Incest laws challenged

[ls317]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,,2022008,00.html

A German brother and sister are challenging the law against incest so that they can continue their relationship free from the threat of imprisonment.
Patrick Stübing, an unemployed locksmith, and his sister Susan have had four children together since starting a sexual relationship in 2000. Three of the children are in foster care, and two have unspecified disabilities.

The couple, who live near Leipzig, grew up separately and only met many years later. Their supporters say they will fight until incest is no longer regarded as a criminal offence, arguing that the law is out of date. They say it harks back to the racial hygiene laws of the Third Reich and should be overturned in favour of freedom of choice and sexual determination. Detractors insist that incest should remain a social taboo, largely because of the risks linked to inbreeding and the imbalance in social relations it inevitably causes.

[eyesroll]

1. Icky...but I do wonder about laws that prohibit relations between (ADULT) step-relatives.

I don't necessarily mean stepsiblings who were raised together from toddlerhood hooking up as adults (or a stepparent/stepchild relationship at any age)...but, what would happen if, say...

Adult woman Alice and adult man Brad began to date. After awhile, the happy couple introduces their parents to one another...Alice's father Charlie and Brad's mother Darcy, both widowed. Well, lo and behold, Charlie and Darcy hit if off and elope. (OR: Charlie and Darcy are evil and want to thwart their children's happiness.) Boom. Alice and Brad are now stepsiblings, and their relationship is now illicit.

There's obviously no risk of "inbreeding" here, and imbalances in social relations are pretty minimal too. I'd imagine nobody would bother to prosecute this, but I suspect Alice and Brad would be unable to marry in states/country that prohibit stepsiblings from doing so.

[bleedingheart]

9. The relationship you describe would have been outlawed a long time ago

under church laws.

In fact, the reason Henry VIII thought he could rule his marriage to Catherine of Aragon illegal was because she had been married to his brother and by that fact was his sister by marriage.
When he married her originally though...(his father wanted to keep her dowry)..Catherine swore that she and Arthur had not consumated the relationship and a papal dispensation was given to allow the marriage...which was one of the many reasons the Pope had for not allow the divorce

...basically it came down to..."you asked for special dispensation to marry her in the first place, you can't use the same reason to divorce her later".

[WinkyDink]

15. Henry and Catherine were in-laws, not step-anythings. "Consanguinity"

as argued by Henry was dismissed as absurd. Anyway, Henry just had the hots for Anne, so any argument in a storm.

[WinkyDink]

14. Where are such laws? This is almost what happened with Rolling Stone

Bill Wyman, and no law existed to prevent it:
Wikipedia:
At age 47, Bill Wyman began a relationship with 13-year old Mandy Smith, with her mother's blessing. Six years later, they were married, but the marriage only lasted a year. Not long after, Bill's 30-year-old son Stephen almost married Mandy's mother, age 46. That nearly made Stephen a stepfather to his former stepmother. (If Bill and Mandy had remained married, Stephen would have been his father's father-in-law and his own step-grandfather!)

[Horse with no Name]

2. Wasn't this a book series?

Flowers in the Attic?

[bleedingheart]

3. that was a neice and an uncle...

what a weird book series that was...

[Marrah_G]

4. No, it was a brother and sister.

n/t

[bleedingheart]

8. I found a link to what I remembered...however it has been almost 15-20 years since I read them

"The children remain locked in the one bedroom with an adjoining bathroom. When Corrine returns she has been savagely whipped by Olivia, who explains to the children that their parents were half-uncle and niece. (It is later revealed in the series that Christopher Sr. and Corrine were actually half siblings, a fact they never knew but of which Olivia was aware.) As a result of incest, Olivia accuses the children of being “Devil’s spawn.” She will never love them and their mere existence must be kept secret forever, especially from their grandfather Malcolm."

this was from wikipedia.

So in the first book...Corrine and her husband were thought to be neice and uncle.

[Marrah_G]

11. Yes but...

Corrine's oldest son and daughter become husband and wife later in the story. So we were both right :)

[Horse with no Name]

7. I thought it was twin brother and sister

who raised their younger twin brother and sister as their own?
And that was a major weird series...

[bleedingheart]

10. there were a great number of books...

I can't remember all the books...plus I think I read only two of them...(been a long time)...

But Wiki has a good listing of the series..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_in_the_Attic

[AlCzervik]

6. the first book "Flowers in the attic" did have brother sister incest.

[McCamy Taylor]

5. Incest laws prevent family members from forcing each other into abusive relationships.

Without an incest law, a father could force a 14 year old daughter to marry him in many states, making child abuse legal. Or two siblings could be forced to marry by their insular religious community.

Incest laws probably should only apply to those under 18. You can not prohibit two people from having sex because they risk having an offspring with a genetic disturbance, at least not in the USA. Maybe you can in Europe.

[WinkyDink]

12. I think they want a law that somehow lets them avoid knowing what they've done.

[Beelzebud]

13. Yes because there just isn't enough non-relatives to have sex with...