We have gotten to the point in our society and culture where people are advocating for decriminalizing “consensual incest.” The first thing that comes to mind is, who are these people that think it’s virtuous to fight for people to have sexual relations with their siblings or other family members?
This specific controversy was sparked last week after a recent New York lawsuit demanding the state allow a parent to marry their child.
Under New York law, incest is a third-degree felony punishable by up to 4 years in jail. According to the New York code, someone “is guilty of incest in the third degree when he or she marries or engages in sexual intercourse, oral sexual conduct or anal sexual conduct with a person whom he or she knows to be related to him or her… as an ancestor, descendant, brother, or sister of either the whole or the half blood, uncle, aunt, nephew or niece.”
The lawsuit was filed by the parent attempting to marry their child, and they have remained anonymous because they acknowledge that their goal is viewed as “morally repugnant” by the larger society. The lawsuit notes their emotional distress about the State’s laws that seek to “diminish their humanity” in an issue which should be of “individual autonomy.”
The incest advocates are rooting for the parent, one of them being Richard Morris, an Australian who is dedicated to changing incest laws in more than 60 countries. Morris says that he supports the legal push in Manhattan’s Federal Court and that such behavior between consenting adults should be decriminalized. One certainly has to wonder what type of life Mr. Morris must be leading for him to take this up as his life’s crusade.
According to the NY Post, he was inspired to fight for this cause after he heard about a case in Scotland, where a long-separated daughter and father reunited, started a relationship, and were then convicted. He and other advocates have launched around 130 petitions in Change.org in efforts to change incest laws, and thankfully, they have received little to no support. In a statement, the Australian told the NY Post that they “haven’t moved any mountains yet.” Good.
Another person cheering for the NY lawsuit, is Keith Pullman, who is running the blog “Full Marriage Equality.” In a statement to the Post, he said “It is absurd to say that an adult can’t consent to marry their parent. That same adult can be sent to war, take on six or seven figures of debt, operate heavy machinery, be sentenced to death by a federal court, and consent to sex with five strangers (and marriage with one of them) but can’t consent to marry someone they love?”
In Pullman’s website, he advocates “for the right of consenting adults to share and enjoy love, sex, residence, and marriage without limits on the gender, number, or relation of participants”
He published a long list of characteristics that detail exactly for whom the site was designed, including:
- I am attracted to or want to have sex with a family member or close relative (an in-law, step-relation, adopted relation, half-blood relative, full-blood relative, cousin).
● I am in a sexual relationship with or want a sexual relationship with a family member or close relative.
● I want to marry a family member or close relative, or have our existing marriage legally recognized.
● I have experienced Genetic Sexual Attraction or a strong attraction to a close genetic relative I was not raised with or I didn’t raise or who didn’t raise me.
● I am in or want a consensual incestuous relationship with another adult.
Our societal norms have changed drastically in the last two decades, to the point that some of us often feel we are living in some kind of dystopian novel that we have not woken up from. There are advocates now pushing to normalize pedophilia openly, and fighting to abolish consent laws. Who is to say that parents marrying their children won’t be a goal post we move past in the next couple of decades? Only time will tell.
