Liberty to do the unthinkable

By Dan Dudis

"Dan, you're crazy," my friends responded when I said I planned to call for the legalization of incestuous relationships. I was hard pressed to find anyone who would agree with me. Although incest is something that we can all joke about--in the British Royal family, antebellum southern gentility, or the plot line of our favorite soap--when we get down to it, it still makes us squeamish. It is perhaps the greatest of cultural taboos.

I'm not writing to exhort you to take a roll in the sheets with your sister (gag reflex goes here). Nor to describe the joys of the three year relationship I've been carrying on with my mother. I simply believe that incest, and anything else that doesn't physically harm uninvolved others, should be legal. Consenting adults should have the right to do as they please with their own bodies. Our nation's history of legislating morality is the only thing standing in the way.

The standard objection to the sport of kings: biology. Incest has the unfortunate effect of producing a disproportionate number of human specimens who think like Mike Tyson and look a whole lot worse. While such matings increase the chance that deleterious recessive genes will be expressed in offspring, these results are infrequent on an absolute scale. We live in an age of flavored condoms and KY jelly. One would hope that would-be Oedipuses would use protection while reexperiencing the loins that gave them life. And if the Trojans fail yet again, there's always Planned Parenthood. Thousands of babies are born each year with genetic disorders. Do we force their parents to abort them?

Incest puts a lot of Yalies in a difficult position--and I don't mean between the sheets with Aunt Betty. If one political philosophy can be ascribed to most of us, it is social libertarianism (staunch conservatives like to refer to social libertarianism as "relativism," like it's some sort of dirty word or something). Social libertarianism is Adam Smith applied to society--laissez-faire as you walk down the avenue of social interaction. Do anything you want, as long as you don't directly physically harm someone else; I'll mind my own business. Discounting the crazed vegetarian activists of the YCC and the aforementioned believers in the absolute infallibility of their own petty moralities, most Yalies don't really feel the need to play policeman in Greenwich Village.

If one is going to be open-minded about homosexuality, abortion, sodomy, prostitution, bestiality, and all the other scourges of the coasts that Dubuque and Peoria fear, then how can one oppose incest between two consenting adults? The same argument made against incest (perverting the primary human function of reproduction) can be made equally against abortion and homosexuality. Yet most Yalies are solidly pro-choice and pro-gay rights. Social lib-ertarians must be put to the test. If you believe in "live and let live," then you cannot oppose legalization of incestuous relationships.

Incest concerns two consenting adults, getting a little closer than their blood lines already are (obviously, current age-of-consent laws should apply for such relationships). There is nothing that a priori says an incestuous relationship is less beautiful than a non-incestuous relationship. Rather, we, drunk on morality, say that such a relationship should not be allowed. We are conditioned to believe that if it's anything but Mr. and Mrs. White, missionary-style in the bedroom (take that candlestick away from Mrs. Peacock!), it isn't sanctioned by our unforgiving Christian god and his Puritan morality.

Hold your nose if you have to, but the next time cousin Jill hooks up with Uncle Bob, try to approach the situation with an open mind. The grossed-out reflex isn't natural; society has conditioned us to believe incestuous relationships are evil. This morality has led us to make incest illegal. Perhaps society's taboos are the real evil.

Dan Dudis is a junior in Pierson College.

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