No, I didn’t say that at all. But the question was more along the lines of the origin of the incest taboo so that’s what I primarily focused upon.
And for that matter, the problem among the Amish is a very present day reality and getting worse with successive generations.
And the ironic part of it is that as a society, as a whole, they are very moral people with all sorts of prohibitive rules and regulations that are even stricter than the Bible wpuid necessarily demand.
And they certainly don’t consider their behavior to be “incestuous” in the way that the word is usually understood.
I mean, they certainly don’t condone sex between members of a nuclear family like siblings or parent/child situations.
But the problem is that they are such an insular group and marrying outside their Amish/Mennonite community is forbidden and usually only happens if a child decides to leave the Amish when they reach adulthood.
It’s akin to what was going on with the Russian royals years ago who wouldn’t stoop to marry commoners. Repeated inbreeding tales a drastic toll.
And, as I clearly said, it has become part of the moral social code of society and even with modern birth control, I don’t see that taboo being overturned.
Sure, there are cases of close cousins marrying and such, but that’s clearly not the majority. And it’s not like each and every case of sex between close or distantly related family members is going to produce defective genes in the offspring.
It’s more the cumulative effect of when that becomes standard and repeated practice over time.
And, interestingly enough, all these miscellaneous sperm donors floating around do increase the chances of half siblings to marry each other without even knowing it.
But I don’t think the numbers are high enough to warrant a dangerous trend and the options for less secrecy are continually expanding so that’s a good thing.
I recently saw a doc on MTV about a young girl who went ok a search to find as many of her half sibs from her sperm donor biological father as she could and to meet them.
He had specified that he had no objections to any future offspring contacting him by letter or email.
It was really interesting to see how much they physically resembled each other when they finally met one another. It was really fascinating to watch her entire journey.