I lived in an Jordan for a year, and at least in the villages cousin marriage is accepted and often preferred, by the families and the marriage partners themselves. Because there is such strict separation between the sexes, if the girl and boy are cousins they are much more likely to actually know each other (via family events, etc.) before marriage. Also, folks are often clannish and don't want to intermarry with other families.

Obviously in the US things are different. Most everyone I know is disturbed by the idea of cousins marrying. I have to say, though, that I know a woman who fell in love with her first cousin. It was a little weird at first but she's a grownup and has the right to her own life. I'm glad she's happy.

It seems very much like a class issue, to me. Culturally, it seems to happen when a group doesn't have access to larger/different groups of people. Historically, that was the wealthy who kept to themselves so as to retain their titles or property. More recently, that's the very poor, who don't have access to travel beyond a small area.

While, logically, I recognize the reasoning behind it may not be accurate, it still freaks me out. For me, though, that's because of it association in my mind with abuse. I'm freaked out by the idea of cousins, step siblings, step cousins, babysitters, whatever. If two people had significant influence or contact when they were children in a caretaker, or familial sort of context, I can't help but consider any sexual or romantic contact to be abusive at worst and exploitive at best. Sometimes even "we've been best friends since we were five!" makes me a little uncomfortable.

Interestingly -- and I wish I could remember the exact details -- cousin-marriage laws may end up figuring into court fights over gay marriage, because they're one of the few instances where a straight marriage considered valid in one U.S. state is invalid in another. I believe an early 20th century court case actually stated that a state that doesn't recognize cousin marriages does not have to recognize the marriage between two cousins contracted in another state. Such a decision would obviously be relevant in any court case where a gay couple married in (say) Massachusetts was attempting to have their marriage recognized in (say) Maryland.

Amazing. I've lived in California all my life and I had no idea cousin marriage was legal here, I guess I just assumed it wasn't.

Also, regarding the risk of consanguineous marriages, I think we need to distinguish a bit more clearly between absolute risk and relative risk, because marrying a cousin does significantly increase the risk for genetic disorders, something like triples it--I'd have to look it up to be sure, it's just that even then the risk for any disorders is very, very small.

It's interesting that in West Virginia, the state about which cousin marriage jokes are often made, it is actually illegal.

This issue is explosive here in the UK. Rates of Learning Difficulties are roughly three times higher amongst British Asians than the population as a whole. & this is very heavily concentrated amongst Muslim Asian people, rather than Hindus or Asian Christians. http://tinyurl.com/yadtua

To understand the significance of this is is necessary to know that - though I can't find the source - it is commonly believed that up to 25% of all British Muslim marriages are between cousins.

The technical literature emphasises, rightly, how socio-economic factors influence LD prevalence. Poverty can increase the likelihood of low birth weight for instance, and this in turn can increase the chances of having a child with LD. Racism can deny minority communities access to services. All of this is true, but it can lead to a glossing over of the consanguinity issues. See page 10-12 here http://tinyurl.com/yeafmso for an official govt discussion for instance.

Relevant TV Tropes page for examples in media.

This is probably the only issue in the entire domain of morality and legislation that the South has it right on. The real question, then, is whether two male cousins who marry can legally conduct sodomy.

I agree that it's illogical to bar cousins from marrying "just in case" they might produce defective children when it's perfectly legal for people that *definitely will* produce defective children aren't treated similarly.

I've never understood why this is such a big deal. Admittedly, I did grow up in a state in which it is legal for cousins to marry, but statistically, the likelihood of their offspring having genetic diseases is still quite small. Besides, all Jews, whether cousins or not, get tested for Tay Sachs before having children. It's simply a good idea (in my opinion) to know if you're a carrier.

I also don't know about the class thing. I'm from a northern state and grew up middle to upper middle class and still hold the view that cousin marriage really isn't a big deal.

I think for many people, it has more to do with how they were raised. My cousins and I vacationed together yearly from the time we were very young and have a sibling-like relationship, so I don't think of them as anything more than close family. Not everyone grows up knowing their extended family, and I can see how cousins might meet at an older age and develop feelings for each other.

I will note that I've been made fun of for my stance on cousin marriage (when it came up in conversation with a former roommate, she immediately called to my cousin - who also shared our apartment - to "let him know" that I had a crush on him. I don't.).

Two of my first cousins actually did end up getting married. Contrary to popular stereotypes, they are both college educated, and one has a Masters degree. They also both dated others extensively before they realized that they were attracted to each other. One was in her late twenties and the other was in his early thirties, so they had plenty of chances to meet other people.

They did the genetic counseling before they were married, because they knew they wanted children eventually. Now, eighteen years later, they have two beautiful and intelligent kids who are in High School.

