Reason Magazine
- reason.com
- reason.tv
- reason.org
- Donate
- Site Search:
Reason on Facebook
Reason on Twitter
Reason on YouTube
Reason RSSGet Reason E-mail Updates!
Manage your Reason e-mail list subscriptionsadvertisements
Republican Legislator Introduces Pro-Incest Bill!
It's all in the headline, folks.
National Review has a piece up titled "Howard Dean�s Incest Vote," that details how, 20 years ago as a Vermont state legislator, the yelping presidential also-ran voted for a bill designed to allow a 65-year-old woman marry her 85-year-old uncle.
"That's just one data point the Kerry campaign will doubtless want to consider in its calculations about what role to give the controversial former Democratic governor next week," intone the editors.
But the piece could easily have been given the headline I gave this post. After all, it was a member of the family values party that introduced the incest bill:
A Vermont legislator named Elizabeth Edwards introduced...[the] bill....Edwards, a Republican...figured that incest laws were primarily about preventing defective offspring, and her neighbors Ramona Crane and Harold Forbes were too old to bear children. "They're a super-neat couple who don't have any money, and they just have each other, and I think they should be able to get married if they want to," Edwards told United Press International for a February 23, 1983, story.
Hey guys, lighten up. It's not like Edwards was pushing gay marriage.
|7.21.04 @ 1:31AM|#
I'd be interested to hear the libertarian take on this subject. Is the threat of defective offspring enough of a reason to prevent this sort of union? Or, more improtantly, is the risk of a coersive relationship too great to allow it? My quick answer is yes.
Phil|7.21.04 @ 1:43AM|#
The bill passed the state House 73-67 with Howard Dean, who
was elected to the legislature in 1982, voting for the exemption
from the incest laws. The bill went on to the Senate, where it met
a firm rebuke. A Senate committee voted 5-0 not to take up the
measure. The committee's chairman, Republican Allen Avery,
explained, "It's setting a bad precedent. Once you do it for the
Forbeses, you have to do it for others. There certainly is not any
support among members of the Senate to deal with it."
In short, Dean was on the left-most fringe of this question even in
liberal Vermont.
A "left-most fringe" that includes a 14-vote majority in a
140-member House? I suppose that's one way of putting it.
Phil|7.21.04 @ 2:25AM|#
No, Gary, I was criticizing NRO's characterizing an issue that
gained a 73-67 majority vote as "fringe-left." That's some fringe,
that can get the majority!
(It looks confusing because the line beginning "In short . . . "
should be in itals as well, but H&R's shitty comment coding
kills any HTML tags if you include a line break. In other news, I
can't count. "Six-vote majority," not 14.)
|7.21.04 @ 2:43AM|#
Incest is best some say. Is that what they meant by ALL IN THE FAMILY? I tend not to support incestual marriage primarily for the defective offspring reason, but society does have it's limits. If you let this old couple marry (niece and uncle)a precedent would be set
|7.21.04 @ 2:48AM|#
"Patriot, Who is being coerced here?"
Don't you know, Gary? If we allow relatives to marry, then the
government is going to force you to marry your
parent/sibling/cousin/etc.
Just like gay marriage is going to make all present marriages null
and void and force you into a homosexual union.
The traditional family MUST be preserved at all costs!
|7.21.04 @ 3:31AM|#
Mark S:
That's not what I mean by coersion. I'm referring to the
accessibility and influence that a relative can have on a younger
relative (i.e. a creepy uncle). It is concievable that a familial
relationship could naturally have a higher influence on a child
than that of an acquaintance. I guess that is more of a statutory
issue though.
Either way this subject is creepy.
|7.21.04 @ 3:39AM|#
Yes, incest should be strictly limited to Southerners and
European Royalty.
As a geneticist, the 'mutant kid' theory doesn't really hold up
that well. It's the 'ickyness' factor more than anything.
With journalism like this it's little wonder that National Review
has never made a cent of profit!
|7.21.04 @ 4:12AM|#
Incest is OK as long as you keep it in the family.
My other motto is:
Masturbation is fine as long as it doesn't get out of hand.
|7.21.04 @ 4:33AM|#
vice is nice, incest is best, put your sister to the
test...........
