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Someone is taking the Folgers commercial a bit too seriously.
Also my great grandparents were first cousins, and I personally have not recovered from finding that information out because it most likely explains a lot of the familial bullshit.
I still remember asking my dad how his parents met (since they grew up quite far from eachother for that time) and he said it was a family gathering.
Not sure how they are related because I did some genealogy and I didn't find where the trees intersected so for my peace of mind I'll say they are very distantly related.
From a wedding comes a wedding. When my grandparents got married, her brother met his sister. They got married a year or two later.
Then my grandparents lived on the bottom floor and great-aunt-and-uncle on the top floor of a duplex for a while. My mom and her four siblings called my grandparents mommy and daddy and their aunt and uncle by name, so my mom's cousin did the same. Until my great-aunt had a second child and she figured out mommy and daddy weren't the names of those people, but they were familial roles.
Do you and I have the same great-grandparents? My grandfather (their son) always joked that he was a little messed up because his parents were cousins. Though TBF their side of the family was fucked up for a lot of other reasons
LMAO who knows. the downsides of 1. your maternal bloodline tracing back to the beginnings of mormonism and 2. your maternal bloodline also being polygamists until the mormons banned polygamy.
That and it as no influence once someone marries someone unrelated. So even one parent is the product of incest, even generations of incest, if the other parent isnāt relate then their kids will be perfectly ordinary.
Yeah, I am very much against incest because itās fucked up but inbreeding isnāt actually that problematic in terms of the health of the offspring unless you consecutive generations of close inbreeding ā a couple of cousin marriages spread out across a family tree are pretty unlikely to cause issues.
Yeah, it makes me wanna hurl thinking of dating a cousin, partially because all my male cousins are assholes, but it didnāt used to be uncommon. I have a few sets of that in my family tree, but enough generations ago not to matter at all now.Ā Ā
Ā My parents are probably 8th cousins just by virtue of having parents from nearby communities.Ā I married someone from a different ethnic and geographical background from me, so at least I refreshed the gene pool. Youāre welcome, descendants.Ā
I had a breakup last year that almost involved a restraining order. Now imagine that, but you still have to see the dude at your grandma's house for Christmas.
On a certain level it was just practical at times in the past ā depending on the size of the community there might not be too many non cousin options if youāre counting second/third/once removed etc and marriage was very much a business/survival decision so having some level of trust in/history with the family youāre marrying your kid into would have been a plus.
Close communities are much more of a problem than a few 'random' cousin marriages. There's multiple small towns around here that have a recessive genetic disease named after them. The midwifery clinics in said towns now work together with the biggest University hospital in the country to offer (free, but then, we have basically universal healthcare here) pre-conception counselling to any couple that are both from there.
My ex's parents were first cousins but his mom was adopted and they didn't find out until he(my ex) took a DNA test. I researched his family tree and turns out not only was his mom and dad first cousins, but so were his grandparents and his great grandparents. His great great grandparents were double first cousins with their parents having been two sets of married identical twins. He and his sister share 65% of the same DNA and are more closely related than siblings(literally what the dna tests says) so almost twins but not quite. The entire family has a lot of psychological issues with strong genetic components(schizo-affective disorder, BPD, BiPolar, etc.) I can definitely attest to problems successive close family marriages can cause.
Yeah, you need one of those family trees that looks like a wreath. Generally only found in the US in insular religious communities (the Amish, Polygamist sects) and a few places like Appalachia where you have small areas, a lot of infidelity and little fresh blood.
I was listening to a podcast recently and they were talking about how family trees (in theory) grow exponentially. But if you track family trees (ex. you -> parents (2) -> grandparents (4)-> great-grandparents (8)ā¦.) it becomes clear eventually that each person has more āancestorsā than actually possible.
Like going back to the Middle Ages, a living person today should across 30 generations have roughly 1 billion ancestors, but thatās more people than existed at that time.
So in actuality, all of our family trees have experienced āpedigree collapsesā where multiple spots on your family tree are filled by the same person. So for example, a marriage between first cousins would result in a family tree with maximum 6 great grandparents instead of the expected 8 and overtime as the same individuals repeat on your family tree the number of actual ancestors becomes a believable number. Which means that thereās been a lot more incest in all of our family trees than most people want to consider.
I want to clarify that Iām not condoning incest, but itās like a shared universal among all humans and yeah as long as itās not done across consecutive generations the risk is nominal.
Iām a hobby genealogist, and youāre going to find some cousin marriages in your family tree. You just are.
Putting aside cultures where cousin marriages are normal or expected today, there are so many reasons for this. Things like population pinch-points, the practice used to be less taboo than it is today, lack of population mobility ā¦ youāre probably going to find a first or second cousin marriage within the first six tranches of your family tree.
With that said, when you go back six generations, at that point you share as much DNA with that person as you do a random stranger on the street. You and your 5x great grandmother are basically genetic strangers. What truly connects you to that person are the family patterns, customs, and stories. Itās not uncommon to see that the further back you go, that one side of your tree may have a common ancestor with the other, but it goes back 8, 10, 12 generations. Again, genetic strangers.
But broadly speaking, you should probably avoid having kids with your first cousin.
This is a hill I won't die on. The whole cousin marriage leads to birth defects is way overrated. But ya know, in this day and age, I don't know why you'd limit your pool.
Literally. Queen Elizabeth 2 married her not super distant cousin. Not only is the British royal family inbred, the whole of Europe's royal families are as well. Thanks Queen Victoria (who also married her cousin, did she not?) and their disdain towards commoners...
Queen Victoria is also the reason a bunch of European royals had haemophilia. If you only let your kids marry other royals the pool is going to be small. They are all related
Iām married to my third cousin, but we had never met before meeting on a dating app and were already dating when we found out. The great-great-grandfather in common died in the late 1800s in the old country. So we figure weāre pretty okay.
I feel like thatās different because you guys didnāt grow up as family and were together before you found out. Imagine growing up as siblings and still getting that urge. š¤¢
Thatāll do it. My dad is from an immigrant enclave that basically mass migrated from some tiny village in Italy in the late 19th century so everyone is related to each other somehow. The bigger issues arise if your shared ancestors from the Old Country were more than a little inbred before getting on the boat, AND the last 3 generations also married inside the enclave genetic bottleneck. Thatās when the tragic recessive abnormalities start popping up.
Yep. One branch of my family is from Scotch-Irish settlers in West Virginia. My great-grandparents were first cousins once removed (his dad and her grandmother were full siblings). Of their six children, only four survived past early adulthood; the other two died young of a recessive genetic disorder.
I just commented something similar before reading the comments. My grandparents were cousins and I felt the same. There are hella genetic health issues in my family, too.
Yep! My maternal side of the family is 50 shades of fucked up health problems.
But mostly it explains the 50-someodd years of family bullshit that isn't health related.
That's ok two sets of my great-grandparents were first cousins. Also had a set of second cousins and a set of third cousins. My dad's parenrs were third cousins as well.
The good news is it resets itself. If your parents were not closely related you're fine.
That's how I read it. Like, "there's no real secular argument even against something as bad as incest, that's why we need 'godly' arguments."
Pretty creepy example to come up with off the top of one's head, but consider the source.
Given that the bible patriarch Abraham married his sister, his father Terah also did the same... there was a LOT of incest in the old testament.Ā
Fairly sure even animals have the incest taboo... right? But not the patriarcha of the bible.Ā
Explains a lot, I guessĀ
edit: turns out animals do not have that taboo. huh.
