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The single biggest issue with incest is power dynamics. Parent and child, older sibling and younger sibling, aunt/uncle and niece/nephew, they all come with that issue and it means that all of those relationships are to some degree coercive, even if you grant that all involved are adults.
If that isn't the case, though, for instance a pair of siblings separated from birth who only met after both being well-established adults, then no, there's no reason to call their relationship immoral.
That said, if we're supposed to be taking a moral stance against incest from the bible, perhaps Prager would like to answer a simple question:
After Adam and Eve created the second generation of humans, who did those children breed with?
Apparently there was a city of people... "Over there" God made. Or something. Someone told me that once to explain away inbreeding and incest but no one was ever really specific as to why they were there or why God just made a bunch more people after booting Adam and Eve.
The weirdest excuses I’ve heard posit that Adam and Eve had perfect DNA, leading any initial incest to be a non issue, but after the fall DNA couldn’t be perfect anymore so it started to degrade over time. It’s been YEARS since I’ve heard or even thought about it, though, so I couldn’t begin tell you how all the details work out.
I was told that red and blue make purple so having two purples mix doesn't count, because they are different from the red and the blue.
It made exactly that much sense when it was explained to me.
"And Cain went out from *the presence of the Lord*...... to the land of Nod." (my emphasis.)
I think in 1Genesis it also says something like after God rested he said "let us make man in our image.......let them have rule over .......". The pluralism and use of "man" is allegedly different to that in reference to the Garden. So there were other people.
Adam and Eve's 'history' is more so about Christ's bloodline which is why they're spoken about.
And then the flood happened and Noah's sons and their wives had to repopulate the earth, presumably WITHOUT a city of people who either didn't drown or were actually merfolk. I don't remember the Bible trying to explain that one away, though I imagine people doing the old, "if they're cousins it's starts not counting" thing. >.>
I really often feel like a weirdo, because I'm not icked by incest as, like, almost everyone else. Like, it's not my thing at all, not into your shenanigans, Oedipus, but if both are adults and properly consenting, it's really not my business, you do you (and your sister)
I mean, you could argue that it provides unhealthy offspring (but like it needs a few generations of that to have really noticeable impact, afaik), but like people are just as icked about it when protection is used, or when people in question can't have a child regardless
Mhm. Even people who are otherwise extremely rational and intelligent about this stuff are just... Grossed out by it. I understand why parent-child would have an unhealthy power dynamic, that makes sense to me. But I can't see, if siblings want to do that, why it's any of my business.
The power dynamic is exactly the issue, but conservatives very adamantly don't want to acknowledge this as a valid issue. The default conservative relationship style is one heavily built on unjust and nonconsensual power dynamics.
Back to the weird implication that if he didn’t believe in a god then he would totally fuck his sister. Like, dude, some of us don’t need your weird sky daddy to not be total fucking gross weirdos.
I get so disturbed by the genuine belief some of them seem to have that if there was no bible they'd be raping and murdering all over the place.
And these weidos want me to believe they're morally superior?
Seriously. This is such a self tell. Anyone who makes arguments like "without God, what would stop us from murdering whoever we want?" scares me. I give them a wide fucking birth.
I haven't believed in God since age 7, and yet haven't killed a single person. It's almost like I'm a decent human for the sake of being a decent human...not to get a gold star from sky daddy when I die.
When they say this I'm like so you're all sociopaths without God and religion??
I've tried explaining to religious family that were wired for empathy which is mostly all you need to act right no sky daddy required
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah literally ends with Lot’s two adult daughters getting him drunk and raping him. You want me to think that the Abrahamic religions are against incest?
I mean, to be fair, it’s clearly not presented as a *good* thing in that story. In fact, some scholars think it’s in there as a way of demonizing the peoples who were believed to be descendants of Lot. But then the Abrahamic lineage goes on to involve lots of cousins and incest anyway, so you still have a point. Prager would likely counter by saying “that was before God told them it was bad”, but that seems to just open a whole other can of worms.
There's no Christian argument against incest.
Have no Christians ever actually *read* the Bible? Lot and his daughters are God's chosen to survive the destruction of Sodom, and both his daughters rape him to get pregnant. Abraham married his half-sister.
As a trans woman, I am very confused by the fact that my North American peers have been successfully persecuted by somebody who seems mentally challenged.
It only takes ONE generation of inbreeding to have kids with developmental disabilities, and humans naturally avoid incestuous relationships. It's called the Westermarck effect. Non-human primates also are predisposed to avoid mating with first-degree relatives and they don't need a bible to tell them that.
Hell, Isle Royale in Michigan is a long running observational experiment of wolf hunting patterns in the absence of bears. It almost came to end when the wolf population declined to a male wolf and his female offspring. They did not mate.
