The tangled knot of the last taboo

Now that incest has bee rebadged as 'genetic sexual attraction', will it be legalised?

Michael Cook | Apr 12 2016 | comment

The British press is a fathomless mine of lurid but thought-provoking, strange-but-true explorations of the dark side of the human condition. Last week's revelation was published in a magazine called The New Day -- a passionate incestuous romance between a 51-year-old British woman and her 32-year-old American son.

Kim West was studying in California when she had a child out of wedlock. She gave him up for adoption and turned to England. Nearly 30 years later she learned that her son Ben Ford wanted to contact her. When they met, they immediately felt an overwhelming sexual attraction. Ben ended up abandoning his wife and moving in with his mother. They live together and are considering having children.

Post-adoption romance is a poorly-understood but well-documented phenomenon. In 1980s an American adoption counsellor, Barbara Gonyo, coined the term “genetic sexual attraction”(GSA) for these passionate feelings. Two British psychologists interviewed several people in the grip of GSA who all described “a romantic ‘falling in love’, intense and explosive, sudden and almost irresistible”.

Since incest is not only taboo but illegal in most jurisdictions, people are reluctant to discuss it. However the psychologists estimated that such feeling are present about 50 percent of the time when siblings and parents are reunited. Their article was published 20 years ago in the British Journal of Medical Psychology (later renamed Psychology and Psychotherapy), so it is possible that the number of cases has increased.

In fact, as a sympathetic columnist for The (London) Telegraph pointed out, the use of anonymous sperm donation could cause a huge increase in the prevalence of GSA. Children can contact their biological parents as soon as they turn 18 in the UK, so numbers are bound to grow as “genetic orphans” seek out the parents they have never seen. She concluded that:

"Those who succumb to GSA are not sickos, or freaks, but victims who desperately need help and understanding. Their feelings are not controllable, but with scientific research and support, we can give them some degree in control over this devastating affliction."

Do these reasons for sympathising with GSA ring a bell – there is a irresistible love; the “victims” are genetically hard-wired and helpless; it is increasingly common, and, possibly more socially acceptable.

Aren’t these precisely the same reasons which have buttressed the legalisation of homosexuality and same-sex marriage? If the defining characteristic of love is erotic impulse, it is only logical to legalise incest as well.

Legal arguments are already being rolled out. In an article in the journal Criminal Law and Philosophy, an academic at Rutgers School of Law, Vera Bergelson, has argued that the traditional reasons for banning incest are over or under-inclusive, inconsistent or clearly inadequate. For instance, when pressed, opponents of incest argue that children are harmed. But she responds that science does not bear this out:

“ … it is far from clear that inbreeding presents a threat to society. The number of serious genetic disorders associated with inbreeding is quite limited. Moreover, some scientists believe that, in the long run, populations may suffer from the prevention of consanguineous marriages …”

In any case, a higher probability of genetic defects is hardly a reason to ban marriage. If that were the case, society would ban IVF, which has an elevated rate of birth defects. She concludes, as supporters of homosexuality did in the 1970s:

“the true reason behind the long history of the incest laws is the feeling of repulsion and disgust this tabooed practice tends to evoke in the majority of population. However, in the absence of wrongdoing, neither a historic taboo nor the sense of repulsion and disgust legitimizes criminalization of an act.”

Having accepted the logic of same-sex marriage, it is difficult to reject the logic of legalised incest. All we need is GSA’s answer to Caitlyn/Bruce Jenner – a glamorous couple who are hopelessly in “love”. Stay tuned for a campaign for GSA Rights.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/conjugality/view/breaking-the-last-taboo/17896#sthash.VdXcLJxe.dpuf

For those of us interested in the right to act in accordance with our consciences, what is happening in Canada is extremely worrying. As Margaret Somerville points out in her article today, health care workers and institutions are being forced into cooperating with euthanasia.

This is something that happens in no other country, even the Netherlands and Belgium, where euthanasia has been legal since 2002. As she writes:

In general, progressive values advocates claim to give priority to rights to individual autonomy, choice, control over what happens to oneself, and tolerance for those who believe differently. Yet in relation to respect for the freedom of conscience and, where relevant, religious belief, of physicians or institutions who oppose PAD, none of these principles seem to be applied. Why?