Did Mod cause the collapse of evcforum?

Genetic issues aren't the only reason incest is banned. Technically under such a moral rule, one could get a vasectomy and then fuck his daughter all he wanted. Or just use a condom.I would suggest that the possibility of genetic deformities is not even a primary reason for banning incest. It's not guaranteed, and in fact isn't particularly likely in single generation (but of course the buildup of recessive genes is cumulative in each generation of a constrained gene pool)The primary reason incest is unethical is simply that it most often (not always) tends to constitute an abuse of the trust and love between family members. If a parent sexually abuses a child, the child will often not say "no" for fear of rejection from the parent, of causing the family to be torn apart, of losing the support of the family, and so on. The parent has all of the power, while the child has none, and incestuous relationships therefore typically constitute an abuse of that authority.Even incest between siblings takes advantage of such things - "don't tell mom, or I'll tell about the time you..."There are exceptions where there are no real ethical issues - I recall reading about one couple in Germany who were adopted by separate parents and through a bizarre coincidence managed to fall in love, get married, and have children before discovering that they were actually siblings. None of the kids have any genetic abnormalities, they don't plan on having more kids, and they'd really just like to live their lives in peace (unfortunately the anti-incest laws in Germany were being used to annul their marriage and possibly take away their children, and any further intercourse would of course be illegal as well - not a good situation for people who were in fact acting in good faith).But when you're making a law you can't allow for every conceivable and highly unlikely instance in which the law may not have the intended result. Since the vast majority by far of incestuous relationships don;t fall under any of those special circumstances, it's perfectly reasonable and even morally obligatory to make incest illegal.

Ok, but see - that feels like you think we're dumb.Yes, we understood that Dan telling you how to peel a banana was the excuse by which you banned him. Again, the reason you appeared to ban him is because he was correct in his criticism, and moderators appeared to have decided - I say "appeared" when, in fact, many of the moderators explicitly said it in that thread - that allowing too much trenchant criticism corroded the authority moderators depended on to do their jobs.After all, never in the annals of EvC had telling someone how to eat a banana risen to the level of meriting a suspension. Berberry was repeatedly accused of "oversensitivity" but nobody seems to have a comment on Modulous's oversensitivity. And what is it but oversensitivity to react so strongly to being told how to eat a banana? Or even to being called a "retarded monkey", which on the Triumph-Black Scale of Comedic Insult is about 1.21 mili-Mahers?I'm reminded of the recent activity surrounding Barry Cooper, the activist who videotapes and exposes police corruption, particularly surrounding marijuana and drug use, in a popular series of YouTube videos. Frequently he's set up "drug paraphernalia drops" containing sums of cash, then videotaped responding officers pocketing the cash, then depositing the rest into evidence. Since evidence deposits are logged, Barry can compare what made it into the "official" evidence against what he videotaped being put into the drop.In another instance, to expose the abuse of "confidental informant" rules by police who would actually fabricate CI testimony - which they know could never be exposed due to confidentiality protections - in order to justify search warrants, Barry created a videotaped "grow house", complete with the sorts of grow lights and irrigation systems marijuana growers typically used. Except all the plants were little pine trees, and every room in the house was wired for video.Barry had someone deliver an "anonymous tip" that the house was being used as a grow house. Now, an anonymous phone tip isn't enough evidence to secure a search warrant. And since it wasn't actually a grow house, there could be no further evidence that could justify a warrant.But, sure enough, a police Swat team eventually stormed the house, with a search warrant complete with fabricated CI testimony. Testimony that the CI had been in the house, saw pot growing there, bought pot from the house - all things that were impossible because no pot was actually growing at the house.Now, with these actions Barry Cooper sure made an impression on Texas police. And what was the result? He's been arrested, today, on charges stemming from "making a false report to police officers." The warrant was served by the Texas Rangers.That's right - the Texas Rangers, as in "Walker, Texas Ranger", as in the branch of Texas law enforcement traditionally tasked with hunting dangerous fugitives, breaking drug rings, and catching serial killers. Why did the Texas Rangers suddenly see fit to enter the business of serving warrants on minor crimes?Well, they're not. They're suddenly in the business of serving minor warrants on Barry Cooper, because authority closes ranks to protect their own.I'm sorry, Mod, if you chafe under the constant assumption of bad faith in your administrative duties. But that's what comes with authority. The constant assumption of bad faith is the only reasonable stance in regards to authority, because regardless of the level of power - forum administrator to elite law enforcement - all of the incentives run precisely the opposite of acting in good faith.To any moderator - if you can't handle the constant assumption of bad faith, if you're not prepared to consider your own actions in the light of an interpretation of bad faith and adjust them accordingly - and never be rewarded or even recognized for doing so - then I don't think you can call yourself qualified to moderate, or to hold any position of authority. It's the nature of the beast that people are going to see you suspend someone for telling you how to eat a banana and wonder "hrm, what's really going on, here?"And it's completely correct for them to do so. Being in authority doesn't mean you get more benefit of the doubt, it means you deserve less. Sorry, but it has to work that way.

Are you sure it's not legal in the US? I tried to find the law that said it specifically and came up with nil.- Oni

Right, exactly. He wanted to be offensive. He wanted to say that gay sex was the moral equivalent of rape.And that's the conduct that should have been censured, under the Forum Guidelines.

