Proposal sails through, with one vocal opponent saying gay first cousins do not risk having a child with birth defects

Archived version: https://archive.ph/Ri2sc

  • I can’t see how two consenting adults wanting to marry is an issue. Sure, having biological kids born out of incest should be criminalized as that comes under child abuse (going ahead with a pregnancy where the probability of the child having to suffer a birth defect is very high.).

    Let’s say I want to marry my first cousin. Both of us are 22 and 24. We are both adults. Why should society get to decide what we can and cannot do? If you say “love is love” and support this bill, you are a hypocrite.

    • So, accidental pregnancy between consenting adults that took precautions occurs. Is the state requiring a choice between abortion or jail? Just for the woman, or for both? What if the couple disagree on abortion? Still jail for both, or just one?

      • Hmm, interesting problem where I don’t exactly have a good answer. But I would still support some form of criminalisation. If I fed my 3 year old cocaine while knowing it was cocaine, should I not be jailed for abuse? Is this situation not similar?

    • having biological kids born out of incest should be criminalized as that comes under child abuse

      It’s the same as any other situation where a couple has known genetic traits that make birth defects much more likely. Why should it be criminalized if the parents are related, but not when the parents are unrelated, even though the outcome for the child is the same?

      • I’m not very confident in answering this, but this is my answer- Knowing that ur kid will have genetic defects is very easy if you know that your partner is your sibling, no? To know the other genetic traits, you would have to consciously conduct genetic tests n stuff. But not so much for incest.

        • But there are enough situations where it is easily known, even without genetic testing. For example, if a woman gets a child at a comparatively high age, like 40 or so, there is a significantly increased risk of birth defects, comparable to that for pregnancies between first cousins. I’m only talking about those kind of things. Why shouldn’t that be criminalized then, too?

            • Well in your original comment you were just talking about “incest” generally, and then going on to mention you marrying your first cousin as a hypothetical example. That made it seem like you would want a child coming out of that relationship to be criminalized, and that’s what I was responding to. For direct siblings it might indeed be another matter.

              • Yes, in my original comment I did mean that. But one commentator gave the statistics of genetic disorders for kids born out of first cousins. After researching that a little, I changed my mind and wrote about it in a reply to that comment.