If We Could Talk to the Animals

Jenny Block, who has written about open marriage, wrote that there are some interesting comparisons between humans and other animals when it comes to sexuality. How often have we heard that some relationship isn’t “natural?”

As she says, “Just because animals do certain things doesn’t prove that we necessarily do them too.” But sometimes humans can be compared to other animals, and the comparisons have weight. We might be able to get some good ideas from them.

She points out that animals flirt, they masturbate, they watch other animals express their sexuality, even through video.

They exhibit habits other than monogamy. They are polygamous and polygynous. And they are social monogamists as well as serial monogamists, even swans. Bonobos, for example, have multiple sexual partners at any given time in their life. And some species even engage in group sex. When red-sided garter snakes mate, the female is made the center of what is called a mating ball, where 100 males all attempt to mate with the female at the same time.

People exhibit habits other than monogamy. Although not always socially accepted, people partner in a variety of ways. Many of those ways have proved to be perfectly healthy.

Also,

They are homosexual as well as heterosexual. Marine birds, mammals, monkeys, great apes, dolphins, penguins, cattle, bonobos and rams are just a few of the many animal species in which scientists have observed homosexual behavior.

Humans are homosexual as well as heterosexual, obviously. And each is perfectly normal and absolutely biological. Once again, the only issue in human society is our lack of acceptance of both orientations.

She goes on to note that some animals have sex for pleasure, some will seek out additional sex partners if the current one is not interested in another session at that time, some over-indulge, and there are female initiators. And I’ll add that anyone who has had closely related hamsters can verify that some animals engage in consanguineous sex.

Consenting adults should have their rights to any of these things, without the law interfering.

Pretending at Monogamy

Blogger hambydammit says, "So We Aren’t Monogamous… What Are We?"

From the archaeological, anthropological, sociological, biological, and anatomical records, we get a clear picture of what humans do. They have sex with multiple partners.

Most do, yes.

But this observation doesn’t help us very much in our day to day life. Particularly in America, we don’t have much choice but to toe the party line and at least pretend towards some form of monogamy, even if it’s serial.

We're working to change that.

The blogger poses some questions, including...

If we are designed to bond long-term with one partner (or perhaps two), why does our biology most closely resemble bonobos, who do not bond this way?

If we are designed for sexual exclusivity, why are human vaginas designed specifically for intense sperm competition? (Sperm competition happens when sperm from multiple males is in the vagina at the same time.)

Why do so many existing hunter-gatherer societies practice multi-male/multi-female mating?

Prompting this...

Clearly, our social insistence on strict monogamy is largely attributable to the imposition of modern monotheism on the Western world, and as I’ve detailed in THIS ARTICLE, the motivations were hardly altruistic.

Whatever the source of the demand for monogamy, there's no need to require people to be monogamous, including in marriage law. Let people decide for themselves.

The blog entry goes on to discuss "primitive cultures," sperm competition, and accumulation, among other things before wrapping up that entry...

In any case, even if we decide that monogamy is still our goal, it’s helpful to understand that we are not especially built for it, and it’s as much about ownership as anything else. Knowing that non-ownership is an option is liberating in and of itself, and perhaps it will open new doors for people who feel like they just “aren’t ready for commitment” at this time. Maybe it could even help redefine what it means to have a “friend with benefits.”

There are, of course, many forms of nonmonogamy that involve commitment.

The next entry is "If We’re Not Monogamous, then Why Are We Monogamous?"

To begin with, let me offer a caveat. Whatever else we might be, we humans are very flexible in our mating. Even today, we see everything from communal mate swapping to highly stratified polygamy to near monogamy. And if there is still a question of whether we are most naturally drawn to monogamous long term pair bonds or not, it’s clear that we are capable of long term monogamy. But it is a very difficult strategy to follow, and seems counter-intuitive on several levels.

It sure does.

This entry goes on to talk reproduction, "bastards," and sperm competition (again).

Finally, there's the third entry that asks, "Can Non-Monogamy Work Today?"

The blogger notes that in reality, we already practice nonmonogamy.

Like it or not, strict exclusive monogamy exists primarily in the wishes and hopes of the highly religious and doggedly old-fashioned. (Not that it was any different in the real good old days…) We practice a coy game of
wink-wink-nudge-nudge when it comes to exclusivity. Estimates range as high as
40% for extra-pair coupling in some populations. In other words, we say we’re
going to be exclusive, and then we practice non-monogamy on the sly.

