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Kentucky Republican pushes bill to make sex with first cousin not incest
(www.newsweek.com)
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this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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Honestly, this reads like someone dealing with the cognitive dissonance of trying to maintain that they believe that adults should be able to have consensual relations with each other, but at the same time supporting laws that outlaw something they've been conditioned to believe is icky.
It's sounds nearly identical to the "we can't allow gay relationships because they're recruiting kids!"
I don't think that you deserve downvotes for this because I don't think you're necessarily incorrect. I do absolutely feel cognitive dissonance here. I have a visceral, what I think is instinctual, revulsion at the concept of incest. But, if there is love, consensuality, and no one is being harmed (including possible offspring), I cannot in good conscience say that they do not have a right to be together, regardless of how I feel. It takes overriding that feeling to state as such, which isn't comfortable and is, by definition, cognitive dissonance.
I do not, however, think that the comparison to homophobia or other discrimination against LGBTQ+ people is a good comparison. The majority of relationships that LGBTQ+ people engage in are consensual and do not cause harm to anyone. The majority of cases of incest involve sexual abuse and frequently pedophilia. Offspring of close relatives are at high risk for significant biological and social harm (in cases of abuse add psychological harm).
I think the guy you're referring to isn't trying to compare incest to gay rights or anything. He's merely pointing out that the argument against incest among consentual couples is a slippery slope argument similar to the slippery slope arguments used by the far right to deny the LGBT community their rights: "If we let them do _________, then the next thing they're gonna want is ___________". It's a bad argument to make no matter the subject or which side of an issue you're on. There are plenty of legitimate reasons not to support incest without having to resort to slippery slope arguments.
There's also the fact that if one were to seriously try to legalize incest among consenting adults, the immediate response from the right would be "See? We told you that if we started letting gays marry, they'd want to marry their cousins next! What's next, their pets?". And you and I both know that they would immediately start using this argument to further isolate and marginalize the LGBT community, even if they try to distance themselves from the idea.
Go back some time and see what happened when NAMBLA tried to shoehorn themselves into the LGBT rights movement. The LGBT community immediately denounced the group and distanced themselves from them as quickly and as forcefully as they could, and the far right still shit all over them for it, saying "See? They're starting already!". The same thing would happen here -- the LGBT community would distance themselves from the idea right from the get-go, but that wouldn't stop bigots from blaming them anyway even though they have nothing to do with it.
Incest is, by definition, sexual relations between people too closely related. The question here is whether or not first cousins should count as incest.
But next time you debate with someone opposed to homosexuality, ask yourself if they think their revulsion to it is a visceral, instinctual response.
Well, I'm really not comparing the two, I'm comparing the arguments. But that being said, where are you coming up with the claim that the majority of first cousin sexual attraction is pedophilia or sexual abuse?
I suppose I should better clarify terms here:
It would make sense for the legal definiton of incest to encompass situations where harm is likely, whether it be social, psychological, physical, or biological, due to relation. So, it would make sense for first cousins to fall into a "possible" category.
While you have a good point on perspective, I would say that evidence points towards homophobic behavior being conditoned and inbreeding-phobic behavior being instinctual. Homosexual behavior is seen with statistically-significant frequency throughout the animal kingdom. Familial recognition and its use in mate selection (and rejection) and other behaviors is seen even more widely, occuring in even insects, plants, and microbes.
I should likely have been more specific in scoping that. I was referring to the superset of cases of incest there, rather than the subset of cousins. I would have to look at data in that subset in order to make a factual statement.
I think something got lost in the shuffle here. The top level comment of this chain was (which is also what the article is about):
So in my mind it was always about whether or not first cousins fall into the realm of incest and/or inbreeding. We both agree that there is probably a instinctual component to the rejection of incest. I think that, just like with the rejection of homosexuality, the aversion to first cousins because they're incestual is also conditioned, which is why it shouldn't be outlawed. Although I could be convinced otherwise.