Advocacy of Incest in Tv Show

[Anijen]

3 hours ago, Stargazer said:

A second cousin of mine once almost married his twin sister by accident. Their mother had put them both out for adoption shortly after they were born, and when they were young adults it happened that they met and became quite interested in each other. 

This happens more than people realize. So much so, that states have begun (last 10-15 years) to pass adoption laws or in some cases guidelines, that when siblings are put into the adoption pool the candidate parent will not be allowed to adopt the brother or a sister unless there is a certain number of miles (or borders) separating the brother or sister, thereby decreasing the chance that they grow up in the same school etc.

[Anijen]

20 minutes ago, california boy said:

But true, given his track record on LGBT issues.  We just had a thread where he was asked a question and he cut and pasted his anti gay go to post that had nothing to do with the question and mostly was based on opinions not facts.  Now he brings up incest and out of all that he could have chosen from the article, SMAC injects the part that mentions gay marriage love is love.  Implying that those who support gay marriage must also support incest.  Don't you think that is a bit shameful?  Or do we just nod our heads and support his assertion rather than challenge him for making gay marriage a part of the discussion about incest.

I personally. don't see how bringing up a fictional TV show where two people have no idea they are brother and sister is remotely a gospel topic issue.

Calm defended Smac.  Smac himself denied this and explained the postings. I read his posts and found nothing wrong and I did not feel he was being anti-gay. In fact, I didnt even think of anything like that at all until you brought it up. Moreover, Smac's posts were mostly facts (not opinions) because he posted verbatim what was said on the show.and not how he interpreted them. I have learned a lot from Smac's manner of posting, he is always polite and always ends with his signature line of "thanks." 

[Hamba Tuhan]

1 hour ago, california boy said:

SMAC injects the part that mentions gay marriage love is love.   Implying that those who support gay marriage must also support incest.

Sincere question: can you think of any secular reason why two adult brothers, a father and adult son, or an uncle and adult nephew shouldn't be allowed to marry if they love each other and want to form a life partnership? Outside of religious reasons, I can't.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Hamba Tuhan

[rpn]

12 hours ago, smac97 said:

. Little did anyone see what was coming. It turns out, a DNA test that was gifted to them as a present showed the two to be half-siblings from the same sperm donor.

I don't see this as incest.   They didn't grow up in the same family, they had no relationship at all, until they met and courted.   True their dna shows them to be half siblings.   But no person who they knew about or grew up with had any idea at all of that.

So I don't see the Iggy character (what the heck does his gay identity have to do with this?) making ignoring morals or otherwise overstepping bounds.   I also think that that risk is one of the reasons the church opposes use of any but the father/mothers reproductive capability.

[Kenngo1969]

7 hours ago, california boy said:

Because any time SMAC can scour the internet and find something that can possibly reflect badly on gay marriage, he will figure out a way to include that quote.  Is him including that part of the article a surprise to anyone?

 

5 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Cheap shot.

 

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Maybe but also kind of accurate.

 

56 minutes ago, california boy said:

But true, given his track record on LGBT issues.  ...

As long as you admit that it's a cheap shot.

[The Nehor]

57 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Sincere question: can you think of any secular reason why two adult brothers, a father and adult son, or an uncle and adult nephew shouldn't be allowed to marry if they love each other and want to form a life partnership? Outside of religious reasons, I can't.

I can. Psychologically it is just not a good idea. With children it screws them up to an alarming degree way beyond even regular abuse by another. We have an inbuilt reluctance to hooking up with even friends we had as kids (assuming we remember them). The mating drive does look for some similarity with the familiar and some with the exotic. Very few people end up in bf/gf relationships with even unrelated childhood friends and even fewer marry them even when there is social pressure to do so.

There is also the worry about grooming potential. If uncle is a weirdo and wants to wind up with nephew and spends a lot of time with him it is not hard to mold his views on sexuality to try to make that happen even if uncle waits until he is 18 or even into his 20s to initiate sexual relations. It is even easier with parents and their own children or between siblings. Better to just prohibit it and avoid the risk of a careful abuser marrying his daughter when she turns 20 without doing anything illegal.