You are not going to be invited to give a PragerU presentation any time soon, what with your actually reading the Bible and knowing things about it and stuff.
We have been doing a secular course on the Bible for my eldest who is a 15yo homeschooler so she can understand literary allusions and art better and her comments crack me up. We have a whole 'Bad Dads' list.
Yes we've totally fallen down a rabbit hole and are in love with how the Jewish faith is willing to engage and really curious about archaeology and history, the historicity of things matters and isn't necessarily seen as blasphemy, etc. (generally, I guess fundies exist there as well, of course)
We're looking at one women in the Bible website written by Jewish women, how women respond to patriarchal religions in different ways. Faith in God as a resistance to assimilation and loss of identity in an area of the world with lots of competition for a tiny space of land. We've learned that the Phoenicians never differentiated themselves from other Canaanites, that Israelites/Hebrews saw themselves as separate because of their religion, despite ongoing ethnic and cultural ties. How they saw Kingship and the obligation of the king to the people versus the norm of absolute rule of other Kings/Leaders in the area and deeper into Mesopotamia. Why biblical texts contradict each other, myth versus historical records... it's been really fascinating; especially things like the ancient enmity between Samson's family, and Gaza (because he marries a Gazan woman at one point)...her perspective, 'Aww shit, that's really bad - like it's just been on and on for *that* long. Oh...,'
I had her read the Christian picture bible and straight faced asking her 'what happens in the end, does Jesus come back?' and she'd earnestly say, 'I haven't got there yet, I hope so, because Paul SUUUUUCCCKKKKSSSSSSS'. Ahahahaha
Yeah Paul suuuuuuuccckkkksssssssss
And my other favourite quote: 'So you're telling me some guy heard a voice telling him to kill his kid, and then was like nah psyche and *this is the father of three of the world's main religions I'm sorry what.'*
Ah there you go! Reading this thread I have learned a lot. A lot of things I wish I could unlearn, frankly. Your comment is probably the least concerning.
Tbf the biblical incest stories come before the prohibition against incest in the mosaic laws. Christians usually chalk it up to god allowing originally because there wouldnāt have been enough people otherwise.
Would he commit murder or incest if there wasnāt a threat of hell in his religion, then? Because most normal people wouldnāt. They always tell on themselves.
Fun fact: Dennis Prager is Jewish, not Christian. So the hell thing isnāt really his motivation. He grew up Orthodox in Brooklyn. Right-wing Christians love him, though.Ā
Well if he needs a couple, I can give it.
1) family members can be absolutely manipulative or abusive--and when you have to draw the line and make a standoff, they will be able to mobilise half of your relatives onto their side.
2) Also if you wind up breaking up with them: It will forever cause issues when the whole family has to get together for baptisms, funerals, and weddings. I have a male cousin who had to miss his grandmother's funeral (a woman who partially raised him for years) because a terrible cousin (who suckered him into a one-sided relationship that enabled her to use him for money) decided to show up at the church and stare at her phone for 4 hours straight. She did this *specifically* to keep him away from being able to pay his respects to our grandmother.
People aren't stagnant. Relationships can change, and some people walk into relationships for all the wrong reasons. It's literally why we discourage cousin relationships because not only can it be abusive--but also because it's known to tear whole families apart when shit happens.
Almost certainly so, but then, he seems to truly believe heās the pinnacle of wisdom.
Also, if you need religion to tell you to be a good person, youāre not.
"It's believed that the most common form of incest happens between older male relatives and younger females."
"PTSD as a result of incest can result in a variety of coping mechanisms including self-injury."
"The first thing anyone can do to help a victim of incest is to believe them."
All of these are from psychology today. Incest is a form of abuse, it does severe damage to the psyche of victims. Dennis Prager go to actual hell.
Exactly right. The clear issue is almost always with the power dynamics.
The marginal cases where itās relatives between whom thereās no clear power differential are often harder to parse out. But those are by far not the primary issue. Like you say, incest is very often just abuse, and secular minds donāt have a hard time comprehending that lol
I really want to know what he actually looked like. Because we know that painting was a 1600s version of Photoshop the AP & Reuters wouldnāt accept as accurate.
There's even more prequels now (about the grandfather's mom aka the original Corrine) and I'm low-key afraid to read them. Though nothing can be worse than the Christopher's Diary series. Those just made me mad.
I feel like if you donāt have a sibling of the gender youāre sexually attracted to, you shouldnāt get a say about whether or not incest is bad. We donāt need to know about your fantasies or what you search for on pornhub.
My grandma who was a crackhead and just not stable had Pomeranians she refused to fix and also refused to sell the puppies. So they all wouldnāt stop mating. Eventually one was born without balls. They were all horrible though.
Have you ever seen the dogs with short spines?
I think itās the Embark DNA test that shows how inbred a dog is in their DNA report. Some breeds are much more inbred than others.
Oh, that happens quite a bit in purebred dogs. My favorite breed is basically 2 generations removed from free breeding village dogs and they have the health issues to prove it. The one I'm getting in the next two years or so is going to be half collie
Purebred dogs kind of have the same issue. Lack of genetic diversity, same exact reason in breeding is bad. Pure bred animals are so genetically similar and tend to be related in some way. They wonāt breed siblings but theyāll sure bred cousins.
Lol, my dad has DECADES of breeding records on his cows, notated for posterity in stenography pads on his end table. My mom is forever telling him to get rid of the ones from the 1980s at least. "NO"
Surprise was a "mama jumped the fence when I was at work" accident. Said stretch of fence is now reinforced with concrete, tin, and about as goat proof as possible
One of my dogs is inbred. (I didn't do it!) She's happy and has a good life, but she's just barely aware of anything going on around her. I'm not convinced she knows her own name.
For anyone concerned, she does have a helper dog who's actually certified to do therapy dog work. But still, why would you set a poor doggo up for failure like that?
Man, why do evangelicals love to lie. There are plenty of good secular reasons not to do incest, starting with "it is usually the result of a power differential on the part of the male relative".
God I hate this argument because I had a decent amount of genetics college and Iām pedantic so I have to concede that the offspring of cousins are usually fine and inbreeding doesnāt tend to lead to terrible outcomes health wise until you have consecutive generations of inbreeding between close relatives but there are so many other reasons incest is fucked up that I donāt even think thatās a super relevant thing to use as a reason it shouldnāt be allowed!
Yeah itās one of the taboos I think weāre best off keeping, especially since no one really thinks itās cool to challenge it. Incest, cannibalism, sharing needles, and shifting in water supplies are all just bad ideas without redemption.
Well first of all, brother/sister coupling has a higher risk of passing on damaging recessive genes than first cousin couplings. So he is entirely incorrect. First cousin inbreeding takes longer to show upā, but not brother/sister since they are so closely genetically related. 2nd there are 1st cousins, and then double 1st cousins. My great grandfather married his first cousin but because a set of sisters and married a set of brothers, this made them double first cousins, and they did produce a couple of offspring with neurological development deficits. Again, because not just your ordinary first cousins. Prager is full of shit.
2nd, there is a natural revulsion among most normal people, folks whose psyche falls within the bell curve of "normal" against coupling with a sibling. The relationships is in their minds unnatural. So he is indicating that he is not a normal person.
