Court Opinion

ID: 9608138
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:07:01.627812+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:49:58.301241
License: Public Domain

Sears, Justice,
concurring.
I concur fully in the result reached by the majority. I write merely to address an erroneous assumption implicit in the appellant’s contentions. The appellant argues that there can be no incest in this case because the sexual relationship was between the appellant and his step-daughter, who is not related to him by blood. This argument displays a lack of understanding of the crime of incest.
The incest taboo is one of the most important human cultural *651developments. It is found in some form in all societies. This universal proscription restricts sexual intercourse, and hence marriage, among close relatives. Being primarily cultural in origin, the taboo is neither instinctual nor biological, and it has very little to do with actual blood ties. This is evident by the fact that the taboo is often violated — people generally are incapable of violating their instincts — and because society condemned incest long before people knew of its genetic effects. Modern anthropologists and comparative sociologists claim that the significance of the incest taboo is twofold. First, the restriction forces family members to go outside their families to find sexual partners. Requiring people to pursue relationships outside family boundaries helps to form important economic and political alliances, and makes a larger society possible. A second purpose of the taboo, as the majority aptly points out, is maintaining the stability of the family hierarchy by protecting young family members from exploitation by older family members in positions of authority, and by reducing competition and jealous friction among family members.
Decided July 28, 1995.
Dwight L. Thomas, Charlotte Y. Kelly, for appellant.
Lewis R. Slaton, District Attorney, Carl P. Greenberg, Frances E. Cullen, Assistant District Attorneys, for appellee.
In applying the incest taboo, history has defined “close relative” in different ways. For example, medieval Christian societies prohibited marriage between cousins, as well as between aunts and nephews, uncles and nieces, out to the seventh degree. In many of today’s tribal societies, on the other hand, father-daughter and brother-sister intercourse may be condemned as incestuous while first cousins are considered preferred marriage partners.6 Georgia’s decision to include stepparents in its statutory proscription against incest is neither unreasonable nor out of keeping with the historical purpose and meaning of the taboo.