What’s next? Legalized incest?

The US Supreme Court has spoken, and its voice is now the law of the land. Since Friday June 26th with the rainbow flag being waved outside the Supreme Court, same-sex marriages now have the same legal status and the same legal rights as marriages between heterosexuals. From the old saying:

   “By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you man and wife”

the marriage institution in the USA has undergone a major shift, requiring the adoption of two new vows:

   “By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and husband”

   “By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you wife and wife”

After all the hoopla on this issue has settled down, many may ask: what comes next? Are there no more causes to fight for? Was that all? Is there nothing else left to call people to the streets? Are there no more controversial issues over which society can advance to the next level?

If the intention of most so-called liberal-minded people is the demolition of beliefs that go back to the times of the Bible, there are still some controversial issues waiting to be reviewed and cast under a more “modern” spell. And one of those pending issues is the legalization of marriages between people who share a common bond that goes beyond the spiritual bonding, a more physical bond that -just like homosexual relationships- is also clearly forbidden in the Scriptures.

Incest is one of the last taboos left. It still elicits a strong reaction among diverse social groups. As a matter of fact, it evens stirs strong condemnation among prominent homosexuals, including many of those who fought so long and hard for the legalization of same-sex marriages!

Most of the time, those who become aware of acts of incest do so by reading about it in the headline news, news usually related to child molestation, news having to do with forced intercourse, news having to do with sex crimes where there is a victim and there is a perpetrator. A well-known example is the case of  Josef Fritzl, the so-called “Austrian monster”, who imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and fathered her seven children, and who said he was no “monster” and he could have killed her and her children had he wanted to, according to his lawyer. “I am not a monster,” Austrian daily Oesterreich quoted Fritzl as saying in comments relayed by his lawyer Rudolf Mayer. Fritzl also criticized media coverage of his case as “totally one-sided”. In 1984, the man lured his daughter Elisabeth into a basement in his home in the eastern Austrian town of Amstetten, drugged her and locked her up. He claimed she had disappeared to join a sect. Three of Elisabeth's children were raised by Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie after he pretended his daughter had left them on his doorstep with a letter saying she could not care for them. The other three children remained locked up in the windowless basement with their mother. A seventh child died shortly after birth. The pretence unraveled when the eldest child of the incestuous relationship, a 19-year-old daughter, became seriously ill and was taken to hospital .

But very seldom do we hear about incestuous events carried out on a consensual relationship, where both parties are in full agreement over the nature of their acts. No rape involved, no kidnapping, no forced penetration, no violence, no pressure tactics, nothing that may be deemed illegal except the nature of the act itself. And interestingly enough, this kind of relationship is still outlawed in most states in the USA. However, if it is consensual, with both parties in full agreement over what they do with their intimacy, and unless one of them is legally a minor, police departments never get any 911 phone calls denouncing such a thing when it is taking place. It is taken for granted that this is one of the best kept secrets among some families whose members otherwise seem to be law-abiding citizens.

Regarding incest, there is not a single county clerk in any civil court of the entire USA who will issue a marriage license between a man and a woman who are biological relatives amongst themselves, for example between a man and his daughter, even if they are both consenting adults. Instead of getting a marriage license, the likelihood is that they could be picked up by the police, although in the end it would be a waste of time since it would be impossible to have one of them testify against the other, especially with a consensual felony in which both parties would both have to be charged but with none of them willing to testify against the other in court. This is the reason of why these cases never get to the courts even if they do happen, it is almost impossible to obtain a conviction. The only possibility for a district attorney to obtain a conviction would involve catching the incestuous couple in some public park, but certainly never in the privacy of their own home for which the police would previously need a warrant before breaking into the house or apartment.

To keep things simple, and for the sake of argument, let us assume we have the case of an uncle who is 40 years old and his niece who is 22 years old, both involved in a sexual relationship. Their ages make them consenting adults. Do they have a legal right to do what they do? The Bible clearly says they don’t, the US Constitution could be interpreted as saying they do, and the US Supreme Court so far has never issued a clear position on such an event. Oddly, the ages-old argument against homosexual marriage, that marriage is defined to be the union between a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation, does not apply against a marriage between the uncle and his niece, for in this case, barring some physical impediment, it can be assumed that as a couple the uncle and his niece can bear children (and there are documented cases where they do), thus fulfilling the main requirement that some established religions have demanded consistently as the main purpose of marriage, procreation.

