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What’s your most controversial opinion?
(piefed.ca)
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this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
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Following "if it isn't harmful, it's not a problem" as a guideline, incest isn't immoral if it doesn't involve large power imbalance (e.g.: parent and offspring) and doesn't produce offspring.
If the relationship, be it purely romantic or otherwise is mutually desired and fully consensual (usual requirements), then I don't see how it would be different from other non-standard relationships.
I hope that's plenty controversial.
The Habsburgs have entered the chat...
If the two individuals aged for a significant part of their lives together, offsprings are not the only "harm".
Forming relationships with people that are different (as in, not relatives) helps avoid the bad parts of the family structure (the weird beliefs, opinions, behaviours, etc, that are taught within a family but are not accepted outside of it). Without that, you can end up with something that seems like "cultural inbreeding" where the weirdness persists and grows, until it reaches weird shit.
On a side note
Arguably a similar effect already happens in western countries thanks to xenophobia, and that's why you have people that care so much about transmitting their DNA and having their own biological kids as if it mattered. This is just the remnants of a deeply racist culture that believes that you need to preserve your family line, and with it, your DNA. If people were mixing more with other cultures and origins, this would seem much more absurd.
That is an argument from utility, which can most certainly be debated. What constitutes "bad"? That is a subjective interpretation.
And how do we define "weird shit"? Are "normal" relationships not "weird shit" and don't they lead to "weird shit"?
Well, it matters to them. Therefore, it matters. Doesn't it? It does to them.
Genuinely just poking at arguments here, I have no decided opinion either way.
It's more of a question of what is healthy psychologically. Staying to close to one group socially makes a sort of echo chamber, and that's always a problem.
And that's what I mean with "weird shit", things like racism are quite known to be increased in people that are not in contact with people of color for example. Echo chambers are generally bad, and I feel like this would create a very strong one ("us against the world" and whatnot)
DNA doesn't matter when it comes to kids if you don't have a background thought that is at least a bit problematic. It's not about what matters to them only, but also about what is morally wrong. This "DNA is everything" thing is extremely toxic
Should we ban homeschooling for this reason?
I mean, homeschooling can definitely cause that kind of issue.
The difference being that there are good sides to it too, while there are no good sides coming from incest, and trying to equate the two seems a bit far fetched and incoherent.
I’m not a bit fan of incest myself but this response doesn’t seem very satisfying. Just saying “there is nothing good about it” just seems very wishy-washy and hand-wavy
What can be good about it that a normal relationship cannot provide?
I can't imagine a single answer. Thus, "nothing good about it" seems accurate.
You could say that about any arbitrary type of relationship that you don’t like though.
With the difference being that incest brings a lot of problems that other relationships don't. Offsprings are one, I mentioned others, and I'm sure you could find more.
Relationships with big age gaps can also cause a lot of problems but I also wouldn’t want to make it illegal for, say, a 30 year old to date a 50 year old.
This is also a weird case, because the problem with age difference is maturity, which is not measurable as of now. A 30 years old dating a 50 years old is weird, but less than a 20 years old dating a 40 years old, and yet all of these also can vary based on individuals. And most people wouldn't see a problem with a 70 years old going with a 90 years old. That's why it's struggle to make well-defined laws about it.
For incest, once again, the problems are the norm, and then maybe you can find some exceptions. But why push it to be fine and allowed, when it doesn't bring anything, again? It's just opening for more issues to come, with no real benefit because incest is, in most cases rather than not, a problem.
And how do you prevent problems of offsprings, or of dominant position? Do you have to sterilize by force people in such relationships, after having them investigated to check that the relationship is actually consensual? Who would need to have sex with their relative so much that they would want to go through all this? That's why I'm saying that it just feels like a lot of trouble and problems, for nothing good.
I get what you're going for here. But another caveat to add would be that the people in this sort of relationship shouldn't have children. They might be able to get away with that for one generation, but if incest runs in the family then it won't take long for things to start going south
Which is in my 1st sentence.
Whoops, misread that
Do you think people with autism, downs syndrome, or cognitive impairments should have kids?
I see what you're trying to do here and I don't like it
That's ok. You don't have to like what other people think. I don't always like what other people think either. But it's good to challenge and think through ones positions, I think everyone benefits from that. I think it's critical, in fact.
(great thread BTW!)
For sure. And you certainly have made me think.
Having thought about it, I think one relevant difference between incest babies and the examples you gave is this.
If you were to prevent someone with a disability potentially passing it onto their kids, then you’d be saying “you should not be having kids at all” which feels like a civil rights violation.
But if you were to prevent someone from having an incest baby you’d be saying “you shouldn't have kids with this specific person, but you are still free to have children with another person”. This doesn’t hit as hard. It doesn’t feel like you are violating their fundamental rights, just limiting its application in one specific case.
Not the person you asked, but you and everyone reading your comment know that's not a good faith argument.
The reason incest is frowned upon and often illegal is because of the danger it poses to any potential offspring. Many genetic diseases rely on recessive traits that require both parents to carry the recessive trait in order for it to be exposed. If two biological siblings have a child, that child would therefore have a massive amount of recessive traits exposed since both parents would share a massive amount of DNA
At a population scale, genetic diversity is critical to survival of a population, and a collapse of genetic diversity through too much inbreeding tends to lead to a very unhealthy population that can be easily wiped out through disease. This is much less of a risk with random incest today thanks to how much humans move around these days, but the flip side is that there is some risk of this from so called "super surrogates" who have genetically fathered hundreds or thousands of kids. The likelyhood of these kids meeting and reproducing can be quite high, which can therefore noticably reduce genetic diversity in a population, and ultimately reduce the health of a population
I wouldn't call the argument a bad faith argument. Perhaps there is a line somewhere, but ultimately, his argument is that "two people who have an increased chance of passing on genetic disorders can't have children/have a relationship".
For most people, when asked this question outside of the incest framing, would argue that the state has no role to dictate that line. The slope is too slippery and screams too much like eugenics. It's only within the social taboo of incest do people think that argument is acceptable.
Yeah it was clearly made in good faith, don’t know what this guy is driving at.
His reaction just goes to show you though: this is indeed a controversial topic.
I think it is a very topical argument- mind you I am genuinely not taking a position, I am exploring the logical consequences of the argument. There are pitfalls in the line or reasoning going on the argument that they are making. This is how philosophical discourse works. It's how arguments and logic works. Being emotional about it is fine, but it's not conducive to exploring the consequences of the argument.
The purely hypothetical counter argument here would be that what constitutes a "defect" or "danger" is highly subjective and prone to abuse. Where do we draw the line? Either there is no line and anyone can freely breed offspring, or we are in dangerous territory where we are determining which qualities we as a society deem "unwanted". What do we mean by "defect"? What do we mean by "unwanted"?
Well that is an argument from utility. Who is to say that people must subject themselves to the "critical survival of a population"? What if people don't care? If they refused to, what would we do? Force them not to breed, by, say sterilizing them? Surely you see the issue here.