Excerpts From My "52 Perverse Questions" Regarding Incest

Incest is universally banned and, it seems from research that I have done, universally practised. The incest that is most practised is fathers, brothers, or uncles coercing or forcing sex upon minor girls. That is a violation of the rights of that person and is a true crime and should be punished as such.

But what of consenting adults? What if you had a close relative--brother, sister, mother, father, uncle, or aunt--that you found to be sexually attractive and that person let you know that he or she felt the same way about you, would it be wrong to have sex with that person, to give and receive mutual physical pleasure? If you both were concerned about pregnancy and took all the precautions necessary to prevent it, would it be wrong, as adults who fully own the property of your bodies and mind, to have sex with such a close relative? If it is wrong, why is it wrong?

In my "test", 52 Perverse Questions (see side bar) I wrote a section (Section V: A Short Discussion About Incest) about this very subject. I am interested in right and wrong behavior and why it is considered right and wrong. I also try to be logical about what I write.

The following paragraphs are from Section V of my 52 Perverse Questions.

Richard A. Posner, in his book Sex and Reason (1992), at page 200, says this: “Sibling incest would be rare even if not prohibited, because persons brought up together from early childhood rarely find each other sexually attractive. . . . But some siblings are not brought up together, and others do not possess the avoidance instinct.” Almost all children who are “brought up together from early childhood rarely find each other sexually attractive.” This includes adoptive children; children not genetically related to each other or their parents.

As to early separation, where siblings, or children and their parents are separated when the child is at an early age, quite often there is no incest avoidance if they are reunited as adults. In fact, there can be the opposite effect, leading to consensual incestuous affairs. (Go to the website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_sexual_attration, where this is discussed more fully.)

As Richard Posner also pointed out in Sex and Reason, at page 200, regarding the need for laws prohibiting consensual adult incest and the probable fear that most incestuous couples would have about producing children, the “[i]mprovements in techniques of contraception and abortion thus have weakened the case for prohibiting incest.” If we are talking only about consenting adults—not forced or coerced adults, and definitely not minor children—then whether or not to have an incestuous affair is a protected right under the principle of inalienable rights.

Now, before you get outraged (probably too late for that, eh?) let's have a look at the Christians' holy book, the Bible. Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. No mention was made of God creating a large breeding population of other people, so we have to assume--if the Bible is the Word Of God--that Adam and Eve had a bunch of children who all had incestuous sex in order to populate the world . . . not a peep out of God. The same with Noah, his wife, their sons their sons' wives, and the children they all had . . . incest city. Then there is Abraham and his wife Sarah, half brother and sister--same father, different mothers--yet God chose that incestuous couple to start the Hebrew ethnic group, which we now call Jews, and from whom the Christian God derives, yet their incest was not a problem to their God. And finally, here, there is Lot and his daughters getting it on in the wilderness after mom got made into a pillar of salt for merely looking back at Sodom and Gomorrah, but God allows the incest between Lot and his daughters? Very interesting.

So, from a religious historical point of view, incest isn't all that bad, eh. Well, I could go on about this subject, but you could just read Section V of my 52 Perverse Questions. It (52 Perverse Questions) is nearly 70 pages of interesting, and sometimes outrageous, questions, with an answer section, and sections on obscenity, rights, incest, and bestiality. So, how perverse are you? Check out the side bar to see how to get a copy of this work about using logic versus emotion to guide one through life.