On Homosexuality...?

Question

In today's modern world, homosexuality has been accepted by many. Many homosexuals argue that they are "born" with the inclination, and there is nothing that they can do to help it. They also argue that modern studies reveal that this is not, in any wise, a sickness, and that they cannot help it.
My question, though, is why this same logic or idea cannot be used for the justification of marriage between two grown members of the same family. For example, suppose a boy grew up loving (lusting after) his mother. His mother has never molested him or shown any hint of anything more than motherly love. Once he grows up, he voluntarily proposes to his mother, and they marry. What would be wrong with that in the eye of society, then? It was voluntary consent between two parties, and there is no evidence to suggest that the young boy was manipulated, and they've done it because they wanted to. Plus, the son was "born" with the inclination, and that inclination led him to like his mother.

We all know that there is something wrong with that, but what? It was voluntary, and the child was born with the inclination to like people of the opposite sex. They both agreed, so no harm was done to society, nor was any done to the psyche of the boy before it happened. Furthermore, say they never had any children.

Your thoughts, please.

Palomnik - I said "What if they don't have children?" What, then?

Run James Run: The Bible depicts Lot as a selfish and not wholly righteous man. Though the Bible tells about Lot's incest, nowhere does he condone it at all.
If you haven't read the whole story carefully, I suggest you keep your mouth shut.

Answer 1

I have read some good answers, here.

Sociological point of view: I just want to note that incest is among the few cultural universals that sociology traditionally quotes (you can check it in "Sociology", by Anthony Giddens, for example), whereas homosexuality is not.

Biological point of view: the sexual reproduction has a main advantage in nature respect to the asexual reproduction: the diversity of the gens which mix to give birth to a newborn specimen. If these gens are from people who are very closed related in terms of blood, then, this advantage is over, so, there is a tendency to a natural rejection of this kind of breeding.
On the other hand, paradoxically, it is also true that people with similar features or interests also are more likely to engange with each other.

Historically and culturally, every human society has tended to institutionalise this natural tendency (which does not mean that there can be exceptions in Nature) by means of written rules or specific prohibitions as well as a shared rejection of these practices, which is something seen as antinatural.

If we think from an intrinsically liberal point of view, however, where people's freedom to choose is the most valuable aspect of human nature, we find a contradiction between this aspect of sexuality and the freedom of choice. However, the liberal argument has always been a more economical and political argument than a theory about human nature and its intrinsic sexuality. On the contrary, for liberalism sexuality and family matters have traditionally remained in the private sphere, whereas the relatively clearly cut public sphere was dominated by liberalism. Due to this artificial barrier, which ignores so many crucial aspects of human beings, liberalism is unable to overcome its own contradictions when it comes to interpret a big array of modern dylemmas such as this one that you have, very interestingly, suggested.

Finally, my opinion is that there is an increasing tendency nowadays to be more tolerant with minoritarian practices of any kind, which could let us believe that these changes could affect as well the social perception of incest, in the future. However, this trend tends, usually, to a bigger scope of differences relating to each other, coming together, coparticipating or cooperating, conviviality... atune to the globalization process. This tendency makes incest, no more easy but more difficult, as communication makes easier to travel, meet different people and engange in more difficult atypical relationships than in the past, whereas incest can be more related to small isolated communities. Thus, incest is more a matter of the past than a challenge for the future definition of sexuality in more open terms.

Sincerely,
Audrey

Answer 2

The Bible would not call homosexuality an abomination, it calls having sex with male temple prostitutes (a custom of the religions of alternative gods) an abomination. The sin is having different gods earlier Yahweh. Nowhere does both testomony condemn the state of being gay. yet i appreciate the Christian copout that that's no longer Leviticus they are following, yet passages from the recent testomony. The NT prohibitions are grounded in Leviticus, so that are condemning homosexuality depending on a false impression of Leviticus, then ignoring the different more advantageous than 600 commandments that they don't like. Bur, on the grounds that Christianity in the present day might want to be Salad Bar Christianity (even Catholicism - merely seem on the recent "sins" that the Pope invented), what else can all of us assume. The Bible isn't a e book to stay by technique of, that is a e book used to justify doing what human beings want to do.

Answer 3

Fascinating question, and based only on the words you wrote, I'm not going to say you're equating homosexuality with incest. The question must indeed be valid if we are to maintain any surety that one thing is right and the other wrong.