Children should be obscene and not heard.
What's the first thing a Southern girl says after having sex for
the first time?
"Get offa me daddy, yer crushin' my smokes."
Yep, even more tasteless than yesterday (or was that Monday?)
Doc: Whaddya mean the ickyness factor? I learned that incest was
the best way to produce birth defects known to man. Are you saying
that's all bunk?
What about the genetically sex-linked hemophiliacs of the royal
families?
You just blew my lecture--the one where I explained to my son and
his sister why they couldn't get married when they grow up.
Jeff Smith|7.21.04 @ 4:35AM|#
Why are the NR people wasting their time on
this ridiculous trivia? Jeez.
If this is the best they can do on Howie then
they are not working very hard.
Jeff
|7.21.04 @ 4:38AM|#
Dang it, you know what I meant.... :) Just like the guy who said
gays aren't prohibited from getting married................
I'm talking about the lecture where I explained to my son and my
daughter why they couldn't get married to EACH OTHER other when
they grow up.
|7.21.04 @ 4:56AM|#
TWC,
Are you consenting for them to experiment with each other, just not
to get married later on?
Which reminds me: What do you call a 12 year old girl from Arkansas
who can run faster than her brothers?
A virgin.
|7.21.04 @ 5:04AM|#
A young groom from Arkansas shows up on his daddy's porch on his
wedding night.
"Son, Why ain't choo at the Motel 6 with yer bride?"
"Daddy, We was there, takin offn our clothes when she told me that
she was a VIRGIN!"
The boy's father spit tobacco juice from the gap from his missing
front tooth and said, "You done right by leavin her son. Ifn she
ain't good enough for her own kinfolk, she ain't good enough for
ours."
|7.21.04 @ 6:07AM|#
The Egyption royalty practiced incest a lot without any apparent
ill effects. Of course, they were also masters at propaganda and
revising history. The danger comes from familes that have a
recessive genetic defect. If your families genes are fine, then no
problem. With modern genetic testing, there's no real danger.
Likewise, cousin-cousin marriage only has about the same risk as
pregnancy after 35 or so, and is quite common outside the US.
|7.21.04 @ 6:48AM|#
Madog,
I remember some pretty interesting (I thought so, anyway) stuff on
inbreeding from a population genetics class I took several years
ago. The danger of inbreeding is as you mentioned related to the
presence of recessive genetic defects, and so it depends on how
many of those recessive defects are floating around in a
population. For a culture that has been practicing some degree of
inbreeding for a long time, those defects have been to a greater
extent purged over many generations, and so the threat of genetic
disease is less. But a culture with a long history of outbreeding
is likely to have more of those defects (because selective forces
to remove them are weaker), so a sudden switch to inbreeding is
more likely to cause problems.
Essentially everyone in an outbreeding culture, you and me
included, has some recessive gene(s) that would be harmful to some
degree or lethal if they were present in two copies. They just tend
to not matter much because each type of recessive gene is very rare
in the population at large and you're not likely to encounter the
same type in a mate unless that mate is related to you. The other
person has their own recessive genes that would be harmful in two
copies, but they're different than your recessives so nothing
happens. And of course the degree of relatedness is important,
because you're more likely to share genetic material with your
sister than with your cousin, and so on.
I remember an estimate that people in such a culture have an
average of 5-7 "effective" recessive lethal genes. That doesn't
necessarily mean there are 5-7 actual genes that would kill you if
in two copies - it could be more genes with less serious individual
effects that cumulatively have a comparable effect to a "lethal."
So the upshot is if you were inclined to take the vice president's
advice and go fuck yourself, there's a good chance you'd run into
some trouble with your offspring.
There - how was that for answer overkill?
|7.21.04 @ 6:54AM|#
Madog,
Actually, there were quite a few birth defects in the Egyptian
Royal family. That's why they have the elongated skull, AKA the
Doug Christie head, in the statues. Supposedly, King Tut was just a
mess of genetic defects.
