Fucking Family!

Civil rights are an interesting topic, because depending on the time, place and cultural perspective, individual and collective civil rights are a completely different animal.

Take, for example, free speech (good old Amendment I). This is a concept born in England and sanctified in the US Bill of Rights as one of the founding principles of this country. But I dare you to look around for examples of censorship - both voluntary and legal - before you believe 100% in the morality of this particular "right".

When you look at the way the world works, a concept like free speech is just that - a concept. In practice, very few people take the opportunity to say (or, in its most liberal interpretations, paint, film, sing, rap, sculpt, photograph, act out...) anything that comes to mind. We have social barriers in place.

How many times did your parent or other authority figure tell you "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all"? Or maybe, when you were a kid and prone to lapses in social acceptability, you told the kid that smelled like they peed their pants that they stank like pee, and then you were punished for saying something so mean.

Or, in the adult world, we have the classically misinterpreted "fire in a crowded theater" US Supreme Court opinion. And slander and libel laws, which, as long as you're not a celebrity, you're likely to win.

But we laud free speech as being the needle on our nation's moral barometer, even though we have very little evidence to show that we actually believe in it and apply it. So, this most fundamental and sacred civil right is not exactly what we might like to think it is.

Which brings me to my point: if you want to fuck your brother or sister, should the law allow you to do so? Should the law allow you to have children together? Get married?

This German couple, who also happen to be brother and sister (and I'm not talking some complicated adoption thing where there's no shared blood - they are brother and sister), are working to get the law against incest reversed.

Take a second to think about this before you decide whether this is "right" or "wrong".

Honestly, I don't know where I stand on this issue. There are good arguments on both sides.

Pro: they love each other.
Con: they're brother and sister.

Pro: they (would) have a stable family (if the German government would give their kids back).
Con: they're brother and sister.

Pro: they should be free to have any relationship that they choose - it's their individual right.
Con: since the dawn of Western cultural memory, it's been taboo to fuck your siblings.

Pro: the law should not dictate behaviors based on morality.
Con: the law has always attempted to guide society into right actions.

Pro: the law was written in 1871 and is now outdated.
Con: they're brother and sister!

See what I mean? There's an essential, embedded social taboo mechanism at work here. That doesn't make it right or wrong to feel that way, it's just been that way for so long that no one can imagine doing it another way.

But let's compare this to other socially regulated beliefs:
What about the ownership and enslavement of humans?
What about the social and economic domination of one gender/race/class over another?
What about the oppression of religious practices of all kinds?
What about the extermination of humans based on tribe/religion/race/political affiliation?
What about the use of force to influence the actions of individuals, groups and nation-states?
What about the denial of social and political access based on age/gender/race/economic status?
What about the regulation of sex, marriage and childbearing based on gender/class/biological commonality?

When you put incest up next to these commonly accepted social behaviors, you have to question the morality and "right"-ness of these practices. There is a time and place for everything, but we have an opportunity to give more human beings what they need and want by making less rules about what they can and can not have.

And just one more straw that I feel is relevant: the entire planet is populated by people that can trace their ancestry back to five individuals. Go even farther back than that, and you narrow it down to a single African tribe that shares the DNA structure of every human on the planet, with, of course, some minor modifications. Interestingly enough, those genetic modifications are primarily based on adaptive necessity - as in, colder temperatures, more direct sunlight, larger game, dense flora - NOT on determinations of superiority or inferiority. And definitely not determinations of "right" and "wrong".