Well, it had to happen sooner or later. According to Professor Valerian Ciocel, one of the legal experts taking part in Romanian legal reforms, new Criminal Code of that EU member country is going to decriminalise incest. Instead of being jailed, "consenting adults" caught in incest will be given psychiatric treatment without criminal records.
This story appears to be rather old, but it was picked by mainstream Croatian media only yesterday, most probably due to extra publicity created by Fritzl verdict. In any case, the timing for the revelation of this new initiative is worst possible. I can already imagine headlines like "Romanians Would Legalise Fritzl".
Most comments in Croatia, so far, has descended into usual ethnic stereotyping of an Eastern, Orthodox and therefore "barbaric and un-European nation". Many claim that the Romania was forced to do it due to widespread incest among members of their Roma community.
Most people who would try to comment on this without ethnic stereotyping are going to be social conservatives. For them, this initiative is going to be long-sought Holy Graal - convincing argument about liberal legislation paving the way for all kinds currently unacceptable sexual behaviours.
Just as homosexuality was first decriminalised, then legalised and tolerated by being viewed as a relationship between consenting adults, so would incest. The argument about "slippery slope" now looks more convincing.
On the other hand, one of the most important and convincing arguments for the preservation of incest as social taboo - likelihood of genetically deformed offspring of incestous pairs - was weakened by contraxeption, the very same technological advances that made sexual revolution possible.
Romania (and the rest of the "enlightened and progressive" Western world) took that road, but I still don't see legalisation and social acceptance of incestous pairs any time soon. The economic crisis - if it is as bad as many predict - would turn most people more conservative for at least decade or two. It would probably take three or four decades before constitutional amendments for sibling marriages in California.
FWIW, the Finnish Law does not contain the word "incest", but there's still a paragraph on "sexual relations between close relatives". Even a consentual sex between parents and children, as well as between siblings, is still a criminal act, punishable by a fine or, at most, by two years' prison sentence.
Interestingly enough, according to the literary reading of the same law, sex between _half_-siblings is perfectly legal. However, the marriage legislation disqualifies any formal union even between half-siblings - but on the other hand, in this country, cohabitation is perfectly acceptable, even a norm.
When it comes to "any time soon", I'd say that apart from some random parts of the world, social acceptance of sexual relations between close family members is simply never going to happen, even if the World suddenly experienced an ultra-liberalist revolution. Such consentual relations may become decriminalized, in the sense of dropping the above-mentioned paragraph from the lawbooks. Even today, the only cases to actually reach trial are those that involve rape, coercion or pedophilia, so one may question why the law should retain a paragraph restricting the sexual behavior of consentual adults, no matter how deviant or abnormal it may be. Especially since such adults are never going to be caught in the act, or confess on their own accord; why uphold a law that cannot be plausibly enforced?
But the idea of even a willing incestuous relationships gaining some kind of a social acceptance? To the extent that such unions would be included in marriage legislation? No. Personally, I don't view this as some kind of a cultural issue; it's a psychobiological issue. I recognize the Westermarck effect as a fact of life, and I'm pretty sure that so does the majority of the rest of the World. It's a human thing.
Of course, that's another reason why upholding the kind of laws described above can be considered pointless. Abnormal behavior doesn't necessarily have to be punished as a criminal act, if it doesn't directly hurt anyone else.
On a completely unrelated note - I'm glad to read your text once again.
Cheers,
J. J.
Posted by: Jussi Jalonen | Thursday, March 26, 2009 at 22:47