By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
Swiss lawmakers are now considering a controversial new bill that will decriminalize consensual adult relationships between family members.
Salon.com is reporting that the upper house of the Swiss parliament is planning to consider a new law that will allow consensual sexual relations between adult siblings, and between adult parents and their grown children. Sexual relations with minors will remain illegal.
A Swiss Justice Department spokesperson explains, “Incest continues to be a taboo in our society, but it’s not up to criminal law to stop every morally reprehensible aspect of behavior. Rather, the law should be for punishing behavior that’s particularly socially damaging.”
The country already allows second-degree relatives, such as aunts and uncles, and nieces and nephews, to marry. At present, incest in Switzerland carries a maximum three-year jail term.
Daniel Vischer, a Green party MP, told London’s Telegraph that he sees nothing wrong with two consenting adults having sex, even if they are related.
“Incest is a difficult moral question, but not one that is answered by penal law,” he said.
However, Barbara Schmid Federer of The Christian People’s Party of Switzerland, called the proposal “completely repugnant.”
“I for one could not countenance painting out such a law from the statute books,” she said.
The Protestant People’s Party also opposes decriminalizing the offense.
As a spokesman told the Telegraph: “Murder is also quite rare in Switzerland but no one suggests that we remove that as an offense from the statutes.”
If the bill passes, Switzerland will join China, France, Israel, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the Ivory Coast, all of which have no laws on the books that prohibit consensual incest between adults.
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