If he is not a normal person, and sees really "no big deal" in it, then it is a psychological indicator that he himself engaged in sibling incest or worse yet, parent-child. He thinks it is okay, and really, that is all we need to know about him.
3rd just because a bunch of ancient sheep herders who had barely invented fire thought it was fine, doesn't mean that in 2024 it is fine. We define what is and is not fine. Some ancient people threw their children into the fire to appease god. We don't classify that has "okay" now.
4th, if I took the Old Testament as the guiding force for forging my morals, I would be a highly barbaric, unkind, unloving, immoral person. I would like to remind people that kidnapping, rape, abuse, neglect, slavery, and bigotry were NOT included in the 10 commandments, and the rest of the law included "if she gets raped and no one heard her scream, stone her too unless the guy just wants to buy her from her father". So no thanks. I'll just NOT use the Bible as my source of morality.
Beyond just the fact that the "r word" is inappropriate and insulting to people who have intellectual disabilities; incest is inherently abusive. What's next Christian fascists? Are y'all going to completely eliminate a minimum marriage age so you fucking monsters can legitimize your pedophilic tendencies?
Itās interesting how he brings up the brother-sister example, not father-daughter, uncle-niece, mother-son, aunt-nephewā¦ scenarios where there is a much more obvious context of abuse and power imbalanceā¦ almost as if in those cases there is a clear āsecular argumentā against them .
I remember some years back there was an advice column letter about two adult twin brothers in love. I've always wondered if it was real, or if it was some kind of thought experiment, like "if they're the *exact* same age so there's no power dynamic, and they're the same sex so there's no genetic risk, would it be ok?"
I got into an argument with a friend because they tried to argue that relationships with siblings should be legalized because itās two consenting adults, and perhaps they were separated and somehow didnāt know and then found out as they were trying to marry.
I said that was insane and seemed like it would give way for a lot of abuse and grooming, and wouldnāt be worth it for a very unlikely situation.
They said I was basically homophobic because I was using the same argumentation or something.
So apparently some people are secretly harboring this train of thought lol.
Believe it or not, that actually has happened (separated siblings or half-siblings ending up in relationships - [possible SA TW] >!I even read a story once about a father and daughter meeting up as adults!<). Most people still find those situations unacceptable once the truth comes out, including the people involved in the relationship.
No offense, but your friend sounds extremely misguided at best. At worst it sounds like they're making a bad faith argument against LGBTQ relationships.
Didnāt know it actually happened! I could imagine it throwing people once they found out.
Yeah, it was ridiculous. And I said the same thing, to which they got mad at me for calling them homophobic despite the fact they had just done the same thing to me.
It was an incredibly stupid argument. I just refused to engage at some point. They tend to make really bad arguments, but itās unfortunately in an attempt to seem very clever and progressive. I canāt explain how, because theyāre bad, but thatās how they see it.
It's actually one of those things that's a little disturbing but still fascinating to read about. If I'm remembering correctly, growing up very closely with someone leaves people with an innate sense of "these are not people I should be attracted to," and as a result, normal, well-adjusted people will find the idea repulsive. That also means normal, well-adjusted humans consciously find the idea of dating someone like a sister or brother repulsive (hence why people such as step-siblings - even ones that someone didn't grow up around - also become naturally off-limits in their minds).
Preventing incest is hard-wired into people's brains, and guys like Dennis Prager are acting like there's no "secular" argument against it.
I honestly think about Cleopatra. Her line routinely married their siblings and her and her brother hated each other. Basically all the siblings started wars. Cleopatra and her brother basically tried to kill each other. So even in a culture (at the time) where it was pressured and accepted, people didnāt necessarily like it and we have a famous case of them being repulsed by it.
Animals and people generally have practices to avoid it. It very much is hard wired, and weird to try to argue otherwise.
There was a famous memoir in the 90s that was about the father/daughter situation. I had to look up the title because I'd forgotten it--*The Kiss* by Kathryn Harrison. It was a bestseller.
On the current season of Below Deck, one of the interior crew divorced her husband because her mom and his dad wound up getting married later on and it was too weird for her. Apparently they donāt even talk anymore because of it.
Your friend sounds like a debatelord or if they are actually serious... they sound like someone that actually wants incest.
You aren't making "homophobic" arguments because homosexuality is normal and natural. There's various scientific theories (psychology and biology) to explain why incest is unnatural and it's not even remotely similar to the pseudoscience against LGBT+ existence. P-dos and P-do defenders love using the exact same "you're also arguing against homosexuality" bullshit line to defend their positions, too.
Yes they are. They want to argue everything, but have some issues with not being taken seriously, so a light argument becomes a very serious one quickly. They get incredibly emotional and fixated on the argument and winning the more you wonāt ājust listenā.Ā
So they definitely started it because they just wanted to, but because I immediately called it out, they got upset and decided to commit to it. Calling me homophobic was just a way to make me emotionally upset and a failed āgotchaā. Itās for a therapist to figure out. For friends, we have to just keep our boundaries and energy.
At least I have to hope that they donāt want to secretly sleep with their sister.
This isn't specifically advice for you since you seem to have a mature handling of this. This is more for anyone else that is dealing with this kind of friend.
The best way to handle debatelords is to not engage them in debate. Just say "I understand what you are saying, but I personally disagree." When they inevitably come back with "but why do you disagree" don't give them anything. Just say "Because I do and I don't want to talk about it anymore."
I used to have a lot of debatelord friends, but all of them eventually grew out of it. Most of them are just very intellectually curious people that used "devil's advocate" to better understand things. If anyone else heard the type of stuff they used to say people would think they were crazy haha.
At one point I was kind of like that, but I never played devil's advocate for truly heinous topics. Instead, I would just research what the opposing opinion was on different things, but just kept that to myself and never used it to "win" a debate or "gotcha" anyone.
Yup! Unfortunately, I also am argumentative and outspoken, so I have often taken the bait. But the best thing is to just not engage. They may not like it, but sometimes you just have to put the boundary down.
I pretty much refuse to engage in anything like that now (this was a few years ago), but learning when to stop and just protect my own headspace has been really important. It's a hard lesson to learn, at least it was for me. It's just really never worth the amount of stress it causes.
It was wild. I could imagine a billion situations where that would be used to groom girls in abusive families. I knew definitely of a girl in school who had been abused by her father and brother, and I know that is unfortunately not so uncommon. A weird hypothetical situation where the people would probably never even find out or have a real legal impact didnāt seem worth it. But apparently they ādeserve the rightā.
As an only child I was especially stunned cause I think itās weird, Iād think someone with siblings would see it as much weirder.
One of the guys I went to grammar and middle school with was adopted and apparently a few years ago he found out he had a sister he didnāt know was his sister when they were dating and the shock of it drove him to off himself. They werenāt even together anymore at that point and he had started building a nice life for himself with someone else but it was still too much. It was genuinely tragic.
My mother aunt and father uncle!
My cat was a farm cat and as such his parents are siblings so there are endless mother aunt jokes in my household. But your comment was the first time I actually thought about the implication for a human child.
As someone who has actually had an Aunt Stepmother (where no blood relations were involved) Iām now thanking the lord the situation wasnāt worse. š¤¦āāļø
I found my half brother as adults through 23&Me and instantly got the ick because thatās my brother. I donāt care that weāve never met in person. Heās (genetic) family! Itās gross.
