Photo by SF Bart
Science fiction writer John Wright ((Coincidentally, Wright is married to Ms. Lamplighter, who Karnythia has recently been blogging responses to. I didn’t realize that until after I had put this post online. Small internet.)) writes:
All the same arguments that apply to making homosexuality a norm apply to incest… What argument can be given to outlaw incest that cannot be given with even more logic to outlaw homosexuality?
And he later added:
Give me an argument justifying homosexual relations on grounds which do not answer as well or better for justifying incest?
I’ve seen this claim — that there are no moral arguments for accepting homosexuality that don’t also apply to incest — fairly frequently. The claim seems flatly wrong.
What follows is what I wrote in John’s comments. This isn’t meant to be a complete catalog of the differences between incest and homosexuality; there are many essential arguments I didn’t touch on. I just outlined a few arguments that I thought might appeal to at least some of John’s readers. (Hence, these arguments are all rather social conservative in their approach.)
* * *
I think there are a number of compelling differences.
1) Accepting the legitimacy of homosexual relationships doesn’t fundamentally alter relationships between child and sibling, or child and parent.
In contrast, if incest is legitimate, that socially recognized potential for sexuality will alter (and in some cases poison) the relationships between children and their siblings, and between children and parents. And this will be true for all families, not just those families that practice incest.
(Some might object that if homosexuality is accepted, then same-sex parent-child incest will be accepted with it. Not true. Parents don’t need social condemnation of homosexuality to avoid sex with their same-sex kids, any more than they need social condemnation of heterosexuality to avoid sex with their opposite-sex kids.)
2) Gays (including women and men) are a significant portion of society. probably between 1% and 4% of Americans are gay, and most will be gay for virtually their entire lives. There are tens of thousands of children being raised by same-sex couples.
It’s to society’s benefit that gays be integrated into society’s stabilizing institutions to as great an extent as possible. It’s beneficial to society that couples form commitments of caring and responsibility; it’s beneficial to society that children have the stability and security of married parents.
Furthermore, there are high costs to society if 1%-4% of the society is made into outcasts. Higher suicide rates, economic costs (non-outcasts form businesses and employ people), public health (non-outcasts take better care of themselves), and riots are just some of the costs society pays.
Sometimes treating people as outcasts has clear benefits which outweigh the costs (for instance, treating violent criminals as outcasts), but homosexuality is not such a case.
This provides us with some clear distinctions between homosexuality and incest. There is no incest equivalent to the Stonewall riot; there are not tens of thousands of children being raised by openly incestuous parents. There is no large population of “incestists” who it would benefit society to integrate into norms of mutual care and responsibility, and maintaining the ban on incest incurs virtually no costs on society (and has some benefits).
3) Sexual orientation is significantly different from an attraction to a particular inappropriate individual (such as a sibling). Forbidding someone the chance to pursue an inappropriate attraction is an ordinary part of life; but forbidding someone their entire sexual orientation is cruel and lifelong.
If Albert feels an attraction to an inappropriate person — for example, an already married woman — it’s not particularly cruel to tell Albert that he must forget that particular attraction. The same thing would be true if Albert feels an attraction to his sister. In both cases, Albert isn’t really being told to give up on love; he’s just being told to put it off until he meets someone who’s available.
I think that most of us, if we were honest, would admit to having at some point in our lives had an attraction to someone who it would be wrong to pursue. And (I hope) most of us did the right thing — we didn’t pursue the attraction and hoped to meet someone else.
But what if Albert is gay? The large majority of gay people, are gay for life, and won’t ever be genuinely attracted to people of the opposite sex. So if we forbid homosexuality, we’re not just telling Albert to put off love until he’s attracted to someone who is willing and available. We’re telling Albert that he must accept an entire life without even the hope of romantic, sexual love.
In that way, forbidding homosexuality is cruel in a way that forbidding incest is not.
Now, sometimes we should be cruel in the service of more important social goals — for instance, protecting children from adult sexual predators is laudable, and we rightly don’t care if this is in some sense cruel to the predators. However, the same reasoning cannot support needless cruelty towards consenting adults.
