Kuu

There was a case in New Zealand a few years ago when a brother and sister who had been adopted out at birth married without realising they were related. They were married for several years and had four children, all quite normal, before the truth was discovered.

They were charged with incest. They wanted to stay together and the woman offered to be sterilised if they could stay as a family. The judge however ordered them to take two children each and said they were not to see each other again.

To me this was far more immoral than the two of them wanting to stay together.

Amos

Genetic diversity has nothing to with it but the attraction of opposites is the reason for the innate appearance of what we call incest aversion.

Some of this can be encultured and some of it can be innate and that is why it is often difficult to breed animals that grew up together.

In Catholicism we call this "marriages are made in heaven" to which Shakespeare added: "Let not to the marriage of true minds admid impediments for love is not love which alters when it alteration finds." In other words, animals do not rape each other.

JerryM

The Libertarian in me says that government should stay out of the sexual activity of consenting adults. (Unless maybe someone is strangled, beaten up, etc.) The Realist however, knows that incest is such a deeply ingrained cultural taboo that it will take a lot of social evolution before it is considered even minimally tolerable, let alone non-criminal. Incest is an idea whose time hasn't come yet.

I found a link to a study testing the theory that children who are reared together become averse to having sex with each other (known as the Westermarck hypothesis.) These authors found that to be true for intercourse, but not necessarily for non-procreative sex, such as genital exposure or touching. I'm not sure how to relate this to anything, but it's interesting. <a href="http://www.yorku.ca/ycom/profiles/past/mar99/current/dept/dispatch/dsp4/htm" target="_blank">http://www.yorku.ca/ycom/profiles/past/mar99/current/dept/dispatch/dsp4/htm</a>

echidna

This thread would be incomplete without reference to the S&S thread regarding the <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=57&t=000563" target="_blank">Mitochondrial Eve</a>.

Maybe a sobering thought for some (myself included), but ultimately we are all already ancestrally related, even to our spouses.

elwoodblues

That is just about the saddest, most horrible godamned thing I've ever heard. I don't have words.

Boro Nut

I'll go along with that. With me it's about 8 o'clock of an evening.

Boro Nut

luvluv

Some of you have said that you found consensual adult incestuous sex acts to be morally repugnant. I don't see how that can be the case. I don't see how an atheist could consider this wrong. There's no adverse consequences which naturally stem from the act other than being ostracized by your community. But if being ostracized makes an act immoral most of you are immoral for being atheists. So while I think an athiest is free to feel incest is disgusting, I don't see a way to describe it as being morally wrong.

99Percent

Please indicate to me with a quote where someone here has said that consensual adult incestuous sex acts to be morally repugnant.

While a subjectivists might derive tha incests is morally wrong because it disgusts him, an objectivist is not going to be able to derive an ethic from consensual adult activities - sexual or not.

Ought Naught

Just doing my part...

99Percent

Thanks Ought Nought, (curious name BTW), I stand corrected.