Beauty relies on facial symmetry.

Incest causes high probability of facial assymetry.

The offspring of the man with his daughter is his daughter.

Ergo the man should not mate with his daughter. — Kenosha Kid

You speak from facts (I hope)! I speak from hopes! Apples and oranges! Good point though!

Incest has been taboo since prehistory, likely not because of an anti-liberal agenda, but because it leads to unhealthy babies. — Kenosha Kid

I don't know about prehistoric times. I also don't know how you get your information from 5000-plus years ago when there were no recordings of social customs.

All I know is that ancient Egyptians believed in the matrilineal inheritance of divinity of pharaohs. Therefore -- this is a recorded fact -- most pharaohs married (legally, while they may have had countless concubines) their sisters, aunts or mothers, in the hopes to produce a male offspring that was legally and by religion acceptable to be the next pharaoh.

Ancient Egypt lasted about 5000 years. That's not bad for an empire commanded by successive generations of children born to incestuous marriages.

You really proceed with maximal unjustifiable assumptions, don't you. — Kenosha Kid

Oh. So you're the one developing the negative side effects of hormonal contraceptives and having abortions? Good to hear.

The short answer would have sufficed. But I guess two answers are better than none. And so long as Ivanka doesn't know more than we do, everything is alright :wink:

It may be a struggle to find the data, but I would assume there to be more genetic disorders from non-related couples actively trying for a baby, compared to an equal sample of related couples using protection against pregnancy. If true, unless one is an antinatalist, this would defeat the principle objection against incest? — Down The Rabbit Hole

But those are not directly caused by the peculiar sex act taking place. Genetic disorders resultant from incest are caused specifically by incest, not luck of the draw. — Kenosha Kid

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying, but do you mean those trying for a baby get special treatment as genetic disorders are a consequence but not a direct consequence? Would this be a deontological case?

I speak from hopes! — TheMadFool

From the bottom of my heart, I hope that your daughter-cum-granddaughter is not a total munter.

From the bottom of my heart, I hope that your daughter-cum-granddaughter is not a total munter. — Kenosha Kid

I hope and pray! The only problem is I'll have to arrange for a gun very soon! :lol:

those trying for a baby get special treatment — Down The Rabbit Hole

There's nothing special about it, it's a general rule: that which you didn't cause is not your fault. If your child has a genetic deficiency due to a fluke mutation, no one is to blame. If they have it due to inbreeding, the inbreds are the cause.

I don't know about prehistoric times. I also don't know how you get your information from 5000-plus years ago when there were no recordings of social customs. — god must be atheist

It's an inference from the fact that incest is the most widespread taboo in the world. The alternative reading would be a great, near-simultaneous but actually uncoordinated change of heart across the entire globe.

There's nothing special about it, it's a general rule: that which you didn't cause is not your fault. If your child has a genetic deficiency due to a fluke mutation, no one is to blame. If they have it due to inbreeding, the inbreds are the cause. — Kenosha Kid

Women over 40 stand an increased chance of having children with birth defects. Does this mean that we should prevent women over 40 from having children? What about women with AIDS, or some genetic defect that could be passed down to the child?

None of this even matters anyway as having children isn't necessary component of having a relationship and getting married. Nothing says that married couples must have children. An incestuous couple could adopt, just like gay parents. And since the basic argument for gay marriage was that consensual adults that love each other should be able to marry, that argument would include incestuous couples.

There's nothing special about it, it's a general rule: that which you didn't cause is not your fault. If your child has a genetic deficiency due to a fluke mutation, no one is to blame. If they have it due to inbreeding, the inbreds are the cause. — Kenosha Kid

I don't see how the incestuous couple using protection against pregnancy would be the cause of a child with a genetic disorder, but a non-incestuous couple actively trying to have a child are not the the cause of a child with a genetic disorder.

Do you have the actual statistics? — baker

No, I would make a more rationalist(rather than empirical) sort of argument for why I think incest between 2 consenting adults is more rare than homosexuality between 2 consenting adults. The argument is that it seems really far fetched and extremely unlikely that 2 people from the same family have incestuous tendencies and they also both mutually agree that they are compatible with one another enough to have sex or a full blown relationship. By contrast, a homosexual can choose to be with all the vast numbers of other homosexuals in order to practice his homosexuality and to be considered homosexual. In addition, I would say that almost everyone that is open to having an incestuous relationship doesn’t feel that this is the only kind of relationship that would make them happy. They would probably mostly be cool about living in an anti-incest society. By contrast, homosexuals often need to practice homosexuality to be happy.

