldn't be described.

These businesses can be part of the problem of forcing people underground or they can be part of the solution to supporting the rights of all.

Speaking of being part of the solution, if you have of used to have an romantic or sexual relationship with a close relative, or know someone who has, I'm not afraid to tell the story and I will protect your identity.

Consanguinamory Happens, and Sometimes Children Are a Result

Here's an article with a few good nuggets, but also contains some condescending opinions. Dana Dovey at medicaldaily.com writes about consanguineous sex and inbreeding, which aren't always the same thing.

Incest is defined as having sexual relations with close family members, and throughout the majority of the world the practice is not only taboo but also illegal.

In many places, yes, but not all.

However, just because people won’t admit to partaking in incest does not mean that the practice does not occur.

Consanguinamory happens a lot more than most people think.

In some circumstances, incest is a necessity  and multiple studies have shown that offspring of distant relatives are actually healthier than the general population.

I'm not surprised.

However, the risk for life-threatening deformities and diseases among inbred children is not as high as you may believe.

Right. Most children born to close relatives are healthy, and, depending on genetics, might be highly intelligent.

A 2008 study on 48 cases of incest found that the risk for birth defects is around two percent in the general population but rises to only four percent between first cousins. However, due to the sensitivity of the subject, there was no information available for the children of incest between closer relations.

Children are born to closer relatives every day. It's ridiculous that bigotry is keeping science away.

The article goes on to talk about Genetic Sexual Attraction.

Whatever anyone wants to say about why some people engage in consangiunamory, there's no good reason to perpetuate bigotry in law or discrimination against consenting adults.

Seeking Attorneys Willing to Represent Consenting Adults

We are interested in collecting contact information of legal counsel, lawyers, and attorneys willing to assist consenting adults who face discrimination and prosecution for being together. Specifically, these would be adults who are closely related by consanguinity or affinity. Some of them would be people who were not raised together and may have birth certificates that do not indicate close relation to each other, yet they still face legal issues for being together.

We are looking for attorneys who specialize in family law, criminal defense, and/or civil rights. Wherever you are in the world, we want to hear from you.


This is not a solicitation to represent a specific client at this time. This is simply an effort to collect contact information for willing legal counsel. However, there is the potential to have a history-making test case as a result of giving us your contact information.

Here are examples of some of the common situations in which legal counsel may be needed...

• Consenting adults facing criminal prosecution for privately having sex.
• A biological-custodial parent facing removal of a minor child because of that parent's consensual sexual relationship with another adult.
• A legal parent in a dispute over custody of/visitation with a minor child wherein the other parent is citing the first parent's consensual relationship with another adult as reason to deny custody/visitation.
• Consenting adults in a long-term relationship seeking to legally marry, but being denied due to discriminatory laws (even in jurisdictions where they can legally cohabitate and have sex.)
• An adult experiencing employment or housing discrimination because of a consensual relationship with another adult.

Day in and day out, there are people who live under the threat that someone will destroy their life  simply because they love another adult. If you are serious about being willing to help protect the rights of people who aren't harming anyone, please write us a fullmarriageequality at yahoo dot com with your contact information, where you can practice, and areas of law you practice.

Polyamory as a Sexual Orientation

Facebook has, thankfully, moved beyond the gender binary. That is a great step. Facebook should become more accommodating of relationship diversities as well.

Ann E Tweedy of the Hamline University School of Law has this paper available for download on polyamory as a sexual orientation. Here's what the abstract says...

This Article examines, from a theoretical standpoint, the possibility of expanding the definition of “sexual orientation” in employment discrimination statutes to include other disfavored sexual preferences, specifically polyamory. First, it examines the current, very narrow definition of sexual orientation, which is limited to orientations that are based on the sex of those to whom one is attracted, and explores some of the conceptual and functional problems with the current definition. Next the Article looks at the possibility of adding polyamory to current statutory definitions of sexual orientation, examining whether polyamory is a sufficiently embedded identity to be considered a sexual orientation and the degree of discrimination that polyamorists face. After concluding that such an expansion would be reasonable, the Article briefly outlines some issues for further investigation, including potential policy implications and the conflicting evidence as to whether polyamorists want specific legal protections.

