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Originally Posted by adysav
As I mentioned in a previous post, this is clearly not a valid argument.
Incest does not cause genetic disorders. Members of the same family are likely to share the same predisposition to particular medical conditions.
So for example, Alice and Bob are siblings and both carriers of cystic fibrosis (CF), passed on from a parent. There is a 25% chance of any offspring of this union developing CF and a 50% chance that it would carry the gene but show no symptoms, like Alice and Bob.
If Alice had instead decided that incest was not her thing, and met Chris who is not a CF carrier, their children would have a 0% chance of developing CF and a 50% chance of being a carrier.
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Inbred children show an astronomically higher rate of genetic disorders than other children. This includes not only medical disorders, but mental disorders. It was easy to observe throughout history and almost every culture has a stigma around incest. We all know about Oedipus and Electra because their fates are the worst of the tragic fates due to the incestual nature of their relationships.
To say that incest isn't a cause is missing the point that there is a high <b>association</b> between incest and a propensity genetic disorders. Nearly every person has recessive genes that could result in genetic disorders if paired with another who has those same recessive genes, it isn't as though there is just one or two problems that could be caused by incest - there are literally thousands of bad possibilities which greatly increases the probability that incest will result in <i>some</i> disorder.
Personally, I think this is a completely unrelated point to gay marriage, however. Gay parents don't have children without help from others. There is no risk with gay marriage, compared to high risk with incest.