A1lion835
Smash Champion
I hope that looking at this title didn't make anyone recoil in disgust.
What's wrong with incestuous relationships? In my book, nothing. Usually, people's objections are that it's wrong/immoral/sick/against God's wishes/makes mutant babies.
How is marrying your sister any more wrong/immoral/sick than marrying someone the same gender as you, or of a different race? People who are against those things are, in effect, saying "Nope, sorry, you two can't love each other like that, it's not allowed because *reason*." And we call those people close-minded, we say they hate gays and it's a bad thing, we say they're racist - so how can denying love between two relatives be okay?
Against God's wishes -- With no guarantee that God exists, or that God's wishes are for brothers and sisters not to marry, this really doesn't make any sense at all.
The only other objection (mutant babies) is the only one that could hold some ground...but it doesn't hold much. People with similar genes reproducing doesn't cause birth defects, but an increase in homozygotes. That means recessive traits which code for birth defects could be more common, or the opposite could happen and birth defects would occur less often.
Something that inbreeding does inevitably lead to is an increase of female carriers. In small populations, these carriers probably won't live long enough to reproduce, so it's not a problem, but in larger populations, more carriers would reproduce.
However, the numbers don't change that drastically. Don't forget that we're not forcing people to marry their relatives: we're simply allowing them to do it. The number of incestuous marriages would be very small, so we're talking about a small number of unions which could cause a small number of birth defects. Not only will natural selection eventually deal with the defects, but an abortion can be carried out -- as in a "normal" union -- if the fetus is shown to have severe birth defects.
Finally, these defects are only fatal after 2 or more generations of close inbreeding, varying depending on the number of defects the carrier has. Let's put the number of incestuous marriages / non-incestuous marriages in a population around 1/1000 (a number which seems fairly realistic). That means that the chance of having 2 consecutive incestuous generations is around 1 in a million. That's less than 300 cases in the US! As stated in the previous paragraph, abortions are always an option if the defects are severe enough, and natural selection will eventually weed out any highly-defected lines.
What are other people's thoughts?
What's wrong with incestuous relationships? In my book, nothing. Usually, people's objections are that it's wrong/immoral/sick/against God's wishes/makes mutant babies.
How is marrying your sister any more wrong/immoral/sick than marrying someone the same gender as you, or of a different race? People who are against those things are, in effect, saying "Nope, sorry, you two can't love each other like that, it's not allowed because *reason*." And we call those people close-minded, we say they hate gays and it's a bad thing, we say they're racist - so how can denying love between two relatives be okay?
Against God's wishes -- With no guarantee that God exists, or that God's wishes are for brothers and sisters not to marry, this really doesn't make any sense at all.
The only other objection (mutant babies) is the only one that could hold some ground...but it doesn't hold much. People with similar genes reproducing doesn't cause birth defects, but an increase in homozygotes. That means recessive traits which code for birth defects could be more common, or the opposite could happen and birth defects would occur less often.
Something that inbreeding does inevitably lead to is an increase of female carriers. In small populations, these carriers probably won't live long enough to reproduce, so it's not a problem, but in larger populations, more carriers would reproduce.
However, the numbers don't change that drastically. Don't forget that we're not forcing people to marry their relatives: we're simply allowing them to do it. The number of incestuous marriages would be very small, so we're talking about a small number of unions which could cause a small number of birth defects. Not only will natural selection eventually deal with the defects, but an abortion can be carried out -- as in a "normal" union -- if the fetus is shown to have severe birth defects.
Finally, these defects are only fatal after 2 or more generations of close inbreeding, varying depending on the number of defects the carrier has. Let's put the number of incestuous marriages / non-incestuous marriages in a population around 1/1000 (a number which seems fairly realistic). That means that the chance of having 2 consecutive incestuous generations is around 1 in a million. That's less than 300 cases in the US! As stated in the previous paragraph, abortions are always an option if the defects are severe enough, and natural selection will eventually weed out any highly-defected lines.
What are other people's thoughts?