Eventually the scientists doing the observations made the call to introduce new wolves because global warming has made it unlikely the lake will freeze well enough, long enough, for new wolves to make it to the island.
If there's not a history of things like a founder effect, the probability of deleterious effects from a single generation isn't that much higher than unrelated people, but the effects compound very quickly and seeking out unrelated potential mates seems to be a behavior that goes pretty far back in the tree of life.
The _really_ egregious effects of a limited gene pool usually result from not being able to produce offspring with anyone less related to you than, say, a second cousin for multiple generations. The Habsburgs practiced uncle/niece marriages for many generations before they started producing a bunch of Charles II of Spain type scions.
it's funny Prager's admitting that only his belief in his particularly cruel interpretation of the Christian God is what's stopping him from wanting to boink his siblings
he idea we believe it is wrong because it is in the Bible is a tautology from them.
By the same logic we could argue it is in the Bible because it is wrong.
There is...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest_in_the_Bible
Not that it is entirely clear, given 'obvious' incest that appears ommitted though is implied, or missed in transcription, or assumed to be beyond need for mention. .
I guess two things:
1) You could make an argument that incestual relationships may frequently be inherently coercive.
2) Assuming we're talking about two adults with no coercive elements and no risk of pregnancy... *should* I care if a brother and sister have sex? It neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket.
Many many people have misconceptions about incestual relationships. Brother/Sister, Father/Mother, Aunt/Uncle are bad, besides genetically speaking as many others have mentioned the power dynamic are a major problem.
Many people then extrapolate on stereotypes and commonly held beliefs and apply that to literally ANY incestuous relationship. The range of problematic issues drop off exponentially as you get further out on the family tree. For example, first cousins have a 94% chance of having a perfectly healthy child as opposed to the non-related couples 98% chance. First cousins generally speaking are less likely to have power dynamics at play that would make the relationship inappropriate as well.
The notion of incestual breeding causing mental disabilities, is a factor at play with extremely close familial pairing. Once you've gotten to and beyond first cousins, the issues are statistically negligible.
Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein both of whom are historical geniuses married their first cousins and no one ever questions their intelligence for doing so.
Hear me out, I think incest is ok, but only in a very specific set of circumstances. If it is A. An equal power dynamic and B. Either not having any sex that can produce offspring or if it is physically incapable of producing offspring (I.E. same sex, post-menopausal, other reasons of being infertile). I think it's weird as hell, but I guess as long as it's not an abuse of a power dynamic and isn't putting future generations at risk, I'm not one to judge
He's not _wrong_ about the consanguinity of a single generation of sibling incest being only slightly more likely to produce deleterious genetic conditions than any two random people, but … that's also pretty far down the list of reasons why incest is considered a universal taboo. I mean, it's _still_ not a good idea even if it takes a few generations to produce Charles II of Spain.
Thank you for your submission to /r/AreTheStraightsOK! This is a reminder to take a moment and see *if* this **has already been** posted recently, to make sure that personal information **has been** censored, and to **flair your post** if you have not already done so. [Please be aware that our rules on transphobic submissions have changed](https://www.reddit.com/r/AreTheStraightsOK/comments/mwkgbp/rules_and_submissions_update_for_the_end_of/). Other general submission guidelines regarding [hateful content](https://www.reddit.com/r/AreTheStraightsOK/comments/kj0cal/regarding_hateful_content_please_read_before/), [reposts](https://www.reddit.com/r/AreTheStraightsOK/comments/kxgbo3/rules_and_submissions_update_january_2021_popular/), [homophobic posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/AreTheStraightsOK/comments/lffvad/posts_related_to_homophobia_on_our_subreddit_now/), and [**Reminder About Rule 5 and Rule 8**](https://www.reddit.com/r/AreTheStraightsOK/comments/qoge4u/reminder_about_rule_5_and_rule_8/) can be found here if you want to read any of those links. If you want to apply to be a moderator of this sub, you can read [this post titled **State of the Sub: Summer 2021 Edition, Partnerships, and more**](https://www.reddit.com/r/AreTheStraightsOK/comments/oozly0/state_of_the_sub_summer_2021_edition_partnerships/), which also contains information about our partnership with r/TranscribersOfReddit. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AreTheStraightsOK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
“If you don’t let us marginalize queer people then you will have incest.” That may be the saddest defense of a religion I have ever read.
The single biggest issue with incest is power dynamics. Parent and child, older sibling and younger sibling, aunt/uncle and niece/nephew, they all come with that issue and it means that all of those relationships are to some degree coercive, even if you grant that all involved are adults. If that isn't the case, though, for instance a pair of siblings separated from birth who only met after both being well-established adults, then no, there's no reason to call their relationship immoral. That said, if we're supposed to be taking a moral stance against incest from the bible, perhaps Prager would like to answer a simple question: After Adam and Eve created the second generation of humans, who did those children breed with?