There another argument I could make here. Given that homosexuality has become legalized and more de-stigmatized and incest is still usually illegal and highly stigmatized, wouldn’t it makes sense to think that it’s because homosexuals are probably more common and thus more politically powerful?

A man wants his daughter to be sexually attractive.

A man doesn't want to have sex with his daughter.

What could possibly go wrong? — TheMadFool

I think most fathers don’t necessarily like to think of their daughters as sexual beings to begin with. Regardless, I think you can desire someone to be sexually attractive to certain people while also not being sexually attracted to that same person. For example, I hope that my brother remains sexually attractive to his wife but I’m not sexually attracted to him.

Women over 40 stand an increased chance of having children with birth defects. — Harry Hindu

Being over 40 isn't an act. Incest is.

I don't see how the incestuous couple using protection against pregnancy would be the cause of a child with a genetic disorder, but a non-incestuous couple actively trying to have a child are not the the cause of a child with a genetic disorder. — Down The Rabbit Hole

You're saying you cannot tell the difference between a deliberate act and happenstance?

Does homosexuality lead to offspring with genetic disorders, high infant mortality, children with broken immune systems, and weak hearts? If not, then the two are not comparable. Homosexuals do not have to worry about the suffering of their future offspring directly caused by their homosexuality, nor do they or society have to pay the medical fees for mitigating that specific suffering. — Kenosha Kid

Homosexuals have contributed to higher rate of AIDS in our society though. I have heard that roughly 80% of people in the US that have AIDS are homosexual men. That also causes a lot of suffering and a lot of medical bills for society to pay. I also have heard that incest only creates a modest increase of risk having genetic disorders, high infant mortality, children with broken immune systems, and weak hearts. So, I think from a purely consequentialist perspective, incest probably actually fares better than male homosexuality.

The difference at hand is about knowing what the probable outcome of one's actions will be, vs. not knowing.

The incestuous person engaging in heterosexual sex (and who is aware of the dangers of incestuous procreation) is in this sense the same as the person who knows they have a hereditary disease that they are likely to pass on to their offspring.

If that's true, does it change your questions? — T Clark

I don’t see why it would, child molestation is really common and I don’t see why we need to look at incest as the problem. I think it’s like pointing out that lots of boys get molested by grown men and then making that part of homosexuality statistics. Though, I’m not sure if you were trying to use statistics to argue against incest since I’m not sure exactly what your comment is saying.

It may be a struggle to find the data, but I would assume there to be more genetic disorders from non-related couples actively trying for a baby, compared to an equal sample of related couples using protection against pregnancy. — Down The Rabbit Hole

Yes, that seems to be true. My understanding is that incest only creates a modest increase of risk for an offspring to have genetic disorders. Actually, I think older couples that want to have kids are just as likely to have kids with genetic disorders. People who have genetic disorders and carry genetic disorders are like wayyy more likely to have a child with a genetic disorder. So, I do think it’s a pretty weak argument against incest myself.

I also have heard that incest only creates a modest increase of risk having genetic disorders, high infant mortality, children with broken immune systems, and weak hearts. — TheHedoMinimalist

Again, we'd need to consider the miscarriage rate and the abortion rate, as compared to those rates in the normal population. I imagine they are both higher in the incestuous population.

I don't see how the incestuous couple using protection against pregnancy would be the cause of a child with a genetic disorder, but a non-incestuous couple actively trying to have a child are not the the cause of a child with a genetic disorder. — Down The Rabbit Hole

You're saying you cannot tell the difference between a deliberate act and happenstance? — Kenosha Kid

I don't see how the former is any more deliberate than the latter.

So, I do think it’s a pretty weak argument against incest myself. — TheHedoMinimalist

A socio-economic argument against incest is that if everything "stays within the family", the family will have less influence over other people in the community, thus weakening socio-economic cohesion, which in turn makes everyone more vulnerable.

Marriage for business and political purposes makes it harder for people to back down from their business and political commitments.

Again, we'd need to consider the miscarriage rate and the abortion rate, as compared to those rates in the normal population. I imagine they are both higher in the incestuous population. — baker

I don’t think those are overly high either. I think older couples that try to have children also have really high miscarriage rates but I don’t think you would use that as an argument against them having children. People that have genetic disorders or carry genetic disorders probably have much higher rates of genetic disorders, miscarriages, and abortions than incestuous couple do. In addition, incestuous couples often choose to use contraception and not have children so shouldn’t we also consider the indirectness of the relationship between incest and bad pregnancies?