Wiki is your friend:

quote:

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In the United States, every state and the District of Columbia have some form of codified incest prohibition.[19] However, individual statutes vary widely. Rhode Island repealed its criminal incest statute in 1989[19], Ohio only targets parental figures[19], and New Jersey does not apply any penalties when both parties are 18 years of age or older.[19] Massachusetts issues a penalty of up to 20 years' imprisonment for those engaging in sexual activities with relatives closer than first cousins[19] and Hawaii up to 5 years in jail for "sexual penetration" with certain blood relatives and in-laws.[19]

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In all states, close blood-relatives that fall under the incest statutes include father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, and in some states, first cousins. Many states also apply incest laws to non-blood relations including step-parents, step-siblings, and in-laws.[20]

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Oh my God! Why won't this thread just Die!!!!!TTFN,WK

That's your take. Not mine, and not others. He was asking provocative questions that were understandable given his background. Questions that we did not adequately answer at the time. End of...

Not only is it illegal in every state in the US, there are Ida codes in every department I know for incidents involving incest. If you don't know what Ida codes are, ask NJ. He should know.

Do we stop at 300 these days, still?

Unfortunately we haven't lately. Some threads seem to never die.

I don't even think it's an issue at all. It's either a law that got grandfathered in or we innately recoil from it. The question is, why? I'll be the first one to say, I don't know. But that's what I'm trying to figure out from a moral, biological, or sociological point of view. But we're discussing consensual incest among adults. Seems to me there's no good reason to outlaw it beyond, "it's creepy, so don't do it." It's the same with violating a corpse of your deceased spouse, or polygamy/bigamy, or any other host of supposed taboo crimes against humanity.I read an article where a British couple who, unbeknownst to them, were separated at birth. Through some kind of cosmic aligning, they met, fell in love, and is now fighting to stay together. I think they were weirded out at first too, but eventually said, fuck it, we love each other.Is it the right of the government to step and tell them can't be together? I don't, but we're jousting with ideas here on why it is or isn't moral, and how that all comes to be. Yeah, but what's not to tell mom about in the first place? Why is it wrong, intrinsically?My point is some things seem morally repugnant for reasons we can't even understand. Either it's an old custom that hung around as socially taboo, and so we outlawed it because that's just what we've always done, or there is some intrinsic gross factor that weird's us out.

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"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from mistaken conviction." — Blaise Pascal

Not to confuse the issue of incest but it also depends on your culture, what would constitute incest.For example: In the Hawaiian system of kinship, what you would consider to be your cousin, would be considered your brother/sister, and I think considered to fall under the incest taboo.In other kinship systems, it is considered acceptable and maybe even desirable to marry your cross-cousin.Even though many in western culture describe the offspring of their mother or fathers siblings as cousins and not brother or sister, there can be a stigma associated with such a pairing.

Probably there's not. But I think what you're getting hung up on is this: laws don't exist because of their moral justifications.Laws exist because legislators passed them, and they persist until legislators decide to repeal them. Legislators may make some kind of moral justification for those laws, or they may not - but the laws that exist, exist because legislators decided it should be so.A moral principle doesn't automatically become a law as soon as we recognize it. A law doesn't cease to exist automatically when we perceive that its moral basis has evaporated. The law isn't the reflection of our morality on our government; it's a reflection of the will and effort of legislators.The reason incestuous marriage is illegal is because at one point legislators decided it should be so, and as yet legislators have not spent the effort to change their minds. It's likely that they won't; politically they would have nothing to gain and much to lose. The daughter-fucking lobby is neither enormous nor well-funded.

Indeed. Of course, between actual consenting adults, it's rather difficult for the state to even notice let alone enforce unless children are produced.And of course I have no issue with extramarital sex so long as no lying occurs and everyone is cautious with regard to pregnancies and STDs.Necrophilia of one's own spouse (ick!) doesn't necessarily violate any moral rule (under utilitarianism, but possibly under other systems - no absolutes, remember), but keeping a corpse in the home would at least run a public health risk. Assuming you had a perfectly preserved corpse (ick!), and the deceased spouse (ick!) expressed in their will that sexual contact with their corpse (ick!) would be allowed ...I wouldn't want to put you in jail, but I'd reserve the right to say that's disgusting. This is part of the reason laws make poor studies of morality - most of us don't think about it. At all. Even a little. They get as far as "gross!" and that prompts a reaction of "that's wrong, they shouldn't be allowed to do that," and there we go. If questioned, they'll try to rationalize some post-hoc reasons, some of which may even be valid, but the real motivating factor was "gross!"An aversion of dead bodies is instinctual for humans - it causes a direct survivability advantage to remove the dead from living environments simply because of disease. An aversion to necrophilia, therefor, is to be expected along with it. Deviants from that instinctual aversion are...difficult to empathize with.Remember, we don't actually simulate the minds of others. When we try to put ourselves in the shoes of another, what we're really doing is asking our brains, "if we were in this situation, what would our reaction be?" When you think of what a sad person is likely to do, you imagine what you would do if you were sad. But not everyone's mind is identical - as with necrophiliacs (ick!), there are times where imagining oneself in the position of another will simply not come anywhere close to what the other person is thinking, feeling, or likely to do. Imagining yourself having sexual contact with a corpse when you have an instinctual aversion to dead bodies will produce the "ick!" reaction that the necrophiliac simply doesn't have.Again, this is the reason that at some point we all need to grow up from our childhood understanding of the world around us, and actually ask why we believe what we think we believe. Questioning also implies that, when we find out that our reasoning is flawed, we need to be willing to change our minds.Most of all, we need to understand that what works for you and me might not work for others, and that in many cases that's okay. Freedom to conform to the majority is not freedom at all, after all - unless some deviance is allowed, there are no choices. Many people forget this in their outrage against all things icky.

We'll just stick with siblings above the age of consent.

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"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from mistaken conviction." — Blaise Pascal