LAWFUL INCEST MAY BE ON THE WAY

By Jeff Jacoby

When the BBC invited me onto one of its talk shows recently to discuss the day's hot topic -- legalizing adult incest -- I thought of Rick Santorum. Back in 2003, as the Supreme Court was preparing to rule in Lawrence v. Texas, a case challenging the constitutionality of laws criminalizing homosexual sodomy, then-Senator Santorum caught holy hell for warning that if the law were struck down, there would be no avoiding the slippery slope. "If the Supreme Court says you have the right to consensual sex within your home," he told a reporter, "then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."

It was a commonsensical observation, though you wouldn't have known it from the nail-spitting it triggered in some quarters. When the justices, voting 6-3, did in fact declare it unconstitutional for any state to punish consensual gay sex, the dissenters echoed Santorum's point. "State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are . . . called into question by today's decision," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the minority. That opinion too was scorned by the politically correct. But now Time magazine acknowledges: "It turns out the critics were right."

Time's attention, like the BBC's, has been caught by the legal battles underway to decriminalize incest between consenting adults. An article last month by Time reporter Michael Lindenberger titled "Should Incest Be Legal?" highlights the case of Paul Lowe, an Ohio man convicted of incest for having sex with his 22-year-old stepdaughter. Lowe has appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, making Lawrence the basis of his argument. In Lawrence, the court had ruled that people "are entitled to respect for their private lives" and that under the 14th Amendment, "the state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime." If that was true for the adult homosexual behavior in Lawrence, why not for the adult incestuous behavior in the Ohio case?

The BBC program focused on the case of Patrick and Susan Stubing, a German brother and sister who live as a couple and have had four children together. Incest is a criminal offense in Germany, and Patrick has already spent more than two years in prison for having sex with his sister. The two of them are asking Germany's highest court to abolish the law that makes incest illegal. "Many people see it as a crime, but we've done nothing wrong," Patrick told the BBC. "We are like normal lovers. We want to have a family." They dismiss the conventional argument that incest should be banned because the children of close relatives have a higher risk of genetic defects. After all, they point out, other couples with known genetic risks aren't punished for having sex. In any event, Patrick has had himself sterilized so that he cannot father any more children.

Some years back, I'd written about a similar case in Wisconsin -- that of Allen and Patricia Muth, a brother and sister who fell in love as adults, had several children together, and were prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned as a result. Following the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence, they appealed their conviction to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, where they lost. Lowe will probably lose too.

But the next Lowe or Muth to come along, or the one after that, may not lose. In Lawrence, it is worth remembering, the Supreme Court didn't just invalidate all state laws making homosexual sodomy a crime. It also overruled its own decision just 17 years earlier (Bowers v. Hardwick, 1986) upholding such laws. If the court meant what it said in Lawrence -- that states are barred from "making . . . private sexual conduct a crime" -- it will not take that long for laws criminalizing incest to go by the board as well. Impossible? Outlandish? That's what they used to say about normalizing homosexuality and legalizing same-sex marriage.

Parts of Europe are already heading down this road. In Germany, the Green Party is openly supporting the Stubings in their bid to decriminalize incest. "We must abolish a law that originated last century and today is useless," party spokesman Jerzy Montag says. Incest is no longer a criminal offense in Belgium, Holland, and France. According to the BBC, Sweden even permits half-siblings to marry.

Your reaction to the prospect of lawful incest may be "Ugh, gross." But personal repugnance is no replacement for moral standards. For more than 3,000 years, a code of conduct stretching back to Sinai has kept incest unconditionally beyond the pale. If sexual morality is jettisoned as a legitimate basis for legislation, personal opinion and cultural fashion are all that will remain. "Should Incest Be Legal?" Time asks. Over time, expect more and more people to answer yes.



