| >As an aside, my girlfriend just pointed out to me that it is hard to justify laws against incest (two adult relatives). Maybe we shouldn't have such laws. I don't think we should have them. We only have them because its "eeeewwwww." Social taboo. Cousin marriage is legal in most of the east coast, including in my state and cousin marriage wasn't taboo historically. In non-cousin marriage states it would be hard to enforce such a ban anyways. Do you have to prove you aren't related when you get your license? Who is going to find out? Who is going to care? Is the IRS going to challenge you? Is your employer going to find out your spouse is actually your cousin, know that is illegal in the state you got married in, and then deny your spouse benefits because your marriage wasn't technically legal? Probably not. "Genetic problems" is compelling in some ways (but probably overblown) but you can have sex without marriage and marriage without sex and have sex without children (especially in the case of same-sex sex, post menopause sex, sex with someone who had their gonads removed, sex with inter-sexed persons... I can go on...) I would also say it is your choice to have children with genetic problems - I mean we don't actually outlaw it. If two people were carriers of a terrible disease we don't punish the parents for knowingly taking that risk. We don't punish parents who have children much later in life (children born to parents of advanced age have a higher chance of a few diseases such as Down's Syndrome.) The reason we have these laws is nobody has challenged them in court yet and is not likely to because not to many people want to marry their sister enough to file a federal lawsuit and I'm not aware of too many people who were arrested for incest (regardless if they were practicing it or not). Legislatures can pass any laws they want. It can only be challenged by judicial review after said law is passed. |