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

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?

I thought it would be helpful to create one post where I link to everything:

• My initial response. I debunk the idea that no-one cares enough, argue against the usual eugenic argument, and also against the annoying argument I see all the time that amounts to, “Hah! All you can get is your mom?!” I also point out that polygamy/polyamorous marriage isn’t inherently sexist, because it includes polyandry and polygynandry. Women still have to consent.
• Eugenics is not a good argument, but it’s the only one that sounds kind of scientific and reasonable in people’s heads, so they always fall back on it. It doesn’t matter if it has strange and disturbing logical implications, apparently. Then I have to explain the difference between consensual sex and consensual cannibalism…
• I like this one. He provided me with an actual study for his statistic. I point out that it’s not as bad as he originally said, and either way the study itself points out that its findings are almost useless, because of sample bias.
• I have to further explain why eugenic arguments are logically dangerous, and how even by the standards of eugenics, laws banning consanguineous sex make zero sense.
• I lay down my arguments, once and for all, for why it makes sense and is just to have age-of-consent laws, but not laws against consanguineous sex. Let this be the end of it.
• I explain to someone why people are polyamorous, and how it can work successfully. I also point out an assumption in his own thinking about jealousy in monogamy.
• My closing statements.

"Do you think incest and polygamy will be legalized?" - Part 7

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?

Closing statements:

I don’t understand why y'all feel so comfortable trashing these people, and arguing for legally abusing them. Is it because y'all don’t know them personally? Well, I do, and they’re perfectly nice, reasonable people. Actually, some of them are nicer than the “normal” people I’ve met. They love one another. They take care of their kids. They pay taxes. Emotionally, I don’t understand how people can hate that so much. Trust me, just because you don’t think you know such a couple, doesn’t mean you don’t. The closet for both [polyamorous and consanguinamorous people] is large, and the closet for consanguineous couples is massive. It doesn’t mean they like living in fear and secrecy, and they shouldn’t have to. However, it’s easy enough for them to get away with it that they don’t risk rocking the boat.

It seems like what y'all want is to shove them into the closet and tell them to shut up, so y'all don’t have to be confronted with personal discomfort. Why should your personal discomfort have any relevance to law in a liberal country which enshrines protections for the rights of minorities against the tyranny of the majority? How does shaming people and telling them to shut up encourage abuse victims to come forward? And more importantly, how can you demand such a contract when it isn’t in good faith? These couples do hide in the closet. The problem is that when other people find out accidentally, they hunt them down and throw them in jail, even if they hid it well.
They need to fight these laws, because there is never any guarantee that the law won’t be used to abuse them, regardless of how they behave. The majority always loves telling minorities to shut up and go away when they complain. Meanwhile, minorities complain because, regardless of their silence and isolation, the majority still abuses some from time to time to make an example of them. There’s no other way for them to protect themselves, other than to fight the legal and social regime.

Most feel like the cost of fighting is too high, which is why it takes decades of momentum to get more to come out of the closet. That doesn’t mean they stay in the closet because they acquiesce to this “agreement”. They’re just afraid. They’re afraid of y'all. They’re adults with otherwise normal lives, who’ve done nothing to anyone that could ever be construed as harmful or destructive. Yet y'all have the power to utterly destroy them. Is that just? Are y'all really comfortable being potential threats to perfectly nice people, some of whom y'all may know? I don’t want to be a threat. I don’t think anyone should have the right to be - not towards good people like them.

"Do you think incest and polygamy will be legalized?" - Part 6

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?

Addendum on non-monogamy:

EVanimations, on 28 Apr 2014 - 9:51 PM, said:

Futurist, I’ll admit that I don’t know or care much about the issue at hand, so I’m not going to spend too much effort defending a position I’m unfamiliar with. That said, my opinion is that… well, incest is icky. I very much dislike the idea of having sex with someone directly related to me; it ain’t right.

[...] As for polygamy, I don’t like the idea of watching some other guy have sex with my woman, and I respect the fact that my woman doesn’t like the idea of watching some other girl have sex with me. Again, no reason to keep it illegal, but why would you want that in the first place if you truly respect each other? It feels kind of unfair to a woman who loves a man but has to share him with 5 others. Same the other way around.

I understand your personal aversions. “Wrong” for you, however, doesn’t automatically mean “wrong” for somebody else. There are advocates of same-sex marriage who still find the thought of having sex with someone of their own gender to be disgusting. Dan Savage, who gives advice mostly to straight people, still finds the idea of sex with a woman icky. People find the idea of having sex with someone they inherently don’t find appealing to be disturbing. However, other people are other people, and thoughts aren’t sufficient justification for police action. You seem to understand that though.