British decay discredits mainstream parties

In a very British way, the article below is a reluctant endorsement of the anti-immigrant British National Party -- the only distinctly conservative party left in Britain today. As the BNP is well outside the current British consensus, however, an outright endorsement of it would simply not have been published in "The Times"

Today some in my town will cast a vote for the Epping Community Action Group. Sounds reasonable enough. Run from a flat near the station, ECAG wants to rejuvenate the high street and save small shops by relaxing our parking laws, it opposes fortnightly collection of household rubbish and would not build on green belt land. All for that. It has campaigned for the Co-op to smarten itself up (it was an eyesore), for the local adult learning centre to reopen and to stop town centre premises becoming an endless parade of chain coffeehouses and takeaways. My kind of people. And, yes, ECAG is run by a former chairman of the National Front but, hey, you can't have it all ways.

Ian Anderson, a man whose commitment to neighbourhood issues would seem the perfect antidote to disillusionment with party politics, was chairman of the NF from 1990 to 1995. Something more then a juvenile dalliance, it would appear. He says he has had no connection with extreme right-wing politics in ten years, a statement that is open to debate, not least because he stood for an NF splinter group at the Uxbridge by-election in 1997. Anderson's dubious background is known locally but is increasingly considered not to matter in an area where six British National Party members sit on the local council.

In a part of the world that should be the happiest, clappiest little market town this side of all the other cosy corners of southern England, the mismanagement, incompetence, mediocre thinking and muddled priorities of modern-day life have created a situation in which descendants of the far Right can thrive. I have election literature from all the main parties saying they support the green belt, and a school playing field at the bottom of my garden, half of which has been sold for housing. At the door, every activist said his candidate was opposed to it, yet none, if elected, can do anything about it.

And I am not saying I could ever bring one fibre of my being to consider voting for a former fascist reinvented as a green-belt conservationist; but I'm saying I understand.

Saw my first rat last Sunday. That was a thrill. I remember them from third-year biology, white and clean in a glass case in the science lab. This, however, was mangy and diseased and in something of a free-range situation close to the house. It looked quite startled. We both did. Not as startled as my 70-year-old mother would have been, mind you, had it chosen to take a bow at her surprise birthday party that afternoon. What a bash that would have been. We jump out; then the rat jumps out; then two ambulancemen jump out and cart her off to the nearest cardiac unit. Now that's what you call a surprise.

We don't get rats, you see, even in a relatively rural area, because we have cats. Not our cats, but Ebony next door and Ginger's brother from over the road and the mean cat from a few doors down and assorted others that have kept our property pest-free for more than ten years. We don't even get mice, the gateway rodents forming the advance party for heavy-duty vermin. Then again, until last summer, we had not been cut to fortnightly rubbish collection with the resulting stench and maggot infestations; which could explain why some folk are considering supporting a man who has stood for election on a ticket that advocated a different form of recycling involving humans and known as repatriation.

And I'm not saying I could bring myself to place an X next to that name on a ballot paper, even at gunpoint; but I'm saying I understand.

Then there was the swarm of bees (I know what you're thinking, in which ward does this man vote, Epping Biblical?) that settled in an adjacent tree while the couple were out, at the funeral of Frank, a good old boy from down the road who had died at the age of 92. A decent innings, one might say, except Frank was not delivered to hospital on death's door. He went in to have a pacemaker fitted and died of MRSA. Frank performed volunteer work at the local hospital where he was entrusted to clean the theatre until you could eat your dinner off the operating table. Maybe someone did. In the coroner's report it will probably say he died of irony.

Then, on Sunday, we saw another old friend, Peter, who has not been well lately. He fell from a ladder and badly injured his back and, after contracting MRSA and septicaemia in hospital, is back on his feet after seven operations. The last was to find out why he kept getting MRSA and septicaemia. It is intriguing that so many NHS trusts will not operate on the overweight because, looking at Peter, if you want to shed a stone or five, hospital is the place to be. Not that Peter was large to begin with but you could fit two of him in the suit he was wearing at the weekend. He pulled out a cigarette and said he had started smoking again, and all things considered it was a shame he gave up, because if the hospital had refused to operate on him for having a puff they might not then have had the chance to half-kill him seven times over. He has been advised to sue but says that action would only divert more money from an overstretched NHS. That is the inherent decency of mankind.

