Greentext

Genetics and health issues aren't a big topic now, because of disabilities caused by genes. If your jurisdiction allows for example people with down syndrome to reproduce, you can't argue about genetic defects by incest, as they are less likely/server. Here politicians did switch their argumentation towards protecting the family, which makes sense but only when they grew up as family. The problem is when siblings didn't know each other, when they grew up, later fell in love and only then find out they are blood relatives, they legally can't reproduce. You can't argue with protecting the family, because they never where family. They don't see them as brother and sister.

In Germany there is a group who is fighting to legalize it. About consenting, there is a different law in Germany, which protects that. In Germany for the age of consent, we have 3 categories (14, 16 and 18). The one that matters in this context is everything under 18. If one partner is under 18, you can't fuck them, if you have a specific relation like teacher, family member, guardian. Also this only applies to consent. Rape is still rape.

But to be fair, a lot changed recently and being against incest "just recently" (still over 10 years) weakened their arguments. They don't reevaluate everything that gets affected by court decisions or law changes, if now something else got weakened in their arguments. Consenting incest not between guardians, aren't that many. It needs a group to collect facts and arguments and then need to present them but that doesn't even guarantee politicians to act

you can never be sure that they are actually freely consenting.

They're adults. That's all you need to know.

Also, not condoning grooming or ~~whatever~~ systematic abuse. Not saying it isn't horrific, or that victims shouldn't speak - sometimes people are just that fucking weird

What about twins?

About that smell comment.

There are several registered cases of genetically related people that, unknowing they are related, develop attraction and engage in sexual activity. Some cases even mention the couple being more attracted to each other due to scent.

There's a small article in Wikipedia here.

Now, for an anecdote: I knew a couple that was genetically related and they only discovered they were siblings because they tried to reconstruct their family tree through official records and things came out off.

They already had two perfectly healthy children when I met them. They kept their blood connection as private as possible but they intended to tell their offspring the whole story when they could understand all of it and its implications.

Now about the incest taboo: I find no issue in consenting adults engaging in sexual activity. Normalizing it, I find deeply troublesome. It would completely inbalance relatioships between family members and wreak havoc in the gene pool.

This is the wildest spoiler tag I've ever regretted clicking

siblings smell gross and feel gross to have sex with

Agreed.

if we're being dispassionate - inbreeding increases the risks of genetic issues but by no means guarantees it. Not that I'd recommend it.

The odds of even siblings having a child with issues are apparently pretty low still, but the issue comes from having several generations of it if it gets normalized. Like the Hapsburgs weren't even marrying siblings, but did the cousin and second cousin marriages often enough that they ended up with a lot of inbred family members and those distinctive chins and noses.

So rather than needing to look at everyone's family history to determine whether or not there's been too much incest that the risk of inbred issues in the offspring is too high, it's just generally looked down upon, which means the times it happens completely by accident (like two orphan siblings that never met or secret half-sibling affair children), it's not as big of a deal because the odds of issues are still pretty low.