Furthermore, a large percentage of young people are part of the “hookup culture,” in which some sort of sexual contact is a precursor to a possible relationship. They have friends with benefits, booty-call buddies, pretend boyfriends/girlfriends, and at least a dozen other kinds of short-to-medium term non-committed partnerships. It’s not uncommon for a young person to have uncommitted sexual contact with a half-dozen or more partners before finding someone to commit to exclusively. At nearly all ages, we practice serial monogamy. A significant percentage of young people have relationships that last less than one year. Most retirement age people have had at least two marriages,
and several mid-to-long term relationships in between.

Add to this the growing number of committed couples who are participating in
occasional consentual non-monogamy, such as sex clubs, threesomes, sharing
prostitutes in Vegas, making out with the best friend, etc, and we realize that
we are already non-monogamous. We just make a big show of telling everybody we
aren’t.

That sounds awfully familiar.

The blogger looks at various reasons people profess or pretend to try to be monogamous, then concludes...

We have to admit that each aspect of a relationship is possible without sexual exclusivity. Granted, there are potential pitfalls and problems with each category, but that’s not news. There are problems with all of them in exclusive relationships, too.

There is much more to each of the three entries, and they are worth a read.

When the Surrogate or Donor is Family

An anonymous comment alerted me to this article (thank you) about intrafamilial medically assisted reproduction (IMAR). It discusses a position paper published 20 January 2011 by the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE). The context framing this is when unrelated spouses use a close relative of one of the spouses to assist in reproduction, but the issues are also relevant to those involved in consanguineous spousal relationships (such as, say, first cousins or a mother and son or a sister and brother) who want to have children.

The group advises to evaluate each request for IMAR individually, based on four ethical principles in health care: the respect for autonomy, beneficence and non-maleficence and justice.

That sounds reasonable.

The Task Force explains that the right for individual autonomy is elementary: any individual should have the principle of choice with whom to reproduce. It is understandable that couples wish to preserve some sort of genetic identity with the child, and hence may wish to choose a donor in the family.

I personally know a lesbian couple who had used sperm from a brother of one of the women. It is fairly common for same-sex couples or heterosexual couples experiencing infertility to involve a close relative in some way, whether as a surrogate mother, sperm donor, egg donor, or embryo donor.

In some countries IMAR is illegal and the relevant laws against incest and consanguinity apply to protect the offspring from genetic risks and to avoid possible social disruptions and conflicts.

Ridiculous. How about using genetic testing to avoid risks?

According to the principle of justice, doctors should treat similar cases in the same way. So if sister-to-sister oocyte donation is accepted so should brother-to-brother sperm donation.

This is fair.

The paper gives special attention to (rare) cases of consanguineous IMAR, involving the mixing of gametes of persons that are genetically closely related. "The Task Force considers consanguineous IMAR between up to third degree relatives as acceptable in principle, subject to additional counseling and risk-reduction," says Professor Guido de Wert, coordinator of the ESHRE Task Force. "Here, genetic counseling is appropriate to assess the increased risk of conceiving a child affected by a serious recessive disease."

With genetic counseling, there shouldn’t be any restriction on degree.

First-degree intergenerational IMAR needs special scrutiny, also in view of the increased risk of undermining autonomous choice. First- and second degree consanguineous IMAR is at odds with the spirit of anti-consanguinity and anti-incest legislation in most countries and should not be offered.

The laws should be changed.

In any general population the risk of having a child with a handicap or a major disease is 3%. In third degree consanguinity [such as between cousins], the risk is estimated to be around 5-6%. If the applicant and the intended collaborator carry the same disease, there is a 25% risk of conceiving a child affected with that particular condition.

I encourage anyone, even if they don’t believe they are closely related, to get tested before making children, and that would include testing any donated sperm or egg. Isn’t it good to know the risks ahead of time so that an informed decision can be made? Close relatives can and have had healthy babies together, but it is good to know the possibilities? You don’t have to get tested as a pair. You can get individual tests.

An Advantage of the Polygamous Over Monogamous

From a study that appears in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, we find out some interesting news out of the Centre for Evolutionary Biology, University of Western Australia.

The team discovered that sperm from polygamous mice are better competitors in the race for fertilisation.

As always, this may or may not be applicable to human beings.

