"Do you think incest and polygamy will be legalized?" - Part 5

I came across a poll on the subject of the future of full marriage equality:

I was watching a TV show recently and surprisingly, three characters (two men and a woman) got together in a sexual AND romantic relationship - as in, it wasn’t just a kink, they were serious about it, they even made their relationship official to their family/friends. And it got me thinking, do you guys think polygamy will ever be legalized? And incest? And should they be, and if not, why? Will our society ever see it as acceptable/normal like with gay relationships?

This is the single most important argument I think I made. The distinction between the mental, ethical, and legal abilities of minors to consent is an important one, and one that rarely gets articulated. It’s an argument that doesn’t get brought too much, but is really annoying to deal with. I’m glad I could finally put down my thoughts on this definitively.

"Do you think incest and polygamy will be legalized?" - Part 4

I came across a poll on the subject of the future of full marriage equality:

I was watching a TV show recently and surprisingly, three characters (two men and a woman) got together in a sexual AND romantic relationship - as in, it wasn’t just a kink, they were serious about it, they even made their relationship official to their family/friends. And it got me thinking, do you guys think polygamy will ever be legalized? And incest? And should they be, and if not, why? Will our society ever see it as acceptable/normal like with gay relationships?

More eugenics...

This was a reply to a response I left to OrbitalResonance:

OrbitalResonance, on 28 Apr 2014 - 09:59 AM, said:

[...]

Yes, I am a fu!king Nazi. Don’t you ever use slippery slope with me you small minded buffoon. Incest is immoral while polygamy and homosexuality are acceptable. My logic is one that measures consent and consideration for the end result. There will be a line drawn.

Wasn’t saying you were in favor of those things. I’m making a point, that there’s no clear logical barrier between discriminating against one group[ of consensual adults'] reproductive rights regardless of their actual genes and behaviors, and [discriminating against] another group['s]. Some relatives could have healthy children, some wouldn’t. It depends on individual genomes, epigenomes, and lifestyles, all of which can be determined to some degree and used to make responsible decisions (which is what Israel did with the Samaritans). I think we should have free genetic screening and counseling for everyone, since it makes it easier for people to make responsible reproductive decisions.

The thing is, people who would never advocate for using state force to control people’s consensual sexual and reproductive lives will all of a sudden be okay [with it] when it comes to “incest”. It’s just because that’s the only logical sounding argument most can come up with besides “eww”. I’m saying a) it’s bad eugenic policy anyway, and b) people should be more careful suddenly becoming pro eugenics just because it serves them on one issue. After all, if we’re policing the gene pool and trying to prevent abnormal births, why aren’t we banning sex for people who are past middle age? The reason a eugenic argument allows for bad logical consequences, is because it’s being applied arbitrarily to a large group of people based on an act that’s not necessarily even reproductive. (I also don’t think eugenics is a proper role for a democratic state.)

Actually, let me quote that Slate article:

My guess is that this is how governments will manage unconventional sex practices in the next century. We can’t stop people from doing what they want to do. We’ll tell them what’s generally dangerous. And if they can adequately reduce the medical risks, by wearing a condom or taking a genetic test, we’ll look the other way. We’ll speak the language of science, or none at all.

"Do you think incest and polygamy will be legalized?" - Part 3

I came across a poll on the subject of the future of full marriage equality:

I was watching a TV show recently and surprisingly, three characters (two men and a woman) got together in a sexual AND romantic relationship - as in, it wasn’t just a kink, they were serious about it, they even made their relationship official to their family/friends. And it got me thinking, do you guys think polygamy will ever be legalized? And incest? And should they be, and if not, why? Will our society ever see it as acceptable/normal like with gay relationships?

Science!!

The "deformity" stereotype is an old one

Perhaps no opinion, upon subjects of a medical character, is more widely diffused among the public, or more tenaciously held, than that the results of the marriage of blood relations are almost uniformly unfortunate. This opinion has been so long held and so often reiterated, that by sheer force of these circumstances alone it has come to be regarded as an unquestioned and unquestionable fact.

