Taboos: Good rules to live by or just moral relativism bullshit?

Here's a good example of moral relativity.
In the United States, it is considered
taboo to do anything sexual with a child.
Who would argue that point? But in the
United States, we consider anyone under 18
as off limits... mostly. It varies from state
to state.

There are legal limits set by all
of the states, but what comes first, the moral
attitude or the law that reinforces the attitude?
Now, in England, the age of consent is 16.
Anyone can go out and find themselves a kid of
16 and should they ply them with alcohol,
weed or just good conversation then have
sex with them, it's all perfectly
acceptable. A kid's parents might not like
it, but legally they have no recourse.

Now check out this little bit of moral
higgledy-piggledy. It is legal in 24 states
to marry one's cousin. Sixteen of those
states have no restrictions whatsover. The
other eight say it's tickety-boo with
various provisions: no double first
cousins, genetic counseling, inability to
have kids. And there isn't some obvious
distinction between which states allow it
and which don't.

It's not a Southern thing or even a red
state thing. California, New York and
Vermont allow kissng cousins to wed and scrog
without any restricitons right alongside Alabama,
Tennessee and Georgia. At the same time,
Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas don't even
want cousins holding hands let alone balling.
They are in the company of such liberal brothels
as Minnesota, Washington and Oregon.

Morality is backed up by science here
under the assumption that it is immoral to
create mutant children just to go swimming
in the family pool. Variety is the spice
of genetics. If one person has certain
inherited recessive traits and marries another
person with the same recessive traits because
they are family, the chances increase dramatically
that any offspring will be born with those traits
in the dominant form. By marrying outside the family,
recessive traits are more likely to stay recessive.
Hence, no mutants!

On the other hand, it is legitimate to posit that
if a marriage isn't going to produce children,
does it really matter if the spouses are related
before they get married? Two cousins might grow up
like siblings or having never met. That's
got to change the way things look.

I live in Iowa. We don't go for the
institutaionlized practice of cousin-
loving here. Our neighbors in Wisconsin
allow the practice so long as no offspring
will be produced from the union. Here comes
the shameful or at least embarrassing part.
Half of my family lives in Iowa while the
other half lives in Wisconsin. I have an
aunt in Iowa who cannot have children.
She and her cousin, from Wisconsin (see where
this is going?), decided that they got along
VERY well. They were lonely and since she couldn't
have kids, they were able to get married
in Wisconisn. Everynbody in Wisconsin
thinks this is just freaking awesome while
the Iowa side of the family (with the
exception of a few of the more toothless
hillbilly holdouts) is largely puking their
guts out.

Taboos are fascinating things designed to
prevent certain ill effects, perceived or
real. Pedophilia, bestiality, incest,
miscegination, homosexuality, masturbation.
All of these subjects are or have been listed as
no-gos either in the doing or in the talking about
them afterwards. Rape and incest have always been
wrong, but they've always been done. It used to be
considered more wrong to talk about them after the
fact.

Human beings are funny. Funny queer, not ha-ha.