What if it somehow does not start up at all until both are adults? It is still almost certainly an immature relationship chosen because it is an easy option for a pair of emotionally and socially crippled people. It is like two people who marry because they have been together for a while even though they do not even like each and it is easy except with family it is lazier and even more maladjusted. It seems like it is wrong even there to let it happen. Also many cases are adult siblings who jointly endured abuse. They need therapy instead of permission.

We also do not like it. Every culture has incest taboos though they vary on how far it extends. Rulers sometimes get away with it publicly but that is about it and hereditary rulers are not historically known for being particularly well adjusted people. The typical incest abuser now is violent, selfish, and riddled with mental and emotional issues. Usually it is a single mom or a father with an abused spouse who goes along with it.

It is just better to say “No!” rather than deal with the fallout.

[Calm]

The problem I see is calling something immoral with DNA that would never be seen that way without the DNA...two people meeting as adults, falling in love, and wanting to get married.  DNA tests and suddenly it's labeled incest.

Prior to science, how often did this happen with no one knowing or being offended?  Given the frequency of adultery, got to think in small towns this was not that rare (not saying adultery is more common in small towns, just less mates to choose from).

Good reasons to not marry because of genetic issues with kids and who knows, maybe there are benefits from not marrying people that 'fit' one as well as siblings might, even when raised by different parents, so I think it would be wise at this point to at least put in place laws that decrease the chance of this happening with heavy penalties for violation (limiting number of children per sperm donor and maybe requiring exchanging with other clinics across country where possible to spread them out, not allowing siblings to have near in location adoptions unless open so they know they are siblings).

I don't really understand the "eww" factor though myself as an onlooker, though unfortunate.  I can imagine the disturbance if one of the siblings.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Calm

[mgy401]

It seems to me like many of the critics of @smac97 are quite avoiding the issue.

I wasn’t on this forum in 2008; but I would venture to guess that few (if any) of the folks now saying that they’d be OK with incest between consenting adults, would have openly taken that position in 2008.  In fact, some of them probably mocked the conservatives who drew the connection between legalizing gay marriage and legalizing incestuous marriage.

But once we say that the sine qua non of marriage is “love” and “dignity”, and consign to irrelevance any discussion of the broader social consequences/responsibilities of marital unions generally (which is what Obergefell fundamentally did); then logically we have to re-evaluate and come up with new grounds to justify the few legal taboos that still apply to western-style marriage—or else drop the taboos.  @smac97’s article (and many of the reactions to it in this forum) simply illustrate that process unfolding vis a vis incestuous relationships, where someone is using Obergefell-style reasoning to conclude that incest isn’t such a bad thing after all (and even pressuring/shaming a woman to participate in a sexual relationship she finds repugnant.  #Hertoo?)

[katherine the great]

3 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Some say it is actually healthy for a species to have a limited amount of inbreeding. The defects die but the survivors of such a relationship do not have the recessive alleles that cause the problem so genetically they are a little healthier. That does little good for those who do get the recessives.

Umm. Which diseases in particular are you thinking of? Natural selection does have a way of usually wiping out deleterious mutations over time but there are still very common, deadly hereditary diseases that persist. Sickle cell disease for one. It hasn't been wiped out by natural selection because the lucky heterozygotes have a natural immunity to another deadly (but non-genetic) disease--Malaria. But that doesn't mean that sickle cell disease is healthy for the population.

Edited February 27, 2020 by katherine the great

[katherine the great]

9 minutes ago, Calm said:

The problem I see is calling something immoral with DNA that would never be seen that way without the DNA...two people meeting as adults, falling in love, and wanting to get married.  DNA tests and suddenly it's labeled incest.

And equating that scenario with run-of-the-mill incest (if that's a thing). Incest is so repulsive to us because we naturally are not attracted to those we are raised in the same household with. Purposeful incest is literally "unnatural" behavior in humans. Apples and oranges.

[Calm]

8 minutes ago, katherine the great said:

Incest is so repulsive to us because we naturally are not attracted to those we are raised in the same household with.

