Interesting Ruling on Incest

Incest prohibitions are usually rationalized on a couple grounds: biological and consent.  The biological argument is that siblings or other relatives shouldn't be allowed to procreate because of the risks related to a small gene pool in terms of birth defects and other health problems for the offspring.  The consent argument stems from cases where one of the persons is a minor (usually in a crime with a parent or uncle molesting a child).  The latter case is also covered under normal child molestation statutes.  It seems that an Ohio Supreme Court opinion adopts a less common rationale:

Ohio families suffer when a stepfather has sex with his adult stepdaughter, even if she gives consent, the state Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

In a 6-1 decision, justices said the state’s antiincest law applies even when there is no blood relationship and both parties are consenting adults.

But the case could be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court based on a ruling four years ago that overturned a Texas ban on gay sex between consenting adults.

The Ohio court rejected arguments from Paul D. Lowe, a 44-year-old former Stark County deputy sheriff, that Ohio’s anti-incest law was intended to apply only in cases involving children.

Lowe was convicted in 2004 of sexual battery for having consensual sex with his then-22-year-old stepdaughter. He was sentenced to 120 days in jail, three years of community control, 250 hours of community service and was designated a sexual offender.

Lowe appealed, saying the state has no right to bar sexual relationships between consenting adults who are not related.

While the case is high on the "ick" factor, it is interesting that the court chose to adopt a damage to the family unit rationale for upholding the law in this case.  Then again, the standard of deferring to the legislature makes it pretty hard for the court to reverse in this case.  You can read the whole opinion here.

HT: How Appealing

Comments

[Steve]

Yep: There isn't much science behind the genetics claims and the claim about harming minors only affects minors -- so we're left with the moral argument that Scalia so adamantly defended in his dissent in the Texas case.

Uhm... one quick question.

"There isn't much science behind the genetics claims... ."

On what do you base that assertion? It's basic genetics that offspring of parents with your garden-variety "on or off" recessive gene have a 25% change of manifesting the trait controlled by that gene. While genetic disorders are often dependent on more than just a single gene, the science is more than established that closely-related parents - because they're more likely to share the same recessives - are more likely to produce offspring affected by that recessive pairing.

While the genetics argument would not apply in cases of incest among non-blood relatives (as in the Ohio case described here), it is just flat-out wrong to assert that there's no science to back up the assertion that genetic disorders may propagate more frequently in the population as one result of closely-related pairings. Whether or not you consider that sufficient justification to prohibit those pairings is another issue, entirely.