To many, incest may seem something so repugnant, so abhorrent, that the mere idea of its legalization, even under very special circumstances, is out of the question. However, let us not forget that barely 100 years ago, many had similar thoughts about homosexuality and homosexual relations, to the point that such relationships were typified in the law books of many states as sodomy, considered to be a felony punishable with imprisonment. Most of our grandparents and their own grandparents would have considered marriage between homosexuals something nigh on to impossible, something completely out of the question, and indeed not only was marriage between homosexuals considered a no-no, gay relationships themselves were a closely guarded secret between those involved in that kind of a relationship, so much so that even nowadays the phrase “coming out of the closet” still resonates every now and then regarding some famous public figures.

There is trump card argument against the legalization of incest, which has nothing to do with morality or religious beliefs. It has to do with damage and deterioration of the genetic material of the offspring. In Nature, inbreeding is punished by natural selection. Inbreeding augments the likelihood of genetic defects appearing in the offspring, genetic defects that may be extremely serious and incurable. Those with such defects may not survive not even a few days out of the womb, Darwinian natural selection works hard at removing these defective individuals from the very outset. Even if they do survive, most likely they will be prone to all sorts of weird ailments. In the times of the Egyptian pharaohs, the practice of inbreeding was common among the rulers of Egypt who considered themselves divine and thus were not allowed to intermingle their blood with the blood of commoners. As a result, King Tut appears to have paid the price exacted by Nature. There are many well-documented cases on the adverse consequences of incest, and this issue is out of the question. On the other hand, in the case of humans, biotechnology is fast approaching the point whereby it may be possible in the near future to tell which unborn specimens will carry defective genetic material and which will not, thus allowing for selective abortion removing the defective offspring before childbirth and keeping healthy offspring allowing them to be born. Which in turn shifts the controversy to abortion itself.

Let us raise up the ante even further. Let us go beyond the case of an uncle and his niece, and consider the case of siblings, which to many surely sounds even more disgusting and abhorrent. Marriage between siblings is strictly forbidden everywhere. However, marriage between homosexuals was also forbidden everywhere not so long ago, and it is now the law of the land in the USA. What was wrong then, is OK now. Why should there be a different standard for different cases? What about equal justice under law?

It may be tempting to argue that incest between siblings is contrary to Mother Nature, that it is something “unnatural”. But then, the same argument was often used against same-sex marriages. The argument would be easier to sustain if such things did not happen in Nature. However, homosexual behavior in other animal species besides Man, not bound by moral arguments or religious beliefs, is well documented in scientific journals. Homosexual behavior thus cannot be deemed to be “unnatural”. It may be contrary to religious mores or to the personal beliefs of some who find such practices off-beat, but it certainly cannot be deemed to be unnatural. Nature does not forbid it, and most certainly it does happen in other animal species. However, it still exerts punishment when it happens.

In the case of siblings, there seem to be two opposing mechanisms at work. One is a mechanism called genetic sexual attraction, whereby two siblings who are not aware of their blood relationship are mutually attracted to each other beyond the normal attraction they would feel for others not related to them, and perhaps it would be fitting to consider it as “DNA attracting the same DNA”. The other mechanism, which would be Nature’s defense mechanism against incest between siblings, is the Westermarck effect. However, these opposing effects are not merely a question of biology, a good deal of psycho-biology must be involved as well. Indeed, it is the stuff matter of many soap operas, and just recently the Mexican soap opera Muchacha italiana viene a casarse raised the issue in the relationship between Pedro Angeles and Fiorella Bianchi who were unsure if this unexpected link applied to them (reflecting a situation that can happen in real life), the tale of two siblings who are ignorant of their relationship, and once they discover they are siblings the mechanism of genetic sexual attraction loses it grip with both siblings repelling each other once they have found out the truth; with the Westermarck effect factor replacing the other factor completely. Simply put, in order for any attraction or repulsion between siblings to take effect, they must be either completely ignorant or completely aware of their kin relationship, that is the only proven way to shove aside the Westermarck effect.