Perhaps the most logical way of finding some answer is to modify the question. What if the son grew up and proposed to the father, and was accepted. As in your example, there would be nothing inherently wrong with the relationship, other than the fact that they were extremely close in blood. So it's not the nature of the relationship that is deemed as wrong but the sexualising of 'generally' asexual relationships.

Homosexuality appears to have been around almost as long as heterosexuality. As a practice, it probably originally had some stigma of 'damaging the tribe' by ensuring that two males (or indeed two females) were unavailable for breeding and the production of a next generation. Incest has probably also been around since the early days of humanity, and its avoidance was probably based on a similar instinct, because even animals, given a choice, mate with members of other genetic lines as a first instinct, so as to ensure a strong next generation. In humans this would have been particularly evident as the genetic problems surfaced in 2nd and 3rd generation incestuous families.

As our tribes got larger till they covered the Earth, the removal of individuals from the breeding chain to pursue their natural homosexual natures has stopped mattering in the same way, because there are plenty of 'breeders' left within the worldwide 'tribe.' The genetic disadvantages of incestuous relatioships though remain as real today as they did in our ancestors days. So even if your example incestuous couple did not have children, the potential for this 'weakening' of the tribe appears still to be coded into our individual and societal responses towards such couples - as another answerer rightly said, maternal instincts generally (though not always) preclude sexual attraction to the offspring, and the same reaction is witnessed in society at large as the 'tribe parent'. So while it really only affects individual families if some of their members are gay, it still appears to adversely affect the whole societal family when members of a blood-related family incestuously mate.

That, I'm afraid, is about as close as I can come to any logical answer. Hope it helps.

Answer 4

Incest definitely occurs in nature. There is nothing "unatural" about a male dog mounting his own female pup once she's grown, and the puppies are usually healthy. As a matter of fact, breeders will tell you that you breed back into a champion line...you can do this for at least three generations.
The beef you ate for supper tonight was quite likely "inbred" for the same reason.
So, this is a legitimate question. If homosexuality is allowable because it is "natural"...why not other sexual "deviations"?? Why can't I marry my cousin, or even my brother? Why can't I marry my dog, if I want to? Whose business is it, who (or what) I want to have as my life-partner, and why shouldn't we have the same protections and the same rights as any other married couple? Why shouldn't we be allowed to adopt and raise children? After all, my dog would make a GREAT Dad!!

Answer 5

Probably because if a mother and her son get married it would be incestuous. It would lead to inbreeding and create many issues regarding bring children into this world because the way the genes run in families it would be more prone to a genetic disease than a child from a non-family based relationship.

There are many reasons why a mother & son, father & daughter, brother & sister or any other family pairing you can think of other than Mother & Father are wrong and its not just based on societies view.

Answer 6

By bad karma a person is born in the wrong body. A spirit soul that is meant to be a female takes birth in a male body therefore there is nothing that can be done to change this. However lusting over your mother although there many women to choose from is greatly sinful. Homosexuals feel naturally attracted to members of the same sex, there is no other option.

Answer 7

If Adam & Eve started all the "begatting" in the Old Testament, then by all logic society was founded by inbred, incestual relationships. Your scenario would not be wrong because the bible supports incest from the get-go.

Answer 8

The analogy is wrong. The relationship which exists between same-sex couple and a mother/father and her/his son/daughter is completely different. No matter how inclined the child is, the parents should talk him into trying not to have any sexual feelings for them and help him develop a healthy sexual life...

Answer 9

There appears to be a homophobic sub-text to your question.
Procreation between close relatives is genetically problematic and quite different to same sex relationships where procreation is not possible.

In a rapidly overpopulating planet we should be encouraging homosexuality, not condemning it. And we should be discouraging bigotry. By the way, I'm heterosexual, married with three children. But some of the most generous, funny, intelligent and humane of my friends are gay.

Answer 10

First of all - your comparison is pfawed a mother and child are related by blood. That is the issue not the male/female thing or mother/son thing - it is physiological.

Love between to people of the same sex not related by blood is more accurately compared to love between two people of opposite sex not relaated by blood. It just happens. People who prefer same sex relationships have been forced to justify their preference because they are tormented by others, up to and including murder. So they are asked WHY and the only answer a lot of heterosexual people can tolerate is that it is a mental illness, innate or immoral. (It is none of these.) It is simply two people who find love with each other who are of the sam sex/gender.

WE are, by nature, a homophobic society. For some reason people feel threatened by this kind of love. It really is a person preference, as is love of someone from the opposie sex.

Oh, the debate goes on and to me it boils down to intolerance that jusifies oppression, violence and hate. I find it incredibly sad.

SIGH