A Reply to Miriam Cates
Defending incest once again
Recently I defended incest in The Spectator and Miriam Cates has replied in that same publication. Cates has successfully avoided my compulsory eugenics objection in her rebuttal, yet, her arguments still fail to prohibit incest per se. Indeed: Her arguments justify no more than the existing law concerning young children in households, and, still implausibly commit her to banning obesity and homosexuality. Her supposed refutation of my position can only come from redefining words to suit her purposes.
Cates writes that the issue with cousin marriage over many generations is it compounds the problem of birth defects because it raises their prevalence in the relevant population. According to her this is ‘a situation that is both tragic and increasingly costly to the taxpayer’. This fails to avoid the two objections I have already put. The situation is ‘tragic’ in regards to ‘serious deformities’ only insofar as children as a group are considered as opposed to children in particular. The particular children of incest are not disadvantaged at all though; there is no ‘tragic’ situation, because, these children would not exist were it not for such incest. Provided they live worthwhile lives then there is no moral problem at all (the fact other children could exist without the birth defects is irrelevant).
Now if stopping the cost to the NHS is sufficient grounds to ban cousin marriage, analogously, the £500m cost of HIV and the £2.47bn cost of obesity to the NHS warrants banning homosexuality and obesity too. This is unacceptable, thus, banning incest is as well. Cates has not avoided this objection. Maybe Cates will argue this argument doesn’t work because all it really supports is internalising the negative externality, not outright banning. If this is Cates’s reply then I look forward to seeing her support a gay tax some time soon, but should she do so she couldn’t argue to ban incest either, rather, she could only support a surcharge on incestuous reproduction. The disabled with inheritable diseases would also have to face this surcharge too. Cates should admit to these being the conclusions of her arguments, or, provide alternative arguments to them.
Cates mischaracterises my argument when she writes: ‘But to object to the prohibition of incest on the grounds that it prevents potential lives from existing is to condemn any action or inaction that might avert a future conception, such as the use of contraception, celibacy or even the prevention of rape.’ My objection to banning incest is not ‘it prevents potential lives from existing’, rather, it is individuals should be free to have children with whoever they want. Now if children are harmed by incest, then it might be alright to ban it, but with rare exceptions, existence with birth defects is better than nonexistence; no harm occurs, therefore, the moral presumption of freedom stands.
In the second half of her article Cates makes her best points. I’d agree that the family should be a safe place for young children and women away from predatory males. But it is not only the law against incest which protects young children from sexual abuse by their parents, rather, the age of consent does that too. And I am not opposed to an age of consent, so, I agree with Cates in opposing pretty much all she does in the second half of her article. A charitable reading should have rightly assumed I was only justifying sex with those who can consent. Obviously, Cate’s argument doesn’t get her to banning all incest: A 70 year old mother and 45 year old son can both consent to having sexual intercourse. What is the mother possibly going to do to invalidate her son’s consent; say she won’t cook him dinner. Cates clearly lacks imagination when she states ‘parent-child or sibling incest is by its very nature abusive’.
Only by changing the definition of words can Cates get to refuting my liberal case and that is no refutation at all. She should stick to the proper definition of incest, i.e., sexual intercourse between close relatives, not try to shoehorn child abuse into its very definition, reject that overinclusive conception of it, then claim victory against proponents of individual freedom.