I was watching The Royal Tennembaums last night and, in the movie, Luke Wilson’s character is in love with his adopted sister, Gwyneth Paltrow. The point comes up that this is creepy and possibly even illegal. But the later part is never answered. Is incest among adopted siblings also illegal (is it even incest?) or is it just weird?
I had a friend who kind of had a crush on his step-sister for a while, and his mother even kind of joked that there was nothing wrong with it.
Bullshit.
Anyone who has sex with their “sibling,” be it by birth, adoption, or 2nd, 3rd, 4th marriages, should be drawn and quartered so their defective genetic material can not further contaminate the gene pool.
Let me speak for everyone when I say, “EWWWWWWW!!!”
This depends on state law, so there may be some variation within the US, but I believe that relatives by adoption are legally considered to be the same as relatives by blood.
Elaborate on this. Step siblings are not related genetically. If they love each other, what’s the harm? Their offspring aren’t any more likely to have genetic defects.
What if they were already married to each other, and then their parents got married to each other, making them technically step siblings? Should they be drawn and quartered?
From WestLaw
“Ewwww” is a visceral reaction, not a rational one. Not everyone will agree that it’s disgusting.
On the rational side, there are too main reasons why incest is wrong:
- increased chance of birth defects
- it impairs your ability to develop normal relationships with appropriate partners
The first reason obviously doesn’t apply to adopted sibs. And I’m not sure about the second reason. I would guess that it’s true, but I don’t know to what degree it would mess someone up.
I’m an only child, so I probably have a more detached point-of-view about the subject.
On review, I see that I haven’t answered the OP’s question about legality. I was reacting to Lord Ashtar’s condemnation. I will say that it is “weird” because it does seem to me that the taboo against incest does extend to adopted siblings. It’s weirder if the kid or kids were adopted when they were very young and raised as siblings their whole lives.
Is having sex with your actual sibling illegal? If both siblings are of age and the sex is consensual? I mean, frowned upon, sure. But I didn’t think it was illegal.
Consensual, heh heh. I meant, of course, if both siblings give consent.
For the “eewww!” people, what about this scenario:
Man with 17 year old son marries woman with 17 year old daughter.
Romance ensues.
Is it wrong?
With law topics, it’s usually much easier for us to find a law if you narrow it down to a country or even better,
a state if its US…
At findlaw.com just input in the search box ‘incest’
Only because the first thing that flashed into my brain was Greg and Marsha Brady :eek:
In an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the leader of an incest survivor’s support group intones, “Step counts. Remember step counts.”
If it is incest, then it pretty much has to be illegal by definition. The question, actually, is whether it is truly incest for adopted siblings to have sex.
Incest is primarily a legal and social concept, rather than a biological one. The taboo exists largely to prevent ties and rivalries which would undermine the family as it is usually defined within a particular society.
While all cultures have an incest taboo, the same relationships have been approved in some societies and condemened in others. There was a time in Egypt and Hawaii where siblings were actually expected to marry–but only if they were in the royal family. In England in the 19th Century it what considered incest if a man married his late brother’s widow. In the Old Testament, the Israelites regarded such marriages as a duty. The last I heard, an uncle and neice or an aunt and nephew could marry in Rhode Island, but only if they are Quakers or Orthodox Jews.
Definitions of incest within the U.S. are sometimes a bit hazy or ill-defined. There is actually one state (Georgia?) where there is no statutory definition of incest; the courts just know it when they see it.
In a Missouri case in the 1970s, it was ruled lawful for an uncle and a neice to marry since the neice had been adopted into the family. In the same decision, however, the court went on to say that if the couple had been brother and sister by adoption their marriage would have been prohibited.
My guess is that most states would likely take this same view of relations between adopted siblings. Interestingly, this contrasts with the view expressed in a good deal of western literature. Dr. Zhivago, Frankenstein, The New Prometheus, and Wuthering Heights come to mind as three novels in which a man and woman are raised in the same houshold as brother and sister, and everyone seems to think the idea of them getting married is cool.
Everyone keeps talking about sex at the beginning of the post, and marriage at the end. Can we please get on the same page, or at least clarify what we’re talking about? Is there any law in the U.S. that outlaws sex between consenting siblings of legal age?
Maybe the OP can clarify if he meant if it was illegal for them to get married or just to have sex.
If I were playing Gwenyth Paltrow’s step brother, I wouldn’t care if it was incest…
In response to the “EWWWWWW!” crowd, I have 2 words to send you scurrying back into your lairs:
Woody. Allen.
EEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!
I don’t recall ever hearing anthropologists claim that there is a social reason such as you describe for the incest taboo. Most societies have pretty complex rules about who someone’s supposed to marry. The reason why close relatives are excluded is that inbreeding has dangerous biological consequences. Also, I heard an anthropology professor at UC Berkeley years ago make a convincing case that there is a genetic basis for the universal taboo against incest between siblings. Part of the support for this argument was the fact that people almost never mate with people they were raised with, even if they are not blood relatives. Based on his evidence, only someone who is severely disturbed or genetically defective would want to have sex with their adoptive sibling.
OK, the OP does not ask if it’s right or wrong, but if it’s illegal. Almost everywhere, it is. As mentioned before, the straight factual answer depends on each jurisdiction’s laws.
Oh, and the Woody Allen/Soon Yi Previn pairing IS NOT “incest”. It was tawdry as all get out (and it’s the enactment of the plot of one of his own short stories from the 70’s!) but it just is not “incest” in any legal way. Soon was the adopted daughter of André Previn and Mia Farrow; Woody NEVER married Mia nor entered any sort of legal familial role over Soon.
As slipster pointed out, the laws (be they statutes or traditional taboos) against incest in most human societies are not for the sake of eugenics (though the ocassional malformed child-who-is-his-own-uncle may have been seen as a sign that the gods frowned on this sort of thing) but for the sake of protecting what that society sees as the proper structure of the family unit both internally and in its relationship with the other units that form the society, and avoiding situations that are potentially exploitative and/or detrimental to the cohesion of the tribe/society. As in, if one family unit becomes isolate within the tribe, how can it be counted on to rally together with the other clans? If Oog has been getting it on with his daughters, where does that leave the future well-being of his wives, who would have normally counted on sons-in-law for support in old age?
Perhaps, but not in General Questions. Let’s stick to the OP, please.