I’ll add that it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of these two things. The vast majority of incest is non-consensual. It only has a different name from rape, because both words were formed in a time when rape was considering “using” a father or husband’s property against his will. But if you rape your daughter, that’s not rape under this definition, because she belongs to you. But obviously, people don’t want fathers raping daughters, so they shuffled the act into the general taboo against intrafamily sexual encounters.
Most people, like you said, don’t have an orientation towards incest. On the contrary, most evidence shows that unlikely homosexuality, hostility towards incest is ingrained in people. It’s a cross-cultural phenomenon. People don’t realize that, because what’s defined as incest changes from community to community. In the one I went to high school in, for instance, having sex with your first cousin was in the gray area. People who did it were discouraged from continuing the relationship because it wasn’t classy, but nor were they socially shunned, as they would be if it were a sibling.
I do actually think laws against incest are redundant. Most people will never commit it on their own, and most who do are rapists and need to be tried under sexual assault laws. That said, I can see incest being a factor in sentencing rapists. Many men who rape family members, especially minor children, don’t actually penetrate them, so you can’t hit them with full-on rape. But you should be able to treat them like full-on rapists.
Adults who engage in legally consensual incest need help, not punishment.
Good post.
After reading your post, I felt I had to comment:
My Post
Here is the last paragraph from my post:
“I appreciated Ampersand’s blog post and I do support individuals trying to fight for a more equal, tolerant and accepting society. I think that it is important that people start realizing that we need to appreciate what makes us different, instead of constantly trying to homogenize the world. Ampersand’s post was made in response to comments by sci fi writer John Wright. He tried to make some solid arguments about the differences between homosexuality and incest. But in my opinion, there is only one difference between the two (the genetic component of incest), and that can easily be rebutted. Truthfully, we as a society should be respecting of the relationship between two, consenting adults. Whether they be of the same or opposite gender, or whether they be related or not. Love is…”
Please see “Re: Justifying homosexuality without justifying incest”
for full response.
Jalex
All the arguments for allowing heterosexuality could also be used for allowing incest. At least as much as the arguments for allowing homosexuality can be, anyway. So, is it time to start the anti-sex league and insist that all reproduction take place via artificial insemination?
What Amanda said . I would look on any comparison between homosexuality and incest as pretty obvious trolling because it’s deliberately using the fact that almost all reported incest comes under the heading of sexual abuse with family access being just a method to accomplish the abuse. In law and genealogy the term also covers biological siblings raised apart and close cousins, but when the term is used in general parlance it refers to rape.
Now of course a troll can slide back and forth between definitions so that in one sentence their argument relies on “we all know incest is nonconsensual and evil” and in the next on “what about that poor couple who only found out years later that they had both been adopted”? But an honest argument would avoid the loaded word “incest” and use language that made it clear the writer was referring to consensual relationships between biologically-but-not-socially-related people.
Yeah, Christ, anyone this arrogantly pompously egregiously stupid deserves at best a response of “Because FUCK YOU.” —But that’s why I try to avoid arguments on the internet. My winning charm’s an overwhelming advantage.
Flippant comments aside, though, one critical difference between adult, consenting sexual relations, gay or straight, and incest is as follows: There is no pathology specifically associated with either heterosexuality or homosexuality. The reason the APA declared homosexuality NOT to be a pathologic state, in defiance of cultural prejudices, is that there is no psychosocial pathology associated with homosexuality that is not the result of prejudice. Gays in a non-prejudiced society or sub-culture are as healthy psychologically, as likely to have positive relationships, and LESS likely to abuse children than straight men. In contrast, pedophiles (for example) have significant psychological problems in addition to their sexual disorder (even leaving aside, for the moment, the damage they cause to others). Most paraphilias, even those harmless to others, are associated with significant psychiatric problems. Homosexuality is not. Thus, homosexuality (and heterosexuality) can be clearly differentiated from paraphilias.
Of course, there is no such sexual orientation as “incest.” A person might be sexually attracted to his/her brother, sister, mother, father, child, step-child or parent, etc. but there is no one out there who is attracted to no one except for first degree relatives. But amp’s already said that and more eloquently.
Amanda’s first paragraph is extremely poignant and must always be considered in conversations about incest.
