Does the state have a right to intervene in private consensual relations?

The one issue with this is an issue that faces all incestuous relationships. This is a question of consent or rather whether it can be established that this is a truly consensual relationship.

The reason we ban incestuous relationships is that the power relationships inherent in families makes it impossible to prove consent and for the safety of the parties involved we prohibit these types of relationships. I think many would be fine with incest in theory (as disgusting as it me seem) if consent could be effectively established but due to the familial relationships involved that is impossible.

I think this scenario falls under that example. Power relations factor heavily in this situation (even if not in this specific example). Government paternalism probably wrests on shaky philosophical grounds for most people but this fits under the safety paradigm that guides a lot of laws like sexual harassment regulation.

 

^ Those are excellent points and I when reading the original article I wasn't even thinking about the familial power relationships. We've been debating brother and sister but what about father and daughter or mother and son?

If incestuous relationships were legal then situations like that could arise too.

 

One thing I've been thinking about is getting the government completely out of the marriage business and leaving it up to contract law. Businesses could come up with their own policies on what sort of spousal benefits they recognize. So if some people want to enter a polygamous relationship that's up to them to decide what sort of contractual obligations there are while an HMO is free to decide whether to recognize one or any of the spouses.

 

I would suggest that this is not why we originally banned it, but rather because there is a natural biological 'trigger' that makes it feel wrong, as an evolutionary protection. I'm fairly sure there is something similar involved with homosexuality, as that is the only way I can contextualize some of the hysteria surrounding that subject. At the time most of these anti-incest laws were passed, people were working 10 and 12 year old kids in extremely dangerous factory jobs so they didn't exactly have the greatest regard for the fragility of children. Victorians seem to have viewed children as something one had to endure until they grew up, rather than the way we view them today.

But on a more specific front, the article states that the male in this relationship was adopted and raised separately, and the siblings only met much later. In this instance I have a hard time seeing how any sort of psychological familial power games would be relevant.

 

There possibly might be a social adaption based upon some evolutionary input regarding incest but I'm doubtful about homosexuality. Homosexuality has been practiced in most cultures and in some it was even celebrated. I can't think of a single culture where that is the case with incest.

 

The linking point is that both are reasonably understandable diversions from the ideal reproductive viewpoint (making them reasonable threats to reproduction as opposed to sexual attraction to igneous rocks) so reproduction has something to fear from them and neither one is particularly fruitful from a reproductive point of view (one results in no reproduction while the other results in a lower quality of output from reproduction).

The fact that these two siblings are together is sufficent proof that these inhibitions don't get expressed universally or effectively. If it was something that didn't happen, there would be no need for any lower level instinctive inhibitions.