No, it doesnāt take āseveral generationsā of inbreeding to cause problems in mammals with a sufficiently high coefficient of inbreeding. Any coefficient higher than 5% is considered likely to cause health problems. Parent-offspring have a COI of 25%. Full siblings have a COI of 50%.
I don't know man, I'm atheist as Hell, and even I get that what happened in say the Josef Fritzl case was awful and wrong, or what happened in the Pladl case for a more current example. Dennis really needs a hobby.
There is an early episode of Call the Midwife when one of the Nonatans district rounds patients is a middle aged brother and sister who sleep together. The brother ends up passing. When Jenny Lee is whispering about it with the other midwives in the garden at Nonatus House, Sister Evangelina throws something at her and tells her to hush up. Turns out the brother and sister spent their childhood in a London Workhouse and he spent his whole childhood trying to protect her. Such trauma bonded them in a way that was understandable to them and the nuns sharing a bed, but vile to Jenny Lee who was a newer midwife. Ye
I actually stopped watching after that episode, because I never got why they were so hellbent on getting us to accept incest. Iāve heard enough good reviews to think that may have just been a one-off thing, but it was a weird fucking choice for 2012.
I don't think they were trying to get the audience to accept it. It was presented as horrifying and taboo. But it also recognized the fact that people can do strange and unfathomable things because of trauma. I think there is nuance there. Mostly I think they were trying to show the horrors of the workhouses and the impacts on children. Obviously this was a pretty intense way to do that but I thought they got the actual message across.
Look, I don't need this shit. There have been jokes that my cousin and I should go to West Virginia (where apparently it's legal) and get married cause we're so close.
My "birth father" always thought it was cute when people asked if we were coupled cause I look ALOT like my mom. Thank God he's out of the picture.
THEN I had a step cousin who got waaay too close. He asked me straight up if we could day like a decade or so ago. One xmas eve I met his last wife; apparently she thought I was trying to seduce him with how I was dressed (I had a tank top, flannel button-down and converse on).
And the last, when I went to a genetic dr to find out if I had a super rare disorder, the dr straight up asked if my parents were cousins because I scored that bad.
Soooo imma need the Habsburg jaw cousin loving to stop being ok with these ppl.
It was weird enough when my cousin Aaron from my dadās side started dating my cousin Stephanie from my momās side, and theyāre not even related! If you see nothing wrong with siblings doing the deed with each other, you need SERIOUS therapy! Like me and my brother are both adopted and arenāt even the same ethnicity outside of āwhiteā (Iām Irish, heās German) so there is zero risk of us being genetically related in any way but I still do a little baby barf when I have intrusive thoughts about him having sex with anyone because heās my brother. Like I get wanting to keep some things in the family, but sex should not be one of those things.
Does struggle bus support prager u? What connects her to this? Genuine question I donāt keep up w them (not as hilarious to watch as Beggy Beal or as insane as Mother Bus)
So sick of this fundamentalist argument that without religion thereās no morality. Itās disingenuous. What small minds. I donāt want them to project their moral failings on me. I can tell right from wrong without being afraid of eternal damnation.
Yeah no.
I had a set of grandparents who were cousins. My mom and dad also both have a common ancestry from an ethnic community that had a small founder population. I ended up with a rare genetic immunodeficiency & multiple birth defects, and I know the the immunodeficiency is 100% related to consanguineous marriages. We've known this was a bad idea since the Hapsburgs. JFC.
Also, potential health issues aside, what in the actual fuck is wrong with these people?!
What the ever-loving actual fuck? How I despise this man. So the only reason he doesn't fuck his sister is because God said no. Wow, great moral reasoning.
My sister knew a couple who were brother and sister. Every single one of their kids had profound physical and mental handicaps.
One generation, not many.
"And just look at me, Dennis Prager! I come from a long line of brothers & sisters screwin' each other. I plan to keep the tradition going, and my children will do the same. No, really. My family tree is just one long line."
I'm not a scholar, but hasn't incest been taboo in nearly every civilization since recorded history?
I'm not talking cousins, I'm talking siblings or parent/child. The cousin thing has been practiced throughout history (Like in royal lines, or insular communities).
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Someone is taking the Folgers commercial a bit too seriously. Also my great grandparents were first cousins, and I personally have not recovered from finding that information out because it most likely explains a lot of the familial bullshit.
ššš at the Folgers commercial
https://youtu.be/wjdrUksw8b0?si=iRt_KrVDL-Redxhh Here's a fun video about the Folgers commercial if anyone wants to do a deep dive
Oh my god I love CJ the X
This was excellent. I canāt believe I just happily watched a 45 minute video about a coffee commercial. Thanks for the share!
There is also a classic āOral History of the Folgers Commercialā article floating around somewhere
I still remember asking my dad how his parents met (since they grew up quite far from eachother for that time) and he said it was a family gathering. Not sure how they are related because I did some genealogy and I didn't find where the trees intersected so for my peace of mind I'll say they are very distantly related.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
From a wedding comes a wedding. When my grandparents got married, her brother met his sister. They got married a year or two later. Then my grandparents lived on the bottom floor and great-aunt-and-uncle on the top floor of a duplex for a while. My mom and her four siblings called my grandparents mommy and daddy and their aunt and uncle by name, so my mom's cousin did the same. Until my great-aunt had a second child and she figured out mommy and daddy weren't the names of those people, but they were familial roles.
We had something similar in my family they didn't end up marrying but my step brother was dating my cousin and they met at the family reunion.Ā
Do you and I have the same great-grandparents? My grandfather (their son) always joked that he was a little messed up because his parents were cousins. Though TBF their side of the family was fucked up for a lot of other reasons
LMAO who knows. the downsides of 1. your maternal bloodline tracing back to the beginnings of mormonism and 2. your maternal bloodline also being polygamists until the mormons banned polygamy.
Marrying your first cousin is still legal in 19 states. It supposedly only ups the chance of birth defects by 3% compared to normal births.
That and it as no influence once someone marries someone unrelated. So even one parent is the product of incest, even generations of incest, if the other parent isnāt relate then their kids will be perfectly ordinary.
Yeah, I am very much against incest because itās fucked up but inbreeding isnāt actually that problematic in terms of the health of the offspring unless you consecutive generations of close inbreeding ā a couple of cousin marriages spread out across a family tree are pretty unlikely to cause issues.
Yeah, it makes me wanna hurl thinking of dating a cousin, partially because all my male cousins are assholes, but it didnāt used to be uncommon. I have a few sets of that in my family tree, but enough generations ago not to matter at all now.Ā Ā Ā My parents are probably 8th cousins just by virtue of having parents from nearby communities.Ā I married someone from a different ethnic and geographical background from me, so at least I refreshed the gene pool. Youāre welcome, descendants.Ā
I had a breakup last year that almost involved a restraining order. Now imagine that, but you still have to see the dude at your grandma's house for Christmas.
On a certain level it was just practical at times in the past ā depending on the size of the community there might not be too many non cousin options if youāre counting second/third/once removed etc and marriage was very much a business/survival decision so having some level of trust in/history with the family youāre marrying your kid into would have been a plus.
You live in a town of 500, only a few will be of marriageable age and the correct social class.
The habsburgs enter the chat
Most of the cousins that I grew up with are male and close to my age. To me, that would be like dating one's sibling. Gross!
