hey folks,
a couple of weeks ago there was a ruling by the constitutional court of Germany that incest between brothers and sisters should remain illegal. The case involved a man who had four children with his sister and was sentenced to 2 years in prison. Their parents were divorced or something and they grew up in different families, so they only got to know each other as adults and fell in love. 2 of their 4 children are disabled, but doctors haven't been able to narrow down the cause of their disability. The mother (i.e. the sister of the father) is slightly mentally handicapped, too. The chief justice was in favour of legalizing incest, seeing as it is legal in some other countries, but the other judges outvoted him.
Anyways, some of the arguments against legalization that the judges cited were:
- the children of incestuous couples are likely to be disabled
- the more vulnerable/weaker of the two partners has to be protected
- the constitution says that families are the basic unit of society and have to be protected
- incest puts a lot of strain on the families involved
some arguments for legalization were:
- disability can have many causes, e.g. when one/both parent(s) in a non-incestuous relationship are disabled themselves, the children are very likely to be disabled. However, disabled ppl are, of course, allowed to marry and have children
- the incidence of incest is very low because normally children who grow up together (even if they are adopted and not genetically related at all) develop a psychological incest taboo, i.e. they will see the other children as their siblings and out of bounds sexually, even when they are NOT related. So legalizing incest would not result in a lot of ppl suddenly getting interested in it and practicing it.
- Sleepy's own argument: why should one of the partners be more vulnerable and weaker than the other, as long as they are both of age and have all their faculties intact? In this particular case, the woman (sister) was more vulnerable because she was mentally handicapped, plus the man (brother) beat her. But this isn't always the case, so how can you tell which partner needs to be protected? Plus, there can be a "weaker" partner (battered wife or husband) in any relationship and yet ppl are not generally prevented from marrying. You can only define who is the weaker partner after abuse has taken place, not before ppl marry ???
what do you think? (please refrain from comments about sodomy (sex with animals), pedophilia (I'm only referring to consenting adults, not kids or rape) and inflammatory analogies/comparisons of any kind. THANKS