gribbles Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/german-ethics-council-calls-for-incest-between-siblings-to-be-legalised-by-government-9753506.html Yowza. gonna see more joffreys being born methinks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tywin Manderly Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 Wow! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1918me Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 But on Wednesday, the German Ethics Council recommended the section be repealed, arguing that the risk of disability in children is not enough to warrant the law and de-criminalising incest would not remove the huge social taboo around it Yikes. To use a poorly thought-out metaphor off the top of my head, just because throwing my TV out the window and onto the street has a low chance of disabling somebody, doesn't mean I should be allowed to do it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theprincethatwasntpromised Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 Well that's disgusting... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edda van Heefmstra Ruston Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 I'll throw it out there: so? As long as there are still protections against coercion and as long as the age of consent laws still apply, who cares? I mean, you all read the article and thus read about the case that prompted the challenge, right? Two people above the age of consent who were strangers to each other met, entered into a relationship, fell in love, had kids. The father is now in prison, presumably leaving the mother to care for all four kids on her own, because they happen to be related. (Maybe he was simply sentenced to the time, and it has already been served or was commuted to something that lets him be home, but I doubt it.)Alternately, make sure that the ban is actually focused on protecting children from being forced into incest, and isn't based on the potential genetic abnormalities / difficulties of any children born out of incest. I am now over 35. I haven't totally given up on finding a relationship in which I might have a child*. Although my age alone means that my potential children are at higher risk for certain conditions, there's no law forbidding it. Same is true of carriers of things like single Tay-Sachs alleles. So is there enough of a risk to form a basis for banning incest? All incest? Only full siblings and direct ancestors-descendants? We know that first cousins (same grandparent(s)) have a risk of about 5%, which is the same as women over 40. Is that enough, and we should ban both, or let the cousin thing slide?Again, this is not to say that all incestuous relationships are okay, just that they also aren't all as "icky" as people think.* Not with my sister. She's way too much woman for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polishgenius Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 I mean, you all read the article and thus read about the case that prompted the challenge, right? Well I can tell you didn't, given that the article outright states that (1)three of the kids were taken into care, of which two are disabled and (2) that he spent three years in prison, having been sentenced in 2008, and is now out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gribbles Posted September 27, 2014 Author Share Posted September 27, 2014 Sending him to prison is mite bit excessive IMO. What they did was consensual, so sending either one of them to jail doesn't help matters at all and could be construed as an injustice. Something needs to be done, just not jail, IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seli Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 That is not quite what they said. They seem to argue there is no reason to remove rights we all have (to love and have relationships) between consenting adults simply because they are related. They argue morale outrage should never be the reason for legislation, which seems to be a good basis to any approach to laws. The increased risk for birth defects clearly isn't a proper reason to prohibit these relations. Same sex relations are also prohibited, as are relations between sterile partners. And there is no precedence in forbidding other partners who have an increased risk, such as older couples. The big problem with incestuous relationships, whether there is proper consent, is less of a problem in this specific subset - siblings who were separated for a long time. And other subsets (parent-child) don't seem to be included in the call for de-criminalization. It seems to be a sane proposal overall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edda van Heefmstra Ruston Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 Well I can tell you didn't, given that the article outright states that (1)three of the kids were taken into care, of which two are disabled and (2) that he spent three years in prison, having been sentenced in 2008, and is now out.I did, and still got it wrong. Care to address the actual substantive points, though? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Toblerone Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 “The majority of the German Ethics Council is of the opinion that it is not appropriate for a criminal law to preserve a social taboo,” And I have to agree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 One point a commenter in the German press made is that there are so few actual cases of brother-sister-incest known that it really is no big deal in practice. There was the spectacular case with the disabled children, but overall there are not enough to do any statistics etc. It seems virtually non-existent.