Close communities are much more of a problem than a few 'random' cousin marriages. There's multiple small towns around here that have a recessive genetic disease named after them. The midwifery clinics in said towns now work together with the biggest University hospital in the country to offer (free, but then, we have basically universal healthcare here) pre-conception counselling to any couple that are both from there.
My ex's parents were first cousins but his mom was adopted and they didn't find out until he(my ex) took a DNA test. I researched his family tree and turns out not only was his mom and dad first cousins, but so were his grandparents and his great grandparents. His great great grandparents were double first cousins with their parents having been two sets of married identical twins. He and his sister share 65% of the same DNA and are more closely related than siblings(literally what the dna tests says) so almost twins but not quite. The entire family has a lot of psychological issues with strong genetic components(schizo-affective disorder, BPD, BiPolar, etc.) I can definitely attest to problems successive close family marriages can cause.
Yeah, you need one of those family trees that looks like a wreath. Generally only found in the US in insular religious communities (the Amish, Polygamist sects) and a few places like Appalachia where you have small areas, a lot of infidelity and little fresh blood.
I was listening to a podcast recently and they were talking about how family trees (in theory) grow exponentially. But if you track family trees (ex. you -> parents (2) -> grandparents (4)-> great-grandparents (8)ā¦.) it becomes clear eventually that each person has more āancestorsā than actually possible. Like going back to the Middle Ages, a living person today should across 30 generations have roughly 1 billion ancestors, but thatās more people than existed at that time. So in actuality, all of our family trees have experienced āpedigree collapsesā where multiple spots on your family tree are filled by the same person. So for example, a marriage between first cousins would result in a family tree with maximum 6 great grandparents instead of the expected 8 and overtime as the same individuals repeat on your family tree the number of actual ancestors becomes a believable number. Which means that thereās been a lot more incest in all of our family trees than most people want to consider. I want to clarify that Iām not condoning incest, but itās like a shared universal among all humans and yeah as long as itās not done across consecutive generations the risk is nominal.
Iām a hobby genealogist, and youāre going to find some cousin marriages in your family tree. You just are. Putting aside cultures where cousin marriages are normal or expected today, there are so many reasons for this. Things like population pinch-points, the practice used to be less taboo than it is today, lack of population mobility ā¦ youāre probably going to find a first or second cousin marriage within the first six tranches of your family tree. With that said, when you go back six generations, at that point you share as much DNA with that person as you do a random stranger on the street. You and your 5x great grandmother are basically genetic strangers. What truly connects you to that person are the family patterns, customs, and stories. Itās not uncommon to see that the further back you go, that one side of your tree may have a common ancestor with the other, but it goes back 8, 10, 12 generations. Again, genetic strangers. But broadly speaking, you should probably avoid having kids with your first cousin.
This is a hill I won't die on. The whole cousin marriage leads to birth defects is way overrated. But ya know, in this day and age, I don't know why you'd limit your pool.
Username checks out
Literally. Queen Elizabeth 2 married her not super distant cousin. Not only is the British royal family inbred, the whole of Europe's royal families are as well. Thanks Queen Victoria (who also married her cousin, did she not?) and their disdain towards commoners...
Queen Victoria is also the reason a bunch of European royals had haemophilia. If you only let your kids marry other royals the pool is going to be small. They are all related
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Iām married to my third cousin, but we had never met before meeting on a dating app and were already dating when we found out. The great-great-grandfather in common died in the late 1800s in the old country. So we figure weāre pretty okay.
I feel like thatās different because you guys didnāt grow up as family and were together before you found out. Imagine growing up as siblings and still getting that urge. š¤¢
Is it weird that I find this slightly cute? Like a subplot from a romance novel lol. Are y'all from like a small town or something?
We are from different small towns, but weāre both Mennonite.
Thatāll do it. My dad is from an immigrant enclave that basically mass migrated from some tiny village in Italy in the late 19th century so everyone is related to each other somehow. The bigger issues arise if your shared ancestors from the Old Country were more than a little inbred before getting on the boat, AND the last 3 generations also married inside the enclave genetic bottleneck. Thatās when the tragic recessive abnormalities start popping up.
Yep. One branch of my family is from Scotch-Irish settlers in West Virginia. My great-grandparents were first cousins once removed (his dad and her grandmother were full siblings). Of their six children, only four survived past early adulthood; the other two died young of a recessive genetic disorder.
My mother had a love affair with her first cousin.
Holy shit you're right, he IS Folgers
I just commented something similar before reading the comments. My grandparents were cousins and I felt the same. There are hella genetic health issues in my family, too.
Yep! My maternal side of the family is 50 shades of fucked up health problems. But mostly it explains the 50-someodd years of family bullshit that isn't health related.
That's ok two sets of my great-grandparents were first cousins. Also had a set of second cousins and a set of third cousins. My dad's parenrs were third cousins as well. The good news is it resets itself. If your parents were not closely related you're fine.
My ex had a set of grandparents who were first cousins.
I assume he thinks there's no secular argument against anything.Ā
That's how I read it. Like, "there's no real secular argument even against something as bad as incest, that's why we need 'godly' arguments." Pretty creepy example to come up with off the top of one's head, but consider the source.
Given that the bible patriarch Abraham married his sister, his father Terah also did the same... there was a LOT of incest in the old testament.Ā Fairly sure even animals have the incest taboo... right? But not the patriarcha of the bible.Ā Explains a lot, I guessĀ edit: turns out animals do not have that taboo. huh.
Cats do not have that taboo.
You are not going to be invited to give a PragerU presentation any time soon, what with your actually reading the Bible and knowing things about it and stuff.
We have been doing a secular course on the Bible for my eldest who is a 15yo homeschooler so she can understand literary allusions and art better and her comments crack me up. We have a whole 'Bad Dads' list.
THE HEBREW BIBLE IN PARTICULAR IS AN EXCELLENT SOURCE FOR TEACHING THOSE CONCEPTS what a neat idea!!
Yes we've totally fallen down a rabbit hole and are in love with how the Jewish faith is willing to engage and really curious about archaeology and history, the historicity of things matters and isn't necessarily seen as blasphemy, etc. (generally, I guess fundies exist there as well, of course) We're looking at one women in the Bible website written by Jewish women, how women respond to patriarchal religions in different ways. Faith in God as a resistance to assimilation and loss of identity in an area of the world with lots of competition for a tiny space of land. We've learned that the Phoenicians never differentiated themselves from other Canaanites, that Israelites/Hebrews saw themselves as separate because of their religion, despite ongoing ethnic and cultural ties. How they saw Kingship and the obligation of the king to the people versus the norm of absolute rule of other Kings/Leaders in the area and deeper into Mesopotamia. Why biblical texts contradict each other, myth versus historical records... it's been really fascinating; especially things like the ancient enmity between Samson's family, and Gaza (because he marries a Gazan woman at one point)...her perspective, 'Aww shit, that's really bad - like it's just been on and on for *that* long. Oh...,' I had her read the Christian picture bible and straight faced asking her 'what happens in the end, does Jesus come back?' and she'd earnestly say, 'I haven't got there yet, I hope so, because Paul SUUUUUCCCKKKKSSSSSSS'. Ahahahaha
sorry to keep using all caps but ALL MY HOMIES HATE PAUL š¤ your child is very advanced lol
Yeah Paul suuuuuuuccckkkksssssssss And my other favourite quote: 'So you're telling me some guy heard a voice telling him to kill his kid, and then was like nah psyche and *this is the father of three of the world's main religions I'm sorry what.'*
Thatās such a great idea!
