# Incest: How close is too close? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 29, 2007, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924 "2007-09-29T13:29:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/41 "2007-09-30T21:53:47Z")
[QUOTE=Lumpy] One of the southern states (sorry I couldn’t find the cite- Kentucky? Tennessee?) allows “regular” first-cousin marriage but specifically prohibits marriage between “double cousins” (the offspring of two siblings who married two siblings). [/QUOTE] It’s apparently [North Carolina](http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:UN85gRflo88J:www.cousincouples.com/info/states.shtml+cousin+marriage+laws+double+cousins&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us) that you’re thinking of. ---
**Author:** ![auntie\_em](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@auntie\_em](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/auntie_em)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/42 "2007-09-30T22:55:01Z")
I’m sure someone’s already said this, but for me it’s less about the blood and more about the relationship. Adopted or step siblings who were raised for all (or even most) of their lives as siblings? Ewww. A step or adoptive parent and child situation that began when the child was . . . well, a child, who was raised to think of the parent as . . . well, a parent? Ewwww. Woody Allen and Soon Yi Previn? Ewwww. (But that may be just because it requires one to picture sex with Woody Allen.) On the flip side of the coin, I don’t have that mentality that instantly turns the “Ewww” faucet on when I hear a story about people being attracted to / romantic with each other as consenting adults, and THEN finding out that they’re related. I wouldn’t be able to continue such a relationship myself, but for some reason it grosses me out much more to hear about people who were raised as relatives (regardless of biology) gettin’ it on. ---
**Author:** ![ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/43 "2007-09-30T23:19:06Z")
Apologies if this has been broached already. I’ve skimmed the thread but am still reading it in-depth. What about adding homosexual attraction into the mix? Imho it sets off a very different continuum of what is “acceptable” if you completely eliminate the possibility of any sexual activity arising from attraction leading to a possible pregnancy. There’s also the whole “Hot lesbian sisters!” thing with mainstream porn, counter-balanced with “poignant” literary references such as the book _Into the Forrest_ by Jean Hegland. ---
**Author:** ![auntie\_em](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@auntie\_em](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/auntie_em)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/44 "2007-09-30T23:21:22Z")
[QUOTE=ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies] Apologies if this has been broached already. I’ve skimmed the thread but am still reading it in-depth. What about adding homosexual attraction into the mix? Imho it sets off a very different continuum of what is “acceptable” if you completely eliminate the possibility of any sexual activity arising from attraction leading to a possible pregnancy. There’s also the whole “Hot lesbian sisters!” thing with mainstream porn, counter-balanced with “poignant” literary references such as the book _Into the Forrest_ by Jean Hegland. [/QUOTE] Actually, I was including (although I didn’t specifically mention) the possibility of same-sex “action” when I posted my reply; it’s still gross to me in the contexts I mentioned. ---
**Author:** ![ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/45 "2007-09-30T23:27:19Z")
To clarify, I personally still have some heeby-jeebies with the sister-to-sister and brother-to-brother scenarios, but I seem to observe that those situations seem to get more leeway from society at large compared to the same context with heterosexual participants. ---
**Author:** ![Rico](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rico/32/3582_2.png) [@Rico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rico)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2007, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/46 "2007-09-30T23:32:53Z")
The polygamist communities of Colorado City, AZ and Hildale, UT have been in the news recently as the town that the recently convicted Warren Jeffs is in charge of. But it’s famous for something else, as well. From [here](http://johnhawks.net/weblog/2007/06/17#fumarase_deficiency_colorado_city_2007): > [@](#): > > The twin border communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., have the world’s highest known prevalence of fumarase deficiency, an enzyme irregularity that causes severe mental retardation brought on by cousin marriage, doctors say. > [@](#): > > …fifty percent of cases of fumarase deficiency in the world belong to this one community of 10,000 people. > [@](#): > > Local historian Benjamin Bistline said 75 to 80 percent of people in the area are blood relatives of two men — John Y. Barlow and Joseph Smith Jessop — who founded the sect on the remote desert plateau in the early 1930s. > “There aren’t any new people coming in. It’s a closed door and that gene just keeps getting passed around,” said Bruce Wisan, a court-appointed accountant overseeing a trust of the sect’s assets. Not necessarily that one cousin marriage is going to give your children birth defects, but this is over 70 years of a lot of cousins inbreeding. ---
**Author:** ![auntie\_em](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@auntie\_em](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/auntie_em)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/47 "2007-10-01T00:23:57Z")
[QUOTE=ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies] To clarify, I personally still have some heeby-jeebies with the sister-to-sister and brother-to-brother scenarios, but I seem to observe that those situations seem to get more leeway from society at large compared to the same context with heterosexual participants. [/QUOTE] Oh, I never took your comments to be supportive of such unions. I’m just saying that hey - when my husband and I got together, we decided not to have kids. But wouldn’t you still be ooged out if we’d grown up as brother and sister? So for me, the issue of whether or not kids are likely to result from the union is not important. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/48 "2007-10-01T00:35:10Z")
You should be able to get an absolute answer by going to your local Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages. At least in the U.K. - I don’t know about elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![diggleblop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ac91a4/32.png) [@diggleblop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/diggleblop)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/49 "2007-10-01T00:42:48Z")
Incest to me: Parent/Child Aunt/Nephew Uncle/Niece First Cousins Grandfather/Granddaughter Second Cousins Brother/Sister Anything along the lines up to first, second and even third removed is a little twisted to me personally. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/50 "2007-10-01T01:18:02Z")