If you read poly* people’s writing - especially the philosophers and social theorists - many actually find the idea of sexual jealousy itself to be repugnant. They see it as a desire to control another person, to get love from them through social sanction and even legal force, and not through having earned it.

The argument is that if you’re constantly working to deserve their love, and they’re constantly working to deserve yours, then a fling on the side, or even a more long-term relationship on the side, isn’t threatening. Jealousy, however, particularly when worshiped as it is in monogamist cultures, can lead to immoral and antisocial behavior: spying, stalking, lying, yelling, beating, and even murder. Because our society worships monogamy, it inevitably also worships jealousy, and so encourages all of this destructive, unethical behavior.

There are people out there, a minority though they are, who don’t feel much jealousy in relationships. Besides that though, you’re buying into the monogamist line of thinking, which equates sex or even love of someone else with a betrayal of their love for you. Clearly, having sex with someone else doesn’t mean they don’t want to have sex with you. What’s harder for people to understand is that this can apply to love as well, though it’s more difficult.

I’d like to point out that there are many people who are dispositionally and openly polyamorous, but are in practice monogamous because they can’t find anyone else they like enough to integrate into their lives. I think most poly* people aren’t against monogamy, they just wish it was left to occur naturally, instead of yelling at people because they’re not doing it right. (I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing.)

The most common type of polyamory I’ve heard of is hierarchical polyamory. In that, there’s a primary relationship, which has veto power and the most romantic attachment, as well as secondary relationships, which can be long-term but aren’t as demanding or committed. Even in group marriages, different people add different things to each other’s lives, and so their love isn’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

When the relationship is all same-gender, or the other people involved are bisexual, it makes it easier because everyone is sexually and romantically bound to everyone. Common triads are between a bisexual man or woman, another bisexual of the same gender, and someone of the opposite gender. They can all have sex together, sleep together, wake up together, and they each fear the loss of both others. It helps to limit the risk of fragmentation - which is, to be fair, a legitimate worry.

A counselor who supports consanguine couples

Full Marriage Equality recently alerted me to an imgur post about consanguinamory.

(TL;DR: OP supports incest couples after commiserating with dozens of them.)

With human rights scratching towards the forefront of global issues, I'd like to take a moment to voice support for consanguine couples. I was going to do one of those nifty "My Job As" posts that I admire and enjoy, but I'm a small-time lurker who only has a few uploads, so I'm not familiar-enough with the layout to really make a pop-out interesting post.

Two years as an untrained volunteer peer counselor for BlahTherapy.com, I have spoken with literally thousands of people, I've counseled marriages, helped people in their careers, contacted law enforcement for abuse victims, and spent hours talking people out of suicide. Among all of those unfortunates, the plight that has struck the deepest chord with me are consanguine (incest) couples. This is a trend that is far more common than what I've personally found discussed in any form of media, and life for these people is very difficult.

Receiving much the same hate as LGBT persons and couples (and even hate FROM LGBT persons), their relationships are considered just as *forbidden* for reasons ranging from religious to scientific. (Example: According to the coefficient of inbreeding, full siblings have 50% chance to pass on deleterious alleles, which is very high, but just because negative traits can be passed on, that is no indicator of what KIND of negative genes will pass on.)

Much of society uses outrageous examples like three-headed children and the Wrong Turn movie franchise as colloquial examples, but such deformities are VERY extreme and unlikely, even in repeated incest; the haemophilia that lurked in Royal European families is rumored to have been the *result* of inbreeding, but this is impossible to verify, nevertheless, the strength of the rumor that incest tends to produce horrifying diseases has persisted in society.

The societal backlash on consanguine couples is often severe, given that the potential for harm is statistically so much higher than other types of relationships, but the harsh reality is that, in spite of how society-at-large may feel about the topic, consanguine coupling happens regularly (I wish I could cite that, but currently - and again, to my personal knowledge - no reputable scientific foundation will fund incest research).

To consanguine couples: you are not alone, and your plight is well-understood. Not everyone condemns your feelings. PM me any questions.

We've been unable to identify who made this post, or how to contact them. We'd love to network with this person, and potentially make connections between the consanguinamorous people they know and the consanguinamorous people we know. The greatest weakness of this community is how fragmented it is. If anyone knows how to contact this person, or if you yourself are the person who made this post, please contact myself or Full Marriage Equality. We, and everyone else we know, would really appreciate it.

My email is [the name of my blogspot] @protonmail.com. (In case it wasn't clear, thefinalmanifesto is the name of my blogspot. I'm just being opaque to avoid spam.)

"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.