We have previously discussed the expansion of the acronymn LGBT. Personally, I think a useful inclusive term is gender, sexuality, and relationship diversities (GSRD). Isn't it obvious from thousands of years of human history that some people are polyamorous, just like they are left-handed or heterosexual. Even if they are seeing only one person, or nobody at all, some people simply are polyamorous as part of their identity. Some people couldn't be monogamous under the threat of ostracism, shaming, loss of employment, loss of marriage, loss of child custody, loss of their wealth, etc. Trying to force people into monogamy is hurtful to all involved.

Yes, there are people who have been comfortable and fulfilled in monogamous or polyamorous relationships, but that doesn't mean that there aren't people who are polyamorous, just like the existence of bisexuals does not mean that there are no heterosexuals or gays.

Poly people should be as free as anyone else to share love, sex, residence, and, if they want, marriage with any and all consenting adults, without prosecution, bullying, or discrimination. That's why we need full marriage equality.

Bookmark These Blogs

There are some great blogs about consanguinamory that have just started to get off the ground.

Go here and bookmark the Consanguinamory blog and/or subscribe for updates. There are going to be some great insights there and there is already worthwhile content. For example, there's this page for people who are dealing with their own consanguinamory and this page for people who think or know someone in their family is consanguinamorous. I'm bumping up this entry because the blog has posted a series of videos with narration that is important for people to hear.

The other great new site that has a blog is Friends of Lily. The companion Tumblr is here.

A new Tumblr blog has been started by someone in a GSA-initiated half-sibling relationship.

It's so good to see more places where people can get information.

Also, as a reminder, The Final Manifesto blogspot is a great blog to bookmark and follow for marriage equality issues,  and there's the related Tumblr, too.

Also, if you want a discussion forum about consanguinamory, see here.

If you're looking for current news about polyamory, there's a great blog called Polyamory in the News.

We Get Letters From Lovers Denied Their Rights

Our most popular posting (by far) got another interesting comment from Anonymous. He wrote in about finding love. I edited the comment a bit for punctuation/capitalization.

First would like to say wow i came across this site, its great to see how many other brother/sister relationships are happening out there.

One of the reasons this blog exists is to let people know they're not alone, and they're not. Chances are, everyone here reading this knows of siblings who have been involved, whether you know it or not.

I met my sister 3 years ago, we are both consenting adults in our 20s. We both fell completely and utterly in love with each other in such a short space of time. We had never grown up together because I was put in care by my mother.

This sounds like a Genetic Sexual Attraction situation.

We have no secrets and just wish wholeheartedly we could go public. But due to the laws where we live we can't. It's the number 1 thing that gets us down. We fear being caught because the law would have us both jailed, would put both her children in care (not my kids) and that would be the end to something special.

It's ridiculous that public resources would be wasted that way, but it happens.

We both don't see we're doing anything wrong. We love each other dearly and that's all that matters.

Congratulations on your love! There is no good reason for you to be denied your rights and forced to hide your love.

Anyone can comments below, including anonymously, and you can also write me at fullmarriageequality at yahoo dot com

Update on New Mexico Unjust Prosecution

New Mexico's public resources are continuing to be used to persecute consenting adults for exercising their freedom of association. Updating a situation that was covered here, Douglas Clark at cnjonline.com writes...

A Clovis man and his mother, in court to answer incest charges on Friday, instead were taken into custody after the court determined they violated a no-contact order, which had been a condition of their release.

Caleb Peterson, 19, and his mother, Monica Mares, 36, were arraigned before Magistrate Court Judge Duane Castleberry. Mares was summoned to stand before Castleberry first, with Peterson requesting if the judge could address them jointly.

None of this should even be an issue! They are consenting adults!!! They obviously want to be together. Why try to stop them???

Peterson and Mares could each face up to three years in prison and a $5,000 fine if convicted of the incest charges.

They might be "guilty" of having sex with each other. That shouldn't be a crime. She didn't raise him. He was raised by another. adoptive family. Do we expect every cougar who has ever given a child up for adoption or donated an egg or embryo to do  a DNA test whenever she encounters a younger person, before affection commences?