It was a little strange when they first told the family about their relationship. Some of us, especially the ones in our generation, were kind of disturbed at the thought, especially since the nine cousins have always kind of thought of each other in a sibling-like way. Oddly enough, the older generations got over it much more quickly. I have to say, I don't think any of us really think about it anymore. They love each other and that's enough for us.

Anthropology is helpful here. Much of the concern about incest as taboo, and exactly what is defined as incest (whether first cousins etc. is included) is an issue of kinship. And so forth. It has been a while since i looked at the material, but I think it provides an interesting perspective.

Another interesting analytical perspective is a genealogical one. As Foucault and others have intimated, the construction of adolescence and the policing of pre-adult sexuality today was framed by 19th century reconstruction of society to construct a bourgeois class. I think a lot of our concern over close kin marriage (first cousins, step-siblings) is wrapped up with our idealization of child sexuality. Somehow we connect that close kinship with adolescent innocence and a resulting marriage with sex/sin and thus joining the two is abomination.

I think, like in many issues where it is applied, the genetic argument is a smokescreen for other things--whether that argument is for or against.

As the child of two only children marrying a cousin has never been an option, but I've known for a while that science claims that first cousin marriages do not produce greater-than-normal birth defects. So I don't have a problem with it. I'm more troubled by older laws that permitted uncles to marry nieces, but not aunts to marry nephews.

I can't think of any way to phrase this without sounding like kind of an ass, so I'm just going to go for it and hope that people will be able to see the point instead of picking on the wording.
Also, I don't know of a word that accurately describes the genetics that cause what would be classified as the "problem" with cousin-babies, so "defect" and "abnormality" are all I really have to work with. If anyone has a better word, PLEASE share because these conversations always feel awkward.

To the point:
I think the issue here is the dog-breeding thing. To get a "pure-bred" dog, there must usually be extensive inbreeding in that dogs background, which is why purebreds have such predictable health problems. Say a golden retriever puppy mates with his sister (which is not uncommon) - no, there isn't a guarantee of genetic defect. However, if his sister has puppies, and two of the puppies from *that* litter mate with each other, the chance of inherited genetic abnormality rises - and so on and so forth.

So, if cousins A and B have kids, those kids are certainly not guaranteed to have a genetic abnormality. However, if those children create offspring with children on a neighboring branch of their family tree, the chances of an inherited genetic abnormality rise accordingly.

If inbreeding becomes a way of life, the overall populative risk for genetic abnormality goes up. It's easier to make cousin-marriage illegal altogether because it would be incredibly costly to the government and the people to go through and say "well, your grandparents and parents were related, so you can get married to someone related to you".

I live in Canada. I know people who are first cousins who are married. Many of them are middle class and well educated, included a school principle. Their children are just as bright and capable - or messed up - as any other random sampling of people.

Regarding animal breeding - you need to get some serious inbreeding happening to get that level of genetic similarity. It's not going to happen from the occasional cousins having children. Purebred animal lines always go back to the same well - generation after generation - or they are no longer considered purebred. Very, very different. Compare it to the lines of Egyptian pharaohs, where siblings often married if you must, but even the European royal families (where marrying cousins was all you did!) don't have the same kind of genetic fingerprint that a purebred animal line has - despite the unfortunate inclusion of hemophilia into the family line. (But hell, we don't stop hemophiliacs from marrying and having children!)

Sarah:

There's a difference between making intermarriage a "way of life," and removing legal impediments that have been imposed because of an overstatement of the risks. If several states have abolished cousin-marriage laws, the science must be very strong. Admittedly, there are communities in which marriages seem to lack desirable genetic diversity, i.e., certain Hasidic commununities, but those problems cannot be laid at the feet of the statutes that permit marriage between first cousins. There are many other factors at play in favor of in-group marriage.

Also, we're not dogs.

Sarah:

Yes, I was snide, but as others have pointed out, there a big difference between human intermarriage and purebred dog breeding. As for education, you seem to be making a floodgates argument. Where's the flood?

I would imagine that general premarital genetic screening would suffice. If you carry the gene for sickle cell anemia or Tay Sachs disease, you're going to factor that into you decision about a spouse whether or not he or she is a first cousin.

you’re going to factor that into youR decision

--Tried to correct this but canceling the post, but got a rude message telling me that I was posting too fast.

Well, if I was super into someone and they just happened to be related to me, I sure wouldn't make a big deal out of it.

It's interesting to me how quickly then discussion on marriage policy - especially among Americans - turns to reproductive concerns. Never mind that it's perfectly legal and normal for unmarried couples to have sex and procreate (40% of US children are born out of wedlock), or that plenty of marriages do not result in children. Many of us still take for granted that the state may enact a genetic agenda through who it allows to marry.

