Incest is defined as sexual intercourse between people too closely related to marry legally.
This is one of those things where I just really don't care and don't want to know what consenting adults do in their bedrooms...
As long as we're talking consenting adults. But yeah, I really don't want to know either
Yeah, it would be helpful to have spelled out what the argument in favor of criminalization is based on (not to mention the often rather thorny--because highly culturally variable--matter of which degrees of kinship meet the definition). Increased incidence of birth defects and increased dubiousness of claims of noncoerciveness are often cited as key reasons for criminalizing incest.
But if we are discussing sexual relations with first cousins, some scientists say it's not as genetically risky for them to procreate as previously thought. So, I wouldn't think first cousin relations should be criminalized.
I don't really understand precisely what those numbers represent in terms of consequences, but obviously the gist of it is that you get an increased likelihood of destructive recessive traits being expressed. I don't think[?] that the statistic for cousins given there suggests a likelihood of defects all that different from, e.g., what the likelihood of Ashkenazic Jewish parents producing a child with Tay-Sachs was prior to the advent of genetic screening--although, Tay-Sachs is just one specific defect, whereas you're presumably looking at a greater array of potential problems with a cousin match. I'm sure you're right though that multiple generations of inbreeding would yield far more defects than a single incident (on the other hand, when it's legal, then at least in theory that raises the possibility of it becoming commonplace among certain groups).The inbreeding is computed as a percentage of chances for two alleles to be identical by descent. This percentage is called "inbreeding coefficient". There are several methods to compute this percentage, the two main ways are the path method and the tabular method.
Typical inbreeding percentages are as follows:
Father/daughter - mother/son - brother/sister -> 25%
Half-brother/half-sister -> 12.5%
Uncle/niece - aunt/nephew -> 12.5%
Cousin -> 6.25%
An inbreeding calculation may be used to determine the general genetic similarity among relatives by multiplying by 2, because any progeny would have a 1 in 2 risk of actually inheriting the identical alleles from both parents. For instance, the parent/child or sibling/sibling have 50% identical genetics.
While I personally agree with this, I'm not certain whether the overwhelming majority of mental health professionals internationally would, as this sounds like a specifically Freudian model of normal human development. In general, if you're going to claim in a legal context that something should be criminalized because it's a mental health hazard, then you need to have empirical support for that claim; you can't just appeal to an abstract ideal of what's "normative."If we're talking about sexual relations between immediate family members, we could also add that incest is psychologically wrong because as human beings, we are supposed to emotionally mature and detach from our family as we grow older, and have emotional ties with those outside of our family. I would think anyone who keeps their Oedipus complexes, brother-sister lust, and so on, right into adulthood has emotional and psychological problems that would need to be treated.
I suppose legally, but to me, if two adults consent.. I don't know. Let them do what they want?If it's not consenting it's illegal. As easy as that.
Yes. I think through some evolutionary phenomenon we're supposed to find our immediate relatives sexually repelling. I can't remember enough to elaborate, sorryIf we're talking about sexual relations between immediate family members, we could also add that incest is psychologically wrong because as human beings, we are supposed to emotionally mature and detach from our family as we grow older, and have emotional ties with those outside of our family.
If it's not consenting it's illegal. As easy as that.
I think you're thinking of the 'Westermarck effect', which is an observation backed up by most (not all) relevant studies: that people who were raised together--regardless of whether or not they're 'blood' relatives--strongly *tend* not to form sexual attractions to one another.I think through some evolutionary phenomenon we're supposed to find our immediate relatives sexually repelling. I can't remember enough to elaborate, sorry