So I would love to be one of the people on these pages who thinks our world is wonderful. I would love to be the guy that sneers at the negativity in the Daily Mail, with its scares and its rats and its MRSA. I would love to be wiping a sentimental tear at the memory of ten years of Tony Blair; but the school playing field was sold and I did see the rat and Frank is dead and Peter is lucky to be alive and in my part of the world the far Right is winning. And I am not saying I would not implore you to set fire to your ballot paper and run screaming from the hall rather than cast a vote for National Front extremism, in any form; but I'm saying I understand.

Source



Australia: Another perverted Mohammed

Muslims have huge sex hangups

A TEENAGER will appear in a Victorian court today charged with indecently assaulting a woman feeding her newborn baby in a change room at a Melbourne shopping centre.

Mother-of-three Janelle, who did not give her surname, told police she was breastfeeding her one-week-old son about 3.45pm (AEST) last Monday in a curtained-off area of the family room at Broadmeadows Shopping Centre, when the alleged attack happened. The 37-year-old, from Romsey, northwest of Melbourne, told police that a man pulled back the privacy curtain claiming to be looking for his sister before asking personal questions about breastfeeding. Janelle said she tensed up and when her baby came off the breast, the intruder leant forward and touched her before leaving.

Broadmeadows detectives tonight charged 18-year-old Broadmeadows man Mohamed Chkhaidem with one count of indecent assault and four counts of stalking in an out-of-sessions hearing before a bail justice at Broadmeadows police station this evening. Chkhaidem was remanded in custody to reappear at the Broadmeadows Magistrates Court today.

Earlier, the mother called for better safety measures in shopping centre changerooms. "In a feeding room doing something natural, feeding your own child, you should be able to do (it) in privacy and peace," she said. "Maybe it's a silly extreme to go to but (what) we might need to look at doing is having a panic alarm in the rooms or proper locked cubicles like toilets, rather than the curtain - but we shouldn't have to go to that extreme."

Source



Australian bar owners defend race ban

Publicans faced with racial realities are not allowed to do anything about it. Drunken Maoris are an extremely troublesome group. As a former boarding house proprietor, I know all about it.



ANGRY publicans have defended their right to choose who drinks in their hotels - regardless of whether they offend racial minorities. As Islanders who were deemed too violent for Scruffy Murphy's last night called the shut-out brazen racism, the industry claimed police encouraged taking action against some ethnic groups. "Police are not averse to going to publicans and saying 'you need to do something about this particular racial group or a gang'," Australian Hotels Association deputy chief executive David Elliott said yesterday. "Police advise me on regular occasions that the main offenders in violent city crimes are certain minority groups and we pass that on to hotels."

Mr Elliott said publicans should be able to act on information given to them by police. "It's only fair that hoteliers remain vigilant about the racial descriptions they are given," he said.

However Steven Thomas and Alex Tosic, both of Maori descent, were ashamed of the pub's Islander bouncers turning on their own kind to enforce the exclusion policy, which has since been scrapped. "That Islander brother (Benji Tupou) was bumped out by his own bro and that's just wrong," said Mr Thomas, who was last night drinking at the Newmorlent Hotel in Botany.

Alex Tosic, 23, said she could understand if the pub didn't let someone in if they were causing trouble or even if they knew them to have caused problems in the past. "But I have lots of close friends and relatives who are not troublemakers at all and for them or I not to be allowed into a venue because of that is the worst form of racism," Ms Tosic, of Petersham, said.

The Daily Telegraph also asked drinkers at Scruffy Murphy's - facing claims of discrimination at the Equal Opportunity Tribunal - their views on the ban introduced in November 2005 and scrapped last year. "The ban is not racist - they cause a lot of trouble in this area and people have had enough. I'm in favour of the ban if it stops trouble," said lunchtime drinker Patrick Pool, 22.

While hotels tried to shift blame to police, senior officers slammed excluding patrons on the basis of race. "There is no provision within the legislation for the refusal of entry to, or removal from, licensed premises, of patrons on racial or ethnic grounds," said Detective Superintendent Frank Hansen, manager of the drug and alcohol co-ordination unit

Source

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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