I was visiting some silly White people recently and I managed to infuriate everyone at the gathering by suggesting, like a typical jerk, that incest should not be illegal.
Thing about middle class White people is that there’s like 899,943,097,107, 165, 221, 669, 507 hundred quadrillion things that are never allowed to be discussed because some uptight White weenie is going to get offended. Not just not discussed at dinner. I mean not discussed ever. Whenever I piss off some uptight White middle class Professional Offended Persons, I always figure it’s a great subject for a blog post!
I’m a libertine, and my libertarian argument is that incest laws are no damned business of the state!
The most typical type of incest is father-daughter, in fact, these are really the only kind that are ever prosecuted. The reason for the societal hatred and outrage over incest is due to societal hatred of normative male sexuality. Incest means fathers screwing their daughters. Since male sexuality is evil under the current Matriarchy-Mangina Dictatorship, fathers screwing their daughters is normative male sexuality. All fathers are evil horny bastards who wish to take advantage of their pure as the virgin snow (on account of being morally pristine females) daughters.
Mother-son incest doesn’t happen too much, so no one cares. Brother-sister incest occurs quite a bit, but no one ever goes to jail for it, so the laws are ridiculous. And if anyone ever did go to jail in the case of brother-sister incest, it was be the male, since it’s male sexuality that is evil, naturally predatory and malign according to the feminist maggots and wussieboys who run society. The female in the brother-sister incest would always be innocent because feminist cunts and their fagboy buddies say females are perennial innocents.
I would argue that in most cases of brother-sister incest, there’s no predatory behavior involved. In which case it’s no business of the law’s. Brother-sister incest is not a good idea, and it ought to be stopped (But not by cops!), but it’s often just two adolescent innocents exploring their budding sexuality. Just what business is this of the state’s? None whatsoever!
As far as father-daughter incest, it’s surely covered under existing child sexual abuse abuse statutes. There’s an argument that father-daughter incest is a particularly nasty form of child abuse, and the victims are harmed worse than others. Fine. Have incest as an enhanced penalty statute in cases of child abuse.
Since no one ever goes down in brother-sister incest, and it’s just silly kids who don’t know what they are doing anyway, why is it even illegal in the first place? Good question. Probably to police those evil brothers with their persistent 16 year old erections that threaten their permanently hymened sisters of ivory white goodness and rectitude.
In cases where both parties are over the age of 18, why is incest against the law at all?
It doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes a father has sex with an adult daughter. A mother having sex with an adult son is even rarer. No one ever goes to jail for adult-adult incest, so why is it against the law in the first place? Once again, it’s only to police those evil fathers, who never stop wanting to fuck their daughters, even after they are all grown up into womanhood.
In many US states, any sexual contact between first cousins of any age is illegal. This is particularly preposterous, as cousin incest is extremely common worldwide, even in the US.
A silly argument against these rarely enforced laws is that incestuous sex leading to pregnancy leads to inbred offspring and birth defects. This can be dealt with via laws against incestuous marriage. In most civilized states, incestuous marriage is rare enough anyway, so there’s no reason for the state to worry about it.
Incest laws exist due to moral panic. What’s going to happen if we get rid of the laws? Why! There will be a huge wave of incest, followed by a tidal wave of babies, most of them with ears growing out of their groins!
Some sensible states have seen the light recently and gotten rid of their stupid incest laws. Rhode Island sensibly eliminated all incest laws in 1989. Ohio’s law only targets parents as offenders. In New Jersey, incest is legal, as it ought to be, for adults.
Incest, reasonably enough, is completely legal in Russia, Belgium, Portugal and India at the very least.
Incest ought to be legal not because it’s a good idea, but because it’s none of the state’s damned business. The most harmful kind, father-daughter sex, is readily dealt with under existing child sex abuse statutes. Incest involving adults, problematic though it may be, is simply none of the state’s damned business.
Although I’m a libertine, I am troubled by incest at any age.
Father-daughter incest is often quite harmful to the underage daughter. Father-daughter incest with an adult daughter is typically not harmful for the father, but the daughter often comes out of it feeling harmed. Mother-son incest is very rare. In a few cases, mothers have had sex with adult sons. The mothers escape unharmed, but the sons often feel it was a bad idea.
Brother-sister incest is often not a good idea. One or the other, the brother or the sister, frequently feels harmed by the experience. If it’s going on, parents need to intervene and separate the sexual explorers. Cousin incest should simply be legal, though cousins should not be allowed to marry. It’s dubious whether cousin incest is any more harmful to participants than any other sexual behavior.
A lot of harmful things in society are no damned business of the Nanny Cop State’s. In fact, many harmful activities, are, properly, not even illegal at all. The Nanny Cop State has no prerogative, and indeed no right, to legally sanction all harmful behaviors.
Great article here on the subject, and the great William Saletan of Slate asks the same question here. From Saletan:
This week, the Associated Press published an interview with Rick Santorum, the third-highest ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate. Referring to a pending case involving sodomy laws, Santorum argued, “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery.”
Surely, Santorum is right. Now there’s one principled fundamentalist wacko! Surely, no one should go to jail for bigamy, adultery, polygamy or incest involving siblings, cousins, or adults. The piece then goes on to interview gay rights ultra-liberals arguing, absurdly, that the state should be able to ban adult incest but not ban gay sex. It’s always sorry when the conservative crazies make sense and we Lefties are the nuts. It’s worse than sorry. It’s embarrassing!
Reading the arguments in favor of incest laws, most of them seem to revolve around the same misandrist feminazi-Mangina fag argument that incest is all about power. In other words, it’s evil humans with dicks preying on poor innocent forever children humans with vaginas. The permachildren with mammaries being too stupid to look out for their own good and avoid being talked into doing stupid things, we (The Cops!) have to watch over them like shepherds until they are dead, protecting the Braying Female Lambs from the Evil Male Wolves.
One more thing. You know what else is “all about power?” Heterosexual sex. I’ll give the Feminazis like Andrea Dworkin credit for at least figuring out the obvious. C’mon Nanny Staters, lets make fucking illegal too!
This article from the Harvard Law Review makes the logical assumption that most laws against incest lack a rational basis and argues instead for a reforming of such laws on the basis of consent vs. non-consent. The article points out, unbelievably, that incest and even marriage is often illegal even between adult step-relations, and even between adult ex-step-relations, when there is no reason for this.
Since adult step-relations have no blood relationship, there is no reason for that sex between them should be illegal, nor should marriage between them be illegal. The usual argument against this sort of thing is moral revulsion, but recent cases striking down laws against gay sex indicate that moral revulsion is no reason to outlaw any private sexual behavior.
References
- Inbred Obscurity: Improving Incest Laws in the Shadow of the ‘Sexual Family’. Harvard Law Review. June 2006.
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