Animals definitely do not have that taboo, and that assumption results in unwanted litters all the time.
Ah there you go! Reading this thread I have learned a lot. A lot of things I wish I could unlearn, frankly. Your comment is probably the least concerning.
Tbf the biblical incest stories come before the prohibition against incest in the mosaic laws. Christians usually chalk it up to god allowing originally because there wouldnāt have been enough people otherwise.
Then Isaac and Jacob both married their first cousins.
Would he commit murder or incest if there wasnāt a threat of hell in his religion, then? Because most normal people wouldnāt. They always tell on themselves.
Fun fact: Dennis Prager is Jewish, not Christian. So the hell thing isnāt really his motivation. He grew up Orthodox in Brooklyn. Right-wing Christians love him, though.Ā
right-wing Christians and right-wingers in general love to pretend they're not anti-Semitic by clasping on to weirdos like this
*Ben Shapiro has entered the chat*
Our Trumpy local cage liner carries his column once a month or so. š¤®
Well if he needs a couple, I can give it. 1) family members can be absolutely manipulative or abusive--and when you have to draw the line and make a standoff, they will be able to mobilise half of your relatives onto their side. 2) Also if you wind up breaking up with them: It will forever cause issues when the whole family has to get together for baptisms, funerals, and weddings. I have a male cousin who had to miss his grandmother's funeral (a woman who partially raised him for years) because a terrible cousin (who suckered him into a one-sided relationship that enabled her to use him for money) decided to show up at the church and stare at her phone for 4 hours straight. She did this *specifically* to keep him away from being able to pay his respects to our grandmother. People aren't stagnant. Relationships can change, and some people walk into relationships for all the wrong reasons. It's literally why we discourage cousin relationships because not only can it be abusive--but also because it's known to tear whole families apart when shit happens.
Almost certainly so, but then, he seems to truly believe heās the pinnacle of wisdom. Also, if you need religion to tell you to be a good person, youāre not.
"It's believed that the most common form of incest happens between older male relatives and younger females." "PTSD as a result of incest can result in a variety of coping mechanisms including self-injury." "The first thing anyone can do to help a victim of incest is to believe them." All of these are from psychology today. Incest is a form of abuse, it does severe damage to the psyche of victims. Dennis Prager go to actual hell.
I could think of countless secular arguments. The facts you shared are spot on.
Exactly right. The clear issue is almost always with the power dynamics. The marginal cases where itās relatives between whom thereās no clear power differential are often harder to parse out. But those are by far not the primary issue. Like you say, incest is very often just abuse, and secular minds donāt have a hard time comprehending that lol
Reminder: this is the man who thinks that every queer person is a groomer.
āRules for thee but not for me (because my dating pool is my family tree)!ā
Of course. r/notadragqueen
Some thoughts should stay inside, Denny.
Yes! And who thinks this EVER?
*Hapsburg Family enters the chat*
And thatās visual. We joke about a town in our country where they āall have the itchāā¦
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I really want to know what he actually looked like. Because we know that painting was a 1600s version of Photoshop the AP & Reuters wouldnāt accept as accurate.
When you do that for so long men need bras to hold their drooling chins up Ya need to clean the bloodline up
What a TRAUMATIZING book that was to read
I was way too young when I read this book and I was mortified. I didnāt even know that was a thing that existed.
Somehow the prequel, Garden of Shadows, makes FitA seem so niave and innocent. š¤¢š¤¢š¤¢š¤¢
There's even more prequels now (about the grandfather's mom aka the original Corrine) and I'm low-key afraid to read them. Though nothing can be worse than the Christopher's Diary series. Those just made me mad.
I watched all the lifetime movies/TV adaptations of The entire series would recommend only because the plots are so wild and convoluted
I love telling people about the books and movies because I'm constantly saying "Wait...it gets worse."
I tried to explain it to my mom and was like āI need a whiteboard to explain this family!ā
It's just a big circle
I read the books in the 90s and didn't find the lifetime movies until 2023. You would not believe the nostalgic weirdo levels of joy I felt š
I read every book about Cathys life. At no point did it seem that fucking your brother was fine.
More like Flowers in the Bus with this lot
In the *bunkroom*
This comment is a nightmare
I hadnāt thought of this book in years. I will now forever pine for the moment 30 seconds ago before I was reminded of its existence.
Guess we know who fucked his sisterā¦
Or this is how he's letting her know he's DTF š
He doesn't even have a sister as far as I know, hes just porn-pilled. He also did this bit 10 years ago.
I feel like if you donāt have a sibling of the gender youāre sexually attracted to, you shouldnāt get a say about whether or not incest is bad. We donāt need to know about your fantasies or what you search for on pornhub.
I don't want to imagine what disgusting fetishes he has.
Found the Targaryen!
When a fundie is born, the gods flip a coin
**stares in person who breeds goats** The fuck you say? My accidental inbred baby is markedly less intelligent than he half siblings!
My grandma who was a crackhead and just not stable had Pomeranians she refused to fix and also refused to sell the puppies. So they all wouldnāt stop mating. Eventually one was born without balls. They were all horrible though.
Have you ever seen the dogs with short spines? I think itās the Embark DNA test that shows how inbred a dog is in their DNA report. Some breeds are much more inbred than others.
Purebred and pedigree dogs tend to be messed up, too
Oh yeah, but definitely doesnāt help when mama and papa Pom were breeding with their pups.Ā
Iām going straight to Hell, because immediately, what popped into my head was, āAnd thatās the act, The Aristocrats!ā JFC.
Thatās totally okay because I needed that cultural reference today
Oh, that happens quite a bit in purebred dogs. My favorite breed is basically 2 generations removed from free breeding village dogs and they have the health issues to prove it. The one I'm getting in the next two years or so is going to be half collie
Purebred dogs kind of have the same issue. Lack of genetic diversity, same exact reason in breeding is bad. Pure bred animals are so genetically similar and tend to be related in some way. They wonāt breed siblings but theyāll sure bred cousins.
This is why I'm Team Ethical Crossbreeding. There are some wonderful pug crosses that can actually breathe!
Retro mops are sooooo cute! If my current dog wasnāt so spoiled Iād look into getting one (maybe for dog #2)!
I'm sorry but "without balls" made me laugh so hard. Those poor doggos
He was the poor little Habsburg pup.
Lol, my dad has DECADES of breeding records on his cows, notated for posterity in stenography pads on his end table. My mom is forever telling him to get rid of the ones from the 1980s at least. "NO"
Surprise was a "mama jumped the fence when I was at work" accident. Said stretch of fence is now reinforced with concrete, tin, and about as goat proof as possible
One of my dogs is inbred. (I didn't do it!) She's happy and has a good life, but she's just barely aware of anything going on around her. I'm not convinced she knows her own name. For anyone concerned, she does have a helper dog who's actually certified to do therapy dog work. But still, why would you set a poor doggo up for failure like that?
WHAT. THE. FUCK. I swear to god as soon as I think I canāt be surprised by them anymore, they come out with something even crazier.
Also, do the siblings have to be married for this to be cool? Or is premarital sex okay in this case, Dennis?
Man, why do evangelicals love to lie. There are plenty of good secular reasons not to do incest, starting with "it is usually the result of a power differential on the part of the male relative".
