Keeping it in the Family : Why my family reunions will be awkward for everafter.

I'm hella busy with life at the moment, but I could no longer ignore Paul D's anguished cries that demanded I post. So, I'm posting - but it's a rehash of a written debate I was a part of in this weeks Craccum. (Auckland University's Student Magazine.) So apologies if you have already it, and apologies to Craig Riddell- in turning a written debate into blogpostform, I made his points sound crappier than they really were. If you can get a hold of Craccum read the whole thing, you should - tis' a treatfest.

Maybe it’s a direct consequence of my upbringing in New Zealand’s isolated rural heartland, but I’m a supporter of the legalisation of incest. But lest you, the faithful and dwindling reader(s) of A WordOnFailure, suddenly conjure up images of me as a depressing and vile little man that refers to his own mother a MILF, let me explain. I may be depressing, and I may be vile, but I still find sex between a brother /sister, mother /son, father/daughter, grandma/uncle to be yucky and gross.

But, as I’ve posted before (ad nauseum), the criminal justice system shouldn’t exist to protect my delicate and sheltered little mind from stuff I find yucky, gross and morally objectionable. One of the most basic tenets of any liberal democracy is that the law must be value-neutral, not something that gives preference to one set of values over another. The point of the criminal law should be to prevent identifiable harms and violations of the rights of others (like if I hit you or stole your shoes). The continued criminalisation of incest represents a flagrantly unprincipled violation of people’s ability to choose who they are, and choose who they love. In essence, society freely declares the love of committed, loving, CONSENTING couples a social taboo that carries a maximum sentence of TEN YEARS, simply because it makes the majority feel sorta queasy. Incest couples seem creepy and weird and a tiny, tiny minority, but that’s no reason to trample on their basic rights.

In fact, as a minority group, it is even more important that it should fall to the government to lead the way and show that those who engage in a consensual practice deserve the tolerance of society (even if that consensual practice is utterly bizarre). It was once considered normal to condemn homosexuality as an unnatural practice deserving of criminal sanction, but the passing of proactive legislation by the Government in 1986 was the catalyst for a change of social attitudes. Those who denied the important right to love on spurious moral grounds (the ‘ahh, its gross’ defence) are now consigned to the bigoted dustbin of history. But there are those who would argue that their support of incest criminalisation, isn’t based on indefensible moral postulating, but is grounded in a principled and conscientious protection against social harms. These people are Noobs.

The first argument people raise against incest is that it increases the chances of harmful genetic diseases occurring in the offspring of incestcouples. (The, ‘ahh, retard babies’ defence) It’s different from inbreeding in that it involves first cousins or closer. While I’m not denying the heightened risk of a genetic deformity, research shows that the common perception overstates the risks. But more importantly Criminalising incest on the grounds that it may lead to a deformed child (even if the couple don’t want children, those who would argue the ‘ahh, retard babies defence’ appear to have lost all faith in the condom as fail-safe baby preventer, and have decided to cockblock with the Crimes Act itself), seems fundamentally inconsistent with a society that allows people with a known hereditary deformity (say haemophilia) to enter into relationships and have children. Surely these parents carry the same risk of a costly genetic epicfail? If the ‘ahhh, retard babies defence’ holds then people with haemophilia should not only be prevented from baby-making, but anyone evil enough to have sex with a haemophiliac should be punished with the full force of the criminal law. This seems palpably absurd.

The next argument raised is better, but still flawed. Opponents of incest would suggest that because incest is SOOO GROSS and SOOO TABOO in so many cultures, it can’t be the result of a free and informed choice – and must be the result of a lifetime of an uneven power relationship. (Essentially this argument says we can’t prove that Daddy has groomed Daughter all her life to love him, so we criminalise it to protect the children.) At first glance, this argument appears intuitively valid- especially as I don’t really wanna defend smokin’ Joe Fritzl and the Vienna 7. But the criminal law remains well-equipped to deal with cases where people have been coerced into sex because of an uneven power relationship – on a more frivolous level; a secretary can’t be fired if she doesn’t have sex with the boss. Child abuse and rape remains a sickening, unspeakable crime and those guilty of it should be (and are) convicted and punished accordingly. But we cannot use this as an argument to punish those incestuous couples who are genuinely in a loving relationship based on mutual consent.

Sure, it’s gross, sticky and weird. Really gross, really sticky, and really weird, even. But an incestuous love is still love, and still worth protecting.

Alex.

(Als0, sorry for that bizarre and horrifically bad-taste link in the previous paragraph. It made me sad, and I didnt want to suffer alone. For a better, cogent analysis of incest click here.