Apparently there was a city of people... "Over there" God made. Or something. Someone told me that once to explain away inbreeding and incest but no one was ever really specific as to why they were there or why God just made a bunch more people after booting Adam and Eve.
It also defeats the ‘Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve’ argument. If there aren’t only two humans, nobody cares if they’re gay.
There may not have been Adam and Steve, but there could've been Henry and Greg. Lol
very true, nibblenephim
I think my favorite twist on "Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve" was my bi friend ending it with: "so that's why I had a threesome."
The weirdest excuses I’ve heard posit that Adam and Eve had perfect DNA, leading any initial incest to be a non issue, but after the fall DNA couldn’t be perfect anymore so it started to degrade over time. It’s been YEARS since I’ve heard or even thought about it, though, so I couldn’t begin tell you how all the details work out.
I was told that red and blue make purple so having two purples mix doesn't count, because they are different from the red and the blue. It made exactly that much sense when it was explained to me.
That very much sounds like something a toddler would be patiently explaining to me while finger painting.
"And Cain went out from *the presence of the Lord*...... to the land of Nod." (my emphasis.) I think in 1Genesis it also says something like after God rested he said "let us make man in our image.......let them have rule over .......". The pluralism and use of "man" is allegedly different to that in reference to the Garden. So there were other people. Adam and Eve's 'history' is more so about Christ's bloodline which is why they're spoken about.
Yeah, Cain got banished to the land of Nod, which happened to have people completely unrelated to Adam and Eve and where Cain found a wife.
And then the flood happened and Noah's sons and their wives had to repopulate the earth, presumably WITHOUT a city of people who either didn't drown or were actually merfolk. I don't remember the Bible trying to explain that one away, though I imagine people doing the old, "if they're cousins it's starts not counting" thing. >.>
Same with after The Big Ass Flood. Just… more incest!
Zeus: Amateurs
Eve had 3 sons :)
look bud it wasn't Adam and Steve, it was Cain, Abel, and Manuel (?)
Seth*
I really often feel like a weirdo, because I'm not icked by incest as, like, almost everyone else. Like, it's not my thing at all, not into your shenanigans, Oedipus, but if both are adults and properly consenting, it's really not my business, you do you (and your sister)
Same, like, are we taking crazy pills or is there nothing inherently more wrong with that than childhood friends?
I mean, you could argue that it provides unhealthy offspring (but like it needs a few generations of that to have really noticeable impact, afaik), but like people are just as icked about it when protection is used, or when people in question can't have a child regardless
Mhm. Even people who are otherwise extremely rational and intelligent about this stuff are just... Grossed out by it. I understand why parent-child would have an unhealthy power dynamic, that makes sense to me. But I can't see, if siblings want to do that, why it's any of my business.
The power dynamic is exactly the issue, but conservatives very adamantly don't want to acknowledge this as a valid issue. The default conservative relationship style is one heavily built on unjust and nonconsensual power dynamics.
I would also say a big issue with incest is that leaves the victim with deep mental/emotional trauma, personally
Nobody tell PragerU that it doesn't just take generations to fuck up a kid physically and mentally.
Back to the weird implication that if he didn’t believe in a god then he would totally fuck his sister. Like, dude, some of us don’t need your weird sky daddy to not be total fucking gross weirdos.
I get so disturbed by the genuine belief some of them seem to have that if there was no bible they'd be raping and murdering all over the place. And these weidos want me to believe they're morally superior?
Seriously. This is such a self tell. Anyone who makes arguments like "without God, what would stop us from murdering whoever we want?" scares me. I give them a wide fucking birth. I haven't believed in God since age 7, and yet haven't killed a single person. It's almost like I'm a decent human for the sake of being a decent human...not to get a gold star from sky daddy when I die.
When they say this I'm like so you're all sociopaths without God and religion?? I've tried explaining to religious family that were wired for empathy which is mostly all you need to act right no sky daddy required
And consider all the folks who do profess to believe and *are* abusing their children and siblings.
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah literally ends with Lot’s two adult daughters getting him drunk and raping him. You want me to think that the Abrahamic religions are against incest?
I mean, to be fair, it’s clearly not presented as a *good* thing in that story. In fact, some scholars think it’s in there as a way of demonizing the peoples who were believed to be descendants of Lot. But then the Abrahamic lineage goes on to involve lots of cousins and incest anyway, so you still have a point. Prager would likely counter by saying “that was before God told them it was bad”, but that seems to just open a whole other can of worms.
