*~*~* friendly reminder that incest is immoral and illegal Stop! You shouldn't be any sort of romantic/sexual relationship with any of your relatives! It's disgusting! *~*~* love, Bee ♥
Well, at least you’re being polite, Bee, so thank you for that. But let me address what you said. I’ll go in order of your statements.
Morality (or conversely, immorality) tends to be a highly subjective concept. It assumes a shared set of beliefs about right and wrong, which is often built on prejudices and personal feelings, and not on foundational, universal truths. For some examples, people hold very different views on the morality of corporal punishment (ranging from spanking children to whipping or caning convicted criminals) and capital punishment (the death sentence). Some people find that all torture is immoral, some find it potentially necessary in the case of terrorism, etc. Some people find homosexuality immoral. It used to be a fairly common idea (in the United States, at least) to find interracial marriages immoral. (I’m making no statement on any of those topics, only pointing out that “morality” is not universal.)
Yes, incest is illegal in many (but not all) jurisdictions. However, there are a number of groups arguing that such laws are morality-based, and take no consideration of the consent of the people involved.
Saying people shouldn’t be in a romantic or sexual relationship with a relative is, I believe, based on your personal judgement of what it is and what it involves. Shall we in turn apply my personal judgement to aspects of your life? I’m not going to, because 1) I don’t know you and your life, and 2) I have no desire to try to dictate how your life should be lived.
And then we get to the biggest point: “It’s disgusting!” And that is the major root of all negative conceptions about familial romantic/sexual relationships, I believe. It’s that intensely personal reaction to something that someone can’t stomach the mental picture they concoct about something (without personal knowledge, or formed by a negative personal experience that does not reflect all possibilities) that drives the morality judgements, which in turn drive the legal judgements. But it’s all based on your ideas about what it is, and not the reality that many other people actually live. But think about the people who find homosexuality “disgusting”. And let’s think about the subset of those people (primarily men) who find the idea of two men having sex “disgusting”, but the idea of two women having sex “hot”. It’s not about people of the same gender having sex, it’s about two people they find unattractive having sex. The same thing goes for interracial sex (although that stigma is also on its way out).
I could go on and on with examples and counterexamples, but I think the point has been stated enough. What I’d ask you (and anyone reading this) to do is to review your personal feelings about incestual relationships, figure out what it is about it that actually bothers you, and then try to see what assumptions you’re making about all those relationships that may not reflect the realities of all those relationships. Imagine, if you can, a romantic or sexual relationship between two family members that does NOT include what it is you find personally troubling. And if it’s simply based on something that you find personally distasteful, remind yourself that no one is asking you to like or want it, but to simply allow two people to have the freedom to pursue a relationship that they want and mutually consent to.
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