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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
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Indeed.
If it's the gene-pool thing, then make it illegal for them to have children together. As creepy as this is, it shouldn't be a crime for consenting adults to have sex.
I don't see how this woman can sincerely be considered a "sex offender." Does anyone out there feel threatened by her? Would you be worried if she lived across the street from your kids' school?
The fact that only the mother is charged is just another layer of weirdness, although perhaps it was based on the power relationship since she is technically his mother (I say "technically" because they hadn't lived their whole lives in that relationship)? Maybe? Dunno.
I just told my friend about this, and he jokingly replied, "Ew, he had sex with a 54-year-old?"
Secondly, it seems the most helpful (and cost-saving) thing we could do for these two is provide them with counseling and support, not prison. The amount it will cost tax-payers to lock her up for a year is ridiculous considering that she isn't a threat to anyone and that she will be no different when her time is up. If we really this is sort of thing is a problem, we (as a society) should provide services that will actually deal with her emotional/psychological issues.
"Would you sign this initiative? It's to legalize incest."
Uh...
@6: Wait so you want to make it a criminal act once a baby is born, verified through paternity tests and such? Interesting. Tough to enforce, but interesting. The act of giving birth to an incest baby seems less criminal than fucking your son, though, IMHO.
Imagine if you find out you're related to this guy:
http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogim…
For the record, my name is Thornton, but I'm not related. No, really.
Funny, I was just reading in the Nat Geo about King Tut, whose parents were brother and sister, and who had a couple of stillborn children with his own sister. Tut was genetically defective, with a club foot and probably a cleft palate. Not unlike Charles II of Spain, who was impotent, could barely walk, and was what they used to call "simple".
@17 - WiS included! But wait...fuck Canada!
The other argument for banning incest is that any such relationship would be too easily influenced by power imbalances, e.g. that of a parent over a child. That doesn't seem like such a convincing argument here, though; the man is an adult and his mother had no ties to her son through his childhood and most of his adult life.
So ... I don't know. I can't find an argument against it, creepy though it may be.
I'm not saying everyone should go out and bonk a family member for shits and giggles, but under these circumstances (one couple vs a whole family full of couples over several generations) I don't think the "think of the children" argument holds water. As gross as we all find this, unless there's some evidence that there was coercion involved, it's pretty ridiculous to charge one consenting adult with a crime and not the other.
But a crime? That's bullshit.
They're both consenting adults. They aren't harming themselves or anyone else (except maybe my damaged psyche). It's none of the state's business.
Even if you buy into the genetic defects argument, she's well past child-bearing age. At most you could argue that is should be illegal to have a child from this couple (and even that is debatable). But there are a wide assortment of birth control measures to prevent that, and abortion is still legal if all that fails.
Besides, with today's genetic screening technology, surely we could eliminate or at least minimize such risks?
Took his sweet time, didn't he?
That applies to first cousins, NOT parent-child or sibling incest. That kind of incest results in serious genetic defects in the first generation.
However, making laws that restrict breeding based on genetic risk is very problematic. Do you want to forbid people with genetic disorders from breeding at all? You can easily find someone who has a greater risk of a serious illness in their offspring no matter who they breed with than most people would have if they bred with a sibling.
You also have cases of people who are known carriers. If they fall in love and want to breed with someone else and that person turns out to also be a carrier, the risk for that ailment is equal to or greater to the risk they'd have of breeding with a sibling (a sibling might not be a carrier). So, should they not be allowed to breed with the unrelated person with whom they fell in love because the risk to the of having a potentially very harmful disease would be much higher than average?
The problem with incest, generally, is the power imbalance. It is very difficult for both parties to truly, freely give consent. This is the same problem you'd have with a therapist-client relationship or a teacher-student. And like such situations, there will be some cases where it's fairly clear that consent is truly given. Being raised apart and both being adults makes the power imbalance unlikely to be an issue, and the consent likely to be real. Since this isn't a high risk of rape, it doesn't make much sense for it to be illegal. However, most cases of incest do need to stay illegal, because of the high risk of coercion and thus rape.
Get back to me when more than a tiny fraction of the population knows what their genetic risks are.