I do sometimes wonder if that had really happened, what would the story Lot's daughters tell be? I bet they would have preferred the bear.
There's no Christian argument against incest. Have no Christians ever actually *read* the Bible? Lot and his daughters are God's chosen to survive the destruction of Sodom, and both his daughters rape him to get pregnant. Abraham married his half-sister.
I doubt any Christians read the Bible really…
As a trans woman, I am very confused by the fact that my North American peers have been successfully persecuted by somebody who seems mentally challenged.
It only takes ONE generation of inbreeding to have kids with developmental disabilities, and humans naturally avoid incestuous relationships. It's called the Westermarck effect. Non-human primates also are predisposed to avoid mating with first-degree relatives and they don't need a bible to tell them that.
Hell, Isle Royale in Michigan is a long running observational experiment of wolf hunting patterns in the absence of bears. It almost came to end when the wolf population declined to a male wolf and his female offspring. They did not mate. Eventually the scientists doing the observations made the call to introduce new wolves because global warming has made it unlikely the lake will freeze well enough, long enough, for new wolves to make it to the island.
If there's not a history of things like a founder effect, the probability of deleterious effects from a single generation isn't that much higher than unrelated people, but the effects compound very quickly and seeking out unrelated potential mates seems to be a behavior that goes pretty far back in the tree of life. The _really_ egregious effects of a limited gene pool usually result from not being able to produce offspring with anyone less related to you than, say, a second cousin for multiple generations. The Habsburgs practiced uncle/niece marriages for many generations before they started producing a bunch of Charles II of Spain type scions.
it's funny Prager's admitting that only his belief in his particularly cruel interpretation of the Christian God is what's stopping him from wanting to boink his siblings
It’s wild to me how conservatives say out loud, “the only reason I don’t do this is because of my imaginary friend”
I was honestly expecting he would say "It takes many generations of inbreeding. I should know."
he idea we believe it is wrong because it is in the Bible is a tautology from them. By the same logic we could argue it is in the Bible because it is wrong.
can someone get grandpa dennis his meds
"Hi. I'm Penis Prager, and this is the Fart Side Shat." *fart noises*
He has first-hand experience.
Whats the religious argument against incest? They believe there was a time in history where only siblings existed
There is no Christian argument against incest
There is... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest_in_the_Bible Not that it is entirely clear, given 'obvious' incest that appears ommitted though is implied, or missed in transcription, or assumed to be beyond need for mention. .
Jaime Lannister did **not** age well.
If we could speed communicate this tweet to every state education department that installed PragerU shit? That would be *great*…
I guess two things: 1) You could make an argument that incestual relationships may frequently be inherently coercive. 2) Assuming we're talking about two adults with no coercive elements and no risk of pregnancy... *should* I care if a brother and sister have sex? It neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket.
It’s crazy to me how a mf can support incest and be repulsed by gay people at the same time
Dennis has switched from begging for femboy spankbank pics on bait posts to advocating for incest.
Many many people have misconceptions about incestual relationships. Brother/Sister, Father/Mother, Aunt/Uncle are bad, besides genetically speaking as many others have mentioned the power dynamic are a major problem. Many people then extrapolate on stereotypes and commonly held beliefs and apply that to literally ANY incestuous relationship. The range of problematic issues drop off exponentially as you get further out on the family tree. For example, first cousins have a 94% chance of having a perfectly healthy child as opposed to the non-related couples 98% chance. First cousins generally speaking are less likely to have power dynamics at play that would make the relationship inappropriate as well. The notion of incestual breeding causing mental disabilities, is a factor at play with extremely close familial pairing. Once you've gotten to and beyond first cousins, the issues are statistically negligible. Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein both of whom are historical geniuses married their first cousins and no one ever questions their intelligence for doing so.
Is Christianity all about incest?
It sounds like he is talking from experience
This is the “family friendly” education provider that Conservatives have championed.
Hear me out, I think incest is ok, but only in a very specific set of circumstances. If it is A. An equal power dynamic and B. Either not having any sex that can produce offspring or if it is physically incapable of producing offspring (I.E. same sex, post-menopausal, other reasons of being infertile). I think it's weird as hell, but I guess as long as it's not an abuse of a power dynamic and isn't putting future generations at risk, I'm not one to judge
He's not _wrong_ about the consanguinity of a single generation of sibling incest being only slightly more likely to produce deleterious genetic conditions than any two random people, but … that's also pretty far down the list of reasons why incest is considered a universal taboo. I mean, it's _still_ not a good idea even if it takes a few generations to produce Charles II of Spain.
So is he making argument in favour of adult incest or against it, I’m confused..?
Yes