I think most fathers don’t necessarily like to think of their daughters as sexual beings to begin with. Regardless, I think you can desire someone to be sexually attractive to certain people while also not being sexually attracted to that same person. For example, I hope that my brother remains sexually attractive to his wife but I’m not sexually attracted to him. — TheHedoMinimalist

Yes, I understand!

Let's get this discussion back on track shall we?

You want prove that there's no difference between homosexuality and incest and that if one is immoral, so is the other.

A coupla points

1. Not everybody thinks/believes that incest is bad. In fact there are cultures which promote relationships between relatives that border on incest. These are so because of certain nonbiological benefits - property is retained within the family, maintaing a bloodline as paractised by royalty, etc.

Thus, homosexuality, even if it amounts to incest, isn't bad.

2. Indeed as you said, homosexuality and incest seem to be the same thing but to come to this conclusion requires convoluted reasoning.

Homosexuality is in one sense taking a member of the same sex out of the gene pool - if you're a gay woman, you remove a woman and if you're a gay man, you retire a man from the eligible-for-marriage category of people.

Incest amounts to the same thing. If a person is having an incestuous relationship then this amounts to deleting their names from matrimonial websites. Consanguinous partners are unavaiable for a genetically healthy pairing with their opposite sexes.

What say you?

Fucking your sister is probably going to destabilize family dynamics, no?

Then again, Game of Thrones made it hot.

A socio-economic argument against incest is that if everything "stays within the family", the family will have less influence over other people in the community, thus weakening socio-economic cohesion. — baker

I don’t think it’s common for any family to have any involvement or influence in the community in this modern age to begin with. I can’t remember the last time any member of my family had any serious involvement with the community. So, I don’t see how this would make much of a difference to the lives of most people. I think most people interact with the community to put food on their table more so than anything involving romantic relationships. I guess I should also point out that seems highly unlikely that incest would ever be so widespread in any society that it would have this sort of big macro effect.

Fucking your sister is probably going to destabilize family dynamics, no? — darthbarracuda

And homosexuality wouldn’t? I wonder how many family relationships got ruined because someone came out as gay and their family didn’t like it.

You want prove that there's no difference between homosexuality and incest and that if one is immoral, so is the other. — TheMadFool

My view is actually that both are not immoral. I don’t understand why we hate incest if we acknowledge that homosexuality is ok

I think what is being presumed is that members of a family have grown up together and share a certain type of bond that would be, in principle, ruptured by incest. Whereas any bonds that are ruptured due to homosexuality are contingent upon things apart from the family itself. Homosexuality may threaten some families, but incest is taken to threaten the concept of family.

Fucking your sister is probably going to destabilize family dynamics, no? — darthbarracuda

I think that could be true, but merely for the fact that incest is prohibited. Fucking your sister will probably lead to gain others family members rejection, and thus destabilize the family. Even without others family members noticing it, just for the incestuous couple to know they are doing something which is prohibited would create in them some disturbance at least.

The key statement to decide is whether incest would cause family destabilization in the context of a society which does not condemn it.

That said, I think your argument is the main implicit argument behind the law besides the weaker genetic argument.

I think there is a collective fear to incest and that fear resides in the idea that incest leads to desarticulation or perversion of the family as an institution, which in turn is, for the eyes of the conservative mind the base of society.

So in that conservative collective imaginary, incest, in the case of spreading out, could destabilize a society.

Homosexuals have contributed to higher rate of AIDS in our society though. I have heard that roughly 80% of people in the US that have AIDS are homosexual men. — TheHedoMinimalist

Depends what you mean. If you mean that someone who knew they were HIV and therefore had a strong chance of harming another but had sex with them anyway, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a liberal who would disagree. If you mean that, since HIV was particularly rife among the gay community that they would, by my reasoning, be somehow retrospectively culpable, then you have not payed attention to my reasoning.

I don't see how the former is any more deliberate than the latter. — Down The Rabbit Hole

I can't help you with that.

The difference at hand is about knowing what the probable outcome of one's actions will be, vs. not knowing. — baker

It's about reasonable expectation. Having a child at all does not lead to a reasonable expectation that the child will have genetic defects. Having a child with your own sibling or parent or offspring does.