The one royal family that I have ever heard that had significant
amounts of inbreeding without any genetic repurcussions were the
Incas.
|7.21.04 @ 7:02AM|#
I'd been practicing law for about 3 mos, in Michigan, when I got
a phone call. The young man wanted to know whether it was legal in
that state for he and his half-sister to marry. It seems they had
been raised apart, met as adults, and were, doncha know, crazy for
each other. I was pretty sure it was illegal, but asked him to give
me a half hour to research it, and call me back. (He would not give
me his number.)
He never called back. Akshully, I think this was a prank by my law
school pals, but none will own up to it.
And yeah, it is illegal.
--Mona--
|7.21.04 @ 7:07AM|#
A guy tells his doctor, "Whenever I have sex my penis swells up
and itches."
The doctor runs some tests and asks the patient, "What kind of
condoms do you use?" After the patient tells him, he says, "You
must be allergic to the lubricant they use. Use another brand from
now on."
"Phew. That's a relief."
"Why? What did you think it was?"
"Well, I thought I was allergic to the cat."
|7.21.04 @ 7:21AM|#
The Egyption royalty practiced incest a lot without any
apparent ill effects
The one royal family that I have ever heard that had
significant amounts of inbreeding without any genetic repurcussions
were the Incas
Just because there weren't any *recorded* ill effects doesn't mean
that there weren't ill effects. These people were despots ruling
over societies that were almost completely illiterate. Even if the
average Pharoh or Incan noble was a hemophiliac who drooled
constantly and had an IQ of 77, do you really think anybody would
have written that fact down for posterity?
Brian|7.21.04 @ 7:47AM|#
If the rationale for outlawing incest is the probability of
recessive gene-linked birth defects, then would the government be
justified in outlawing marriage (or for that matter, copulation)
between unrelated individuals with the same potentially harmful
recessive gene?
I realize that we aren't at a technological point where most people
would know whether this is the case or not, but we probably will be
within a couple of decades, if not sooner.
The action of the Vermont Senate on this matter was pretty clearly
based on the ickiness factor, as there was no way this couple was
going to reproduce. I would imagine this is the case for most
people who support the prohibition of incest, whether they will
admit it or not.
I seriously doubt that if we completely decriminalized incest
tomorrow, the incidence of it would change one bit. Are that many
people just waiting to have a go with their sister as soon as it's
legal, but not a moment before? C'mon...
By the way, a boy from Alabama comes home to tell his father he's
met the girl he wants to marry. His father asks, "son, is she a
virgin?"
"Yessir, she certainly is!"
"Well, if she's not good enough for her own family, she's not good
enough for ours!"
Brian
(Georgia Native)
|7.21.04 @ 8:05AM|#
Dan,
Sorry, I wrote that wrong. Most of the discovery of genetic defects
among the ancient Egyptians was due to fossilized remains. Among
the Incas, IIRC, they actually found fewer defects in the
fossilized remains of the royal family than they did in the
general, not inbred, population. Which goes to show that inbreeding
can be beneficial if you're in a good gene pool.
J,
Your point is one reason that I'm a big fan of interracial marriage
(another is that children of interracial couple seem to be
disproportionately hot) is that it in essence a more extended
family. Also, there are far less negative genes that are dominant
than recessive genes, so there are relatively more positive traits.
This means, there is increased likelihood of more positive genes
being expressed in the offspring.
|7.21.04 @ 9:29AM|#
Among the Incas, IIRC, they actually found fewer defects in
the fossilized remains of the royal family than they did in the
general, not inbred, population.
Well, yes. But that only accounts for defects that are apparent in
skeletal remains. They could all have (for example) suffered from a
host of mental illnesses, and been dumb as posts, and we'd never
figure it out from looking at their remains. It seems unlikely that
they would have been free from the negative effects of inbreeding,
unless they regularly culled their children.
If the rationale for outlawing incest is the probability of
recessive gene-linked birth defects, then would the government be
justified in outlawing marriage (or for that matter, copulation)
between unrelated individuals with the same potentially harmful
recessive gene?
It seems to me that it should be reproduction, not marriage or
copulation, that should be outlawed in that case. Pregnancy is,
after all, completely avoidable, even if you're sexually
active.
Anyway, it seems to me that there will only be a very narrow window
of a few years (if that) between "testing for negative traits is
cheap and ubiqitous enough to be made mandatory" and "negative
genetic traits are medically correctable". So it's probably a moot
point.
|7.22.04 @ 1:05AM|#
Thanks J. Doc , "lest we get more cases of favinism, etc. etc.."
spell check please.
