German incest couple lose European Court case

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by Skybird

But must we really go to extremes here to just relativise incestous behaviour? Must we really try to make incestous relations look the same as births given by mothers above 35 years? I think there still is a tremendous and extremely big difference.

No there isn't. Scientifically at least, you can't demonstrate that. There is no difference, and while incest does come with obviously heightened risks, these risks are substantially lower than many other conditions under which marriage is considered socially acceptable.

I'm not going out of my way to challenge "ancient laws" here, but there really is very poor scientific basis for this prohibition. Rather, the prohibition on incest is a purely social one, meant in large part to secure the traditional economic institution of marriage.

All I see is the usual panic-mongering of "we can't allow this one block of our traditional social norm to fall, or the rest of the society will go to hell with it", even if the norm is stupid, baseless, and in this case clearly damages and breaks up what was up to now a more or less functioning family. Society has nothing to fear from incest. What exactly is the threat from a sexual activity between two consenting adults? The fact that your tax money might have to pay for their disabled kids? Shouldn't you then attack all preventable cases of disability and demand mandatory abortions for all mothers at risk of producing unhealthy children? The fact is, incest between adults would not do anyone any significant harm, and certainly far less harm than many other things that are considered to be acceptable, right, and inalienable. But yet it's attacked, because apparently it makes a lot of people fear for their kids suddenly getting hots for their sister and/or brother. Just like allowing homosexuality is a threat because it makes your children gay, right?