Right, it is the relationship, not the DNA that is the primary emotional issue.  Thus adopted children with no blood ties raised as siblings still qualifies as eeewwww even though there  would be no fear of genetic diseases.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Calm

[Bernard Gui]

12 hours ago, 2BizE said:

The morality of this issue is that science has shown offspring of people closely related leads to higher incidence of birth defects.  It would be irresponsible of couples to take his risk.   This places the community and state at risk of medical and financial concerns as well as longevity of populations.  Generally, state laws prevent closely related couples from marrying.  I’m not aware of a religious law in the scriptures preventing this, but marriage is a state agreement in most countries.

This could easily be overcome if one or both parties agreed to sterilization. If marriage is a relationship between consenting adults, what could be the objection?

Edited February 27, 2020 by Bernard Gui

[Bernard Gui]

13 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

Second, the ability to consent is compromised by existing familial relationships.

How so?

[Meadowchik]

1 hour ago, Bernard Gui said:

How so?

Through familial relationships' inherent power and influence.

[Hamba Tuhan]

3 hours ago, The Nehor said:

I can.

I think you're just a bigot. A variation of every single concern you raised has been used in the past to argue against same-sex relationships generally.

2 hours ago, katherine the great said:

Incest is so repulsive to us because we naturally are not attracted to those we are raised in the same household with.

You say this as if all those who are attracted to those with whom they have been raised don't exist. They find it perfectly natural.  

15 hours ago, 2BizE said:

The morality of this issue is that science has shown offspring of people closely related leads to higher incidence of birth defects.

This whole 'morality' argument breaks down completely if the involved parties are the same sex.

[Calm]

Having watched about half the show before suffering from emotionalism and irrationality overload (seriously, would anyone halfway informed act as if you could solve the opioid crisis by one massive dramatic gesture) and skipping to the end, the fact the psychologist is gay is irrelevant as far as I can tell. His approach would fit pretty much any TV psychologist I can think of except the psychotic ones. It is what TV writers imagine therapy to be like.  And the “adorable” is from someone  who probably has no clue they are siblings. 
 

If there is any agenda here, it’s been going for 40+ years as it is the same old template of couples counseling they have been using that long. 
 

Are they trying to normalize incest by dropping a half brother and sister into the couples slot? I am not seeing it because there is no context between the couples outside the dna that hints at a previous family relationship which I have seen with portrayals of intentional and even a few unintentional sibling romances.  I don't see it as justifying incest.  There isn't enough thought involved.  He loved her, she loved him but he had cooties!  There wasn't enough time spent on it to push anything.  It was basic couple conflict slapped with label "incest!"
 

 I think they push the boundaries because how else are they going to make the same old, same old something new?  It is, imo, extremely lazy writing, but I have felt that all along with the show. They have very beautiful people, intense music, and dramatic, over the top plots with one crisis popping up as soon as one has been resolved...pretty much like almost every other hospital show out there.  But it is pretty pretty people, so who needs actual thought. 

Edited February 27, 2020 by Calm

[Stargazer]

7 hours ago, The Nehor said:

That being said, I look at your story an wonder if there was abuse or grooming that led to that relationship.

Interesting question. I don't know enough to say definitely about the grooming or abuse, but I rather doubt it.  My uncle came back from his service in the Army during the Korean War, and was thus an adult when he and his uncle got together.  Before that, my uncle was engaged to be married to a woman.  After his uncle died, he continued in gay relationships, but after his last gay partner died (of AIDS) he ended up marrying the man's wife and is living in a heterosexual lifestyle now.  He's 91 years old at this point.  

[Stargazer]

9 hours ago, Daniel2 said:

BTW, this gem comes from the "news site" that Smac quotes the article from.  So, their invocation of Obergefell as some sort of cause isn't surprising:

 

 

So what is your problem with it?  That they claim the bulk of the media is liberal-biased, or that it asks for financial support from those who agree with it?

[Kenngo1969]

3 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Interesting question. I don't know enough to say definitely about the grooming or abuse, but I rather doubt it.  My uncle came back from his service in the Army during the Korean War, and was thus an adult when he and his uncle got together.  Before that, my uncle was engaged to be married to a woman.  After his uncle died, he continued in gay relationships, but after his last gay partner died (of AIDS) he ended up marrying the man's wife and is living in a heterosexual lifestyle now.  He's 91 years old at this point.  