During Friday’s arraignment proceedings, Peterson informed Castleberry he was not read his rights upon his arrest.

Does he even have any rights, if he's not allowed to love another consenting adult?

Here is Jane's post on this.

Please, Honorable Judge Duane Castleberry, toss this case out of court!

New Mexico Prosecuting Consenting Adults For Loving Each Other

Our friend at the Consanguinamory blog covers an outrageous prosecution case out of New Mexico. Go there for excellent analysis. I just wanted to make a couple of notes based on David Stevens' article at cnjonline.com...

“Caleb admitted to having a sexual relationship with Monica whom he knows to be his biological mother,” the criminal complaint reads.

Please exercise your rights to remain silent, Americans!

Notice there is no victim of this "crime."

Court records show Peterson was adopted by another family as a child and had only recently re-established contact with his mother and moved to Clovis.

“Caleb stated his mother had always had bad luck with men and had been in abusive relationships all her life. Caleb felt if he was there to take care of her, she would not have to deal with abusive men anymore and he would take care of the household and his younger brothers,” the complaint reads.
The relationship turned romantic and sexual in nature after Peterson moved in with his mother, sometime after his 18th birthday, the record shows.

So they were consenting adults and she did not raise him. This is probably a Genetic Sexual Attraction situation.

Reeb said she did not have enough information to know how she might proceed with the case.

“I can’t put my personal views into it,” she said. “If they violated the statute, even if it’s consensual, it’s the law and we will prosecute it.

You don't have to prosecute! It's an unjust law! Please don't further waste public resources.

Please click here to get analysis from Jane.

Update here.

Radio Interview With GSA Newlywed

A Friend of Lily and Friend of FME who is newlywed to her half-brother is interviewed for about six minutes  on an Australia radio show. Here's the link to the audio. Congrats to the newlyweds and congrats to her on a great interview, even as she battled throat problems.

Solidarity From Advice Columnist Andre Shakti

Andre Shakti at harlot.media provides an advice column with relevant material. First, the question...

Can you date sisters?

If they agree to it, of course someone can date sisters. Many traditionalist polygynists marry sisters.

I'm not saying I want to.

No, no, of course not.

Third Time is the Charm For a Woman With a Triplicate Bond

There are scores of ongoing relationships I've covered through exclusive interviews in which the lovers are denied the freedom to be open about their love and are, by law, denied the freedom to marry and have that marriage treated equally under the law.

The attractive woman in the interview below is obviously capable of thinking for herself. And yet, she's denied her right to marry the person she loves and they could be thrown in prison just for loving each other. They aren't hurting anyone; why should they have to hide their love and be denied their rights?
Read the interview below and ask yourself why this woman should be denied her rights.


*****


FULL MARRIAGE EQUALITY: Describe your background.

Anonymous Woman: I grew up in West Virginia. I am 41 years old and college educated. I have been married twice and divorced twice. Both marriages were 14 years. I spent my life knowing that I had been adopted at birth. I knew my biological mother's name and had been told that I had a younger sister. I had also been told that she lived within 30 minutes of me, but I had no need to meet her.

When I turned 39, I started wondering about my younger sister and started trying to find people who knew her. I eventually accomplished that, and through that process found out that not only did I have a sister, but I had a total of five other siblings; two brothers and three sisters. One sister died at four months, another sister was adopted out and we can't locate her. One brother died of drug overdose four months before I found out about him. I met my one sister who was still alive and I was able to locate.

Then I met my other brother who is a year older then me.  As soon as we met, something happened. We felt so close instantly, like crazy, like we had always known each other.

We started spending all of our time together, laughing and talking about family. About three weeks after we met, we both started noticing feelings that we thought we shouldn't have been having considering we were blood relatives. We really started trying to avoid those feelings and even started talking less and less each day. It was not working. We fell in love. It was a love like neither of us had ever felt or had before. We had the strongest bond. We realized we were already best friends, soulmates, and siblings. We always say to each other "three infinity" because of our three bonds with each other.

Laws Against Consenting Adults Being Together Need to Go

Here's the latest question and answer at this blog's companion Tumblr.