The possibility that, sooner or later, marriage between relatives could also be legalized sometime in the future by other generations that will eventually replace us, looms in the horizon. We may have a firmly established moral stance or a deeply rooted religious belief against the legalization of incest, but in the end that may not matter in the legal terrain. It certainly didn’t carry any weight when the US Supreme Court legalized gay marriages. Most of the same US Justices of today who legalized gay marriages may nevertheless be firmly opposed to the legalization of incestuous marriages, but they will not live forever nor will they be sitting in their benches forever, they most certainly will be replaced by younger Justices -should we call them “more open minded”?- who will be more prone to allow such things to take place, using perhaps some of the same arguments that guided the current Justices to their sanctioning of gay marriages.

If legalized incest is to become a reality, judging from current events, it will not take place as the result of something we might call a “quantum leap”, going in a matter of hours from “no, never” to “perhaps in some cases” to “very well, go ahead and do it, you also have rights protected under the US Constitution”. It will be the end result of a series of small and cumulative steps taking place in the span of several decades. The coup d'etat achieved by gay couples in the full legalization of homosexual unions in the USA was not something that happened overnight, it took patience, it took persistence, they had to overcome what seemed to be insurmountable odds. A lot of fights in the courts, a lot of parades on the streets, a lot of political noise, a lot of appearances in talk-shows, a lot of defiant protests, a lot of almost everything on a non-stop basis. Until they finally won. They proved that in the end persistence pays.

The first step in procuring the legalization of incest marriages would be the promotion of a growing acceptance of the idea. Just as it happened with gay marriages. This involves desensitizing others gradually. From the initial “shock and awe” that the mere public discussion of the issue now elicits, little by little the discussion would no longer produce as much rejection as it did. The next step is sliding here and there the idea that “they also have Constitutional rights, and we should fight along their side supporting them wherever we can”. Just as it happened with gay marriages. Sooner or later, society would split in two major groups, with one group fiercely fighting for its “Constitutional rights”, and the other group fiercely opposing the first by resorting to arguments based mostly on moral or religious grounds which have no bearing on the US Supreme Court Justices. Eventually, the “fight for all rights protected by the US Constitution” would begin at the lower courts, court by court, state by state. Just as it happened with gay marriages. Again, it must be emphasized that this is not something that is expected to bear fruit in a matter of days, it would be a prolonged struggle lasting over several decades.

It may come as a shock to some that, besides the fact that in some cultures and religions the practice of incest is allowed, the fight for the legalization of incest has already started in some first-world countries, like Germany. A well-known case involves two siblings, Patrick Stübing and Susan Karolewski. From 2001 to 2005, they had four children together since starting a sexual relationship in 2000. Three of the children are in foster care, and two have unspecified disabilities, which would seem to corroborate the statistical forecast that the odds of having an offspring with some sort of disability under these circumstances is around 50-50, although it is not known whether they are a result of inbreeding, or because they were born prematurely. Both siblings grew up separately and only met many years later. Their supporters say they will fight until incest is no longer regarded as a criminal offence, arguing that the law is out of date, saying it harks back to the racial hygiene laws of the Third Reich and should be overturned in favour of freedom of choice and sexual determination. Detractors insist that incest should remain a social taboo, largely because of the risks linked to inbreeding and the imbalance in social relations it inevitably causes. Patrick Stuebing, was sentenced to 14 months in prison in 2005. His sister has never been imprisoned because she has always been tried as an adolescent. The couple were born into the same family but Patrick was already living apart from his mother when his sibling was born. After a life spent in children's homes, Mr Stübing was reunited with his mother, Annemarie, in Leipzig in 2000, when he met his sibling for the first time. Six months after the reunion, their mother died of a heart attack. The siblings fell in love, and their son Eric was born in 2002, followed by Sarah, now 4, Nancy, 3, and Sofia, 1. Two of the children are known to have disabilities. All the children except Sofia have been taken into foster care. The main basis for punishment for the incest, the European Court of Human Rights said, was "the protection of marriage and the family" because it blurs family roles, and it also noted “the risk of significant damage” to children born of such a relationship. Incest is still illegal in Germany, under paragraph 173 of the legal code. Susan Karolewski was convicted and sentenced to supervision orders because she was a minor when the sexual relationship began and because she has dependent personality disorder. Under Germany's criminal code which dates back to 1871, vaginal sex between siblings or between (grand-) parent and child is a crime, punishable by up to three years in prison. The couple's lawyer has argued that the law is “out of date” and “breaches the couple's civil rights”. In 2004, Patrick Stübing voluntarily underwent a vasectomy. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany upheld, on March 13, 2008, a law that makes incest a criminal offense, rejecting the appeal by Stübing. On 12 April 2012, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Stübing's “conviction and prison sentence for an incestuous relationship” did not violate Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (Right to respect for private and family life), as “the German authorities had a wide margin of appreciation in confronting the issue”. Stübing requested the case for referral to the Grand Chamber, but on September 24, 2012, his plea was rejected.