- Dr. Bell, a New England physician in 1859

"Do you think incest and polygamy will be legalized?" - Part 2

I came across a poll on the subject of the future of full marriage equality:

I was watching a TV show recently and surprisingly, three characters (two men and a woman) got together in a sexual AND romantic relationship - as in, it wasn’t just a kink, they were serious about it, they even made their relationship official to their family/friends. And it got me thinking, do you guys think polygamy will ever be legalized? And incest? And should they be, and if not, why? Will our society ever see it as acceptable/normal like with gay relationships?

The argument continues:

Help for Family and Friends of Incestuous Siblings

(Here is a PDF version of the full text)

This is for the benefit of friends or family of romantically involved siblings, who may have recently discovered their secret. Though I’ve used “incest” in the title, I won’t continue to use the terms “incest” or “incestuous,” I will use “consanguinamory” and “consanguineous” (pronounced “con-sang-gwin-am-or-ee” and “con-sang-gwin-ee-us). “Incest” is too loaded a word for intelligent discussion, and I only ever use it for sexual abuse. If I say “consanguinamory”, assume I am talking about consensual sex. (I’m going to assume that the couple is opposite-sex, but most of this also applies for same-sex couples.) Remember: there’s a difference between love and abuse.

This might be long, but bear with me. All of your concerns are about to be addressed. If you truly love them, you will have the patience to read this.
 

Unfamiliarity leads to disgust, and disgust leads to hate

Westermarck suggested that humans have an inclination to prevent other people from behaving in ways they would not themselves behave. On this view, left-handers were in the past forced to adopt the habits of right-handers because the right-handers found left-handers disturbing. In the same way, those who were known to have had sexual intercourse with close kin were discriminated against. People who had grown up with kin of the opposite sex were generally not attracted to those individuals and disapproved when they discovered others who were. […] Once in place, the desire for conformity, on the one hand, and the reluctance to inbreed, on the other, would have combined to generate social disapproval of inbreeding.

- Patrick Bateson, Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo

Why do we condemn others for having sex with their relatives? What has this to do with our not being interested in having sex with our relatives? […] We condemn them because by arousing our aversion their behavior causes us pain.

- Arthur P. Wolf, Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo

"Genetic testing breathes new life into Israel's Samaritans"

Samaritans celebrating Sukkot

All of these weird eugenic arguments people make about consanguinamory, about people having "too many kids," are not only creepy, but they're based on bad assumptions. When people are given easy access to good information on how to manage their families, they usually use it. The results can be amazing.

MT. GERIZIM, West Bank — When Ben Yehuda Altif got engaged to his first cousin Mazal, there was no problem winning the blessing of their families or the Samaritan high priest, who leads their ancient Israelite sect. Marriage between cousins is common in the religious community. But there was still an obstacle. Like many Samaritan couples today, the pair had to pass a premarital genetic screening to predict the likelihood of having healthy children. Without the green light from doctors, the marriage would be off. "Doctors said OK, and now we have a healthy, handsome boy," said Altif, 33, reaching for his wife's cellphone to show off pictures of their son.

Samaritans, who trace their roots back about 2,700 years, are best known for clinging to strict biblical traditions that have largely disappeared, including animal sacrifice, isolation of menstruating women and, until recently, a ban on marrying outsiders. But after facing near-extinction and being devastated by a high rate of birth defects because of inbreeding, the community is using modern science — including genetic testing, in vitro fertilization and abortion — to preserve their traditional way of life.

"It's changing our blood," said Aharon Ben-Av Chisda, 86, high priest of the 750-member Samaritan community, which is split about evenly between the West Bank village of Kiryat Luza near Nablus and the Israeli city of Holon, south of Tel Aviv. The white-bearded priest said genetic testing was breathing new life and optimism into the once-besieged community. He noted that he and his wife, who is a second cousin, had four children before genetic testing was available: Three are deaf and one can't walk. Most other families at Mt. Gerizim tell similar stories of health problems and handicaps among the older generation, though lately such problems have begun to disappear.

Samaritans are one of the world's oldest religious sects. Similar in practice, beliefs and ancestry to Jews, they follow the Hebrew Torah. But instead of Jerusalem, they revere a temple their ancestors built on this remote West Bank hillside.

