"Ick" Isn't A Good Enough Reason

This story from Germany is somewhat troubling. A man and a woman grew up in separate households, and as adults they met and fell in love. Twist is, they then found out that they are actually siblings; the man was taken away from his family when he was very young. They decided to continue their romantic relationship. German law won't let them get married because they are biologically siblings, but they've had four kids together.

Three of their children have been taken away by the state and two have some form of birth defects, although the doctors are unsure if the close genetic relationship is the cause of these problems. The Guardian reports that at least one of these "birth defects" seems to be epilepsy, which would not, to my knowledge, be directly related to the boy's parents being closely related to one another.

(CNN has a video interview of the couple, who are nice-enough looking young people. I haven't bothered to search for a link for you Loyal Readers this morning. If you're that interested, I'm sure Google can help you out.)

And don't think that because it's Germany, it's not an issue. Several States here in the U.S. have laws similar to the one in Germany that put this man in prison for two years. Tenn. Stat. § 39-15-302 renders the conduct that these consenting adults (he is 30, she is 26) a class C felony (Tennessee has class A through class E felonies; class A being murder and the like). Germany is not so different a country from the United States; if it happened there, it could happen here, too.

Also here in the U.S., the slippery-slope argument is being used to suggest that same-sex marriage should not be permitted: "If gays can marry, then what about brothers and sisters? Or brothers and brothers?" Some scholars who I admire very much suggest that while technically this is a logical fallacy, we should nevertheless give some weight to slippery-slope arguments of this nature because they do come true sometimes, and whether they have logical effect on the issue under debate, they also affect the debate itself.

Certainly, incest as practiced between an adult parent and a minor child would be of obvious and tremendous psychological harm to the child. But we already have laws against child molestation anyway. Perhaps it is appropriate to add to the punishment for such a crime in light of the fact that the parental relationship only compounds and magnifies the harm to the child resulting from such an act.

But even so, why are there laws against consensual adult incest? I've suggested in the past that such a thing seems like it would be exceedingly rare; in a healthy family relationship that sort of thing would normally be so far out of the question that it would occur to no one. But then I see a story like the one about this couple in Germany and it reminds me that when a society makes rules, it makes them for everyone, both the majority and the (in this case, probably tiny) minority.

So if there is a tiny minority of people who have the psychological makeup to have such a relationship, should the rules punish them for doing what everyone else takes for granted? After all, they don't feel like brother and sister; they weren't raised in the same household -- to them, the sibling relationship is an accident of genetics and nothing more. All they want, I'm sure, is to be left alone to live their lives in peace.

Germany's Constitutional Court is expected to rule on the case in April.

In the meantime (and afterwards) it's useful for us to consider why we have such laws ourselves. What purpose do these laws serve? Who are they hurting, aside from themselves; if they are hurting themselves, should society intervene? One thing I know for sure -- protecting the rest of us from having to contemplate the icky reality that some people choose to live their lives in ways that the rest of us would not choose to is not a good enough reason to send people to prison.