When gay sex between consenting adults was considered “sick, perverted and criminal”, the issue of incest was more or less irrelevant. It was kind of like charging a criminal with public littering because he cut the hand off another person and left it lying in the street, if you will pardon the gallows humour.
But what about now, when, in most western societies, same-sex relations between consenting adults are largely mainstream? Does the incest angle in the ad bother you?
Now mind you, I am talking about “consenting adult” sex. I am not talking about fathers buggering their 5-year-old sons!
But should gay incest be illegal or not? If the original proscription against incest was to prevent inbreeding, then the main reason against it is absent in same-sex relations, is it not? Or are there other aspects I have not thought of?
Is it possible, irony of ironies, that straight incest should remain illegal but gay incest need not be, for the same biological reasons?
Though I happen to be a gay person, I have no gay same-sex sibiling or close relative, so my question is NOT personal, I assure you. But the idea of two brothers kissing gives me the creeps :eek: ! Is that just an irrational prejudice?
I think its wrong because of religious reasons (i also will never understand NOT wanting to be with a woman), but I would never get involved in your personal business.
The law and state should not discriminate against your personal preferences, but it should not force religious institutions to accept it either.
I don’t think straight incest should be illegal, either, which I hasten to point out is not remotely the same as saying I condone incest. But the inbreeding angle is just a non-starter. It’d take generations before you started seeing serious effects of inbreeding. Plus, we don’t screen prospecitve couples for genetic problems before letting them marry, even when there’s a much larger chance of the couple passing on congenital health problem to their kid than there would be for healthy siblings.
One of the basic gay rights arguments has always been, “You don’t have to like what I do in my bedroom, but so long as it’s not hurting anyone, you have no right to prevent me from doing it.” That philosophy doesn’t end at same sex pairings. Incest creeps me the hell out, too, but that doesn’t mean I get to tell people they can’t fuck their brother, if that’s what they want to do.
Incidentally, I’m at work, so I can’t view the video. What exactly is it for? How does the gay incest angle work into it?
OH YEAH, to the incest part, that’s pushing the line WAAYY too much, and I think thats probably a sign of some sort of mental illness (whether its straight or gay incest), it goes against our very biology.
I agree that no religious institution should be forced to accept any doctrinal position it does not want. That is why the Canadian law that legalized gay marriage, for example, makes it perfectly clear that religious institutions do not have to marry ANYONE they do not wish to.
Similarly, all of the human rights codes I know of in the western world that forbid discrimination based on sexual orientation DO NOT apply to religions and places of worship. For example, a church can refuse to hire or ordain a gay person just as a synagogue can refuse to hire a non-Jew as a rabbi without being accused of religious discrimination. Or just as the Roman Catholic Church can refuse to ordain women without being afoul of sexual equality provisions in the law.
I hope this thread will not be hijacked, because I am proposing a debate on gay incest. But do you have any specific examples of religious institutions being forced by the state to accept a sexual preference? If you do, maybe that could be a separate thread that you could launch so we can discuss it appropriately.
It is a PSA showing three young guys in a parked car smoking dope, and then suddenly the two in the front seat kiss. And the guy behind them looks disgusted and reminds them they are brothers. Then they both come to their senses and back away.
The point of the ad is to warn people not to get high and drive by showing how distorted your judgment can get. It is not really an ad ABOUT gay incest, although it asumes a generalized revulsion against it in the audience.
I wonder about the biology. . . . are we hard-wired against incest? I think we might be because I remember a story about a man in Israel who wanted to study marriages between men and women raised in the same Kibbutz to see if they were better, worse, etc.
The amazing thing is that he could not find a single case of someone marrying a man or woman they has been raised with in the same kibbutz. They married people from other kibbutzim frequently. But never from the same.
The guy concluded that while there was no blood relationship to prevent such marriages, something in their minds screamed “she is your sister/he is your brother” because on a communal kibbutz, the kids had been raised like siblings.
I remember seeing this guy on TV on a PBS show or something.
Would that explain why even the people who say incest should not be illegal are still creeped out by it? In the ad I cited, are people as creeped out by the two guys kissing, or is it just when the third guy mentions they are brothers that you feel weird?
I doubt if the ad is even anti-drug. And oddly enough, I do not consider it homophobic. The point is just to show that drugs change your judgement, so you should not drive when high. It does not say not to get high; just not to drive high.
And I doubt if it is implying that drugs make you gay. It is an ad that appears on a station directed at teens, and I doubt it the gay angle bothers them by itself.
Holy shit, they’re trying to argue that drugs will make you gay for your sibling?! Man, everytime I think the war on drugs can’t get any dumber…
About the kibbutz thing, I don’t think that shows a biological component. It sounds like people in the same kibbutz are being socialized as siblings, and are also (of course) being socialized to view incest as disgusting, so that social taboo is just automatically being carried over sibling-like relationships, even if there’s no specific indoctrination against marrying a non-relative from the same kibbutz.
Millere, since you cannot see the ad there at work, I would recommend you wait until you get home to really judge it. It does NOT imply drugs will make you gay for your brother.
See my answer to BrainGlutton, above.
Regarding the kibbutz thing, you could have a point. I guess it does not prove we are hard-wired against incest. It IS possible that two “nurtured” ideas work hand in hand to prevent kibbutzniks from marrying people from the same kibbutz.
I thought it was a pretty funny commercial - produced by MTV by the way - so what do you expect?
I also didn’t find the commercial homophobic, nor do I think the audience was supposed to experience revulsion. It seemed like a light-hearted way of saying you do stupid things when you’re stoned.
I doubt it. Not only does it still hold in similiar situation where the people are expected to marry as my cite mentions, but I doubt mere socialization would get you a one hundred percent non-marriage rate from the kibbutz. That kind of absolutism smells biological to me.
You would have to specify which of two kinds of uncles. My mother’s brother is my uncle and a blood relative, sharing an important percentage of my genes. My mother’s sister’s husband is my uncle, but not a blood relative.
I first read about the Kibbutz study in one of E.O. Wilson’s books, and he was putting forth the idea that this indicated a biological predisposition against incest. But I think that is rather short sighted. Sex is about a lot more than love, and we know that sex abuse by male relatives happen quite a bit. So you have (presumably) an older sibling willing to have sex with a younger sibling even if there isn’t a romantic attraction. Perhaps there is a biological impediment to forming a lasting pair-bond, but there doesn’t seem to be one simply against sex (or at least it isn’t very strong, if there is one).
As to the OP, I tend to agree with Miller’s first post. The genetic problems created by incest are generally overstated, and depending on how you define incest (how about first cousins?) is actually quite common-- many cultures encourage marriage between close family members, even if not specifically siblings.