Interesting life!

[katherine the great]

5 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

You say this as if all those who are attracted to those with whom they have been raised don't exist. They find it perfectly natural

I didn’t say they don’t exist I said it is an unnatural attraction. Sure there’s always gonna be that perv who finds his sister irresistable but that is not normal. This isn’t just my random opinion Hamba.  Numerous studies indicate this. 

[smac97]

14 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Sincere question: can you think of any secular reason why two adult brothers, a father and adult son, or an uncle and adult nephew shouldn't be allowed to marry if they love each other and want to form a life partnership? Outside of religious reasons, I can't.

A few off-the-cuff resources ont his issue:

Here:

Quote

Mr. James Russell of Cashiers, North Carolina, recently justified meat-eating in the pages of Asheville Citizen-Times by arguing that humans are biologically classified as carnivores. His reasoning was simple. The  consumption of animal flesh is morally right because it is natural.

Unfortunately, Mr. Russell got his facts wrong. Zoologists place humans in the order Primate (family Hominidea), not in the order Carnivora. Furthermore, like rats, humans are omnivores, not carnivores. But more troubling is Mr. Russell’s belief that humans should look to nature for moral guidance. He justifies meat-eating in humans on the grounds that other animals eat one another. I suspect, however, that he does not approve of gang rape, adultery, cannibalism, and the consumption of feces, all of which are practiced in nature by our four-legged brethren. While moral codes exist in other species (see here), humans have the capacity—and, indeed, the responsibility—to operate on a higher ethical plane.

The (Nearly) Universal Taboo

On matters of morality, I generally agree with Katherine Hepburn who quipped to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Nature is what we are put in this world to rise above." There is, however, an exception to my contention that humans should not turn to nature for moral guidance. It is the rule that says: “Don’t have sex with first-degree relatives.” First-degree relatives are the individuals you share 50 percent of your genes with—your parents, children, and siblings. Indeed, non-human animals have evolved a host of strategies to prevent incest (here). Even plants possess anti-incest mechanisms (here).

As University of Miami psychologists Debra Lieberman and Adam Smith pointed out in a recent article in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, humans have social and psychological mechanisms to deter incest. With very few exceptions, marriages between brothers and sisters and between parents and their children are verboten in every human culture. The primary psychological anti-incest mechanism is the yuck response. Even the idea of sex with mom or dad or bro or sis is upsetting to most people. The psychologist Jonathan Haidt has found that nearly everyone is repelled by the prospect of brother-sister sex, even in hypothetical situations in which there is no chance of pregnancy (here).

Put another way, incest appears to be a malum in se kind of thing.  It's not just a religious thing.

See also here (discussing the near-universal incest taboo).

See also here:

Quote

Classically, incest has been considered from both a psychological and sociological point of view to have harmful consequences. Genetic research, though by no means lacking controversy of its own, generally supports the notion that inbreeding has untoward genetic consequences. The psychodynamics of all three parties to father-daughter incest seem to indicate that people who become involved in incestuous behaviour are often psychologically damaged before the fact, so that if they show subsequent evidence of psychological impairment the incestuous behaviour can be as plausibly viewed as a dysfunctional attempt at solving problems as it can a cause of subsequent psychopathology. Girls involved in the father-daughter incest present in one of half a dozen frequent clinical syndromes. The presentation is influenced by the degree to which the girl may have participated in ongoing incestuous behaviour as opposed to being the presumed victim of an older adult's coercive actions or her own temporary suspension of a behavioural taboo. Research is inconclusive as to the psychological harmfulness of incestuous behaviour, and evidence is reviewed on both sides of this complicated and controversial question. Quite apart from the general issue of the harmfulness of incest, a number of indicators can be derived from the nature of the incestuous episode and the early response to therapeutic assessment which aid in the clinical forecasting of probable outcome.

