So you're against this, but think it's perfectly acceptable for a 13 year old boy to shag an 11 year old girl if they're not related?

Why don't you want laws against both behaviours above? Why are you in favour of making one illegal and having one legal?

Errr...No, how have you derived that ? You have missed the point and jumped to the wrong conclusion, the complete opposite. It was stated that there are enough laws to cover sexual abuse of minors, if the incest law was scrapped. Me, assuming the age of criminal responsibility was 16 in Switzerland asked said question. It turned out that the a.o.c.r is 7, so that had already answered my question.

Nope, that is your downfall in this argument, not mine.

Society has defined the norm, it is there in law and behind the scenes. You fail to accept this, fail to acknowledge the subtle difference between physical and natural law, fail to grasp my repeated angle on this. You fail. All through the thread, your last few posts have been laughable , you simply just do not get it.

Now, how is your Mum ?

Missed all the chat here over the weekend.

My point of view on this is simple. As abhorrent as I personally find the concept of incest between consenting adults, I can't see how a law changes people's desire to act in a certain way if they have their mind (and bodies) set on it.

However, the sheer selfishness of knowingly creating a disabled life based on genetics is something that could and should be governed. As other posters have mentioned, you enter the area of ignorance in this area with pregnant mothers smoking , drinking or taking substances which could or do adversely affect developing children, which is not currently legally regulated.

The question is, if you're in the position of desiring an incestuous relationship and have no issue with the moral dilemma associated with it, is the law really going to change your sexual orientation? I severely doubt it.

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I think this only affects the extreme minority of people; the evolutionary desire to not indulge in incest is as strong as the desire to have intercourse in the first place. We as a species actively seek out appropriately heterozygous mates to insure many things, lack of risk of mental/ physical deformity and susceptibility to disease. Similar to cannibalism, incest eventually leads to the dying out of the individuals that practice it.

I've asked you some substantive questions about your position and you have failed to answer them.

I'm well aware of the concept of a natural law (in the sense of the life sciences) and natural law (as a concept in jurisprudence). It is you who initially conflated the two and are now struggling to disentangle them. The basic lacuna in your argument is to explain why any observation of nature is relevant to how human behaviour is legislated. You still haven't stated a justification for this other than to endlessly say, "but it's unnatural, can't you see?"

My mother died a few years ago, thanks.

OK, sorry about the Mother jibe. Afwul of me. Again, sorry.



un·nat·u·ral (n-nchr-l)
adj. 1. In violation of a natural law.
2. Inconsistent with an individual pattern or custom.
3. Deviating from a behavioral or social norm: an unnatural attachment.
4. Contrived or constrained; artificial: smiled in an unnatural manner.
5. In violation of natural feelings; inhuman

Yes. I know what the dictionary defines as unnatural, there a five different but related meanings there. If you're trying to argue a certain case you need to be careful about which definition you're using at a certain point.

The trouble is that the two meanings that you've highlighted don't necessarily fit with what you were talking about earlier. Here the definitions are to do with social convention . . . earlier you were talking about the observation of nature and Mother Nature. Two quite different directions there.

The basic idea behind natural law is that things are inherently right or wrong. The problem then becomes one of discovery rather than creation. That's fine . . . many people would agree that murder, for example, is inherently wrong. There would still be a philosophical and legal discussion to be had about how you knew that and whether it should be translated into law.

But this hasn't been what you've been saying. Your argument is along the following lines. Please correct me if I've misinterpreted you, I'm just trying to see your position clearly (it's quite blurred at the moment):

"Through observation of nature, incest is obviously unnatural."

I'm not sure what claim you're making beyond that though, as at some point you jetisoned any moral consequences from your position.

This is where we differ. We are part of Mother Nature. What we do is defined as dictated by, and part of , hence cyclically forming, Natural law.