To add to her second point: there is a biological imperative for picking mates whose genetic material significantly differs from your own. Study after study has demonstrated that we are attracted to people with a certain amount of genetic difference, and at the same time repulsed by people with high genetic similarity. Furthermore the risks of consanguinity are null for children of homosexual parents, whereas they are the highest they can get for children of incestuous relationships. One could argue (and many have) that this is the source of the repulsion most people feel towards incest; because the fitness cost of incestuous relationships could be very high, most species have developed high aversions to it (many mammalian species to the point of kicking out all adolescents of a certain sex once they are mature). Which brings me to another point: homosexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality etc. is widespread in vertebrates (and especially in mammals, see: bonobos). Incest is pretty rare, and no species regularly practices it (barring highly isolated populations). This argues a high evolutionary imperative against incest, however it also argues that evolutionarily, sexual orientation is fluid and not entirely related to reproduction in a 1:1 manner.
I skimmed this and am in a bit of a hurry so sorry if I missed it, but the most glaringly obvious difference is
1) Consent
And
2) Power differentials. A child seeing an adult (or even an adult seeing another familial adult) as an authority figure, especially a parent, uncle, grandparent or even older sibling. This does not allow for equal consent (see #1).
All of your points are great, but all seem to be secondary to these blaring issues.
I’m struck by the reversal of the burden of proof, at least when it comes to the legal arguement. Locke started from the state of nature and only then justified restricting certain freedoms. Why? That the best way to preserve liberty, a central concern for liberal regimes. He didn’t start from a totalitarian template and then ask what freedoms should be allowed.
OK, here goes….The ‘gay agenda’ is sexual and marrage freedom BETWEEN CONSENTING ADULTS!!! NOT about adults and children, any one with slightly more brains then a religious fanatic knows that.
Now the incest thing. 1st SEX is about sex not having babies. If 1 adult wants sex with the other adult, what right do you have to interferre??? If gOd doesn’t like it, then let S/He/IT deal with it directly…YOU are not needed!!!
If the 2 adults are brother/sister the above statement still applies. And if REPRODUCTION is impossible than why is incest a problem???? Especially since some of the ‘good’ men of the bible did it!!!!
And the ‘we have to protect the children’ BS!!! When was the last time you had sex in front of the kids??? Is it something you normally do??? If so then you don’t really care about the KIDs anyway. So no problem.
Also I have not heard one gay say they want to legallize gay sex/marrage cuz that will get incest legal. Totally DIFFERENT issue which if you want it leagal then start a movement!!!
Its all BS, its is and always has been about a bunch of fanatic assholes trying to control everyone else.
1. Coincidentally, Wright is married to Ms. Lamplighter, who Karnythia has recently been blogging responses to. I didn’t realize that until after I had put this post online. Small internet. (back)
It’s not coincidental, or surprising. It’s a marvelous illustration of intersectionality, and how people who are bigoted in one respect are probably bigoted in others a) because they haven’t challenged themselves deeply; b) because they aren’t really anti-racist/whatever and don’t respect their allies; and c) because frequently multiple forms of hate are just reflections of the same internalized “ism”/desire to defend the status quo.
There are probably a lot of racist/homophobe marriages out there, belying the “opposites attract” idea.
“however it also argues that evolutionarily, sexual orientation is fluid and not entirely related to reproduction in a 1:1 manner.”
Or that the same factors that cause homosexuality also do something beneficial for everyone else, compensating for the roughly 5% of the species that won’t reproduce…
I always wanted to ask the Christians how it worked, you know, populating the earth after God created Adam and Eve. God, at one time, must have been okay with incest, right?
Well, he pretended to answer you directly, and I wish I’d saved it, because then he nuked the whole 800+ comment thread. —So it goes.
I did read his response (although it didn’t occur to me to save it), and wasn’t very impressed with his rebuttal. I was going to respond later, but now I guess not.
Amanda said what I wanted to say: there’s nothing wrong with consensual incest, there’s a lot wrong with rape however the perpetrator knows the victim.
Amp, I realise that you were tailoring the message to a socially conservative audience, but I’d take issue with this:
What if Albert is bisexual (, like me)?
