The article
I read was written by Daniel Sokol, and it’s about a case of incest that
happened in Germany, and how the German court handled it.
It begins
talking about an imaginary case about a couple of siblings that decided to have
sexual intercourse. It was sort of an introduction to the real case, which was
about a couple of siblings too, but they didn’t grow up together. The brother
was given to a foster family when he was three years old, and 20 years later he
met his sister, who was 7 years younger than him. They felt in love and started a
relationship that had as a result 4 children, three of them were given up to
foster families, and just the youngest daughter lives with her mother.
The article
presents the arguments from both parts: the applicant’s and the government’s
case. The applicant argued that Patrick, the brother, and his sister didn’t grow
up together or met before, so they didn’t have a brother-sister relationship.
He also argued that this case is different than the cases related to the
Electra and Oedipus complex, because there wasn’t overlapping family roles,
like mother-son or father-daughter. The government argued that the incest is
banned because is the German government’s role to protect the family structure
as a base of the society.
Even
though, the Court agreed with the accusation that the government was violating
Patrick’s privacy, the rule which regulates this topic specifies that is just
for relationships between adults, and in
German you are an adult when you are 18. Patrick’s sister was 16 when the
relationship started.
At the end of the judgement, Patrick was convicted of incest, and the Court didn't violate Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights, about the privacy.
The article’s
author explains that, for him, the regulation about incest in Germany has
loopholes. He placed as examples other European regulations, such as UK, where
the incest between adult siblings is prohibited, and Portugal and Serbia, where
the incest has been decriminalized.
He ends the
article asking the readers some questions the incest topic can open, related to
ethics and moral psychology.
This is the link to the article, on the online edition on The Guardian newspaper.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/apr/16/incest-legality-ethics
Wow tricky subject! I've never really understood why they ban something so private like a relationship between siblings. I mean, I get why they did if before, because population was low and the risk of genetic disorders in their offspring was (and still is) high, but now, with the medical technology we have and all the changes that have happened in the family concept we used to have, it seems pointless to keep the criminalization. Go Portugal!
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