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Homosexual incest - is there such a thing?

Caper said:
Thanks I knew that had a name and if you read the post you quoted I did make the distinction between siblings seberated.
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I was summarizing the definition of the Westermarck Effect for readers just tuning in, not trying to prove my reading comprehension skills of your post, which people probably skipped right over anyway.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I was summarizing the definition of the Westermarck Effect for readers just tuning in, not trying to prove my reading comprehension skills of your post, which people probably skipped right over anyway.
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Sorry, sorry.... I really meant thank you..... I wasn't being sarcastic.
 
I was thinking about incest today cause of a TV episode I saw recently. And I wondered if genetic fitness is a factor, why is not smoking or drinking while pregnant illegal for the same reasons that incest is?

The whole thing seems odd to me now that I think about it. Protecting the rights of something that doesn't even exist yet.

Does such a thing make sense in society?

I guess environmentalism does make the world better for future offspring, but it also benefits the whole of humanity and us right now.

But to take a non-existing entity and outlaw something now between existing people and place that non-existing thing in priority over those two people, feels kinda weird.

Is it cause we are certain the non-existing person will exist and the odds are high that they will suffer?

Another thing I thought of, is what if medical technology advances to correct the issues with inbreeding? Would incest be OK then? So then our morals hinge on how far modern medicine can go. And again that feels weird. Like if we could teleport an embryo from a womb and have it grow in a test tube? Does the former mother have the right to just kill it? It's out of her body, so what say does she have?

It's just odd to think that technology shapes our very morals. It's also weird to think of protecting the rights of something that doesn't exist.
 
The question you should ask is whether incestuous relationships matter in the light of contraceptive use. If it's really about the possibility if the kid...well vasectomy or tubal ligation will fix that issue.

So then what?
 
There's a case on my mother's side of the family of a widow and a widower who married.
His daughter and her son also married. I'm unsure which marriage came first, but nobody (AFAIK) ever even considered that there was anything wrong or improper about either marriage or the combination of the two. In fact it was seen as rather romantic.
The fact the younger partners were in their thirties may have been relevant. Had they been teenagers, would it have made a difference? Maybe to some people. Can't see it myself.
Had they both been male or female (this being long before civil partnerships) I imagine familial response would have differed.
 
I think the laws were put in place not because of individual cases of incest. The risk of genetic defects from one-off incest in a family aren't that high. But if ten generations are incestuous the risks would increase greatly. It's easier to just ban it altogether.

Just look at Charles II of Spain. One of the last of the Habsburgs (inbreeders extrordinaire) he suffered from prognathism (habsburg jaw/austrian lip) to such an extent that he couldn't chew his food. He had several other problems including infertility.

A gay relationship couldn't have these consequences so in theory should be exempt from the law. But I could see a hetero couple successfully suing as this could be seen as discrimination on the basis of sexual preference.

I think in cases of gay or infertile incestuous couples the law tends to look the other way as no one is really being harmed.

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Interestingly, study in Iceland by the deCODE genetics company, published by the journal Science, found that third cousins produced more children and grandchildren according to wikipedia (Interbreeding article).


Hilarious quote from wikipedia article on Charles II : As the American historians Will and Ariel Durant put it, Charles II was "short, lame, epileptic, senile, and completely bald before 35, he was always on the verge of death, but repeatedly baffled Christendom by continuing to live." :D
 
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If they're adults, it's none of anybody's ***** business.
 
If incest means "sexual contact among genetically related individuals", all human sexual relationships are technically incestuous, given that all human lineages can be traced back to an individual from whom we are all descended. That said, such a definition is not terribly helpful, but it does illustrate the difficulty in devising a bright-line distinction between "incest" and "not incest".

The reason I refer to the arbitrariness of the definition of incest is that I am pretty sure that modern incest laws were cobbled together from canon-law considerations of consanguinity and whatever religious justifications were used in Protestant domains. Therefore, they represent a prescientific approach to issues of relatedness. For instance, marriage of a "non-related" individual to one's sibling created a consanguinous relationship between one and one's inlaws, so, under canon law, it was possible to have an incestuous relationship with someone to who one was not gentically related.

I know that it is possible for people to have same-sex sexual contact with second-degree relatives (i.e., first cousins), if I am to believe the anecdotes I have heard. However, whether such contact is incestuous, depends on the legal definition of incest and the legal definition of sexual contact. In most US states, incest laws refer to "sexual intercourse" and "sexual intercourse" is defined in a sex-neutral way, so it is possible for same-sex sexual relationships to violate the incest laws. Nevertheless, I think that devising some non-legal definition of incest is rather futile because incest, as it is being discussed in this thread, is primarily concerned with the legal delimitation of sexual behavior. If one wants to discuss the biomedical implications of close relatives' procreating, such a discussion is better served by talking about the effect of inbreeding.
 
Mijo I also suspect that there's probably an attempt at maintaining genealogies and incestuous relationships could mean that the female could no longer be able to be given away.

I suspect that may be a social pressure against incest anyways back in ye olde times.
 
I don't understand why it isn't clear that this is incest unless you only consider vaginal intercourse to be sex. Sex includes any sexual act involving touching, hugging, kissing, fellatio, cunnilingus, sodomy, S&M, fetishes and/or anything else you might find arousing not to exclude naked cool whip wars. If you are doing any of these things with a family member regardless of sexual orientation then it is incest. If you are doing this with a family member below the age of consent it is child molestation, which is a separate issue.
 
Why is everyone talking abot sexual relationships as if they always implied pregnancy? Yes, the whole "moral logic" of incestual relationships is that the offspring tends to come with genetical issues... But this thread is about homosexual incest. By definition, there cannot be natural offspring coming from them. There's also heterosexual incest with protection, to avoid pregnancy, etc, so the question of where we draw the moral line doesn't need made up scenarios of a world where the cure for the genetic faults in offspring that come from incestual sex, has been developed. The moral question is pretty much in vogue, and it goes like this: take any incestual relationship in which, there is never an offspring and define why is that wrong.
 
Because if you are under the age of consent it is considered statutory rape, if not, then it's just objectification of a family member and is more or less a version of masturbation IMO. Circumstances tend to play apart if there aren't other options for partners, which can happen by effectively isolating the family member in which the act becomes opportunistic, or because they live in an isolated area with no contact with anyone outside the family. Orientation has nothing to do with it.
 
Okay, I did not specify this but I was actually only referring to cases where people are of legal age. Obviously if we're dealing with adults having sex with minors, it's a whole other monster right there.
 
But if you have a parent/child situation, and the act takes place after age of consent then some kind of emotional or manipulative abuse had to take place to get the adult child to the point of thinking it's just dandy despite what society has to say about the relationship. It's still an opportunistic situation, and I see no difference in a scenario with an older sibling taking advantage of a younger sibling. How many times have you heard of reported cases of incest where the younger partner was the instigator?
 
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