That he will most likely experience attraction to women in the future wouldn’t make his present attraction to a man ‘perverted’ or unacceptable. In fact, insisting that there’s a fundamental difference between the two attractions sounds like an attempt to deny that his orientation exists.
I know that when it comes to the fundies, we have to engage with the best tools we have, but it’d be good if you could come up with an argument that doesn’t involve throwing the bisexuals under the bus.
Re. incest: one key difference I’d point out is that those who do fetishise incest tend to do so because it’s taboo, whereas those who fight for queer rights are attempting to dispel taboos.
Amanda, #1:
I’d point out that there are cultures that have encouraged close-family incest – the ancient Egyptians, for instance – and that there are a hell of a lot of cultures that condemn homosexuality, so while I’d be not at all surprised if you were right, I’d like to see evidence that societies that accept incest are dramatically less common than societies that accept homosexuality before I’d be willing to make use of that argument myself.
Paul, #5:
Just a side issue, but that ‘poor couple’ never really existed; a British MP made them up just to prove a point (or maybe because he’s a twincest fetishist) and his metaphor ran away with itself.
Just returning to share this delightful skewering of Wright’s wrong, for all concerned.
Thene, with all due respect, I’m not sure you understood my argument.
Contrary to what you seem to be saying, I was not arguing that it is perverted or unacceptable for a man to love a man if he could love a woman in the future. Nor do I think that’s an inevitable implication of my argument.
My argument was that banning homosexual relations is cruel to homosexuals, in a way that banning incest is not cruel to people who are attracted to a family member. It’s true that particular argument wouldn’t work as a defense of bisexuality, but I don’t think “making an argument that doesn’t apply to bisexuals” rises to the level of throwing bi-folks under a bus.
I have not read all the comments here, and this might be slightly off-topic, but a very interesting and compelling response that gives the lie to the notion that homosexuality is “not natural” because it is not represented in the animal world, except perhaps for dominance behavior in certain species and where heterosexual sex only happens for reproductive purposes, is provided by The Sex Lives Of Animals exhibit at The Museum of Sex in NYC. The web page I have just linked to does not do justice to the exhibit, which is fascinating. It ought to travel all over the country (if it has not already, and I just don’t know about it).
Yeah but when you point that out, then they turn around and argue that it’s dirty and wrong because filthy animals do it, and people are so much better than animals. Then you (well maybe not you but I) get annoyed at the massive logic fail and need to disengage.
Dianne, can you please give examples? I’m not clear on what exactly constitutes a paraphilia, but I do know that some extremely conservative psychiatrists have worked on the DSM.
Lexie @14,
I always wanted to ask the Christians how it worked, you know, populating the earth after God created Adam and Eve. God, at one time, must have been okay with incest, right?
I was saying that to my husband just the other day, and he said no, somehow other people appeared on earth to mate with Cain so he wasn’t screwing his sisters. I don’t think he’s right, but Genesis, ch. 4 is not very clear on this point. For a more authoritative source than my husband (who is interested in religion but no theologian), see this website, which says Cain did indeed have sex with his sister (or maybe a niece), but that incest was OK for the first generations of humans, who were pretty recent out of God’s workshop and thus lacking the genetic problems that apparently are the only reason to prohibit incest.
But the reproduction of God’s people has always been a higher priority in the Bible than the incest taboo. See, e.g., Lot’s daughters getting him drunk and having sex with him when he didn’t realize it was his own daughters. (Which, to the extent that the Old Testament tells us real Jewish history, sounds like the most misogynistic defense of a father’s raping his daughters ever. I’m surprised that Austrian guy didn’t raise it. “She got me drunk and MADE me put her in this dungeon!” Then again, Lot is also the guy who offered those daughters up for gang rape in lieu of having completely strangers who’d shown up to his house get taken away.)
I agree with Lexie @ 9 – I’ve heard this argument used with homosexuality vs. beastiality (I know…just another way to dehumanize LGBT). The real reason that I could come up with is consent. Homosexual relationships can choose to be consensual. There is no consent from animals or children.
