W. Germany thinking about non-criminalising Incest ?

[Handley_Page]

It seems that despite the opposition, an influential group in Germany think de-criminalising Incest is a good idea.
But before anyone reaches for the "Yes" button, I take the liberty of pointing out this bit in the report:-

Their first child was born in 2001, and three of their four kids are in professional care; two are disabled and a third reportedly needed a heart transplant.

After his third conviction for incest, Steubing was sentenced to three years in prison. His legal appeals failed at the Federal Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights. Stuebing was allowed to keep custody of the fourth child when her husband-brother was in prison.

Not a good recommendation, I think

 

[lovecraft68]

Might be more than incest at work there.

Supposedly studies have shown it would take generations of incest to cause defects. Remember the royals in many cultures bred within the family to keep it pure and yes, there were a few crackpots here and there but not all of them.

My take on this has always been to pass some form of law where it would be allowed if one of the two had a form of permanent birth control, a Vas, tubes tied...

I also don't see this as something that will suddenly make thousands of siblings come out and say "hey, its legal, let fuck" that has nothing to do with it, either they will or in most cases will not.

 

[1sickbastard]

Rhode Island, I think, doesn't criminalize incest. It's a civil offence if between consenting adults, but nothing more.
Incest is also legal in Russia & France, again, as long as it's between consenting adults. The only real prohibitions are not allowing marriages between kin closer than first cousins.

In the US, first cousin marriage is legal, either fully or at the approval of a county Justice of the Peace, in something like 27 states. It may surprise you that nearly none of those states are in the South.

It may be that what the German Gov't is considering (East/West Germany don't exist as legal entities any more), is that government has no business dictating the private lives or sexual behaviors between legally consenting adults. Which it doesn't.

LC is right, legalization isn't going to cause a widespread surge in marriage between siblings or parent/child, uncles-aunts/nieces-nephews. There are built in evolutionary behavior inhibitors that discourage sexual liaisons between close kin.
To look at it another way, if a family only breeds with itself, it removes it's genes from the common gene pool which puts said family at a huge evolutionary disadvantage. That disadvantage is increased by the manifestation of genetic birth defects.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Yeah, one of the reasons that incest has strictures against it is that generally human beings are rather revolted by the thought. It's probably a thousand times more common on the pages of Lit than in the genuine world.

 

[Bramblethorn]

It seems that despite the opposition, an influential group in Germany think de-criminalising Incest is a good idea.
But before anyone reaches for the "Yes" button, I take the liberty of pointing out this bit in the report:-

Their first child was born in 2001, and three of their four kids are in professional care; two are disabled and a third reportedly needed a heart transplant.

After his third conviction for incest, Steubing was sentenced to three years in prison. His legal appeals failed at the Federal Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights. Stuebing was allowed to keep custody of the fourth child when her husband-brother was in prison.

Not a good recommendation, I think

I think we discussed this case on one of the forums a few months back. As far as I can tell there are three main arguments offered for banning incest:

Ick factor (including religious prohibition) - I don't accept this one as a justification for law-making, especially given that it's also been applied to same-sex marriage, mixed-race marriage, and quite a lot of other things.

Consent/power-imbalance issues - definitely an issue for parent-child relationships, but in general I wouldn't see it as a big issue for adult siblings. (The Stübing/Karolewski relationship started when he was 23 and she was 16; I'm not comfortable with that age gap, especially given what else I know about the situation, but that's got nothing to do with their shared parentage.)

Genetic issues - this is less of an issue than popularly believed. Repeated inbreeding over generations can indeed be a serious problem, and incest taboos probably served a useful purpose in history when most people lived in relatively small communities and married close to home, but between larger/more mobile populations and the Westermarck effect there's not much risk of that these days.

Yep, Stübing/Karolewski have three kids with some form of handicap. But there are other things that can cause that sort of pattern. For example, the health problems I've seen reported for the kids (premature birth, epilepsy, congenital heart problems) are all things that occur with fetal alcohol syndrome, and given what's been reported about their family background I wouldn't be tremendously surprised if that had more to do with it.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of people who have a significant chance of passing on genetic disease for reasons that have nothing to do with inbreeding. I'm one of them; for me to have a child with any partner is probably more of a risk than for a brother and sister. So if the risk of genetic illness is too high for a brother/sister couple, you probably ought to prohibit people like me from having children altogether.

(The name for this, BTW, is "eugenics". German medical history of the last 80 years offers some clues as to why German people might be unpopular with that idea - not that other countries have a spotless record on this.)

For what it's worth: brother/sister is legal in much of Australia, has been for a long time, but there don't seem to be a lot of people rushing out to take advantage of this.

Edit: Some more info on the genetic risks here. Estimates that first-degree relationships have about a 31% excess risk of death or severe disability, but also notes that some of this may be non-genetic in origin, complicated by things like young maternal age.