Dr Renee Firman and her team attempted to show that sperm from rival males compete to fertilise females and that, over several generations, polygamy can select for mice who produce more sperm, with stronger motility, than monogamous males.

The study found that while 53 per cent of the litters had mixed paternity, 33 per cent of litters were fathered by the polygamous males compared to 14 per cent by monogamous males.

And whether they were mated first or second, polygamous males retained this advantage, showing that the increased fitness applies to both offensive and defensive competition.

Depending on the causation, if someone wants children they may be better off practicing polygamy, and someone who doesn’t want children may find an advantage in monogamy instead of polygamy. Or maybe the more fertile are more likely to practice polygamy? As a reminder, I am not against monogamy. I am a firm believer that each person should be free to pursue celibacy, monogamy, polyamory, or polygamy (in whatever form).

Yet Another Pespective on Consanguineous Sex Restrictions

At the Atheist Experience, Matt D. ponders laws and bigotry towards consanguineous sex. Atheism isn’t invoked in the argument. Rather, the venue meant that nobody invoked a religious restriction on sexuality or marriage.

While I personally find the concept of marrying a sibling, etc. rather "icky", there are lots of things that I find "icky" that aren't necessarily immoral and that society has no business restricting. My aversion is something that most of us experience and it's known as the "Westermarck effect" but that's not the case for everyone.

There are certainly biological reasons to avoid inbreeding, but marriage isn't necessarily about procreation. There are also psychological issues that surround taboo relationships (both contributing psychological issues and psychological issues that result from such unions) but we have to be very careful to distinguish between issues caused by societal disdain for something (as was/is the case with inter-racial marriages) and psychological harm that is intrinsic to the relationship (a daughter raised segregated from societal influence in order to 'brainwash' an incestuous spouse).

So far, so good.

I think there's a compelling argument that we should generally discourage incestuous marriage in order to minimize the risk of birth defects and psychological trauma, but that we are probably not justified in prohibiting those unions as a matter of law.

It is good that he recognizes the lack of justification for laws against consanguineous sex. It is too bad he seems here (see below) to express support for discouraging people who have found love in this way.

He continues, pleading a lack of enough information to make a move either way.

Until such time as we have compelling evidence (and not just a visceral aversion), I'm not sure that I can support laws against such marriages - but I'm in favor of discouraging it by education and investigating such relationships to ensure that we have true, informed consent.

Not exactly support, but at least it isn’t another knee-jerk condemnation and spewing of hate.

He does cut some slack for people who were unaware of their close biological relation when they fell in love, who are people who most likely are experiencing Genetic Sexual Attraction.

I'm of the opinion that it would be more immoral to prevent their marriage that to allow it...and that colors the entire spectrum of possible incestuous relationships...especially when you consider that some people get married, lead happy lives and find out about their kinship years later.

He ends with…

As a matter of personal freedom, unless someone can demonstrate clear harm, I don't see a compelling reason to disallow it.

Then comes back with an amendment…

Re-reading that, it looked like I was in favor of discouraging a loving relationship between people who happened to be related and that's not the case. The education comment was intended to address the real risks and not be a pronouncement about whom you should/shouldn't love or marry.

So it looks like we have another ally. Thank you, Matt D.

Most of the comments expressed general support for this freedom to love, sex, and marriage (and to poly people, too), though there was a disapproval of procreation.

Weedwhacker showed a lack of solidarity...

This "argument" is nothing but a distraction tactic to make same-sex marriage sound illicit and immoral.

Actually, we are just trying to fight for the rights of all consenting adults to love, sex, and marriage with the person or person(s) of their own choosing. You don’t have to like the idea of consanguineous sex to see that there is a larger set of rights that covers having sex with someone of the same sex and having sex with someone who is a close relative. The right to free speech not only covers, say, unpopular books about Roman Catholicism, but also paintings of ugly dogs, and movies critical of Richard Nixon. Are those all the same things? No, they aren’t, but are all protected by the right to free speech, even if only a few people want to make paintings of ugly dogs.

Dawn evaluated the genetics…

I don't have the exact numbers at my fingertips (got rid of my genetics books about 6 years ago) but if I recall correctly, the "unknown" risk of birth defects due to familial marriage (sibling, parent/child) is about 10% (and I may be recalling incorrectly and it might be 10% greater than the usual risk of about 3% in the general public marriages).