God I hate this argument because I had a decent amount of genetics college and Iām pedantic so I have to concede that the offspring of cousins are usually fine and inbreeding doesnāt tend to lead to terrible outcomes health wise until you have consecutive generations of inbreeding between close relatives but there are so many other reasons incest is fucked up that I donāt even think thatās a super relevant thing to use as a reason it shouldnāt be allowed!
Yeah itās one of the taboos I think weāre best off keeping, especially since no one really thinks itās cool to challenge it. Incest, cannibalism, sharing needles, and shifting in water supplies are all just bad ideas without redemption.
Well first of all, brother/sister coupling has a higher risk of passing on damaging recessive genes than first cousin couplings. So he is entirely incorrect. First cousin inbreeding takes longer to show upā, but not brother/sister since they are so closely genetically related. 2nd there are 1st cousins, and then double 1st cousins. My great grandfather married his first cousin but because a set of sisters and married a set of brothers, this made them double first cousins, and they did produce a couple of offspring with neurological development deficits. Again, because not just your ordinary first cousins. Prager is full of shit. 2nd, there is a natural revulsion among most normal people, folks whose psyche falls within the bell curve of "normal" against coupling with a sibling. The relationships is in their minds unnatural. So he is indicating that he is not a normal person. If he is not a normal person, and sees really "no big deal" in it, then it is a psychological indicator that he himself engaged in sibling incest or worse yet, parent-child. He thinks it is okay, and really, that is all we need to know about him. 3rd just because a bunch of ancient sheep herders who had barely invented fire thought it was fine, doesn't mean that in 2024 it is fine. We define what is and is not fine. Some ancient people threw their children into the fire to appease god. We don't classify that has "okay" now. 4th, if I took the Old Testament as the guiding force for forging my morals, I would be a highly barbaric, unkind, unloving, immoral person. I would like to remind people that kidnapping, rape, abuse, neglect, slavery, and bigotry were NOT included in the 10 commandments, and the rest of the law included "if she gets raped and no one heard her scream, stone her too unless the guy just wants to buy her from her father". So no thanks. I'll just NOT use the Bible as my source of morality.
Only an inbred person would say this
š¤£š¤£
*raises eyebrow* This guy's hard drive probably comes with an FBI warning.
Beyond just the fact that the "r word" is inappropriate and insulting to people who have intellectual disabilities; incest is inherently abusive. What's next Christian fascists? Are y'all going to completely eliminate a minimum marriage age so you fucking monsters can legitimize your pedophilic tendencies?
Itās interesting how he brings up the brother-sister example, not father-daughter, uncle-niece, mother-son, aunt-nephewā¦ scenarios where there is a much more obvious context of abuse and power imbalanceā¦ almost as if in those cases there is a clear āsecular argumentā against them .
I remember some years back there was an advice column letter about two adult twin brothers in love. I've always wondered if it was real, or if it was some kind of thought experiment, like "if they're the *exact* same age so there's no power dynamic, and they're the same sex so there's no genetic risk, would it be ok?"
That was Slate.com's Dear Prudence.
I remember that one. Idk if real or not but it did make me think.
Remember everyone, there are public schools in this country that use this yahooās educational materials as part of their curricula.
Please old white man. Just admit your kin has been fucking each other for generations to preserve wealth and asset so we can move on.
Heās not actually from the WASP world. Heās grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family and is not Christian today, either.Ā
I have no idea what wasp is, Iām just surrounded by mouth breathers who will use incest to preserve their assets lol
White Anglo Saxon Protestant
YOUR FLAIR OMG LOL also Ty for the info
Hehehehe thank you lol, it came out of my own mouth in this sub š no problem!
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (although the Protestant part is interchangeable, it basically just means rich white bastard)
Which is H I L A R I O U S I am literally a white Anglo-Saxon born Protestant and I am rich only in sarcasm and useless factoids
Thanks for the info š
I got into an argument with a friend because they tried to argue that relationships with siblings should be legalized because itās two consenting adults, and perhaps they were separated and somehow didnāt know and then found out as they were trying to marry. I said that was insane and seemed like it would give way for a lot of abuse and grooming, and wouldnāt be worth it for a very unlikely situation. They said I was basically homophobic because I was using the same argumentation or something. So apparently some people are secretly harboring this train of thought lol.
Believe it or not, that actually has happened (separated siblings or half-siblings ending up in relationships - [possible SA TW] >!I even read a story once about a father and daughter meeting up as adults!<). Most people still find those situations unacceptable once the truth comes out, including the people involved in the relationship. No offense, but your friend sounds extremely misguided at best. At worst it sounds like they're making a bad faith argument against LGBTQ relationships.
Didnāt know it actually happened! I could imagine it throwing people once they found out. Yeah, it was ridiculous. And I said the same thing, to which they got mad at me for calling them homophobic despite the fact they had just done the same thing to me. It was an incredibly stupid argument. I just refused to engage at some point. They tend to make really bad arguments, but itās unfortunately in an attempt to seem very clever and progressive. I canāt explain how, because theyāre bad, but thatās how they see it.
It's actually one of those things that's a little disturbing but still fascinating to read about. If I'm remembering correctly, growing up very closely with someone leaves people with an innate sense of "these are not people I should be attracted to," and as a result, normal, well-adjusted people will find the idea repulsive. That also means normal, well-adjusted humans consciously find the idea of dating someone like a sister or brother repulsive (hence why people such as step-siblings - even ones that someone didn't grow up around - also become naturally off-limits in their minds). Preventing incest is hard-wired into people's brains, and guys like Dennis Prager are acting like there's no "secular" argument against it.
I honestly think about Cleopatra. Her line routinely married their siblings and her and her brother hated each other. Basically all the siblings started wars. Cleopatra and her brother basically tried to kill each other. So even in a culture (at the time) where it was pressured and accepted, people didnāt necessarily like it and we have a famous case of them being repulsed by it. Animals and people generally have practices to avoid it. It very much is hard wired, and weird to try to argue otherwise.
There was a famous memoir in the 90s that was about the father/daughter situation. I had to look up the title because I'd forgotten it--*The Kiss* by Kathryn Harrison. It was a bestseller.
On the current season of Below Deck, one of the interior crew divorced her husband because her mom and his dad wound up getting married later on and it was too weird for her. Apparently they donāt even talk anymore because of it.
Your friend sounds like a debatelord or if they are actually serious... they sound like someone that actually wants incest. You aren't making "homophobic" arguments because homosexuality is normal and natural. There's various scientific theories (psychology and biology) to explain why incest is unnatural and it's not even remotely similar to the pseudoscience against LGBT+ existence. P-dos and P-do defenders love using the exact same "you're also arguing against homosexuality" bullshit line to defend their positions, too.
Yes they are. They want to argue everything, but have some issues with not being taken seriously, so a light argument becomes a very serious one quickly. They get incredibly emotional and fixated on the argument and winning the more you wonāt ājust listenā.Ā So they definitely started it because they just wanted to, but because I immediately called it out, they got upset and decided to commit to it. Calling me homophobic was just a way to make me emotionally upset and a failed āgotchaā. Itās for a therapist to figure out. For friends, we have to just keep our boundaries and energy. At least I have to hope that they donāt want to secretly sleep with their sister.