Natural Law does not define right and wrong , that is a human moralistic view (One which I chose to step away from). Natural Law defines what is normal. Observably followed by the majority, and what is abnormal (unnatural). The number of incidences of incest make it un-natural, if everybody was doing it, then it would be normal. As it is a statistical freak based on the number of occurences, then it falls outside of the measurable norm.

If we did not have exceptions, everything would be normal, and the word un-natural would have no place in Nature. The word exists , the meaning exists, un-natural events exist. It is used to classify a small section of exceptions. I clearly place incest in the set of exceptions that prove the rule.

Do you mean natural law in the sense of life sciences or natural law in the sense expounded in the wiki article on the subject?

That point is moot. All clarification has been made above.

Grant me the privilege of providing a clear answer once again. It's a simple binary choice.

What's the law on Morris Dancing? I've heard you shouldn't try that either.

Morris Dancing and incest very closely related?

Let me try taking a stab at why arguments based on appealing to natural law fail in the context of the Swiss law on incest.

First of all, as you (UTH) pointed out, natural laws are “discovered” through observation of human behaviour. There are several problems here, the first of which is that it is humans doing the observing. The question arises as to whether they know or understand what it is that they are observing. If you look back at the flow of human development, as you put it, you will find many examples of observations leading to “laws” only to then be disproven as wrong. Phrenology is a wonderful case in point. Observers often observe what they want or expect to observe.

The second issue with your natural law argument is that if you observe over the course of history, you will find incest everywhere. In Egypt. The European aristocracy. In fact, incest would seem to be as old as, say, prostitution. Psychologists posit that the seemingly inherent aversion to incest actually has to do with proximity when growing up, so that in a normal family (as opposed to a dysfunctional one), children who grow up together have a “natural” aversion to seeing each other sexually, even when they are not blood relatives, as in the case of adoption. This suggests the widespread taboos concerning incest are more positive law than natural law: society wanting to control a behaviour it views as undesirable. So, observationally speaking, incest seems to be “natural”, in the sense that it occurs everywhere in nature. Our aversion to it is deeply-rooted but not a natural law.

It is also necessary, especially when trying to get to grips with society’s aversion to incest, to separate sex between consenting adults and procreation, as many have pointed out. One could also argue that this distinction is a natural law, as it has been well observed that humans do not only have sex in order to procreate. Having a law that prohibits incest between consenting adults does not mean (1) that it won’t happen and (2) there won’t be children as the result of the union. I think it is universally agreed that having children from close blood relatives is genetically a bad idea. But that is a different issue. The law addresses only sex between consenting adults and as such is outdated. It will still be the case that marriage between blood relatives is prohibited. Even in France, where the incest law was taken off the books more than 200 years ago, there was a case recently where a father was denied paternity rights over the child he had with his sister.

The main purpose of the criminal code is to punish criminal activity that causes harm to the general public. As distasteful as it is to me, I don’t think sex between consenting blood relatives falls into that category.

I obviously understand the sentiment, most people would find incest abhorrent, it’s just the language you use to illustrate your point is ambiguous.
Incest, paedophilia, cannibalism, aren't necessarily 'unnatural' acts that is a rather grandiose biblical term, they are just incredibly stupid things for a society to advocate, and in all cases in the past where tribes or groups of humans have carried out these acts it has ultimately led to disease and self elimination.
There is no rational to carry out the above acts and through natural selection peoples that have carried out these acts are now no longer in existence.

Using the terms 'Un-natural' and 'natural-law' could encourage people to look at other seemingly pointless pursuits carried out by consenting adults, and tarring them with the same brush.

As per my previous post,

The fact that it happens in such a small number of incidents, the fact that we are hard wired against it, makes it the exception that proves the rule /law.

If you are arguing that it is perfectly natural, there would be far more people doing it, and our gene pool would be in a sorry state.

Again - It is unnatural.

Exactly the same arguments were used against the legalisation of anal sex not so long ago.

What's good for the goose...

Natural does not equal common. We are no more hardwired against incest than we are hardwired against homosexuality.

You certainly seem to be hard wired!