Actually, incest has worked out quite nicely for me. Not that way, you perv. An example was in my Taekwondo school - there were two young ladies there who were in their early 20s, I was in my early 40s. I was also married. I’m also human and I had the hots for them. So I adopted them. I started thinking of them as the little sisters I never had. And it worked. We were friends, good friends, but I quit thinking about how great it would be to get one (or both) of them in the sack. ---
**Author:** ![Chasing\_Dreams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/258eb7/32.png) [@Chasing\_Dreams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chasing_Dreams)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/51 "2007-10-01T01:21:43Z")
This thread reminds me of those old-age styled Chinese martial arts movies. To find out if you are related, simply get a bowl of water and put in a drop of your blood and a drop of blood from your potential lover. If the blood mixes, then you are too close. If it repels, then you can go for it. I don’t even know if there is any factual basis for this method, so use at your own risk. ---
**Author:** ![MelCthefirst](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eada6e/32.png) [@MelCthefirst](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MelCthefirst)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/52 "2007-10-01T01:55:39Z")
In NZ, it was (and still is to a certain extent) common for Maori families to give one child to the grandparents to raise, sometimes aunts and uncles. If the family has moved away from the area, the full blood siblings sometimes don’t know each other. When Maori first introduce themselves, it is important to give their ancestry, which area and tribe(s) they come from. Apart from other reasons, this helps to stop any full blood siblings from getting together by mistake. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/53 "2007-10-01T02:18:04Z")
Personally, I don’t care. Mother/son, sister/brother, first cousins, whatever makes you happy, as long as it’s all consensual. ---
**Author:** ![ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/54 "2007-10-01T02:20:09Z")
[QUOTE=auntie em] Oh, I never took your comments to be supportive of such unions. I’m just saying that hey - when my husband and I got together, we decided not to have kids. But wouldn’t you still be ooged out if we’d grown up as brother and sister? So for me, the issue of whether or not kids are likely to result from the union is not important. [/QUOTE] I agree. And I didn’t clarify because I thought you thought otherwise as to my heeby-jeeby level. 🙂 Another relevant example, this time from cinema is _Lonestar_ I liked both of the characters involved, and routed for them to get together romantically as the plot progressed. Upon the big reveal after they had already done the deed (they were actually half siblings but didn’t know) I felt nothing but surprise and shock for them, and I honestly can’t imagine how anyone could feel disgusted or judge them harshly in any way. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/55 "2007-10-01T04:43:00Z")
To continue the mild hijack, [**Tears in the Rain**](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096237/plotsummary) [1988] was a pretty good made-for-TV flick on the are-they-or-aren’t-they-related? theme, starring Sharon Stone and Christopher Cazenove (the poor man’s Richard Chamberlain of the 1980’s?) as the blissful, then _very_ anxious, lovers, and Anna Massey as the vindictive bitch stirring up things. Scoff at TV movies if you want to, but Stone gave a helluva nervous breakdown scene in that one. (I can’t say I blame her character, either.) ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/56 "2007-10-01T11:42:41Z")
Sounds odd to me to be squicked out by third cousins - I’ve so little connection to my great-great-grandfather, who dated from the late 1820s IIRC, that it’s a real reach for me to think of a fellow-descendant as even related to me. I feel about the same over second cousins; I know my father knew his grandfather well, but great-grandad was still gone twenty years before I appeared on the scene. When it starts getting to people who could have been bounced on the same grandad’s knee as me, only then is it starting to feel closer than I’m comfortable with, and even then it’s marginal. I can see where the State might feel it was a little too close if you only had four grandparents between the two of you, though (the double cousin thing) - that makes you about as consanguineous as brother and sister. But I could stand it if, out of our sixteen great-great-grandparents apiece, there was an overlap meaning we had only thirty between us. ---
**Author:** ![Silver\_Tyger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Silver\_Tyger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silver_Tyger)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/57 "2007-10-01T17:11:27Z")
[QUOTE=chrisk] You make a list of seven names - yours, your two parents, your four grandparents. That other person makes the same list. If there’s any overlap between the lists, then there’s a problem. (This is assuming that there’d already be enough ‘age difference’ eww for a parent-great-grandchild or similar thing.) [/QUOTE] I like that answer a lot. I don’t have any problem with step-siblings either. On the other hand, I was working on a story and was squicking myself out because one character ends having to act like a father to another, and yet they sleep together (they were actually sleeping together before he started be a father-figure to her). It just seemed wrong. (and yet the fact that he’s more than ten years older than her doesn’t bother me) So there you go. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/58 "2007-10-01T18:21:59Z")
I like **Chrisks** rule of thumb. Practical and easy to do. I’d feel oogy if I found out that we were related to _any_ degree. What about between, oh I don’t know, a celebrity comedian/movie-maker and his adopted asian daughter? There’s no consanguinuity but it’s oogy as hell to me. If I remember right, the medieval church held consanguinuity up to the fourth degree unacceptable for marriage, except when it was in the interests of the church. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/59 "2007-10-01T18:26:54Z")
[QUOTE=Hypno-Toad] What about between, oh I don’t know, a celebrity comedian/movie-maker and his adopted asian daughter? There’s no consanguinuity but it’s oogy as hell to me. [/QUOTE] It was a celebrity comedian/movie-maker and his paramour’s adopted Asian daughter. Soon-Yi was adopted by Andre Previn and Mia Farrow. Wojody & Mia never lived together, but he did meet Soon-Yi when she was eight years old. The whole thing is too oogy for my thinking. Soon-Yi is now the stepmother to Mia & Woody’s genetic son Ronan and their adopted children Moses and Malone. He has no contact with any of them, which is probably for the best. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924/60 "2007-10-01T18:40:53Z")
For the benefit of any potential children, first cousins, siblings, aunts and uncles, parents and grandparents are too close and put the EWWWmeter off the chart. If one of parties is sterile I could consider first cousins acceptable if they were not close growing up. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incest-how-close-is-too-close/420924.md?page=4)