Talk:incest

The page currently says A sexual relation between a parent and his or her offspring. Is there a source for this definition? It is my understanding that the word actually means a sexual relation between close relatives, usually blood related -- Nick1nildram 07:52, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Note
* BTW: I stumbled into the middle of this when I linked from Wikipedia - I just did a quick cleanup (grammar-wise) so I have no stake in this. However, if you're looking for a consensus, I think the definition regarding "sexual relations between relatives" is probably more accurate. Perhaps the best compromise would be to make that the #1 definition and move the current definition ("parent and offspring") to #2. Gate2Valusia 08:04, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Speak of the devil! Someone just fixed it - the definition looks correct now. Gate2Valusia 08:17, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Refining Understanding of Incest
Because I have recently modified the definition here and to help pin down the upper limit and lower limit boundaries for the meaning of 'incest', I'd like to look at how Albert Einstein's second marriage to his cousin Elsa is understood. Albert and Elsa's mothers (Pauline and Fanny Koch respectively, both daughters of Julius and Jette Koch) were apparently full sisters; their fathers were also relatively close cousins (something like second cousins) but not first cousins. I think that modern Kansas law would explicitly call Einstein's second marriage 'incest' since they say that, "All marriages between parents and children, including grandparents and grandchildren of any degree, between brothers and sisters of the one half as well as the whole blood, and between uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews, and first cousins, are declared to be incestuous and absolutely void." Popular press strongly implies that Einstein's relationship is incest on the basis that Ten Famous Incest Examples "While incest remains illegal and one of the most widespread cultural taboos worldwide, there are however many more recent examples of famous people who have engaged in romantic liaisons with family members. Among them was Albert Einstein who married his second cousin Elsa in 1919," So Einstein's second marriage is incest to Kansas and can be strongly implied to be incest on the basis that Albert and Else were only second cousins in popular culture. On the other hand, Wikipedia says that Washington, DC and about twenty states see first cousin marriage as legal. My opinion is that in the states where first cousin marriage is legal, the marriage is not incest; it is not "legalized incest". There are various regions where the total number of all marriages that are "cousin marriages" (presumably meaning first cousin marriages) are 50%. In those regions, I believe they still have the concept of incest, but it doesn't extend to first cousins. Leviticus explicitly describes numerous relationships that are incest, but does not explicitly mention first cousins. On these grounds, I justify my claim that only "sometimes" are sexual relations between first cousins considered incest (in partial contradiction of the wording of a banned editor from 2014)- in Kansas first cousin relationships are legally incestuous but in some cultures, what Kansas calls illegal is 50% of all marriages. The banned editor was right to give us some specificity here, but was not nuanced enough in that first cousin marriage is not always or "especially" considered incest- that kind of adverb should be reserved for sexual relations with immediate family IMO. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:24, 13 April 2022 (UTC)