And here:

Quote

Mother Nature has developed her own strategies to deter us from mating with close relatives. According to evolutionary psychologists, just observing your mother care for another baby is a cue that that other child is a sibling and discourages sexual attraction. If you happen to be the youngest, being raised with other children by the same set of parents has the same effect. This may explain why relationships with adopted family members are still considered taboo even though they don’t share the same genes.

Females are more heavily invested invested in the genetic fitness of their offspring, and experts believe that’s why women tend to be particularly averse to incest. A 1994 study showed that women might actually be able to smell the best genetic mate to father their future offspring. In the experiment, which would eventually be known as the “smelly t-shirt” test, women were asked to sniff shirts that had been worn by random men for three days and rate their scents for intensity, pleasantness, and sexiness. After analyzing the participants’ DNA, researchers found that the women preferred the scents of the men who were most genetically different from them.

A more recent study also found that couples who had the most genetic similarities also had the lowest sexual satisfaction. Women who were partnered with genetically similar mates were even more likely to cheat on their husbands. These studies suggest that genes can not only influence mate choice but determine your overall satisfaction with your partner.

And here (same link) (emphasis added):

Quote

Some people believe that incest isn’t all that bad, especially when it’s between two consenting adults who aren’t having children. They insist that when you take reproduction out of the equation through birth control, sterilization, or homosexuality, no one is harmed by incest. Of course, the law has something to say about that.

In 2010, 46-year-old Columbia University professor David Esptein was charged with one count of third-degree incest after being accused of having consensual sex with his 24-year-old daughter. The daughter faced no charges because, in the eyes of the law, children are considered a “protected class,” even when they’re above the age of consent. The theory is that the power dynamic between a parent and a child makes consent impossible to negotiate. Even when incest occurs between siblings, the elder of the two is usually held to a higher degree of accountability.

Epstein’s lawyer has raised the argument that incest between consenting adults is no more reprehensible than homosexuality. Lawmakers around the world have disagreed with him, saying that incest is unacceptable because it destroys the family unit whereas, two unrelated gay people in a relationship form a new one. According to political author William Saletan, homosexuality is an orientation, but incest is not. Banning homosexual sex would mean that gay people wouldn’t be able to create relationships, while those attracted to a close relative can conceivably find alternate sexual partners.

And here:

Quote

I think this British essay making the case for incest being no big deal (the title, "I had sex with my brother but I don't feel guilty," more or less tells it) inadvertently makes a pretty good case for why incest is, in fact, a really bad idea - because it corrupts not only the siblings involved, but the lives of the people around them:

Over the next few years we had sexual encounters every six months or so, each time going farther and farther until I was 17, when we had full sex for the first time. We both went out with other people and there was never any jealousy, although I found it hard to be physically intimate with anyone else. Part of that was because sex with Daniel was so amazing that I had no patience for all the fumbling that seemed to happen with other boys ...

By the time he met Alison he was working and I was a student, and I knew that this relationship was different, but it still came as a shock when he told me he wanted to marry her. However, I was more shocked when he said: “You only have to say and I won't marry her, but then I want us to stay together and not see anyone else. We could be the old boring brother and sister who never got married, but ended up sharing a house because no one else would have them! I know this is meant to be wrong but I've never felt anything so right.” This echoed everything that I've thought about our incestuous relationship over the years. After hours of discussion we agreed that it was time to stop the sexual side of our relationship and also decided that telling anyone else was a bad idea, parting in tears afterwards.

I know Daniel loves Alison, but she's very wary of me. I'm pretty sure that she doesn't see me as a sexual threat, but she thinks of me as an emotional rival and I suppose she's right. It's not unusual - there are countless people dealing with all the emotions that result from partners becoming officially family. ....

Three months ago I met Derek and I think this is going to be a lasting relationship. The sex is certainly amazing and he's a warm and lovely man, so I have high hopes for this. The trouble with having someone like Daniel in your life is that it leaves you with very high expectations, but it's hard knowing that the one person you love above everything is out of bounds. Perhaps worst of all is the fact that you can't tell anyone, as his or her disgust would ruin everything.

