I believe that incest (and incestuous marriage) between consenting adults should be legal. The foundation for this belief is the more fundamental belief that government should not restrict the actions of its citizens except when those actions affect the well-being of others sufficiently to warrant such a restriction. Note, that I am not interested in discussing this more fundamental belief in this CMV. You may reject any such principle, but that is not what I'm asking you to change my view about. Instead, I'm asking you to change my view about incest in spite of such a principle (hereafter "the harm principle").
I believe that many people implicitly (if not explicitly) endorse the harm principle, and I believe it's a driving force behind arguments for the legalization of recreational drugs, gay marriage, and many other causes that many people regard as laudable. I also feel that the harm principle defends consenting adults from prosecution for engaging in consanguineal sexual relations with one another. However, in many places (even among developed countries), such consenting adults can be punished with lengthy jail terms or worse. Whether or not they are frequently punished in such a way is another question whose answer varies from place to place, but my point here is that they can legally be so punished.
I understand that one justification of some laws against incest is that they protect children from being molested by older relatives. If such laws are to remain, they should not preclude such relations between consenting adults, which would really just reduce them to laws prohibiting the molestation of children. Instead of having blanket incest laws that prohibit relations between consenting adults, you could simply have molestation laws that carry more severe penalties when the victim is a relative of the perpetrator.
Another common argument is that incest is more likely to produce offspring with birth defects. Some proponents of abolishing incest laws would propose that blood relatives should be allowed to engage in sexual relations but should not be allowed to conceive, but I think even this is unnecessary. It may be the case that the chance of birth defects is increased when close relatives conceive, but it is not guaranteed. Furthermore, I know of no laws (and I suspect they are rare, if they exist anywhere) that prohibit the conception of children by carriers of genetic disorders, even in those cases in which the disorder is likely (or even guaranteed) to be passed down. Even if such laws exist somewhere, I think they ought to be questioned, and if they ought to be questioned, so should any law that prohibits blood relatives from conceiving.
CMV.
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