Legalization of Incest in some countries

Many countries around the world have legalized incest in recent years.. I did not know that incest between consenting adults is legal in Russia, China, France, Israel, Turkey, the Ivory Coast, the Netherlands, Spain(consent is at the age of 13) until today.

What is your take on the legalization of incest? Is incest bad if it is consensual? Should social norms of morality even determine the legality of incest?

The decisions of consenting adults should not be the concern of society. If the pair have offspring then those offspring are their responsibility and shouldn't trouble others for the offspring's upbringing.

Let them be, just how there are homosexual couples. I see no harm in it at all, besides the chance of the gene problems that is, they should at least recognize the risk.

Since I live in a society that finds incest to be gross, I tend to find it gross. Even if I did not find it to be so distasteful I think that children born from incest are much more likely to have varying forms of mental illness most namely retardation.

[size=14]I say let people live their lives how they want as long as they don't bother anyone else.[/h]

I didn't know it was illegal. I thought it was just frowned upon. Except in Japan.

This.

I wish the entire bad gene pool senerio didn't exist; since the resulting child could potentially get doubled up with bad gene's. But i find it a bit hypocritical to restrict consensual incest due to bad gene's negatively impacting a child; while we don't restrict anyone else's choice in partners. Not to say we should be putting restrictions on these kinds of things though.

I believe laws that limit freedoms; and protect no one shouldn't exist. While i understand the flip side of this, that a potential baby is harmed, i still don't see why we'd only intervene in who someone wants to have a kid with in this corner stone case.

It's not simply limited to this specific case, but children born with deformations and mental illnesses are a drain on society. Remember it's not just the parents who are paying for this child, the government has to pay money to this family to help out and that is your tax money, and my tax money.

Taking it from that perspective, I am not against incest, or gay marriage or drugs or whatever people want to do. But if there is a known issue with doing so, like producing a child with these problems that will need extra money beyond what a family can provide for medical expenses, etc. That becomes my problem now because I don't pay my taxes so a brother and sister can get free money for ignoring genetics.

You have to draw a line somewhere. Even in a places where you have free health care, that comes from your taxes, and the government still gives money to help the disabled which is all tax money. Now if there were two consenting adults who had a kid and were not genetically related or distant enough that genetics was not a factor but there was still an issue with the birth, I will go with society and agree my tax money should help.

If someone is hurt in an accident, my tax money should help them. But if they are born to two consenting adults who know that what they will do will produce a child with problems. That should not cost me a penny, unfortunately that will not be the case in legalizing incest.

So I can only really say this for my opinion: Am I against incest? No. Should it be legal? No.

I believe we can agree that a human being is responsible for their own actions. With that being said, if you decide to fuck your sister you can't justify demanding money from society to pay for your mistakes.

If we go the route of "well, society will have to pay" as the justification of banning anything with a negative externality then here is a short list of things we must ban, because "society will pay for it".

Cigarettes: Cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease.

Alcohol: Accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, cancer, cardiovascular disease, heart disease, among others

Soda: Diabetes.

Fast food: Diabetes

Raw milk: Bacteria

Sedentary lifestyles (video games,etc): Heart Disease, Diabetes, among others

Drugs: Everything

Prescription drugs: Everything

too much sunlight: Cancer

Coffee: Cancer, Cholesteral, Blood Pressure, Coronary artery disease among others.

Processed Foods

Cars

Sports

Allowing those with STD's to have sexual relationships

among tens of thousands of other things that can be justified as "bad" because they'll have a "cost" on society.

So where does the banning stop?

Post above me explains my pov rather well, i get that the harm to the potential child is a price to pay, honestly i never thought about the taxes portion of it. The problem is the grey area that we are dealing with. Where do we draw the line and how defined is it. Can a brother and sister marry but not have kids, should they be cut of government spending to treat their child if they have a kid. Should they be fined substantially if they have a child together?


It's unfortunently these kinds of legislature that have to decided between simplicity to enforce and equality to all of those involved. Law attempts a lot of these what i call "you shouldn't" laws, like wearing your seat belt or underage drinking. These sorts of things by all means should be in existence (ok maybe not seat belts; and lower the drinking age) but it's impossible to enforce to varying degrees; due to the shear number of people that break these laws and or how hard they are to spot.