And here (emphasis added):

Quote

I confess that as a philosophy undergrad I’ve never read Thomas Aquinas’ treatments of ethics. I hated my intro to ethics class which was designed around the work of Karl Rahner, whom at the time I found not just incomprehensible but also deeply irritating, and I ended up avoiding ethics-related electives.

So I am surprised to see that Aquinas explains in the Summa Theologicae (supplement Q 54 A 3) did not only insist that incest is wrong because of possible birth defects. Instead he gives three arguments why incest is contrary to natural law:

The first is the least convincing, that it messes up the proper family relations like brother / sister / father / spouse. This reason strikes me as being tautological: incest is wrong because a daughter should not be a wife to her father.

The second argument is more interesting: incest is wrong because the family is a place where people are supposed to be learning the virtue of chastity, that is, subjugating lust to charity which values people not for their sexual attractiveness but for themselves. The first time a boy learns to appreciate a girl for who she is and not for her sexual attractiveness is in his relationship with his sister. If not for the taboos against incest, this would not be possible. To use modern language there would be no “safe space” where men and women can learn to subject their sexuality to the deeper bonds of charity. (Later in the section he cites Maimomedes, the a Jewish scholar who was almost a contemporary of Aquinas, as the source of this argument.)

Third: incest is wrong because marriage is meant to expand the circle of friendship between families and therefore promote peace and human solidarity. It is funny to think that rules against miscegenation are modern affair that would not have made sense before the 18th century or so. Of course, marrying outside the faith would have been quite against the rules for Aquinas, unless such a marriage was likely to bring the non-Catholic partner into the church, which also would have been seen as a way to increase the bonds of friendship and solidarity.

I bring this up because apparently Cosmo is now promoting incest. Every few years there are rumblings about making some perversion or another mainstream, to see if it sticks. When I was a teenager you could find flyers from the Man Boy Love Association all over Boston wherever kids would hang out and read sympathetic stories about true love between teenage boys and older men in trendy magazines. Fortunately the Catholic sex abuse scandals reminded everyone just what a bad idea that is, but the idea will come back around. Likewise you find incest stories coming up every few years and reprobates asking “well, with contraceptives, why not?” without regard for what would happen to a young psyche being treated as a sex object in her childhood home.

One of the ironies of the current age: we seek to tear down all sexual taboos and then are horrified by the results.

And here (emphases added):

Quote

The bizarre nature of modern logic was on display once again when an Australian judge recently compared incest to homosexuality. In dealing with a criminal case of incest between siblings Sydney District Court Judge Garry Neilson said that, just as gay sex had once been socially unacceptable, “a jury might find nothing untoward in the advance of a brother towards his sister once she had sexually matured.” The bizarreness I am referring to though, is not on the part of the judge, but rather the response to the comments by politicians and media.

First, to clarify: the case that was being tried involved a 58 year old man accused of raping his sister in their family home in 1981 when he was 25 and she was 18. The man had already pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting his sister some years earlier when she was only 10 years old. Judge Neilson did not allow the prosecution to admit the evidence of the earlier assault, stating that the two events occurred in different contexts, and by the time of the incident in question, when the woman was 18, she had already been in sexual relationships with two men and had a young child. In other words, he was inclined not to allow the charge of rape.

That left the alternative charge of incest. But Neilson dismissed that, too. He told the jury that the “only reason” incest is still a criminal offence is because of the high risk of genetic abnormalities from consanguineous relationships, but, “even that falls away to an extent [because] there is such ease of contraception and ready access to abortion.”

The day after this story reached the media, the New South Wales Attorney-General, Brad Hazzard, took the rare step of involving himself in a criminal trial, referring Judge Neilson to the state Judicial Commission for review, and moving to prevent the judge from sitting on any further criminal trials until the matter had been investigated. Mr Hazzard was “extremely concerned” and “appalled” at the judge’s comments and made the somewhat definitive statement that, “Incest is completely reprehensible, unacceptable, disgusting and criminal”. Media agencies reported on the judge’s remarks as “ill-informed”, “disgraceful” and an insult to every gay and lesbian person in Australia.

