Incestous Marriage Should Be Permitted

Preface: - I should remind the voters that the BOP in on Pro to convincingly show why Incestuous Marriage ought to be permitted. - I’ll concentrate in this round on rebuttals, & I’ll leave my case to later rounds. Case: I. Incestuous Lawful Marriage is an incoherent concept: II. Incestuous relationships should not be permitted in a democracy: - This, for, evidently, virtually all subjects of society on the globe do not think Incest should be allowed (for social & religious reasons). Thus, permitting it goes against the principal of democratic rule. III. Incestuous relationships should be restricted by social or religious norms: Rebuttals: C1. Benefits & Impact: - In this section, Pro makes 3 points, which I’ll refute thereafter: 1. Marriage, as a legal union, entails many legal benefits. Permitting Incestuous ‘Marriage’ extends the same benefits for incest couples, hence they should be permitted. 2. Marriage, between normal couples, is associated with many health benefits. Thus, Incestuous ‘Marriage’ should be permitted, for it would enjoy the same health benefits. 3. Consensual incestuous relationships are a fact. 1. => This is clearly a case of equivocation, or at least a case of affirming the consequent [1]. The Marriage here designate that which is recognised by the Law, which thus excludes Incestuous “Marriage”. By that I mean, Pro has to show why incestuous relationships ought to be permitted or recognised in the first place, regardless of the legal benefits of Marriage itself! An analogue course of reasoning can be made for pedophilic relationships for instance. Such that, there are many legal benefits to Marriage, thus, pedophilic relationships ought to be permitted, by Pro’s standards, in order to extend those benefits to such couples. Point being: the fact that there are legal benefits to Marriage, does not warrant in any way making it legal for any combination of couples, incest or not, human or otherwise. 2. => This also is a case of equivocation, for the Marriage indicated here coincidently does not account for incest. Pro here is overreaching. The health benefits (such as decreased mortality. . .) plainly have to do with normal couples, & there is no reason whatsoever to believe these benefits extend to incestuous relationships, or any other relationship for that matter, including pedophilic, zoophilic & others. In fact, the opposite is likely true, for there are high biological costs of incestuous off-spring [2], which include, excess mortality, up to 36% of children resulting from incest will either die or have major disabilities [3]. . . Thus, permitting Incest could only augment distress of parents over mostly dead or disabled children, & result in rampant high child mortality & disability in society. 3. => Pro here does not provide any proof of such cases, accidental incest is, by design, not consensual incest, for the involved parties did not initially consent to incestuous acts knowingly, that was only after the fact. However, regardless of the occurrences of such behaviour, if consensual incest exist, which is not unlikely, then so do all sorts of consensual relationships, & voluntary suicide, & consensual cannibalism . . . The fact that something happens with consent does not necessarily imply that it should happen! Pro has to justify why that is the case. C2. No harm principal: - Pro’s main argument here is as follows: A. Consensual Incest is a victimless crime, thus, according to the Harm Principal, ought to be permitted. - There are many problems with this line of reasoning: 1. Consensual Incest is not necessarily a victimless crime, for the offspring resulting from such relations is very likely to suffer bad consequences, both biologically & especially psychologically due to extreme social pressure & stigmatisation. 2. A victimless crime, often involving consensual acts or solitary acts [4], is a crime nonetheless. Supposing a crime is victimless does not necessarily entail permitting it! Pro has to show why a crime, that is victimless, ought to be permitted. 3. The Harm Principal is not sufficient reason enough to permit something. Pro has to do more than assume the validity of the principal, he has to show how this principal is sufficient otherwise. 4. Mill himself also argues: “ for such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishments, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection.”, expressing the social authority principal [5], which is a crucial principle “for the purpose of determining harm that only manifests gradually over time” [5]. In this case, firstly, permitting Incest entails widespread detriment consequences to society (in child mortality & disability, trauma, & a plethora of psychological effects) ; secondly, such relationships are socially & religiously unacceptable in the first place, permitting them harms the society & its religion in the sense that they go against the interests of both. "This would be equivalent to prohibiting selling something to someone based on their race or ethnicity, or employment based on their sexuality – clearly none of these have anything to do with one’s values or rights as a person." - Pro here makes a straw-man analogy, as we can’t see which aspect of Incest & these actions is shared! Nor do we see how this aspect is supposedly relevant to his point! Plus, Pro assumes that “prohibiting selling something to someone based on their race or ethnicity, or employment based on their sexuality” should not occur, & deduces that, similarly, prohibiting Incest should not occur either, without showing why this assumption is the case, or why is it analogue to Incest to begin with. Thus, this argument can be dismissed as bare assertion. C3. Arbitrarily nature of prohibiting incestuous marriage & relationships: - Pro here argues that, since the laws are arbitrary concerning incest, the latter ought to be permitted. However, following Pro’s reasoning we will find ourselves with more problems than solutions: 1. We might apply the same approach to different laws of different nations, & based on the arbitrariness of prohibitions these laws entail, we would be compelled to discard all of them! Which is clearly completely arbitrary too. In this case, what’s the point of Law to begin with?! If Pro is firm on his approach than he should concede this as well. 2. There are forms of incest that are universally prohibited, namely with first degree relatives (parent or sibling) [6]. Thus, Pro’s assumption of arbitrariness of Incest does not enable him to go further than incest with second degree relatives. - Also, Pro’s claim “incest on some level is occurring within every single relationship on some level” is incoherent & false, for it goes against the definition of incest itself. C4. Discrimination: - Here Pro, as always, makes a number of assumptions without justification: 1. He assumes incestuous ‘marriage’ is the same thing as same-sex marriage, without showing why that is the case. 2. He also assumes that same-sex marriage should be permitted, & so should incestuous marriage. Again, without justifying why same-sex marriage should be permitted, it certainly isn’t in much of the World. If we value a society in which the majority does not oppress the minority on its own whims, then we also value a society where the option for marriage with “close relations” is available, as we do those of the same gender or different race. - Response: 1. That’s anti-democratic, i.e. the rule of the majority. Thus, valuing democracy contradicts, on some level, valuing a “society in which the majority does not oppress the minority”. Is Pro promoting such an approach?! 2. If any minority should be given its needs, then thereby should pedophiles & zoophiles & all sorts of psychos. Is Pro ok with this?! Sources: [1] http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] [3] http://en.wikipedia.org... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org... [5] http://en.wikipedia.org... [6] http://en.wikipedia.org...