Of course, that is an increase of risk. But so is the marriage of 2 persons with sickle cell trait. We don't demand those people not marry. We don't say Ashkenazi (sp?) Jews not marry within the group, although they have a higher risk of birth defects. We don't require anyone get genetic testing. So why keep incestuous marriage illegal?

Thanks, Dawn.

If someone does practice a religion and that is the basis for some of their personal restrictions when it comes to sex or marriage, they should certainly be free to live that way themselves. But they should not be able to force anyone else to adopt the same restictions.

One Benefit of Consanguineous Sex

Findings of a study published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology indicate a correlation among animals between consanguineous sex and a reduction in sexual violence.

As always, what is observed in some animals may or may not be observed in other animals, including human beings.

World AIDS Day

Lots of people like to imply or outright claim that gay sex or polyamory or polygamy spreads HIV.

What can spread HIV is when someone who isn’t infected has unprotected sex or shared a needle with someone who is infected. So yes, a gay person or poly person can get and spread HIV, but so can anyone.

A gay man will never get HIV if he never comes in contact with body fluid from someone who is infected with HIV.

A woman can have 1, 2, 3, or 7 sex partners or wives or husbands in her life at the same time and never get HIV if none of her lovers or spouses has HIV.

And certainly, siblings who grow up experimenting and then growing into a lifelong marital relationship will never get HIV if neither of them has unprotected sex with someone who does have HIV.

Conversely, two heterosexual virgins can meet, marry and stay monogamous and they can both get HIV if one of them shares a needle with someone who has HIV.

So rather than using the tragedy of AIDS to make bigoted statements about LGBT people or poly people, how about we focus on prevention of transmission, treating those infected with HIV so they don't get AIDS, and caring for those with AIDS?

Consanguineous Childbearing and Genes

Some bigots try to justify their prejudice against consanguineous sex and marriage by saying that such relationships inevitably lead to genetic propblems. This argument can be refuted on several fronts.

1. Some consanguineous relationships invove only people of the same gender.

2. Not all mixed-gender relationships birth biological children.

3. Most births to consanguineous parents do not produce children with significant genetic problems.

Secondly: there is no statistically significant difference in abortion or stillbirth, in the sample resulting from consanguineous marriages, compared to the sample resulting from marriages between non-relatives.

Thirdly: There is a statistical difference between the age of the mother, in the sample resulting from consanguineous marriages and the one resulting from exogamous marriages, and this difference is considered by many scientists as the causative in chromosomal defects.

Fourthly: The researcher analyzed these results by several statistical methods, assuming that consanguineous marriage has an effect in chromosomal defect, but the results repudiated this assumption.

Something else to keep in mind…

But if consanguineous marriage was prohibited in the society or rare, then this prohibition will lead to the survival of many individuals carrying the disease-causing genes. Therefore, the chance for possible intermarriage of two non-relatives carrying the disease-causing genes for a particular disease will be considerable; hence, the emergence of this disease in these communities. The best example of this disease is Cystic Fibrosis of the Pancreas. This disease is governed by a recessive gene, common in Britain, despite the scarcity of consanguineous marriages. This is due to the presence of a high proportion of carriers of the disease-causing gene, as explained previously, which leads to increased chance of intermarriage between the carriers of this disease, and therefore its manifestation among their progeny.

Something to Show the Bigots

There was more coverage recently of a study that shows familial attraction is not unnatural or uncommon.

Freud may have been partially right when he said we were all repressing incestuous urges.

In a new study, people were more attracted to faces that resembled their own or that were preceded by a subliminal image of their opposite sex parent.

But rather than suggesting we all secretly want to have sex with our family members, the results instead point to the power of familiarity in shaping who we find attractive.

While romance, dating, sex, marriage, etc. don’t always result from attraction, attraction can lead to such things.

They also cast doubt on the idea that people have an innate repulsion toward incest.

Some people clearly have a repulsion, whether it is innate or not. But others don’t have such a repulsion, and they should not be attacked because they don’t. Some of the repulsion expressed vehemently by some people may be in denial of their latent feelings.

However, not all researchers are convinced the new results have such far-reaching implications.

You can always find more than one opinion.

Inbreeding brings together rare mutations that can cause severe birth defects.

Can’t have an article like this without throwing that in. Breeding always carries the risk of birth defects.

The article then gets into Freud and Westermarck.