While it is necessary to state unequivocally that offences around rape and sexual assault are always serious criminal and moral offences and must be prosecuted as such, the response to the underlying principles of this case and the judge’s central comments were, in my opinion, completely hypocritical.

The judge, for the most part, is correct. In the 1950s it was homosexuality that would have been described in no uncertain terms as completely “reprehensible, unacceptable, disgusting and criminal”. Yet, just a few decades later, Sydney turns on one of the world’s largest annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parades, which over 300,000 Australians attend, to celebrate fornication, sodomy, unbridled lust and, most recently, polygamy. No reasonable individual in the greater part of modern history would have thought for a moment that two men attempting some sort of unnatural sexual union could not only be quietly accepted, but in addition, exalted, “married” and entrusted with the sole care of children.

Incest may still sit in the criminal code across Australia, but it was included at a time when any sexual relationships outside of marriage would be frowned upon. It exists in the code to protect marriage. The hypothetical case of two consenting adult siblings engaging in a sexual relationship seems to me far less reprehensible than two men or two women (or a group) attempting some sort of perverted sexual union. In reality we can’t even speak about homosexual actions being akin to genuine sexual union, it’s just physically impossible.    

While it is well known that in all of the Abrahamic religions homosexual actions are considered intrinsically wrong, because they distort the meaning of the sexual union, the same cannot be definitively said of incest. Sexual union between a parent and a child (of any age) would be considered an offence against divine law, due to the essential role of parents as protector and nurturer; however, sexual union (and by this I mean marriage), between siblings or cousins comes under church law -- most often reflected in civil law -- and may be eligible for a dispensation.

That is not to dismiss the wisdom in a law against family members marrying, but unlike homosexual unions, consanguineous marriages (apart from parent/child combinations) are not objectively morally wrong. In fact, there are a number of instances of sibling marriages in the Hebrew Scriptures, including the necessary intermarrying of the children of the first man and woman implied by the Book of Genesis. If we are going to speak so boldly about which actions are more reprehensible, the prize goes every time to homosexuality. 

Like most people, I do not condone incestuous relationships, but we need to be able to look at the words of Judge Neilson for what they were, a fairly logical assumption, based on past practice, of where social norms could move. Now, I hope that social norms don’t shift that way, but we live in an era that has become so morally bankrupt, with so little understanding of sex or marriage, that it won’t surprise me when the cry goes up for legalising incest.

In fact it is already legal in France, Russia, Belgium, Argentina and China, amongst other nations. A case in Germany two years ago was appealed to the European Court of Human Rights.

Seriously, if our society thought it fine to sanction same-sex love, did we really not expect that incestuous love would be far away? In the meantime there are those who want to hang out Judge Neilson to dry, and sanctimoniously preach to the rest of us about what an authentic sexual relationship should look like. 

Thanks,

-Smac

EDIT TO ADD: I present these not necessarily because I agree with their sentiments (that's a mixed bag), but because as Aristotle said, "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

Edited February 27, 2020 by smac97

[Meadowchik]

12 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Sincere question: can you think of any secular reason why two adult brothers, a father and adult son, or an uncle and adult nephew shouldn't be allowed to marry if they love each other and want to form a life partnership? Outside of religious reasons, I can't.

The problem of consent. Inherent familial influence creates power imbalances that can make consent impossible.

[Vanguard]

13 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

The problem of consent. Inherent familial influence creates power imbalances that can make consent impossible.

So a 30-yr old man is either not capable of and/or should not be allowed to legally consent to marrying his 51-yr old mother? Can you clarify?

[Meadowchik]

3 minutes ago, Vanguard said:

So a 30-yr old man is either not capable of and/or should not be allowed to legally consent to marrying his 51-yr old mother? Can you clarify?

Right, very possibly not capable. The risk of moral hazard is so great that it is prohibitive.

[Vanguard]

1 minute ago, Meadowchik said:

Right, very possibly not capable. The risk of moral hazard is so great that it is prohibitive.

So to put a fine point on it, you're claiming that an otherwise healthy, functional, adult individual should be legally prohibited from marrying his otherwise healthy, functional, adult mother because he or she are incapable of granting consent?