Brothers and sisters unite! Literally
By Comment team
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. Simply put: the state has no right, under any circumstances, to punish two consenting adults for having sex. And thus, to lay it in layman’s terms, I demand the right to screw my mum (or, indeed, my dad).
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.
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.
The sole, single, solitary argument against this is almost painfully bad: “Yuck.” The thought of family members doing it disturbs me. Make it illegal.
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. The Lord Chief Justice is not a bloody teddy bear. It is not illegal to blaspheme. It is not illegal to make dead baby jokes. And, thank God, it has recently been resolved that a man having sex with another man is also not illegal, no matter how icky a thought that might be to most of you. So why on earth should consensual incest be illegal?
But why, you may ask, does this matter? This is not a personal issue – I am not campaigning to overturn my hypothetical prison sentence for porking the sister I never had, and my mum is not my type (still less my dad). Neither is it a truly pressing human rights issue – there are people in jail, unjustly, because they had sex with consenting relatives, but their cause is considerably less important than, say, the struggle against global poverty.
This issue is simply that of taking morality seriously. We tolerate too many of our society’s injustices. People starve. The greedy are rewarded for their excesses. And that’s because we have this uncanny ability to turn off unpleasant thoughts, especially when they demand that we do what’s right.
But the truth is that morality is deeply, deeply unpleasant. It demands things of us we really, really don’t want. And you know what? Morality is right, and we are wrong. If something is morally unjustifiable, and we know it is morally unjustifiable, it is simply not OK to turn your back on it, even if, especially if, it makes you feel a little squeamish. And consensual incest is a case in point: all our most deeply-held beliefs of personal freedom and an impartial State demand its legalisation; the only thing that stands against them is our complacency and our cowardice.
-David Leon
Pingback: ‘Legalise incest: I demand the right to screw my mum’ | Ones to Watch
Keith
28/10/2011 at 18:45
An adult should be free to share love, sex, residence, and marriage with ANY consenting adults. Don’t like it? Don’t do it. Whether you know it or not, you know someone who has engaged in consensual incest, and has not suffered in any way (except through the disapproval of others… but why?)
Some people try to justify their prejudice against consanguineous sex and marriage by being part-time eugenicists and saying that such relationships inevitably lead to “mutant” or “deformed” babies. This argument can be refuted on several fronts. 1. Some consanguineous relationships involve only people of the same gender. 2. Not all mixed-gender relationships birth biological children. 3. Most births to consanguineous parents do not produce children with significant birth defects or other genetic problems; while births to other parents do sometimes have birth defects. 4. We don’t prevent other people from marrying or deny them their reproductive rights based on increased odds of passing along a genetic problem or inherited disease. It is true that in general, children born to consanguineous parents have an increased chance of these problems than those born to nonconsanguineous parents, but the odds are still minimal. But there are increased odds of problems with births to older parents, too. There’s no stigma assigned to that. There is certainly no law against it.
Unless someone is willing to deny reproductive rights and medical privacy to others and force everyone to take genetic tests and bar carriers and the congenitally disabled and women over 35 from having children, then equal protection principles prevent this from being a justification to bar this freedom of association and freedom to marry.
Anyone concerned about these things should have genetic testing and counseling. People who are not close relatives can pass along health problems, too.
Joe
30/10/2011 at 20:54
Stupid articles like this are the reason that students don’t get taken seriously. Then they complain “noone is taking us seriously. Boohoo. It’s so unfair.”
How about the problems which come with inbreeding medically?
Sean Scoltock
30/10/2011 at 22:33
Stupid people like you are the reason the editor of the section has to respond to ensure that the articles in his section are taken with the seriousness in which they are intended.
The writer addressed the precise issue you raise, and dealt with it. The comment above yours fills in all the argumentative gaps that, of necessity, are in any word-limited article.
You are probably confusing legality with morality. Please rectify this.
Peter Maher
01/11/2011 at 10:28
“Joe says: I didn’t read this before I vomited my already-countered opinions into your reply box.”
Very well put. I don’t feel comfortable with disallowing anybody from having children, and I certainly don’t feel comfortable increasing the likelihood of disadvantaged kids, be they muties, diseased or even given hell throughout their childhood because of their parentage.
Frankly none of this is comfortable at all, but this isn’t so much a case of comfort as a case of choosing the lesser of two Evils; or more specifically, between Yuck and Evil.
Pingback: Brothers and sisters unite! Literally | The Oxford Student « ensayosfilosofia