Moral arguments against incest

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BornInMarch

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I already know that incest is wrong, but when I get in debates with people who think incest would be acceptable between consenting adults I lack the words to explain why it is wrong.

Can you please explain why it is morally wrong? Also note that “because the church said so” won’t be enough of a reason in debates, and that “genetic deformities” won’t always work either (the people I debated with mentioned a scenario where two siblings committing incest can’t have children).
 
For parent/child or such there is a power dynamic that makes consent difficult. If progeny are excluded I’m not sure what arguments there are for siblings besides the “ich” factor. In fact one could argue incest was implied in the bible.
 
Not trying to be unhelpful, but don’t waste your precious time debating with someone who thinks incest is OK. As for the morality of it, for any normal (that’s the key word here, NORMAL) person there is a gigantic “YUCK!” factor here that should need no explanation.
 
It’s illegal for siblings to marry. And it’s immoral for two people who are not married to have sex.
Some people who think incest is okay say that it may avoid the problem of inbred genes because the siblings may be the same sex. When you get to that point, anything goes. Arguments fail when people’s minds have been darkened.
The most cogent argument is Boomerang’s: the YUCK factor. If someone missed that memo, all you can do is pray for them.
 
BoomerangToo said:
Not trying to be unhelpful, but don’t waste your precious time debating with someone who thinks incest is OK. As for the morality of it, for any normal (that’s the key word here, NORMAL) person there is a gigantic “YUCK!” factor here that should need no explanation.
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Amen to that. I can’t help but think these people are either just trying to get attention or having fun making you uncomfortable.

Seriously, I wouldn’t even associate with someone that far gone
 
But people today have successfully denigrated morality based on the “yuck” factor; arguing with any secular person, you’d be considered quite terrible if you were to state that homosexual acts seem “icky” to you. Apart from God’s law, I can’t think of a coherent, defensible argument against incest per se, though as others have brought up you could argue power-dynamics.

Viki63 is right: Arguments fail when people’s minds have been darkened. As Chesterton puts it: “Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; only a man who knows nothing of reason talks of reasoning without strong, undisputed first principles.” If those first principles are incompatible, then argument cannot proceed.
 
Incest is contrary to the piety which ancestors, descendants, and siblings owe to each other. It inherently damages these relationships, which nature clearly indicates should be asexual.

Incest in the broader sense (e.g. between cousins) is not contrary to the natural law, but the good to be gained from extending implicit asexuality to such relations, the civic good to be gained from ensuring that society is interbred, and the good of reducing genetic disorders more than justifies authorities in passing invalidating laws against such marriages. And of course, such invalidating laws render such sexual unions a form of fornication, and thus wrong.
 
The best argument is basically a fleshed out version of Arkansan’s argument, namely that incest distorts the nature of the already established natural relationship that arises from the kind of familial bond present in the man and woman in question. Sex is only legitimate in the context of a man and a woman who agree to be united for life and to be willing to live with the natural results of sex (i.e., babies). Try and argue this part first because there is far more precedent than specifically arguing against incest.

Then, argue that each type of familial bond carries with it certain kinds of responsibilities and dynamics, and these are all incompatible with the natural dynamics of a man and a woman who are engaged in a sexual relationship. A mother has a particular authority over her son, as does a father over his daughter, and this type of authority is different in nature and should not be present in lovers. To engage in incest would imply that you must disregard and go against the natural terms of the previous bond.

With siblings, it is a bit trickier, but two different flavors of arguments can be made. First, the dynamics of siblings in part comes from the fact that you come from (at least one) of the same parents. Biologically then, you are the “same” in that you have the same biological source. But we are social beings in ways that extend beyond our families. Marriages are supposed to make new bonds, not merely alter the old ones. It’s a kind of social nepotism to marry your own sister (which is why royal families tended to do this with cousins, btw… The families of Pharaohs had incest and reproduced through them almost exclusively as well). The other argument seems to come from respect for your parents. Your sibling is an extension of your parents, and so they are also off limits.

These seem to be the implicit arguments behind the scriptural prohibitions of incest, btw, and the argument for extension of social bond comes straight from Augustine. While genetic arguments are consistent with the above, they had no place in the traditional teaching against incest.

Ick factor arguments are rather weak, imho. First, the ick factor is far from universal. While Torah has prohibitions against incest for the Israelites, the neighboring countries in Canaan widely practiced incest. Second, we have ick factors for relationships that are not necessarily immoral. For example, we have them today when it comes to marrying first cousins, and yet the Church permits such marriages with a dispensation (not for siblings though).
 
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una_ecclesia said:
While genetic arguments are consistent with the above, they had no place in the traditional teaching against incest.
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That’s true per se, but the frequent presence of defects in the offspring of incestuous unions (between immediate family members anyway) was not unnoticed in pre-modern times.
 
heidi_storage said:
Arguments fail when people’s minds have been darkened. As Chesterton puts it: “Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; only a man who knows nothing of reason talks of reasoning without strong, undisputed first principles.” If those first principles are incompatible, then argument cannot proceed.
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This, and Heidi’s words about secular morality having removed the “ick” taboo.

We also have to grasp how much fundmental Protestatism has formed the conscience of the modern US (as someone said, Everyone in America is a Protestant; even the Catholics, Atheists and Jews).

The fundamentalist core belief of young earth creationism, denial of anything other than 2 people with their children committing incest for a very long time in order to begin the human race means that, as children, we have learned that incest was established by God. No wonder it is pretty easy to decide that the incest taboo is somehow a punishment.
 
What on Earth are you talking about?

That the human race began with Adam and Eve only is Catholic teaching. Denial of it is heresy.
 
That’s true per se, but the frequent presence of defects in the offspring of incestuous unions (between immediate family members anyway) was not unnoticed in pre-modern times.
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True, the point is that arguments did not seem to be made in reference to that. More generally, the societal argument has the added benefit of being immune to the “what about family members who can’t have children?” response.

In particular, Augustine’s argument was able to make room for the Adam and Eve exceptions that are mentioned later in this thread. The human society at that time solely comprised Adam and Eve and their children, so social bonds could only happen between them, but as you extended into the first and second cousin realms and beyond, it became important to extend bonds beyond the nuclear family.
 
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una_ecclesia said:
That’s true per se, but the frequent presence of defects in the offspring of incestuous unions (between immediate family members anyway) was not unnoticed in pre-modern times.
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Aquinas made the argument from defects. The answer to “what about those who can’t have children” is the same as with regard to fornication, namely that sex exists for the purpose of having children, so it is intrinsically immoral to engage in kinds of sexual acts that tend to the harm of the offspring.

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/5054.htm#article3

I agree that the genetic defects argument is secondary, but it does have the endorsement of several Doctors of the Church.

It also helps (given modern genetic science) to further explain why it was fitting that the first generation of Adam and Eve’s children were given a dispensation from the prohibition on sibling marriage. The average person is a carrier for 5-10 recessive genetic disorders, incest drastically increases the probability that one’s offspring will inherit two copies of the same bad gene, and thus have a genetic disorder. But presumably Adam and Eve would have carried no defective genes (since they were created in a state of natural perfection), so their children could have married without any harm resulting to the offspring.
TheLittleLady said:
There are two things. Creation from nothing, 2 original parents.
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Yes . . .

That’s what your last post attributed to “fundamentalists”.
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Ah I never saw the Summa quote. Thanks for that. Still, I am a bit confused because elsewhere in the Summa, possible damage to the children wasn’t seen as an impediment to the “payment of the marriage debt.”

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/5064.htm#article7

See in particular objection 4 of article 1 and the response, which discusses whether a wife should pay the marriage debt to a husband with leprosy if he demands it. There is, at least almost, a contradiction here. Both conditions can be impediments to marriage before it happens, but the article has it that satisfying the husband surpasses concern that offspring will be sickly. (either way, both of these passages were from the supplements. I’m not sure if Aquinas wrote those during his lifetime… more likely one of his students wrote it).
 
The explanation seems simple enough to me. Prior to marriage, harm to the offspring can make choice of spouse wrong. But once a marriage has been contracted, you’re stuck with it, and the choice is no longer between healthy and unhealthy offspring, but between an unhealthy offspring and a non-existent one (and it’s better to be unhealthy than to not exist).
 
On reflection, it does seem that the principle in the part of the Supplement I linked is not correct, as many things harmful to offspring (e.g. both being carriers of the same genetic disorder) do not invalidate marriage.

As you said, Aquinas didn’t write it, his students did.
 
I don’t have a moral argument but I do have a biological argument.

Habsburg.
 
You can add to Habsburg the FLDS church. There are tons of genetic abnormalities among them. There is also a lot of inbreeding and genetic disorders among Muslims.
 
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