Favism:
DESCRIPTION: Hemolytic anemia due to the ingestion of fava beans or
after inhalation of pollen from the Vicia fava plant by person with
glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficient erythrocytes. Usual
course - acute; chronic; intermittent; relapsing. Endemic areas -
malarial endemic areas; worldwide.
CAUSES: acute hemolysis, fava bean ingestion
vicia faba ingestion
ICD-9-CM:
282.2 favism Author(s): Mark R. Dambro, MD
Fava beans and liver anyone? /R
|7.22.04 @ 3:10AM|#
All very interesting my friends, but let me tell you the tale of
Ben and Socrates, my pet Norwegian rats that I kept in the back
yard in a huge cage I built myself at age 9.
The white one was female the black and white one was male. You can
guess the rest.
By the third generation the birth defects were affecting as many as
half of the rats. Within two years the healthy babies numbered
about one in ten.
We are talking scary stuff here, like babies with no eyes, missing
limbs, inability to eat, no fur, obvious mental retardation,
paralysis, aggressive behavior, etc etc. Many of the affected rats
died quickly, others didn't
Come on guys, I was a kid, it took me a while to clue in, but
eventually I did.
|7.22.04 @ 7:09AM|#
Hey, I've got no problems with it. The legal rationale for gay
marriage - which I'm really getting comfortable with nowadays - is
that the right to get married is the right of any person, to marry
any other person. The social policy argument for it is that the
nuclear family, as traditionally conceived by conservatives -
mommy, daddy, and kids - is in such bad state, it's not really
worth it for society to bother trying to protect it. After all, the
conservative argument that justifies this rampant homophobia
denying gays the right to marry, is that the state has a strong
interest in preserving that family structure - but when 30% of
families break up, and 70% of all marriages end in divorce
(marriage being a recidivism problem for some) then the family
really doesn't deserve protection. It's finished.
So if daddy wants to let his daughter have her first date (with
him) at 16, and get married (to him) at 18, I'm cool with it. Who
are we to stand in the way of love?
|7.22.04 @ 7:50AM|#
TWC,
Maybe it's because one of them was a chick but had a dude's name.
Didja ever think of that?
For various research purposes, some animals (and plants) are kept
in labs as inbred lines. It's a very common thing to do with fruit
flies, and even mice can be maintained in completely inbred lines.
Of course along the way you have a lot of animals with various
problems, but they're discarded and the healthier ones are used for
breeding the next generation.
|7.22.04 @ 8:55AM|#
Brian wrote: "If the rationale for outlawing incest is the
probability of recessive gene-linked birth defects, then would the
government be justified in outlawing marriage (or for that matter,
copulation) between unrelated individuals with the same potentially
harmful recessive gene?
I realize that we aren't at a technological point where most people
would know whether this is the case or not, but we probably will be
within a couple of decades, if not sooner."
We don't even need further technological advancements to determine
that for many conditions. Heck, for some conditions people don't
even have to be genetically tested, you could tell from a simple
medical exam. For example, sickle cell anemia is caused by a
recessive gene, so any person with sickle cell must have two copies
of the gene. That means if two sickle cell sufferers have a child,
it is guaranteed (barring a million-to-one mutation of the relevant
gene) that the child will have sickle cell. However, I'm not aware
of any state that prohibits people from marrying (let alone having
sex) merely because of their sickle cell status.
|7.22.04 @ 9:13AM|#
I promise Stephen, if I can ever marry the man I love legally in
the US, I won't get him pregant. :)
FYI, as you can see, the 'first cousin' mutations are more evident
if you keep it going for many generations. If you have the
occassional one, it's no more likely to have two heads or
hemophilia than a couple from the same ethnic background.
After all, let's stop african americans from marrying other african
americans to stamp out sickle cell anemia, italians can't marry
italians lest we get more cases of favinism, etc. etc.
Site comments/questions:
Media Inquiries and Reprint Permissions:
(310) 367-6109
Editorial & Production Offices:
3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd.
Suite 400
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 391-2245