Consensual incest should be illegal in the United States

== Burden of proof == Pro does not uphold his half of the burden of proof by providing a morally sufficient reason that consensual acts of incest should be illegal. He merely attempts to shift the burden of proof to me and attempts to refute a few of my points. However, I have provided a morally sufficient reason *not* to ban consensual acts of incest: it harms no one, as long as birth control is used. Pro does not offer any reason at all to ban it, except possibly genetics, but he drops all 4 of my responses to why genetics are not a sufficient reason to ban consensual incest. Do not let him bring up new arguments in the final round because I do not have a chance to respond. 1) Accidental incest I argued that it was unfair to put people in jail for having sex with siblings when they do it on accident because they do not know that their wife is actually their sibling (since they were separated since they were children). My opponent"s only response is: "Breaking a law is not a matter of fairness." However, whether me make something illegal is a matter of fairness. We should not criminalize accidental behavior because people do not have criminal intent. I should win on this argument alone because most prosecutions will be against people who are engaging in incest publicly, meaning they are in an incestuous relationship. And since biology causes humans to be naturally repulsed (sexually) if the humans are raised together, the vast majority of cases where people are in incestuous relations is going to be when they are not aware that their spouse is actually related to them. The Patrick Stuebing cases involves an individual who was raised apart from his sister [in foster case] until he was 23. My opponent says that the European Court of Human Rights says that Germany has a "wide margin of appreciation." This term [margin of appreciation] is the EU courts way of saying that it is granting deference to the country in question. The "margin of appreciation" is similar to the concept of federalism in the United States, where some issues (such as marriage and education) are generally left to the states. The court"s ruling *does not* mean that it was not potential violation of Stuebing"s rights to say that he could not have consensual sex with his sister. It means that if any court is going to find a violation of rights, it has to be the German Supreme Court, not the EU court. 2) Unenforceability The debate is over right here. My opponent *concedes* that prohibiting consensual incest would violate the Constitution. He says, "Incest laws are unconstitutional because they violate our right to liberty, the most important principle of which is self-determination as you have said." My opponent"s only response is that the government "does not care" about violating the Constitution. He cites a source which lists a bunch of laws that his author considers unconstitutional. However, there are two problems with this: First, even if we assume that the government sometimes violates the Constitution, this does not mean that they *should* violate the Constitution or that we should allow them to do so. The topic asks whether the United States *should* make consensual incest illegal, not whether it *could* make consensual incest illegal. Because we *should* uphold our constitutional values, you should vote Con. Second, my opponent is simply wrong. The statutes listed by his source have never been challenged in court. In contrast, the Lawrence Supreme Court case directly held that people have a right to privacy in the bedroom, so states cannot outlaw sodomy. The Supreme Court also held in Lawrence that "morality" was not a sufficient justification for making something illegal. So even if my opponent could prove that incest was immoral, this is not a sufficient justification under the Constitution. 3) Harm Principle My opponent cites a study (without sourcing it) that says that 700 children are born each year with rare genetic diseases due to cousin marriage. However, my opponent doesn"t respond to any of my attacks on why genetic risk is not a sufficient reason to ban consensual incest. First, remember that if you ban *any* marriage that involves heightened genetic risk to children, you"d have to ban Jewish people from marrying each other, people who *have* rare genetic diseases from marrying anyone, and older people from marrying anyone [because advanced maternal and paternal age correlate with a host of genetic diseases, including Downs]. If you read the article my opponent is citing, all of the risks it lists are also risks that older women face when having children. [1] Second, I asked why 12.5% should be the arbitrary cutoff point when people are too genetically related to have children. My opponent never justifies this number. He cites this study that in the entire United Kingdom, 700 children are born each year with genetic diseases to cousin marriages. [1] However, this study suffers from the base-rate fallacy: my opponent never tells you *how common* cousin marriages are in the UK and never tells you *how common* genetic diseases are in the normal population. For example, Crohns Disease is a rare and serious genetic disorder. Approximately 1 in 1000 people in any given population will get Crohns Disease. [2] The UK population is 63 million. [3] Therefore, you would expect 63,000 people in the UK to be born with Crohns Disease each year. Suddenly my opponent"s "700" statistics doesn"t seem all that bad, when you know the base rate for rare diseases in the general population. The *other* factor to consider is that cousin marriages are extremely common in the UK. My opponent"s own source says: "Research shows the number of cousin marriages has risen dramatically in the UK over the last three decades." [1] His source also says that in the British Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, 25% of all marriages are cousin marriages. [1] Given *how common* cousin marriage is in the United States and given that some rare genetic disorders are *inevitable* in any population, the "700" statistic does not look bad at all. This proves that the 12.5% level of genetic similarity is an arbitrary cut-off point based on fear mongering because people fail to understand the base rate fallacy. My opponent"s argument is a slippery slope. If we"re worried about genetic damage to children, why not a 5% cut-off point or a 2% cut-off point? If you go back far enough, we all share a common ancestor, so maybe none of us should procreate. Third (and probably most importantly), my opponent does not respond to the argument that genetic risk to a future baby is not morally considerable because there is no right not to be born. If not for the incestuous relationship, that particular baby would not have ever existed. If anything, once a baby is conceived, it has a right to life regardless of whether it is genetically damaged. If the State were to take seriously the proposition that someone with genetic damage does not have a right to life, then babies with genetic diseases should all be aborted or killed upon birth. But this is not the case. It seems hard to say that two parents are "harming a child" by conceiving it, even if it has increased risk of genetic disease because - without the conception - the child would not even exist, which is equivalent to death. For the above reasons, the "harm" from incestuous sex is not to the child who faces increased genetic risk because that child would not have otherwise been given a chance to exist. That particular consciousness (brought about by a particular combination of genes) would not otherwise exist. The only true harm from a genetically damaged child is to the parents, who have to pay the increased cost of raising the child. But this risk is like any other calculated risk that people are allowed to take. People can drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes, even though these are behaviors that might harm them. People are allowed to assess the risk and act accordingly. For first cousins, if they are both carriers for a genetic disease, the risk that any given child will have the disease is only 25% [for most diseases, since most genetic diseases are non-dominant]. And the chance they both have the disease in the first place is rather slim (6.25%). People should be allowed (under the harm principle) to assess these risks and determine how they want to act accordingly [the right to self determination]. Fourth, my opponent does not answer my argument that not all incestuous sex is capable of producing children, and even if it is, people can use birth control. Assuming a same-sex relationship or the couple uses birth control, there is between a zero percent and 1% chance of even *having* a child. There is no reason offered in today"s debate why people can"t have incestuous sex if they take preventative measures so they can"t have children. Also, not all incest involves intercourse. My opponent fails to justify why lesser forms of "sexual relations" should be prohibited. My opponent also drops the statistic that it would cost $11 trillion to incarcerate everyone who has ever engaged in any incestuous sexual behavior. My opponent"s source also highlights, as far as the cost-benefit calculation goes, that the State would need to lock up *substantial* numbers of people in the Pakstani and Bangladeshi communities if it were to outlaw consensual incest. The costs are simply not worth the benefits. We might avoid a few genetically damaged children, but we would lose $11 trillion locking people up for consensual behavior, even if it doesn"t even rise to the level of intercourse. Because the costs outweigh the benefits, vote Con. In addition, remember that the harm principle argues that the State cannot legitimately use its coercive power to make something illegal unless it harms another member of society. Since harm to future children is not morally cognizable because children do not have a right *not* to be born, the State cannot legitimately outlaw consensual incest under the harm principle. So Vote Con on this as well. 4) Punishing children who are experimenting My opponent doesn"t bother responding at all to my statistics showing that it is relatively common for small children of the opposite gender to experiment with each other when they are younger. Most of these encounters do not involve full on intercourse, but the definition of incest includes any sexual contact of any time. It would be unproductive in our society to lock up small children for this type of behavior. Vote Con on this because my opponent never responds to it. 5) Molestation My opponent seems to be advancing an argument that a portion of incest involves older relatives molesting younger individuals. This may be true, but does not fall within the resolution. Our society defines sex between someone older than the age of consent (16 in most states) and someone younger than the age of consent to be statutory rape. We consider someone under the age of consent to be incapable of consenting to sex with an older person. Thus, all of my opponent"s examples of molestation fall *outside* the resolution and you cannot vote on them because the resolution is only about consensual incest. 6) They can just find someone else This is my opponent"s last argument - his own personal moral judgment that people who engage in incest should just "find someone else." However, it is not up to my opponent who you or I have sex with. The same moral judgments were used to tell interracial couples to "just find someone else" when interracial marriage was still illegal. The same subjective moral judgments are used to tell gay people to "just find someone of the opposite gender" when they wanted to marry someone who they were in love with. As the Supreme Court said in Lawrence, our job as a society in crafting our criminal laws is *not* to impose our own morality upon other people. Our criminal laws have to be reserved for something more than our personal moral condemnation. For all these reasons, I urge a Con vote. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk... [2] http://www.webmd.boots.com... [3] Google "population of UK"