In things we didn’t think could be happening, Nick Wilson, a Republican Kentucky representative has made the headlines for allegedly sponsoring a new legislation that could outlaw incest laws.
The politician filed his legislation, “House Bill 269,” this January 16, but his document had taken out first cousins from the list of familial relations in the commonwealth’s incest laws. The bill aims to tackle “a problem of familial and cyclical abuse that transcends generations of Kentuckians,” according to Wilson, and it’s still worth it despite the omission that has caused controversy among locals.
The idea of the law is to modernize Kentucky’s laws and add new language to the laws that forbid intercourse between family members. One of the terms that Wilson’s bill is adding is “sexual contact” so that it doesn’t only refer to intercourse.
The original bill includes a list of individuals that are considered family members including parents, siblings, grandparents, great-grandparents, grandchildren, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, ancestors, descendants, and of course, cousins.
Rep Nick Wilson, who has been in the House since last year, has now retracted the filing and corrected it so that the list remains fully intact. This Wednesday, the politician went on to social media to explain that his team made an “inadvertent change” during the drafting of the new bill. Still, he takes what happened as evidence that the system works:
“The fact that I was able to file a bill, catch the mistake, withdraw the bill, and refile within 24 hours shows we have a good system,” Nick Wilson said. The former Survivor winner is also sponsoring three other bills that have already been filed, one that expands the definition of a “violent offender,” another that forbids from traveling to Kentucky to engage in sodomy or assault, and one that will allow written reports about “child dependency, neglect, or abuse.”
Nick Wilson finally responded that he understands that he “made a mistake, but I sincerely hope my mistake doesn’t hurt the chances of the corrected version of the bill. It is a good bill, and I hope it will get a second chance.”
