Posted on 03/23/2007 5:32:56 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Edited on 03/23/2007 5:59:48 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
The BBC recently ran a story about a German couple named Patrick and Susan. The couple has been living together unmarried for the past six years and has four children. In a continent full of unmarried couples with children, this particular pair stands out--because they are brother and sister.
As a young child, Patrick was given up for adoption. He finally met his mother and the rest of his biological family, including Susan, seven years ago. After their mother died, the two became, in the BBC's words, "lovers."
When German authorities learned about the "relationship," they placed three of their children--two of whom have disabilities--in foster care and charged Patrick with incest. Patrick has already served two years and faces more jail time.
While this story is certainly sordid, unfortunately, it's not unique. What makes it noteworthy is that the couple is challenging German laws against incest in Germany's Federal Constitutional Court.
As the couple's lawyer, Endrik Wilhelm, told the BBC, "this law is out of date, and it breaches the couple's civil rights." According to the lawyer, the "couple [is] not harming anyone," and the ban "is discrimination."
To those like Juergen Kunze, a geneticist at Berlin's Charite Hospital, who cite the genetic risks to the offspring of incest, Wilhelm replies: "Why are disabled parents" or "people with hereditary diseases [and] women over 40" allowed to have children?
Anyone who claims to be surprised by this case has not been paying attention to American law. In Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court found that "consenting" adults had a right to privacy when it comes to sexual relations--any kind of sexual relations. As Justice Scalia pointed out in his stinging dissent, the logic employed by the majority of the court could be applied to laws against "bigamy, same-sex marriage [and] adult incest."
If you deny that there's a "substantial government interest in protecting order and morality," as courts increasingly are doing, where do you draw the line? Certainly not at same-sex "marriage," as we have seen. The fact is that, as Dr. Kunze puts it, laws like these "based on long traditions in Western societies" have not been stopping courts lately.
The ugly truth is that, absent a "substantial government interest in protecting order and morality," the incestuous couple has the better argument. In a culture where personal autonomy trumps long-established moral traditions, our revulsion does look like the kind of prejudice that Lawrence rejected as the basis for laws.
Like I said, none of this should come as a surprise. Instead, it ought to serve as a warning of where the law is headed. Let's pray that this time we don't need a rampaging T-Rex to confirm our worst fears.
Today's BreakPoint offer: "Marriage in America: BreakPoint Goes to the Heart of the Marriage Debate" (CD).
For further reading and information:
Roberto Rivera, "The Ballad of Patrick and Susan," The Point, 8 March 2007.
Tristana Moore, "Couple Stand by Forbidden Love," BBC News, 7 March 2007.
BreakPoint Commentary No. 050817, "Taking the Plunge: A Case of Incest."
BreakPoint Commentary No. 060106, "Further Down the Slope: Massachusetts Senate Bill 938."
Robert George, "Rick Santorum is Right," National Review Online, 27 May 2003.
Chuck Colson is the Chairman and Founder of BreakPoint and of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
OMG.....I am LMAO....
Well, there are a lot of people who should not have kids nor should they be allowed to adopt. Just been reading about the couple who overdosed their young daughter after chronic ingestion of clonidine.
It is hard to say if these people were simply idiots involved with a potent drug or if they were criminal in their deeds. Also sounds like they were a bit lazy and it was easier to medicate the child rather than work out the problems.
That'll cure it.
But nowadays parents and school administrators are too lazy and/or inept to tackle the root cause of the so-called AD/HD crisis.
LOL!!
Unless you try to home-school your kid in Germany. Then the police take the kid away from Mom & Dad and lock her up in the psych ward. I guess if you home-school your children, you're a menace to society because you might tell the kids that Bro marrying Sis is an evil thing. Can't have such judgementalism now, can we.
Well said. Keep saying it.
Walk down any urban street in America and ask the kids who their father is -- ask them if they know who their brothers or sisters are. The next generation has absolutely no idea in many cases if the partner in bed with them is a close relation.
I have no doubt that my son would be similarly labeled and medicated if we hadn't homeschooled and had him on the swim team. After seeing the difference in him when he's getting worn out every day at practice and what he was like a couple weeks after the season was over, I'm convinced that the vast majority of what's labeled hyperactivity is just the normal energy levels of kids that need to be released in physical activity. Yeah, it takes time and committment, but it's well worth the effort.
It IS a sickness -- namely, Munchausen-by-proxy Syndrome.
At the time, the elites had a good laugh at the idea that the state could have a compelling interest in what people do in their bedrooms. I would direct them to this column.
Taken to the nth degree, this is what happens. Civil rights is used as an arguement to advance every conceivable perversion known to man. Community standards once the bedrock of our moral underpinnings have been continuously diluted in order to advocate the incidious concept of group identity. Individuals who are 'victimized' in society because they belong to a particular group or segment of society. Individualism is long past. The legal system is tied up in knots as a result of this. The concept of rights have been so grossly misused to the extent that one can argue in a court of law that his rights are violated if he can't rape a child or have sex with his dog, etc. Liberty is freedom from tyranny not the right to do what you want. Otherwise if everyone had a right to do what they want, no social order can exist
We are all born with god given rights. But a society that denies the most important one, the right to be born, all other 'civil rights' are compromised. Secular progressives have gone out of their way to deny this most basic of rights by doing what they do best; dehumanize the child and render it a mass of cells or worse categorize them as 'not a human being'. The same logic can be applied to the diluton of the family.
The moral foundation of all societies is the family. From the family we extend our moral standards to the community which in turn extends to the nation and our civilization. order is maintained as a result. Destroy the bedrock and you have disorder. Disorder requires intervention from the state to re-establish order. Order requires the tyranny of the state to enforce it. Liberty cannot exist as a result. Freedom comes at a price. Defend it with your life if you must. Or one day we will wake up and the constitution of the US of A will be nothing but ink on paper. Secular progressives in their never ending quest to define every human exercise as a'human right' will lead us to this path.
The Federal government has no right to regulate this manner. However, the States should ban incest, or at least making sure that the couple do not reproduce because their children are likely to cause burden in greater society which we have to pay for their health care and public education.
Bingo! Bravo!
Well, there are a few technical biological problems to be solved before this becomes a real issue.
< }B^)
Okay, I think I need to barf.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.