But other evidence indicated that people were actually attracted to mates who resembled their parents. In another study published in 2004 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, people shown images of women's adoptive fathers were able to guess the spouses of the women based solely on the spouse's appearance. In other words, the women married men who resembled their adoptive fathers.

So that would be modeling or imprinting, instead of genetics.

"Westermarck's ideas suggested that certain factors, such as familial resemblance or growing up with someone, tend to inhibit attraction because they trigger evolved incest avoidance mechanisms," study researcher R. Chris Fraley of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign told LiveScience. "However, a lot of data in social psychology suggest that these very same factors tend to facilitate attraction between people. We hoped to better understand why those two streams of thought were in opposition to one another."

Generalities can be studied, but individual examples all have their own circumstances. What are the family dynamics? What have been the dynamics between the individuals, such as between a brother and sister?

Fraley and his colleague Michael Marks of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces conducted a series of experiments using college students. In the first experiment, students were asked to rate images of strangers for attractiveness, but unbeknownst to them, the images were preceded by subliminal snapshots of either the rater's opposite sex parent or someone unrelated to them. The students rated the images more attractive if they were shown an image of their opposite sex parent first.

And in the case of siblings, your sibling is likely to share some of the looks of your parent.

In the second experiment, the researchers created the images by morphing different faces together. Some students were shown faces that were morphed with their own face by up to 45 percent. The more the face resembled their own, the more attractive they rated it.

And you tend to share looks with your family members.

In a final experiment, Fraley and Marks told some of the students they would be viewing images that were morphed with their own faces, which was a lie. The images were actually composites of other people. In that case, the students rated the images as less attractive than those not given that false bit of information.

They know what they look like.

The results argue against Westermarck's view, the researchers wrote in the July 20 issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. If students were subconsciously evaluating the images for relatedness to themselves, the presence of their parent's face or elements of their own face should have triggered disgust.

Moreover, the students who were told they were looking at images of themselves should have rated those images more attractive than they did - because the images were actually unrelated to them.

Another researcher points out that Westermarck is about siblings, not parent-child.

Attraction can be complex. Different people are attracted to different personalities, intellects, body types, skin color, hair color, facial features, and on and on.

Whether family members are raised together or not, there could be any number of reasons two or more of them fall in love, and if people are good to each other and not breaking up homes, those relationships should be encouraged, certainly not punished by law.

The Youngsters Need to Know

Someone asked if a girl can get pregnant by her brother. Some of the person’s friends told her no while others told her yes.

Although not explicitly stated, this is probably a minor who has engaged in sex with an opposite-gender sibling, and is genuinely concerned. Most of the replies I saw were the standard ignorant, prejudiced responses, including the ever-popular “kids will be deformed” nonsense.

However, one reply came from someone named Natalie Underwood, who seems to be a too-rare voice of reason and understanding in these sorts of forums…

Yes.
There is nothing about being brother and sister that would prevent her from getting pregnant from him. The fact that his genes are similar to hers can actually increase the likelihood she will catch slightly – similar body enzymes and chemistry may mean a smaller chance of miscarriage or immune rejection.

Genes being related does not mean that they “cancel out”.

It means they reinforce each other.

By the way, everybody is saying birth defects – the truth, according to a ground-breaking study done by the Genetic Counseling association, is that siblings or similarly close relatives would have only about a 7 to 9 percent higher risk of having children with serious birth defects than average.

This can happen sometimes if there is a hidden gene defect in family history – and if both the brother and sister inherited the same defect, then they would have about a 1 in 4 chance of passing it on to their child. But not all brothers and sisters have the same recessive genes, not all families have a genetic defect in their family history, not all defects are serious, and most are treatable.

The odds are that most children of siblings would be fine – 87-89 percent.

These pregnancies do happen – sometimes girls get taken advantage of by selfish brothers (or vice versa) or they like to experiment together, or sometimes siblings don’t even know each other, but are sexually attracted when they meet after being separated.

Most sexual abuse and rape is by someone the victim knows, especially family.

One in 19 girls will have been approached for sex by a family member by the time she is college age, and a great deal of the sexual experimentation in early puberty happens within families.

If she does get pregnant, she should visit her doctor and have tests done for some of the more common problems, but she should not be alarmed that her baby will turn out to have three heads or something silly. She won’t have to tell anybody who the father is if she doesn’t want to.