The crux of upholding an absolute ban on incest marriages lies in the argument of “the risk of significant damage” to children born of such a relationship. But what if both parties, assumed to be consenting adults, of their own choosing they have both been sterilized and rendered infertile? In such a case, the argument of the risk of damage to children no longer holds, and rejection of a request for a marriage license can only be granted on moral or religious grounds, precisely the kind of argument the US Supreme Court has refused to accept in the past. Oddly, in the case of same-sex marriages, “the risk of significant damage” was never an issue since, by their very nature and definition, these unions bear no offspring. Indeed, if ever this issue is raised at the Supreme Court, the Justices will be hard-pressed to accept incest marriages on the same grounds they have just accepted same-sex marriages, provided the medical technology of the third millennium can weed out defective offspring. Will they dare to? Only time will tell.

It must be kept in mind at all times that what the US Supreme Court has just done is to grant legal protection to civil unions that take place between homosexuals. The marriage licenses that must now be granted to homosexuals are not for marriages intended to take place inside a church or mosque or synagogue in any of the established religions. The separation between Church and state stands firmly, and the US Supreme Court itself has no power whatsoever to grant religious sanctioning to any kind of civil union (even unions between heterosexual couples), nor does it have any power to order any minister belonging to any religion to marry people of the same sex. If, from the very outset, the distinction between a marriage defined as the union of a man and a woman sanctioned by some religion, and a civil union defined as the union between two persons (different sex, same sex, whatever) sanctioned by the State had been made, a lot of problems and headaches could have been avoided, the distinction would be crystal-clear. Let gays and lesbians do with their own private lives whatever they want to do, who cares? As long as they keep it to themselves, their sexual orientations or likings should be their own business.

The central fact that allows things like same-sex marriages to be fully legal now is that the US Constitution from the very outset was intended to be the law of Caesar and not some set of religious codes or doctrines like the Ten Commandments. The Chief Justice, speaking on behalf of the rest of the gang, could very well argue while holding a copy of the US Constitution in his hand: “Look, we didn’t write this manifesto, We’re just nine well paid bureaucrats who do their best in their interpretation of the original spirit of the laws of Caesar as laid down in this document. If the scroll said two plus two equals five, then however nonsensical the postulate might be we are forced to accept also as a fact that two plus two plus two plus two equals ten. To all those who disagree, we can only reply with a quote from the Scriptures that says render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and for the time being we work for Caesar”.

Nevertheless, from a strictly religious point of vantage, there are many who truly believe and remain firmly convinced from times going all the way back to Saint Paul the Apostle that (I Corinthians 6:9-11) certain civil acts constitute what is called a deadly sin, civil acts such as condoning or even granting legal status to same-sex marriages or performing civil marriages between persons of the same sex, or likewise condoning or even granting legal status to civil marriages between close relatives who share a common biological bond and can thus be classified as legalized incest. Under most judaeo-christian based currents of thought, the final judgement of those civil servants who serving Caesar condone or grant legal sanctioning and blessing to acts such as same-sex marriages and those who promote such acts, belongs not to any of us nor to the Supreme Court Justices themselves but to a higher authority, an authority held to be much much higher, certainly, than the US Supreme Court, an authority to whom -according to the Scriptures- even the justices of the Supreme Court themselves are to be held accountable. And, unlike here on Earth, it is assumed that up there there is no court of appeals, all judgements are final. And it can be taken for granted that Caesar will not be there to act as their advocate. They will be entirely on their own. Good luck!