Is incest merely a relic of a decrepit moral system?
The words of Pierre-Elliot Trudeau, former prime minister of Canada, that “the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation”, are frequently being trotted out lately. They’ve been used to argue for legalizing same-sex marriage and polygamy; to argue against any restrictions on new reproductive technologies; and to argue that the criminal law should not be employed to prosecute knowingly placing a sexual partner at risk of the transmission of HIV. Most recently, they were used in a discussion, on “The Current”, a show on the CBC network, about decriminalizing incest. Article 155 of the Canadian Criminal Code provides: (1) Everyone commits incest who, knowing that another person is by blood relationship his or her parent, child, brother, sister, grandparent, grandchild, as the case may be, has sexual intercourse with that person. Punishment (2) Every one who commits incest is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years. Incest is