Thanks, Ms. Underwood, if you are reading this. Do you have a blog? Would you like to contribute to mine?

Any pubescent child should be told that anytime any male a female are involved in activity in which his sperm gets near her vagina, she can get pregnant, provided she has functioning ovaries. Even if they don’t see semen, if there is any just inside the tip of of the penis or any that has emerged from the penis, this is a possibility. If they engage in such behavior, they need to take precautions. And children who are younger than that should be told that it is NOT OK for anyone to touch them when they don't want them to.

From the Past

Look back 125 years to see what someone wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine on consanguineous marriages. You can at least read part of it for free.

Ongoing GSA Research

The Good Dr. Eric Anderson is looking for some more information over a Genetic Sexual Attraction. Here are the questions he asks…

1) Has anyone who has always been heterosexual, felt strong GSA for a bio-family member of the same-sex?

2) Has anyone who has always been gay, felt GSA for a bio-family member of the opposite sex?

3) Who supports the idea that GSA comes not from psychological disturbance of meeting a lost-sibling, but instead a chemical lock produced by an attraction of pheromones linked to our genetic ancestry of evolution? Who has had an experience of hugging your lost family member and feeling a euphoria from the nose to the genitals (for lack of a better example). I.e. who has gone, 'oh my god he/she smelled so good?'

4) Does anyone else have a theory of how GSA comes to be? Regardless of how obscure you might think it. Regardless of how well you might be able to articulate it or not, please post.

If you can give him relevant information, I recommend doing so. I think his work could aid in advancing the freedom to marry.

There is a much helpful discussion on that website, not just in that one thread. Not everyone there encourages the rights I do, but even the perspective of those who don’t can be helpful.

Cousin Marriages From a Genetic Perspective

A blog about gene expression at Discover Magazine look at “the individual & social risks of cousin marriage,” and it even has maps.

In the United States there’s a stereotype of cousin marriage being the practice of backward hillbillies or royalty. For typical middle class folk it’s relatively taboo, with different legal regimes by state. The history of cousin marriage in the West has been one of ups & downs. Marriage between close relatives was not unknown in antiquity. The pagan emperor Claudius married his niece Agrippina the Younger, while the Christian emperor Heraclius married his niece Martina. Marriage between cousins were presumably more common.

How did things change?

With the rise in the West of the Roman Catholic Church marriages between cousins were officially more constrained. Adam Bellow argues in In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural History that there’s a material explanation for this: the Roman church used its power over the sacrament of marriage to control the aristocracy.

That’s interesting.

More precisely the coefficient of kinship between two first cousins is 1/8. That means that at any given locus there’s a 1 out of 8 chance that the two individuals will have alleles which are identical by descent, which means that the genetic variant comes down from the same person in the family line.

If the allele is “good,” that is, totally normal/wild type, not associated with any pathology, then we’re in the clear. That’s why most first cousin marriages don’t produce children who are monsters. What a first cousin marriage does is change the odds. How you present these odds matters a great deal in how scary they sound. If I told you than the chance of first cousins having children with a birth defect is 4-7%, vs. 3-4% for a non-consanguineous couple, it might not sound that bad. But if I told you that the odds of having a birth defect is ~50% greater, then it sounds worse.

He gets more technical and moves on to discuss Muslims in Britain.

Having What the Royals Had

David Dobbs wrote at National Geographic about consanguineous sex among royals.

Royal incest, notes historian Joanne Carando, was "not only accepted but even encouraged" in Hawaii as an exclusive royal privilege.

In fact, while virtually every culture in recorded history has held sibling or parent-child couplings taboo, royalty have been exempted in many societies, including ancient Egypt, Inca Peru, and, at times, Central Africa, Mexico, and Thailand. And while royal families in Europe avoided sibling incest, many, including the Hohenzollerns of Prussia, the Bourbons of France, and the British royal family, often married cousins. The Spanish Habsburgs, who ruled for nearly 200 years, frequently married among close relatives.

Sadly, those who do as the royals did are now often prosecuted and treated as second class citizens.

He has the obligatory “this can mess up your genes” talk included, noting…

Siblings share half their genes on average, as do parents and offspring. First cousins' genomes overlap 12.5 percent. Matings between close relatives can raise the danger that harmful recessive genes, especially if combined repeatedly through generations, will match up in the offspring, leading to elevated chances of health or developmental problems—perhaps Tut's partially cleft palate and congenitally deformed foot or Charles's small stature and impotence.