This ends up being one big political mess;like most "moral laws", where everyone tries to draw lines. How dose the government balance the right of the people, tax payers, and potential child. All while making the law simple and effective to enforce.



Side note: Dose anyone have any hard factual data that incest even causes sever damage to the child of incest a considerable amount of the time?(ya it's probably hard to come by) I did a quick search and found most people saying it's rare to have it affect the child; and the data could really speak loudly here.
A .01% chance of defects vs 30% chance makes these decisions take on a whole new light.

I personally don't see a problem with incest itself. Two consenting adults should be allowed to enter into whatever relationship they please.

Now, if you want to make birth of a child by incest illegal then that is a completely different story. That is something that ends up being a fairly complicated, due to the possibility of a victim. This should probably just be left up to the majority opinion/ there representatives.

The line really just seems to be drawn in the wrong place, and really needs to be moved to not take advantage of the minority of people who enter into incest.

Look into the "inbreeding coefficient" which calculates various odds that two alleles will be identical.

The short version, depends whose inbreeding some pairing have a .20 chance of identical alleles while others have as high as 25 or 50%.

I agree with this. I personally think it's gross, and as far as I know it's not allowed in Canada.

All those things on the list are such a grey area with exception to someone having sex with STDs. Nobody has really died from one glass of soda, or one beer, or one cig. Millions of people play sports and drive cars, but this can not be said about incest. Not to mention there's a huge difference between something that just effects you by you alone and bringing a person into the world with compromised circumstances.

I guess we should screen out and abort those pregnancies that will give life to a person with "compromised circumstances". Time to start genetically screening all potential parents for disease, or congenital birth defect risks!

You can't justify any law against incest without trying to justify why your morality is better than the morality of others and why it should be the law. The same inane logic is used to ban everything from homosexuality to video games. Here's a novel idea, stop banning shit and learn to live with the reality that people will do things you don't agree with.

Anyways, what business is it of yours what two consenting adults do?

Because my money pays for the mistakes of others that can be prevented. If its not illegal than they have a right to get money from the government to pay for the mistakes they make. You can't make incest legal and deny any money to help pay for a deformed child that they birth.

Murder is illegal, but if you want to take a moral standpoint, than why is your moral better than mine. I should be allowed to murder as many as I want. It's only a moral difference.

I won't touch this laughably simplistic worldview because it'll derail the conversation. It essentially boils down to "I have the right to demand money at gunpoint from other people to fix the mistakes I've made". It's disgustingly selfish.



I sure as hell can and would if given the power. I direct you back to the Penn Jillete quote that I referred you to previously





Murder is a violation of basic natural rights. The "I should be allowed to do..." argument is quite selfish and honestly portrays you as a simpleton incapable of forming a stronger argument. So unless you want to start discussing the foundations and theories of natural and legal rights I say we stick to the topic.

Note: I'm NOT calling you a simpleton. I'm stating the argument makes you look bad. I don't want you thinking "FPoD's being mean to me"

The only argument you have to ban incest is the possibility of a child being born with a defect would exist and that "society will have to pay". That's all you've put forth. The first can be resolved through various methods. Birth controls, various other methods such as chemical castration, "tube tying", abortions, gene therapy (major progress being made in the field), among various others.

The second one is resolved by, not forcing people to pay for the mistakes of others.

It keeps leading back to
1). Consenting adults
2). Their child, their responsibility.

I get what you are saying but there's one crucial thing you have to realize, and from all our previous conversations in other threads I can only assume you are American. The other parts of the world have this beautiful thing called free health care, and because we have this in a place like Canada where I live, we are legally bound by our constitution to the preservation of life. That means that if something happens to you, my money that the government takes is used to make you better. So if you willingly make a child, I don't get an option. My money is forced to help that child. So if an incest couple chooses to have a child, and they know this will create a disabled child or has a high chance of, my tax money by law must be given to those parents to spend "in the best interest of the child".

There is no way around this, there is no loophole. If you accept one you get the other. Because to deny that right of government support to this and not to normal couples, is the exact same as denying the right of gay marriage.

You can not pick and choose who you support once you give people a right. If society allows it, than society must accept the consequences of any action, good or bad. All countries with free healthcare operate like this. All countries with legal gay marriage follow this. It's called equality.

When your family tree ceases to branch out, that is not a good thing. But, to each his own I guess, who am I to say? All I can say is genetically, it will make your children weaker, and more sickly, are you alright with that?