Dang, hit post instead of preview. cite:
Cousin Marriages: Cousins may marry. However, the blood relationship between the prospective bride and groom cannot be closer than first cousins.
http://usmarriagelaws.com/search/united_states/hawaii/index.shtml
Donald E. Brown, quoted in Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate, lists a number of Human Universals - “surface” universals noted by ethnologists the world over. Universals in this sense are behaviors or overt language structures that are found in EVERY culture examined. It omits near-universals (traits that most but not all cultures show) and conditional universals (if a culture has A trait, it always has B). On that list are “incest between mother and son unthinkable or tabooed,” and “incest - prevention or avoidance.” The list does not distinguish between cultures that have actual written laws in place, and those that do not. However, it does appear that using this as a reference, it would be difficult to find a culture that does not express this universal behavior in some fashion. Even liberal old Sweden.
Washington state has an incest law as well. I’ve convicted one person of it (elderly man having a sexual relationship with his 23 year old developmentally delayed granddaughter).
RCW 9A.64.020
Incest.
(1)(a) A person is guilty of incest in the first degree if he or she engages in sexual intercourse with a person whom he or she knows to be related to him or her, either legitimately or illegitimately, as an ancestor, descendant, brother, or sister of either the whole or the half blood.
(b) Incest in the first degree is a class B felony [up to 10 years in prison].
Intriguing… Under the Georgia statutes as posted by Walloon, homosexual incest (except between grandparent and grandchild) would be legal. Presumably this is because homosexual sex (regardless of relation) is prohibited elsewhere? If that’s the case, then they’re going to have a bit of a mess on their hands when that other law is eventually repealed. Or perhaps the “twin sisters porn” industry just has powerful lobbyists in Georgia?
In my Kinship and Marriage class (anthro grad student), my professor must have been citing this when he mentioned that the incest taboo was one of the few universal taboos. The trick, though, is how each culture defines incest. In some, marrying your niece is fine; at the other end of the spectrum, men in some cultures feel unclean if they even view their mother-in-law.
Hell, I feel unclean when I talk to my mother-in-law on the telephone …
Of course it was designed that way… that doesn’t change the fact that from state to state a person should be aware that the laws may not be the same. State laws are not consistent in the sense that, they may be breaking the law once they cross the border. I was reading some article recently regarding a married couple winding up in jail because their marriage wasn’t legal in the state they were visiting. Maybe they had just moved there. I’ll see if I can find it again. They were an older couple who got married as first cousins in order basically to help each other survive. They pooled their resources and moved in together. IIRC the problem arose when they wanted to redo their wills making each other their beneficiary…anyway my point was just that you better be careful because there are plenty of laws that aren’t “consistent” across state lines.
Cecil speaks
I interpreted “inconsistent” in a technical sense of “self-contradictory”. My mistake.
That’s understandable, I wasn’t exactly happy with the word either but couldn’t find a better one off the top of my head without going into a long explanation.
Perhaps I should have said, “inconstistency of the laws” instead of the legal system. The system IS fairly consistent. It’s the laws that aren’t.
Better? 