A government ethics committee in Germany has last week argued that laws banning incest between brothers and sisters, who were consenting adults, were an unacceptable intrusion into the right to sexual self-determination.
This intervention came after a much-publicised case, that involved several court hearings. A brother and sister living as sexual partners in Saxony have four children together. They were brought up separately and met when he was young adult and she 16. He was found guilty of incest and served a three-year prison sentence. The couple have tried unsuccessfully to get the case overturned by the European Court of Human Rights.
In July of this year, an Australian judge, Garry Neilson, suggested that the community may now accept consensual sex between consenting adult sibling couples. He opined that views against incest may have changed since the 1950s in a manner similar to those relating to homosexuality.
Why not?