Any child can have health problems. But what doesn’t get talked about enough are the potential positives. Dobbs, thankfully, writes…

And the hazards, while real, are not absolute. Even the high rates of genetic overlap generated in the offspring of sibling unions, for instance, can create more healthy children than sick ones.

Thank you.

Yet affection sometimes drives these bonds. Bingham learned that even after King Kamehameha III of Hawaii accepted Christian rule, he slept for several years with his sister, Princess Nahi'ena'ena—pleasing their elders but disturbing the missionaries. They did it, says historian Carando, because they loved each other.

Imagine that. Some family members love each other in ways that include sexual. That certainly doesn’t fit the bigoted stereotype of “rape and incest.” Nonrelatives can rape or sexually abuse, and relatives can lovingly engage in consensual sex. The problem isn't consanguineous sex; the problem is rape and abuse. Loving, consensual, consanguineous sex should not be kept buried with the royals of the past. It should be brought into the open and enjoyed by all who want to share the tradition old as time.

More on Being Attracted to Family

Ken Eisold, PhD, writes about something we covered earlier: recent evidence about being attracted to the appearance of family members that can manifest in our attraction to people who aren’t family members, but resemble family members.

There is other evidence for this tendency -- as well as parallel perspectives. Neuroscientists now understand that the brain organizes input according to pre-existing categories. So the earlier experiences we all had with caregivers - those who were present and active in caring for us as children - become the templates for later relationships. That may be why, as Professor Fraley put it, we are drawn to others who resemble our kin.

Psychoanalysts have called this tendency "transference," since it seems that attachments to earlier figures in our lives are transferred to current figures with whom we are deeply engaged. That's why the people with whom we fall in love tend to resemble parental figures. That also helps to explain why we reproduce parental expectations in our relationships with the therapists we come to trust and on whom we depend.

So far, so good.

But those attachments can also become frightening if they are too intense or if they tempt us into actions that conflict with adult responsibilities. It is touching for a daughter to say she wants to marry her daddy when she grows up, but it would be shocking for her daddy to encourage those feelings and criminal to exploit them.

Yes, if a parent of a minor child grooms that child for abuse or emotional dependency, that’s horrible. But if not, and that child returns home with eyes wide open having seen what’s out in the world, and as and adult that child chooses to enter into a new level of relationship with a parent, that’s not a problem.

A Natural Attraction

The journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin published the results of a study by R. Chris Fraley and Michael J. Marks that has received some almost-mainstream media attention. The study indicates that we are sexually attracted to our close relatives on a physical basis.

From Wired:

In a series of experiments where subjects viewed photographs of their opposite-sex parent or a photo morphed with their own face, researchers found that people are turned on by photographs of people who resemble their close genetic counterparts.

“People appear to be drawn to others who resemble their kin or themselves,” said psychologist R. Chris Fraley of the University of Illinois, lead author of the study published July 20 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. “It is possible, therefore, as Freud suggested, that incest taboos exist to counter this primitive tendency.”

If we are driven to spread our genes, then wouldn’t it make sense that we’d be attracted to the people who share some of those genes? Or, if my father is genetically predisposed to be attracted to women with a certain look, wouldn’t it be possible that I have those genes, too, and so I’d be attracted to someone who looks like my mother?

It makes sense that there be some natural or social mechanism that mitigates this to prevent young siblings or parents of minor children from doing things that subvert other parental or sibling responsibilities, in addition to most people not being pedophiles. But that mechanism isn’t needed beyond a certain age.

The Huffington Post also mentioned the news.

While rare, some coupled relatives have come out of the woodwork in proof of this theory. In 2008, father and daughter John and Jenny Deaves were featured on 60 Minutes episode about genetic sexual attraction. Not only did the two admit to having an amorous relationship but also to conceiving children together. They live in South Australia.

While it isn't an uncommon experience, only a few people have come out publicly with their accounts of GSA. Most people are afraid to, and for good reason, given how people are currently treated in most places in the world if they come out.

The blog at Discover Magazine also covered the story.

Fortunately, none of this coverage has not been overtly bigoted.

So should there really be laws and social hostility towards something that is natural? Some people strike out against attractions they do not share or do not understand. We see that when it comes to same-sex attraction, and we see it when it comes to this.