sorry, Ivy

Okay, I took your test and seriously tried to imagine myself in the proposed hypothetical scenario. Nope. Outrage meter: zero. More like, "Well, there's something you don't run into every day."

I see where you're coming from. A few years ago, I learned that a seemingly decent enough man I knew owned a puppymill. So based on that one single piece of information, I became instantly disgusted by him.

There are so many child abusers, spouse beaters, sex slave traffickers, racists, rapists, schoolyard/internet bullies, etc. among us who actually cause suffering in the world. Is it possible to save the disapproval for them and just give everyone else a pass?

"Okay, let me try this again...

You meet Charles and Ivy at a cocktail party in New York. They are super sweet and are obviously happy together and in love. You even keep in contact with them for whatever reason.

A few months later, you find out the truth. Somehow, some way, the truth is out. You have not witnessed the horrible antics of this family, only that Ivy has mentioned that her family is "nuts" and she doesn't really talk to them.

Yet you find out this detail. HOW would you react? Your gut reaction.

And please, PLEASE be honest."

I would at first laugh and be like "Oh man that's crazy!". I would think it was gross but I wouldn't care since it doesn't affect me in anyway except the bizarre experience of meeting such a couple. I would find it very interesting. Like a real life Flowers in the Attic, and wonder how crazy her family must be and the stories she could tell. In the movie I thought it was gross when they were merely first cousins so the brother and sister thing didn't really make me that much more grossed out than I already was. I like interesting people and as long as they aren't hurting anyone it's cool with me. I'm so conditioned to think incest is gross, I can't even think otherwise. But then you see royals marrying cousins, as well as people throughout history(I've heard of Orthodox Jewish people marrying cousins), not to mention the Bible! So maybe I abhor it because I was programmed to. Maybe it is programmed in us so we don't create strong powerful families. Because high society seemed to encourage it quite a lot. The only other people you hear about committing incest are the proletarians who tend to be uneducated which means they probably skipped the programming to think it's wrong. So maybe it's not as weird and unnatural as we'd like to think.

What's interesting about the scenario you set up is that it divorces their situation from everything we know about them. In other words, "Let's say you didn't have the facts, and met them in the most superficial way, and learned the most hot-button, least-explicated fact of their lives. What would you think?"

Now why would you posit that as the most authentic reaction to their situation? I think it's just the opposite: I think it explores the most knee-jerk, least-informed reaction any of us could produce.

Their relationship is "incestuous" only in the most technical sense. They weren't raised as brother and sister. Their affection for each other grew as it would have between any two people with a more socially acceptable distance.

And you have to examine what "incest" is, in Western culture. It has two primary facets: a romantic association between siblings, and the sexual involvement between them that could produce a genetically flawed offspring.

The first has an "ick" factor that's as much an emotional reaction as a logical, legal one.

The second is a genuine societal concern. As a culture, we're invested in having the strongest, most capable citizens possible.

When you react to Ivy and Charles, you can't consider that more reasonable, logical element, because they're not going to have children.

You can barely consider the brother/sister element, because that's not the structure they were raised with.

So discarding the validity of their relationship with "Ick, incest!" doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

If they really, really loved each other, and not just a shocking fling, I would be okay with it.


By Grabthar's Hammer...what a savings.

Oh please. I think i have heard many much more "shocking" revelations over the years than this one. It has been common historically for related persons, especially cousins, including first cousins, to marry -- especially among members of the aristocracy. Mary and Matthew on Downton Abbey were cousins (and Mary's first fiancée was a cousin as well). Sure, it is unusual in 2014 American culture for incestuous hookups (at least publicly admitted), but I honestly would give a rat's behind -- the same way that I wouldn't care if they mentioned that they were into bdsm. They are a loving couple, and at this point in my life, I would be happy for them, as I have seen many marriages and relationships fall apart at this point in my life. I have seen friends "come out" in their fifties who were from what the rest of us knew happily married with kids, etc. But I am a married man in my forties so I have seen and heard quite a bit over the years. They are not having children, so that issue is off the table.

Interestingly this is a theme in the film Lone Star (another Chris Cooper film). I won't spoil it but the response is quite amusing.

"Hearts and kidneys are tinker toys! I am talking about the central nervous system!"

I'd be grossed out.

However, objectively speaking, they are consenting adults who have no possibility of creating children, so I have no moral objection. I would still be grossed out on a gut level.

Why on earth would anyone they casually meet find out they are sister and brother? First cousins yes, and that's actually quite legal in most places in the USA (I think.) They wouldn't ever need to tell anyone that they're really half siblings.

How strange that so many people here are so shocked by incest -including the majority of the characters in the movie, with the exception of (of course) Ivy. -- I'm pretty sure that most of the people posting their comments in this thread consider themselves good religious people. Surely they haven't read their Bible...!

This is Genesis, chapter 19:

30 And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar: and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters.

31 And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth:

32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.

33 And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.

34 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.

35 And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.

36 Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.

37 And the first born bare a son, and called his name Moab: the same is the father of the Moabites unto this day.

38 And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name Benammi: the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day.

Not to mention, of course, that the sons (and the indispensable daughters) of Adam and Eve, forcibly commited incest to populate the earth.

Why in the world would you think that, because someone feels benign and not outraged by an adult couple, raised as cousins, who have brought most of the little comfort in their lives to each other, and who can not and will not have biological children, that that means they'd think sex between an adult and a 14-year-old would be okay? A 14-year-old can not consent to that (no matter what she or he might say or feel). If a 14-year-old positively throws himself or herself at an adult, demanding sex, it would still be rape on the part of the adult, if he or she complied. That's an extremely different situation to two legal adults committing to each other.

This discussion reminds me of many about one of the best movies ever made, LONE STAR, by John Sayles. As they say at the end of that one, "Forget the Alamo."