Amp’s post is still very well-reasoned and appropriately targeted to the conservative audience he was aiming at, but it bugged me that consent wasn’t mentioned.
The reason I didn’t mention consent is this:
I’m not saying that the consent issue shouldn’t be brought up — it’s obviously an important argument (and one that other people in his comments did bring up), and one that any more substantial and complete discussion would have to bring up.
But in this particular case, I think that John was actually hoping that people responding to him would go in that direction, and I chose instead to give him arguments that I thought he was less likely to be anticipating.
I thought that was Noah. Or did it happen with Lot, too?
(Checks)
Oh, it was Lot! I’ve been getting that wrong for years. I even “corrected” Mandolin on it, the other day, when she was totally right. Ooops. Sorry, Mandolin!
(Noah just got drunk and his sons saw him naked, but then turned their backs and covered him with their backs turned.)
Amp,
I think the consent issue in some ways is relevant and in some ways is a derail. You’ll get John to agree that rape and pedophilia are bad, but given his views I’d be surprised if he has as expansive a view of what constitutes problematic sex as most feminists do. He probably thinks that so long as someone is an adult and legally deemed capable of contract (i.e. not insane or severely intellectually disabled), so long as s/he does not actually say no, the sex is perfectly consensual and OK.
What your first point alludes to, and Lexie says clearly @9, is that there is a power differential in family relationships that makes what most feminists would consider genuine consent very difficult to ascertain. I think Kathryn Harrison’s memoir “The Kiss” elucidates this: she was not raped in a legal sense, but her father used their biological relationship to draw her into an affair that was destructive and wrong for her.
Sure, unrelated people manipulate one another all the time, but our laws and social norms make the family a kind of sanctioned space for coercion and decision-making for certain others. Incest involves the ability to draw that sanctioned power out of its proper sphere (exercised on behalf of a relative in whose interests one is assumed to be acting) and into a different sphere (exercised in self-interest). It’s an abuse of power.
—–
Yeah, Noah’s sons’ seeing him nekkid was the origin of the Curse of Ham (Genesis 9:18-27), who didn’t turn his eyes away like his brothers did, and thus his descendants were doomed to serve their lighter-skinned relatives, thereby justifying slavery for several generations of white church-goers.
Which has nothing to do with these charts from the Creation Museum.
*
I don’t find that the consent argument works against beastiality and/or necrophilia. No, an animal can’t consent, but it can’t consent to a lot of what we do to it or on its behalf. I’m going to have my cat neutered in a few days, which is small potatoes compared to what was done to that chicken I had for dinner last night.
Corpses can’t consent either, but being dead, they are basically objects.
Beastiality and necrophilia both have the potential to be crimes against property of course. If it’s not YOUR pet dog, then you can’t have it neutered, or have sex with it. The relatives of the corpse that you choose to kiss or make off with in a truck for several days on a cross-country trip will be distressed, and that distress has to be taken into account.
But anyway. Consent can’t function as the only dividing line between sexually moral and immoral. For me, at least.
Actually, IIRC, the sons resulting from this incident, Ammon and Moab, went on to father tribes that were in conflict with the Israelites. So really it’s kind of an affirmation of the incest taboo, making up this origin story for your enemies that involves father-daughter incest, especially in a form where the patriarch was violated by his daughters. Which, obviously, is much worse than him offering them up to be raped to death by a mob.
What I’ve always wondered is, if he was really all that drunk how’d he manage to get it up? Twice?
In which case, it’s still not analogous to homosexuality, but would any of us really care that much?
If it were a brother-and-sister pair who were friends of mine I would probably blink and frown at them and wonder if they were doing something stupid, but it would hardly be the only time I’ve ever done that in reaction to a friend’s relationship choice.
So I don’t think Wright really grasps the liberal mindset. We don’t have a strict Taboo Against Incest Qua Incest that requires all acts of incest to be automatically evil if they fulfill the incest pattern, even if they are devoid of the context that makes incest evil. We’re much more sort of cool, relaxed cats, who care about context.
Also, Wright is a fuckmuppet.
Wright has now deleted his post, as is his right — his livejournal, his rules.