Update on Consanguinamory in Media

Glenn Kenny at nytimes.com reviewed "Marguerite and Julien" and called it "distressing."

­Jérémie Elkaïm and Anaïs Demoustier as siblings who are a couple in “Marguerite and Julien.” Credit Sundance Selects

“Marguerite and Julien” transposes the factually based, centuries-old tale of incestuous French lovers to a not-quite-modern setting (much nostalgia is expended depicting one of its characters developing photographs in a darkroom) that could be called “Wes Anderson and Sofia Coppola Land,” only it isn’t as attractive as that sounds.

The real-life counterparts of this sibling couple were compelled to dissolve their association in 1602, when Julien de Ravalet was 21 and Marguerite was 17. Anaïs Demoustier, who plays Marguerite, is in her late 20s, and Mr. Elkaïm, who plays Julien, is 37, and looks it. (A well-maintained 37, but still.)

So in the movie, they are well into adulthood.

I make this complaint not out of prurient interest, but because I believe there is a distinction between teenagers pursuing incestuous relations and adults doing so. The sight of these two enacting what amount to children’s games before getting down to sex is frankly off-putting, and not in any usefully provocative way. The colloquial term is “icky.” This goes double for the wide-eyed delivery of dialogue like “If we got married, I would be your wife and your sister.”

Oh, come now. Finding the love between others to be "icky" is no reason to dismiss it.

Kenny goes on to explain "contrivances" in how the movie is put together. You can watch a trailer on YouTube.

The trailer actually reminds me a bit about the couple in this interview.

And here's coverage we had of another new movie dealing with these topics.

It's good to see more movies dealing with these issues. Hopefully we'll see more realistic and overall positive portrayals.

Meanwhile, Victoria Irwin wrote at dirgemag.com about "Five Incestuous Relationships That Make Us Want to Keep it in the Family."

How many of us discovered the idea of incest thanks to V.C. Andrews? While Flowers in the Attic was careful not to show too much in 1987, we were all pretty sure that hitting on family meant instant arsenic cookies and lashings.

Want a better read when it comes to sibling consanguinamory? See here.

History has a wealth of family members keeping it close. The Ptolemy and Julio-Claudian dynasties were full of siblings bumpin’ uglies. In the Bible, Lot’s daughters got him drunk and rode the old bone burro to Pound Town to repopulate what they thought was an empty world. European royalty married so many of their relatives that Queen Victoria was the grandmother to half of the Western world.

Yes, there's a long and widespread history of this.

Of course she lists Jaime and Cersei Lannister, somewhat approvingly. To read about that and the four others, go to the site.

Our stories have always had consanguineous sex and consanguinamorous relationships, because life always has had these things.

The Family Values of Lifelong Love

There are scores of ongoing relationships I've covered through exclusive interviews in which the lovers are denied the freedom to be open about their love and are, by law, denied the freedom to marry and have that marriage treated equally under the law.
The family revealed in this two-part interview is a family that politicians and cultural critics (who prattle on about "family values" as an excuse to perpetrate bigotry when it comes to things like marriage) would no doubt hold up as a paragon of the ideal family and would point to them during a speech or use their picture on a website or in a mailer. And yet, they're denied their rights, and the same politicians trash families when arguing hypothetically.

The couple interviewed below in the first part of this interview are mature, articulate, intelligent professionals who're married in every way but under the law. However, they're not only denied their right to legally marry, they could be thrown in prison just for loving each other and must hide the truth from just about everyone in their life. They aren't hurting anyone; why should they have to hide their love and be denied their rights?

Their daughter, interviewed in the second part below, is bright and eloquent, and yet we constantly hear that her parents shouldn't even have given birth to her or her siblings.

Read the two-part interview below and focus on what this family has to say. They sound like the (above) average American nuclear family. Should these spouse be denied equal access to marriage or any other rights? Shouldn't their daughter and their other children be able to watch them file a marriage license?

Assumed names are used to protect this family from prejudiced discrimination.


*****


FULL MARRIAGE EQUALITY: Describe yourselves.

Hellen: I am a marine biologist. We make good money and we recently bought a beautiful house in coastal California.

John: I work in IT as an engineer.