Lawful Incest

In an interesting op-ed piece in the Boston Globe a columnist talks about how he was invited on the BBC to discuss the topic legalizing adult incest, I think I became physically ill when I read this!! Senator Rick Santorum was quoted as saying, “If the Supreme Court says you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything” (Jacoby). Again, ewww!! This whole controversy was brought about because of the Supreme Court’s decision to “declare it unconstitutional for any stat to punish consensual gay sex” (Jacoby). Other dissenters agreed with Santorum’s statement and said that if this is the Supreme Court’s decision than, “bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are all called into question” (Jacoby). A recent article was also published in TIME magazine about a man from Ohio who was “convicted of incest for having sex with his 22-year-old stepdaughter” (Jacoby). The man who was convicted is using Lawrence vs. Texas as his defense; the case challenged the “constitutionality of the laws criminalizing homosexual sodomy” (Jacoby). So the current quest is to determine if the Supreme Court will sanctify adult incest as they were willing to allow consensual gay sex.

First of all my conservative upbringing does not even allow me to process this idea, that because the Supreme Court says that it is alright for consensual homosexual sex it should then be alright for adult incest. I think that is quite a leap! First of all nowhere in the article does it mention that the Supreme Court should accept consensual adult incest but just adult incest. This makes me feel like maybe it is not consensual, which mean that under no way should it be allowed. However, if it were to be consensual sex I feel that it is not the Supreme Court’s job to justify who people can or cannot have sex with. It is not the Supreme Court’s job whether or not to determine what is morally right or wrong but merely to defend people’s rights. My question is how did we even get to the point where people desire incest. I think there is some underlying Freudian theory to explain this, the whole mother/father complex. I think we can also look at this using Garfinkel’s theory of contrast spaces. Within sexuality there are numerous different contrast spaces, the two focused on in this article are the contrast space of adult incest being acceptable and desirable and the concept space that having sex with a family member is morally repugnant (if you didn’t guess, this is the contrast space I’m in). When the question is asked, “Do you find a family member sexually attractive?” Someone who is all for incest could argue that it doesn’t matter that they are a family member they are merely a person and therefore sexual attraction can exist. Those who are against incest might point out that they could never feel sexual attraction to someone they are related to because they share a different kind of relationship with them. Is either one of these arguments right or wrong? No, both arguments are opinions and therefore not wrong, however that doesn’t make them morally or socially acceptable. A person against incest could also say that it is possible for a family member to feel some attraction for another family member, but compared to an advocate of incest they can control their feelings and not act upon them. Issues like this, of a moral nature, will never come to a definite decision as to what is right and what is wrong because there are too many different contrast spaces that have been created due to the evolution of society. Society is constantly evolving and new ideas, concept and opinions are always being introduced. We no longer live in a limited society where there is a definite right and wrong, today the grey area is constantly expanding and people need to be aware of that. Just because I feel that incest is wrong doesn’t make it wrong, but it also doesn’t make it right. That is the difficulty of these times, even though most people live in this grey area between black and white they still want black and white answers to their questions. People want someone to say adult incest is wrong or adult incest is right, they can’t accept a verdict that says people can make their own decisions.

Bibliography-

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/05/02/lawful_incest_may_be_on_its_way/