However, in order to facilitate discussion of John’s views, I am quoting his entire, now deleted post here in this comment. Unfortunately, there isn’t any way I can see to rescue the comments he deleted — I’m just glad I cross-posted my comment here on “Alas.”
Has this guy ever actually watched the Sci-Fi Channel (when that really was its name)?
If not, I’d like to point him to:
Farscape
Lexx
and the other 3 or so shows around the time of Lexx that I found totally unwatchable and, possibly, actually bondage fashion shows instead of coherent drama/action/whatever the hell they thought they were.
What? Polygamy offends the Patriarchy? Really? And here I foolishly thought that polygamy was an artifact of the Patriarchy. Perhaps you also think that wives submitting to their husbands is also offensive to the Patriarchy? I wouldn’t be surprised. Also – uh, oh – that readily falls under the heading of bdsm. Ewww, ewwww!
I’ll see your ad hom & raise you your own appeal to authority:
Okay, I’ll bite (ha! more S&M). You, sir, are a sunderphobe. How dare you judge my decision to sunder my marriage to an abusive crapbag? Really, you’re not so much a “sunderphobe” as you are an opponent of freedom. Do you, I wonder, approve of cheating on your husband? If your disapproval only runs one way, that’s just fucking weird. But then so is your wording there.
You really expected no answer? It seems your knowledge of your liberal left comrades is somewhat lacking.
Why is homosexuality a vice? Why do you think that “lack of self-control” of smokers is what is scorned? Why do you think that smoking tobacco is “trivial” but homosexuality is not? And, lastly, how much fun can you be having sexually if you believe that is an area where self-control is paramount?
So, in answer to your sorry question, because homosexuality isn’t a vice.
And in conclusion…. Scorpius!
I admire your fortitude there, Jake. I read that earlier this evening and didn’t even know where to begin.
Dee@23 – I’m not clear what Dianne’s comment about paraphilias is meant to say; she’d have to clarify. But to say that “most paraphilias, even those harmless to others, are associated with significant psychiatric problems,” is to commit a tautology.
To be diagnosable as a paraphilia, sexual behavior must necessarily cause distress or impairment. Sexual feelings associated with masochistic behavior are not a paraphilia *unless* they impair you in some way (for example, you can’t have any sexual feelings absent masochistic activity, or you are so single-mindedly pursuing masochistic activities that you cannot work, you cannot have non-sexual social relationships, you spend all your money on hiring dom/mes, you get arrested for throwing your naked self under the heels of non-consenting women in public, etc.) Any act that satisfies the urges associated with pedophilia, frotteurism, exhibitionism, and necrophilia are ipso facto paraphilias according to the DSM, because they all rely on non-consenting “partners” and thus immediately trigger the “impairment” clause as they put the person in danger of legal consequences.
So to say “paraphilias are associated with psychiatric problems” is like saying “eating is associated with consuming food.” A paraphilia is, by virtue of its inclusion in the DSM, a psychiatric problem.
Now if Dianne were trying to say that non-vanilla sexual behaviors like those associated with some paraphilias are in and of themselves associated with psychiatric problems, that would be a problematic statement indeed, and I’m reasonably certain there’s no evidence for it. A study I knew of that was in progress when I lived in Denver was showing higher IQs and better overall social adjustment (though with higher rates of non-conformity, preference against following authority, and non-pathological narcissism) among participants in BDSM who were not engaged in criminal sexual behavior.
While I did refer to Scorpius’s assistant as “BDSM barbie” in a fashion that I’m sure would make my current feminist self shake her head at my past Farscape-viewing self… I’m not sure this is a fair summary of Farscape. ;-)
Mandolin @29,
But anyway. Consent can’t function as the only dividing line between sexually moral and immoral. For me, at least.
Yeah, I am probably more conservative about this than a lot of the bloggers/ commenters at Alas. To me, there is no reason to object to homosexual relationships and same-sex marriage unless you think there is something so crucially different between men and women that it is impossible for a same-sex couple to function essentially the same ways that an opposite-sex couples does. (And of the same-sex couples I know, they do largely seem to function the same way — they have sex without producing babies, but so do the many involuntarily infertile and deliberately child-free couples I know.) The law should not distinguish between people on the basis of sex. In circumstances like employment, accommodations, education, etc., private individuals also should not distinguish between people on the basis of sex.