Mentioned several times in the Bible, Samaritans are also considered one of the most inbred communities in the world, with 46% marrying first cousins and more than 80% marrying blood relatives, according to research by Israeli geneticist Batsheva Bonne-Tamir, who spent most of her career studying the community. The restrictions against marrying outsiders were less of a problem when Samaritans numbered more than a million in the 5th century. But because of persecution and forced conversion to Islam, their numbers had dwindled to just 146 by 1917. To crawl their way back, Samaritans began having large families of eight to 10 children, and the frequency of first-cousin marriages doubled, Bonne-Tamir found. As the population grew, so did the health problems and genetic defects, including rare blood diseases, Usher syndrome, deafness, muteness, blindness and physical handicaps.

"It was largely a 20th century phenomenon," said Bonne-Tamir, now retired from Tel Aviv University. Over the last decade, the community also relaxed its restrictions on intermarriage, allowing in about 25 women, mostly Jewish Israelis and arranged matches with brides from Ukraine. Samaritan leaders are reluctant to discuss their gene pool shrinkage, but they estimate the rate of birth defects was once 10 times higher than the nationwide average. By the 1960s, the rate of miscarriage was 10% higher among Samaritan women, one study found. But since adopting genetic testing, Samaritans say the rate of birth defects among newborns today is normal, even though most people still marry inside the community, including to relatives.

"This is enabling us to build a better generation for the future," said Ishak Al Samiri, a spokesman for the community at Mt. Gerizim.
Like his father, Al Samiri married a cousin. He has two healthy children, but he suffers from a blood disorder and his brother is crippled, both believed to be linked to genetic defects, he said.
Samaritans have long been the focus of genetic research, initially because of their ancient roots. In the 1960s, Israeli scientists began to study the Holon branch of the community, both to assist with genetic defects and to trace their historic lineage.

Samaritans claim that they are the descendants of northern Israelite tribes that were conquered by Assyrians. Subsequent genetic studies suggested that Samaritan men carry the so-called Cohen gene, linking them to ancient Israelites. For centuries, Samaritans lived in Nablus, but some moved to Jaffa and later to Holon. In 1988, the Nablus community relocated to a village near an Israeli settlement to escape attacks by Palestinians, who viewed them as Jews. Today Samaritans, who hold Israeli citizenship, pride themselves on staying neutral in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 This can happen if there's a sudden, extreme bottleneck. Moderate levels of consanguineous marriage can have little to no consequence on a population's health stats, as long as the population is large enough and there is still non-consanguineous marriage. If a bottleneck does happen, it can be many generations before all of the deleterious genes from the founder population are eliminated from the gene pool. One of the ways to get around this, as the Samaritans have shown, is to use genetic tests to inform marital and reproductive decisions. If people are worried about children born with disabilities - and I'm assuming they're genuine here, and not just using this as an excuse to attack consanguinamorous people specifically - then a great way to address those concerns is with widespread, cheap access to genetic testing and family planning. As the Samaritans have shown, if you have that, consanguinamory isn't much of a problem.

The naturalistic fallacy needs to die

The "naturalistic fallacy" is commonly used against both biological science, homosexuality, and consanguinamory. It's a fallacy for a reason.

If “natural” is “good”, what use does it serve as a moral rubric? When people say “homosexuality is unnatural”, they are saying “homosexuality is wrong”. But how does that help the discussion? “It’s wrong because it’s unnatural” is the same as saying “it’s wrong because it’s wrong”. That doesn’t tell us why it’s wrong: it’s again “a description” – a false one in this case, since […] there are 1,500 animal species that engage in homosexual behaviour. The assertion becomes a tautology. But just showing that a supposedly unnatural act occurs in nature does not make it moral either! The entire point is to get rid of linking so tightly “moral” and “natural”: whether something does or does not occur in nature doesn’t aid our deciding whether that act is moral.

After all, wearing glasses, building hospitals and using crutches don’t occur in nature – are these to be considered “wrong” based on that category? If they’re not, why use the category of “unnatural” or even “natural” at all when discussing morality?

- Tauriq Moosa

"Do you think incest and polygamy will be legalized?" - Part 1

I came across a poll on the subject of the future of full marriage equality a while back:

I was watching a TV show recently and surprisingly, three characters (two men and a woman) got together in a sexual AND romantic relationship - as in, it wasn’t just a kink, they were serious about it, they even made their relationship official to their family/friends. And it got me thinking, do you guys think polygamy will ever be legalized? And incest? And should they be, and if not, why? Will our society ever see it as acceptable/normal like with gay relationships?

My response: