from: http://www.asianage.com/international/croatia-bill-make-incest-legal-241

Croatia is drafting a bill to legalise incest between consenting adults in the predominantly Catholic country, local media said on Thursday. Under the draft bill, adult sexual relations between brother and sister, father and daughter and mother and son would no longer be a criminal offence if they are entered into voluntarily.
A group of prominent jurists, professors and lawyers were working on the bill, but it was too early to say whether, or when, it would be tabled in parliament, Zagreb daily Vecernji reported.

“It is an open question whether the time is ripe to free adults from criminal responsibility for such behaviour,” said doctor Velinka Grozdanic, a member of the task group. But Ksenija Turkovic, a Zagreb University law professor and head of the group, said that legislation in many European countries was moving towards legalising incest.

She said incest has been legal in France for over 200 years, but recent legalisation moves in Germany have failed.

“If an adult brother and sister willingly indulge in sex, who is the victim that should be protected,” Prof. Turkovic asked. “There is no victim, only public morality is violated.”

Prominent Catholic commentator Zivko Kustic said that the abolition of punishment was not necessarily tantamount to approval. “One should make a distinction between punishment and approval,” Mr Kustic said. “If the state decides not to punish something, it doesn’t mean that it considers it good or decent.”



I recon this news should go down a storm in the Bible belt.

-LS

http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/incest/genetics.html

Curious...

Is gay incest therefore illegal? No mention here of brother/brother, sister/sister, father/son, mother/daughter...

I think this has strange and potentially severe implications for the traditional perception of the family unit. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen...

And, are there "age of consent" issues? I note that the age of consent for Croatia is universally 14...

http://www.avert.org/age-of-consent.htm

I have no idea about gay incest legality (with a law like this I'm presuming so), its just the strange situation of allowing his while elsewhere it rape & paedogeddon time. "The French used to be astoundingly tolerant of incest, but times are changing"[1] Genetically, its not a good thing unless your population can be isolated and you don't mind letting those with genetic diseases die (dieoff, then stabilization).

-LS

[1] http://www.cognitionandculture.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=444:incest-in-france&catid=32:oliviers-blog&Itemid=34

I'd tend to agree - on a purely genetic basis, it's an extremely bad idea. And I would also say that it seriously destabilises laws protecting children.

Furthermore, there are international implications. In the UK, immigration rules have been overhauled relatively recently to ensure that, as much as possible, the rights of children are observed and are not being abused. Are we now supposed to look at, for example any Croatian father arriving in the UK with his 14 year old daughter as potentially being involved in activities which are, on all levels, illegal in this country? I would imagine that there are similar safeguards in other countries...

I'm not all that surprised. My great grandparents on one side left the church and immigrated over here so that they could marry [they were 1st cousins, not brother & sister]. They did not take kindly to that idea over there, then again it was during the height of the second Reich's eugenics movement. Odd considering that it was a time when the nobles still engaged in incest marriages [however the elites hated the professional middle-class which might explain why they weren't normally allowed to practice some of the same traditions].

The mistake on the part of policymakers is the assumption that marriage law will be able to dictate whether or not reproduction occurs. The fear is "if we decriminalize and let them marry, they'll go off and have a dozen kids." Well, I am no expert in public policy but I think if two adults want to have a dozen kids badly enough, they're not going to care whether or not their relationship is sanctioned as a legal marriage. Sodomy was illegal in large portions of the US up through when the SCOTUS overturned those laws, which was only a short few years ago, yet homosexuals and bisexuals were openly out for decades and sodomy was popular in mainstream commercial porn for at least as long without cops going and rounding up workers at distribution companies.

There's no debating that incest increases the odds of health problems [gee, maybe that's where all my health problems come from] but, prohibiting those relations to protect children is like forcing people with genetic defects to be sterilized or use contraceptives to prevent the birthing of children with genetic problems. It's not protecting children so much as preventing certain ones from existing in the first place. If that is acceptable then where is the stop-point; requiring the abortion of children determined by tests in utero to have medical problems?

On the other hand, would it be responsible to allow reproduction in a situation where the possibility of giving birth to a child with a greater or lesser genetic defect is considerably higher than in a non-incestuous relationship? Consider: Firstly, the child - if the genetic defect is severe, what kind of life is it likely to have? Is it better to permit a life of suffering for the sake of life, or to avoid the situation ever arising?

Secondly, the bottom line - healthcare and dollars. Why, in a world where there already isn't adequate healthcare to go around, would anyone encourage increasing the burden, fully knowing that the likelihood is that a child born of an incestuous relationship will require long-term healthcare?

I'm not debating this. I'm just stepping in to say:

EEEEEEEEEWWWWWW!

*barf*

I am in no way saying that I support incest. I neither support nor approve of it, actually.

I would like to say that what people decide to do in the bedroom is none of my business. Everyone should have the right to sleep with whom they choose to, so long as both ADULTS are consenting. Though I am a little more hesistate to say sex between parents and kids (as I cannot phathom parents ever seeing their children in such a light), but again, I am not going to begrudge people who do, so long as it is what everyone wants.

I also think that if people do engage in incest (brothers and sisters, cousins, uncles/aunts with neices and nephews, etc...) then not only should they seriously think about it and WHY they wish to engage in this type of relationship, but if they truly find that they want to be with this person despite it all, then I can only hope they are smart and use protection so as not to risk having children that might be medically fucked due to their genes. As in: If you want to engage in an incestous union, then you should give up the right to have children together for the sake of the unborn child.

I suppose the only reason that I do not begrudge these people is because I honestly believe that you cannot help who you fall in love with. Under some circumstances it is entirely feesable that relations can fall in love and engage in intercourse. How am I to really argue with that, espeically when their relationship does not have the slightest thing to do with me?

I remember as a kid I was absolutely engrossed with V.C. Andrews' novel (and its sequels) Flowers in the Attic. Incest between a brother and sister figured prominently in the novels. It was an intriquingly disturbing and very dark series, and I know it was banned from a lot of high school libraries.

As for my own take on incest... I've never had a sibling, and I can't help but fantasize on what an incestuous relationship with a brother (or sister!) might be like. I dunno, it seems kind of hot, to me. I guess I was warped at an early age by Flowers in the Attic.

-- Nephele

Nephele, I many V. C. Andrews novels (call me disturbed, because I probably am). I think it is because of her books in the light she puts it in that I cannot bring myself to disapprove of incest. Her series "Dawn" is my favorite. I suppose I should add that I have most of her older books and series. Her newer ones...I do not own those as I left V. C. Andrews behind in my upper teen years.

There are genetic diseases out there that we know will be regularly passed down with as much or in some cases greater frequency, and yet we allow those patients to get married, and we allow them to reproduce. If incestuous reproduction is not to be allowed, then we should not allow those cases either. Yet we do.

We do because the last time we let the state try to prevent those types of births, we ended up going around forcefully sterilizing people left & right. Usually based on race & class & education level, without any true care towards the actual problem that spurred the policies in the first place. I for one, rather have the few people out there reproducing when they probably should not, rather than go back to the America that went around forcefully sterilizing minority orphans under the state's care. If having more people in this world with genetic flaws is the trade off, well, I'd rather we kept the freedoms [the few that are left in any case]. We couldn't handle the responsibility the last time, and our current leaders do not inspire the confidence I would like with that degree of power. If we had another United States of Franklins, Madisons, Hamiltons, and Jeffersons that would be one thing. Instead we have, well, I won't bother to name names, this post would be too burdensomely long.

I do believe in mitigating risks, why not make it easy for all of those types of couples to have healthy kids by encouraging them to adopt? It would be a win-win for everyone, we have no shortage of kids that need good homes in this country, I am sure they would appreciate it, and it would decrease the amount of government dependencies by decreasing the amount of unfortunates in the government's care. Our foster home system and our adoption system both need reform as it is.

Heheh, join the club.

They made it into a movie, which I never saw. I know that, had Wes Craven gotten the directorship as originally planned, there would have been more exploration of the incestuous relationship between the brother and sister (as in the novels). But I think the producer backed down in the end (including virtually editing out the incest theme) because he wanted the movie to be more "acceptable."

-- Nephele

As soon as I found out that they had made a movie called Flowers In The Attic based off the book I rented it right away. Do not watch it. It was extremely disappointing and it not not do the book any sort of justice at all. It actually did it a disservice actually. But, then, that is my opinion.

Sgath - I do agree about the adoption. If incest couples wish to have children, but have no desire to bring a child into the world that could be hurt because of the closeness of their genes, then I think the adoption agencies should be open to the idea. So long as they are good people, then their sexual relationship should not matter.

Wait...are people here really implying that an incestuous couple is okay? What kind of world are we living in?

Recent news from here. These things are messy.

Not so different from where I stand.