(And as there are no (eugenic) laws against unrelated people with genetic diseases procreating, one can hardly argue with the risk. Of course it would be better to practise safer sex, but one cannot prohibit the sexual act, because of a high risk of genetically diseased children.)Of course if coercion/molesting etc. is involved the respective laws will apply independently of the family relation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mankytoes Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 Well that's disgusting... True, but do your feelings of disgust give you the right to coerce others? I mean, this is a huge problem that the gay rights movement have had, many people, especially straight men, find male homosexuality disgusting. But that doesn't make it wrong, does it? I mean I'd find watching two forty stone people get it on disgusting, and I think most people would, but few would say that it should be illegal. If it wasn't for the Westermarck effect, it seems unlikely that incest would be illegal, at least universally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Ent Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 If it wasn't for the Westermarck effect, it seems unlikely that incest would be illegal, at least universally. I think this is incorrect. Incest, like male homosexuality, is universally illegal (where “universally” is understood as a fuzzy quantifier over all human civilisations, current and previous) because they are disgusting to many; in particular to most adult males. (Adult males write the laws.) No medical reasons for this are necessary. The evolutionary reasons for this disgust are obvious. (Just like wanting to control sexual promiscuity of females in your ingroup, encouraging male promiscuity in your ingroup, being threatened by male promiscuity in your outgroup, etc. It all makes complete sense from the perspective of the gene.) It simply makes very good sense for a social animal like humans to construct strong psychological deterrents against intercourse with readily available (but suboptimal) partners such as your mom, your sister, or other males. (Interestingly, human psychology can be fooled: full siblings that weren’t reared together experience no disgust. Adopted children that were reared together experience disgust. Our psychology can’t “smell out” genes, it just remembers who we were reared with. I find these things really interesting.) This doesn’t make any of these views ethically correct. (That would be the naturalistic fallacy.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 Culturally, brother-sister incest is ethically highly ambiguous and certainly not universally seen as disgusting. It is usually o.k. for gods and demi-gods (like Zeus, the Inca or the Pharao). And there it isn't dysgenic, because there are plenty of other unrelated concubines in the harem. In the western/judeo/christian tradition, incest is often seen as a grave sin, but also as a temptation (which it would not be if it was simply disgusting). There are several stories in the old testament where incest is committed voluntarily (or by deception/forcing of one party), so rather different from Oedipus or Turin, but of course it is condemned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Ent Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 Huh? I though incest prevention was a human universal? It’s on the list, after all. I’m happy to be proved wrong! ETA: Ah, maybe not about brother–sister? Interesting! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 I think there is a difference between what is perceived as "yucky" and what is "yucky, but tempting for many of us" (because even the most icky things like koprophilia, cannibalism or whatever are apparently tempting for SOME of us). I cannot be the only person who thought that H. Humbert's desire for Lolita was very convincingly and temptingly described. I think that most heterosexual males are more queasy about homosexuality than about sex with a 13 year old girl; obviously our day and age is a historical exception with respect to the official/legal position on these two cases. Of course, mythologies are not such a great guide, taking into account that bestiality is a rather frequent occurence there... which is probably for many up there with koprophilia on the yuckiness scale. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Ent Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 H. Humbert’s desire for Lolita is completely in sync with human nature. I don’t think very many civilisation had a prohibition for intercourse with fertile, young women that happened to coincide with the age at which they acquired personhood (for those cultures where that even made sense.) It’s not yucky at all. It’s just illegal and morally wrong. Homosexuality is yucky, but legal and morally acceptable. Evolution, by and large, is a shitty arbiter of morality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 Meh, the yuckiness of homosexuality is just conditioned. I don't want to have sex with men, but having caught my old roommate in coitus a few times I can say it doesn't bother me at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spring Bass Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 Seems like the ancient Greeks, pre-modern Japanese, and others would quibble with your "male homosexuality is a human universal" factor. Whatever a "universal" actually means when we're 10,000 years of agriculture, cultural evolution, and cultural drift away from the conditions that characterized the evolution (and most of the existence) of modern homo sapiens. Even incest taboos aren't necessarily a universal, although we see developed revulsion against close incest in most (but not all - see ancient Egyptian and Ptolemaic royalty) societies. What constitutes as "incest" certainly changes over time, and it's generally considerable repulsive today for first cousins to marry (even thought this used to be more acceptable - Albert Einstein's second wife was his first cousin). There's also the behavior of our primate cousins to consider, like bonobos doing just about any kind of sexual behavior with each other aside from sibling incest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Iceman of the North Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 One point a commenter in the German press made is that there are so few actual cases of brother-sister-incest known that it really is no big deal in practice. There was the spectacular case with the disabled children, but overall there are not enough to do any statistics etc. It seems virtually non-existent. And you don't think such relationships being illegal have played a role in this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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