In contrast, I do think there are crucial differences between humans and animals, live people and dead people, close relatives and non-relatives. So legal prohibitions and social disapproval of bestiality, necrophiliac sex and incest don’t offend any principle of equality or legal neutrality in which I believe. I think there are differences between one and more-than-one that make poly relationships impossible to fit into our existing legal framework (as opposed to SSM, which fits with no changes anywhere that the law is written to be sex-neutral — i.e. doesn’t refer to “man and woman,” or prohibition on marriage between “uncle and niece”), but I am amenable to the argument that the difference between one and more-than-one is not a difference that should lead to either legal prohibition or social disapproval of the relationship.
“A study I knew of that was in progress when I lived in Denver was showing higher IQs and better overall social adjustment (though with higher rates of non-conformity, preference against following authority, and non-pathological narcissism) among participants in BDSM who were not engaged in criminal sexual behavior.”
That’s very interesting, can you find this study? I might be interested to take a look myself. I’m into light bondage and some other forms of BDSM (which are not too hardcore I guess, not into pain, or Gorean fantasies) and I rarely see studies about it that are actually showing a positive light instead of moral condemnation.
Feminists seem divided on the topic. Approved by some, rejected by others as a tool/continuation of patriarchy, even when freely chosen. I give the benefit of the doubt that ultimately, the position of allowing to choose (even something considered not so good by some) will win.
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Good God, Amp, that really is one of the most hateful religious-based rants I’ve ever read.
And I live in Bob Jones University country, too… even THEY fall back on the standard “We’re praying for the gays” and don’t talk like this anymore.
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What’s ironic about this post and the responses that agree with it is that this sounds just like the arguments made by heterosexuals a generation ago (and still are made by those who don’t accept gay rights). Listen to the arguments recast:
(1) Homosexuality fundamentally changes the relationship between certain kinds of people. Heterosexuality does not.
(2) Heterosexuals are a large group of people. Homosexuals are a small minority. Heterosexuals have families with children. A few decades ago, there were very few or no homosexual families with children. It’s beneficial to society that heterosexuality is mainstream and accepted.
(3) Marriage and heterosexuality is significantly different from an attraction to a particular inappropriate individual (such as someone of the same sex). Forbidding someone the chance to pursue an inappropriate attraction is an ordinary part of life… etc.
The fact is that most of the real objections to incest are revulsion and associations with sexual abuse and statutory rape. Those are the EXACT SAME objections leveled at homosexuals a generation ago… “homosexuality is sick and twisted, all homosexuals are deviants and/or pedophiles, etc.” You still hear these things being said by right-wingers.
Wake up and listen to what you’re saying. The fact is that consensual incest between adults does happen, and it’s not always a power relation problem (parent/child, or brother/sister). What about brother/brother or sister/sister adult incest?
Abuse should be prosecuted whenever and however it occurs. But your attempts at differentiating homosexuality and incest between consenting adults sounds just like the way heterosexuals condemn homosexuals. They are the EXACT SAME arguments. It’s amazing how supposedly open-minded people who encourage diversity and openness to all sorts of relationships (including homosexuality, etc.) resort to the same exact bigotry when confronted by something they find distasteful.
Shame on you.
one, what amanda says is true
two, a sister who is younger and marries her older brother, who have a past of sexual “consensual” relations when they are younger should be questioned of their rationality and need to be doubted. BUT it is important to consider the brothers and sisters who are fighting for marraige who did not know this before the fact. But brothers and sisters who want to get married afterthefact should not support it or fight for the right because it is not right, healthy, and it is destructive. These are people who are skewed in reality because of their power imbalance from the early sexual activity between their brother or sister. I know this because I’ve experienced it.
I was in a sexual relationship with my brother when I was younger. I doubt the word consensual because I don’t believe I had power of what was happening and feel I was taken advantage of.
Many of my friends are homosexual and expected them to have bad sexual pasts but found myself telling them about my fucked up incestuous past.
I’m not sure the two relate. But these are the only points I think that are important to make to this question.