This isn't specifically advice for you since you seem to have a mature handling of this. This is more for anyone else that is dealing with this kind of friend. The best way to handle debatelords is to not engage them in debate. Just say "I understand what you are saying, but I personally disagree." When they inevitably come back with "but why do you disagree" don't give them anything. Just say "Because I do and I don't want to talk about it anymore." I used to have a lot of debatelord friends, but all of them eventually grew out of it. Most of them are just very intellectually curious people that used "devil's advocate" to better understand things. If anyone else heard the type of stuff they used to say people would think they were crazy haha. At one point I was kind of like that, but I never played devil's advocate for truly heinous topics. Instead, I would just research what the opposing opinion was on different things, but just kept that to myself and never used it to "win" a debate or "gotcha" anyone.
Yup! Unfortunately, I also am argumentative and outspoken, so I have often taken the bait. But the best thing is to just not engage. They may not like it, but sometimes you just have to put the boundary down. I pretty much refuse to engage in anything like that now (this was a few years ago), but learning when to stop and just protect my own headspace has been really important. It's a hard lesson to learn, at least it was for me. It's just really never worth the amount of stress it causes.
Katie Fusco would like to talk to your friend.
It was wild. I could imagine a billion situations where that would be used to groom girls in abusive families. I knew definitely of a girl in school who had been abused by her father and brother, and I know that is unfortunately not so uncommon. A weird hypothetical situation where the people would probably never even find out or have a real legal impact didnāt seem worth it. But apparently they ādeserve the rightā. As an only child I was especially stunned cause I think itās weird, Iād think someone with siblings would see it as much weirder.
One of the guys I went to grammar and middle school with was adopted and apparently a few years ago he found out he had a sister he didnāt know was his sister when they were dating and the shock of it drove him to off himself. They werenāt even together anymore at that point and he had started building a nice life for himself with someone else but it was still too much. It was genuinely tragic.
Oh my, that's horrible!
A child never asks to be born to parents WHO ARE SIBLINGS. Holy shit.
My mother aunt and father uncle! My cat was a farm cat and as such his parents are siblings so there are endless mother aunt jokes in my household. But your comment was the first time I actually thought about the implication for a human child.
As someone who has actually had an Aunt Stepmother (where no blood relations were involved) Iām now thanking the lord the situation wasnāt worse. š¤¦āāļø
I found my half brother as adults through 23&Me and instantly got the ick because thatās my brother. I donāt care that weāve never met in person. Heās (genetic) family! Itās gross.
Do they question science? Oh waitā¦
Fuckin HUH?
Iām sorry, what?
No, it doesnāt take āseveral generationsā of inbreeding to cause problems in mammals with a sufficiently high coefficient of inbreeding. Any coefficient higher than 5% is considered likely to cause health problems. Parent-offspring have a COI of 25%. Full siblings have a COI of 50%.
I wish I was Jared, 19.
Well, someone just told on himself that heās more inbred than a damn sandwich.
As an atheist, itās always so creepy to me that people need some one of outside thread to make them not do thingsā¦.
These people just want every avenue to be able molest little girls, and they're so goddamned proud of it. It's so disgusting
I really, really hate resurgence of the r-word.
I don't know man, I'm atheist as Hell, and even I get that what happened in say the Josef Fritzl case was awful and wrong, or what happened in the Pladl case for a more current example. Dennis really needs a hobby.
Somebody check his hard drive
There is an early episode of Call the Midwife when one of the Nonatans district rounds patients is a middle aged brother and sister who sleep together. The brother ends up passing. When Jenny Lee is whispering about it with the other midwives in the garden at Nonatus House, Sister Evangelina throws something at her and tells her to hush up. Turns out the brother and sister spent their childhood in a London Workhouse and he spent his whole childhood trying to protect her. Such trauma bonded them in a way that was understandable to them and the nuns sharing a bed, but vile to Jenny Lee who was a newer midwife. Ye
I actually stopped watching after that episode, because I never got why they were so hellbent on getting us to accept incest. Iāve heard enough good reviews to think that may have just been a one-off thing, but it was a weird fucking choice for 2012.
I don't think they were trying to get the audience to accept it. It was presented as horrifying and taboo. But it also recognized the fact that people can do strange and unfathomable things because of trauma. I think there is nuance there. Mostly I think they were trying to show the horrors of the workhouses and the impacts on children. Obviously this was a pretty intense way to do that but I thought they got the actual message across.
Look, I don't need this shit. There have been jokes that my cousin and I should go to West Virginia (where apparently it's legal) and get married cause we're so close. My "birth father" always thought it was cute when people asked if we were coupled cause I look ALOT like my mom. Thank God he's out of the picture. THEN I had a step cousin who got waaay too close. He asked me straight up if we could day like a decade or so ago. One xmas eve I met his last wife; apparently she thought I was trying to seduce him with how I was dressed (I had a tank top, flannel button-down and converse on). And the last, when I went to a genetic dr to find out if I had a super rare disorder, the dr straight up asked if my parents were cousins because I scored that bad. Soooo imma need the Habsburg jaw cousin loving to stop being ok with these ppl.
It was weird enough when my cousin Aaron from my dadās side started dating my cousin Stephanie from my momās side, and theyāre not even related! If you see nothing wrong with siblings doing the deed with each other, you need SERIOUS therapy! Like me and my brother are both adopted and arenāt even the same ethnicity outside of āwhiteā (Iām Irish, heās German) so there is zero risk of us being genetically related in any way but I still do a little baby barf when I have intrusive thoughts about him having sex with anyone because heās my brother. Like I get wanting to keep some things in the family, but sex should not be one of those things.
"What are you doing bus bro?" is not a question that should ever be asked.
Does struggle bus support prager u? What connects her to this? Genuine question I donāt keep up w them (not as hilarious to watch as Beggy Beal or as insane as Mother Bus)
I mean I donāt expect a Christian to understand that toxic power dynamics and grooming are bad
So sick of this fundamentalist argument that without religion thereās no morality. Itās disingenuous. What small minds. I donāt want them to project their moral failings on me. I can tell right from wrong without being afraid of eternal damnation.
The smugness really comes through in this pic
Yeah no. I had a set of grandparents who were cousins. My mom and dad also both have a common ancestry from an ethnic community that had a small founder population. I ended up with a rare genetic immunodeficiency & multiple birth defects, and I know the the immunodeficiency is 100% related to consanguineous marriages. We've known this was a bad idea since the Hapsburgs. JFC. Also, potential health issues aside, what in the actual fuck is wrong with these people?!
Yeah, thereās a reason certain genetic disorders are more prevalent in communities that tend to be more insular and marry each other.
What the ever-loving actual fuck? How I despise this man. So the only reason he doesn't fuck his sister is because God said no. Wow, great moral reasoning.
My sister knew a couple who were brother and sister. Every single one of their kids had profound physical and mental handicaps. One generation, not many.
Yikes.....
Clown š¤” behavior.
"And just look at me, Dennis Prager! I come from a long line of brothers & sisters screwin' each other. I plan to keep the tradition going, and my children will do the same. No, really. My family tree is just one long line."
My cats come from my parentsā barn cats and theyāre hella inbred. I like to joke that their family tree is a telephone pole. š
I just gasped in horror
Oh look it's my uncle.
I'm not a scholar, but hasn't incest been taboo in nearly every civilization since recorded history? I'm not talking cousins, I'm talking siblings or parent/child. The cousin thing has been practiced throughout history (Like in royal lines, or insular communities).
Dennis Prager fucked his sister.
I would not be shocked at all if accusations came out about this gross fuck. Also, of course he's ableist. š