A Wedding Ring Carries by the Couple
IN PHOTO: Wedding Ring exchange at the marriage refers a new life without any agreement not for a limited period of time but for the end of the life Reuters

The state has no right to prohibit sexual relations between siblings of the opposite sex, the German Ethics Council said. The council wants to repeal laws in the country that ban incest because such regulations intrude into the right of people to sexual gratification.

In pushing for the scrapping of the laws, which German Chancellor Angela Merkel said has slim chance of being approved, the council disagrees with the general belief that brothers and sisters who procreate have higher risk of having offspring with genetic defects.

If that argument would be used, the council said that other non-sibling genetically affected couples must also be forbidden from having children.

The council's push is the result of it having handled the case of a brother and sister from Saxony whose sexual relationship resulted in four children, of which two suffer from disabilities. The two were not aware they were siblings because they were raised separately.

The man was jailed for three years on charges of incest, which is illegal in Germany and most European nations, except for France which abolished the law under Napoleon I.

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Although incest is considered a taboo in many societies, a study made in the 1970s found that one in three American woman and one in 10 American men reported being victims of childhood sexual abuse, and it occurs in normal families.

However, the kind of incest covered in that study, considering that the abuse was committed during childhood, hints that the people involved are young children and an adult in the family which could be an elder sibling or parent or other closer relatives.

But during the 1980s and 1990s, society became more open about incest happening as victims shared their ordeal, including some celebrities such as actress Suzanne Somers. Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur, comedian Roseanne Barr and TV host Oprah Winfrey.

Most of the incest stories involve females victimized by their fathers when they were young girls, however, in one episode of Oprah's show, she interviewed a male victim raped by his mother.

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