Now let's say the chance of two people having "defective"* children, should they reproduce, is 100%. Would this fact alone justify the giving the state the power to prevent them from entering into a contract which is, by and large, a fundamental right of adults? And if so, what is the threshold of genetic probability that we can't accept? 50% chance of defects? 25%?

I think fuzzytheory has a good point about the whole broken-babies thing being a smokescreen - few of us would passionately defend eugenics, even while accepting policies that appear tantamount to it. But on the other hand, I'm always surprised anew by how wobbly and fickle our belief in civil liberties is compared to our sense of social norms.
__
*Before anyone jumps down my throat...I use that offensive word to express the gulf between our general compassion for parents of people with unpredictable or non-congenital disabilities, and the widespread contempt for parents whose behaviors we believe are to blame for their children's disabilities.

I recall needing a blood test before my husband and I got our marriage license. They said it was to ensure that neither of us had any STDs that we could pass on to our children. I thought that it was a bit comical for the Clerk of Court in Frederick, MD to be concerning themselves with STDs. They also asked whether we were related. The lady compiling the paperwork said, "you two look alike, are you sure your not related?" Also pretty funny.
On a more serious note, while I believe that the chances of producing offspring with genetic abnormalities is slight (if there is no known family history of these disorders); I wonder about the eventual effect on allelic variation. Since procreating only within your sanguinary family creates a very small genetic pool, genetic drift could present some very interesting shifts in allele frequency. These changes do not have to be deleterious, they can be advantageous or neutral as well. It would be interesting to investigate allelic uniformity in families where cousin marriages have been the norm for generations.

WOW. This is so interesting! So... I have this cousin who I didn't meet until I was 17, and when she told me why she was attracted only to women, that is when I began to realize/accept what my attraction to women meant. Well, now, when I started college, I explained to my roommate (who was bisexual) how I realized my orientation... she thought I meant that I had realized it by having some sort of sexual/romantic encounter with my cousin, which I corrected. Then she said it would've been weird if I had meant what she thought. My understanding of the cousin issue was that it would be fine for cousins to be together, but maybe best not to have children, so I said, "It's not like we could make babies together." She said, "Still. It would be weird."

Weird? What, like two women together is weird to some people?

It was good enough for the Wilkeses. They always married their cousins. It was bad news for Scarlet, though.

I don't have anything too productive to add, I was hoping somebody would bring up Arrested Development. Since no one did, I am bringing it up.

I don't think the occasional cousin reproduction is going to vastly affect the human race, so I don't really care. As long as relationships are consensual and not exploitative or abusive, then I have no problem with them. Not all cousin/incest relationships are exploitative and not all will involve having children together. Live and let live, I think.

For some reason, reading this I think of the Hapsburg dynasty (Habsburgs)....Particularly the Spanish branch of the family.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/revealed-the-inbreeding-that-ruined-the-hapsburgs-1668857.html

Am I the only person who is seeing all of the comments as being posted "1 year ago"?

I like the laws that ban the marriages of "double-first" cousins only, like in North Carolina.

The issue with cousin marriage is not marrying your cousin, it's continual intermarriage in a family. THEN you get genetic consequences  like the Hapsburgs and the Blue Fugates. Bans on first cousin marriage, and the associated stigma, came from seeing families that regularly practiced cousin marriage that had certain genetic concerns-- but of course those concerns would not occur from occasional cousins marrying.

Thus, a North Carolina solved the issue by saying one can marry their first cousin, but only if their parents married out, ie, they must not share grandparents (as if you share grandparents with your spouse, your consanguinity is the same as a sibling). Thus, at least every other generation new blood is introduced and any risk of inbreeding-related genetic issues is nullified.

Of course, that assumes that you maintain that siblings should not have children even if abuse is not a concern. However, I doubt the ban on sibling marriage (even for those separated at birth) will go away soon, and I always thought the double-first cousin marriage ban was a good solution.

My stance has always been that we ought to ban MARRIAGE between anyone who was raised together (siblings, adoptive siblings, parent/child, or even parent's roommate/child), and offer free, strongly recommended genetic counseling to other closely related couples.

Cousin marriage only really increases the risk of birth defects if the family has a history of intramarriage.  So many people seem to think that if first cousins marry, their babies will have six toes or something. 

I'm Italian-Canadian and I have a number of relatives married to their first cousins.  There are some places in Italy where if you want to marry your cousin you have to bring in your family tree to be examined before they will give you a marriage license, to make sure you don't have another cousin marriage in your direct line in the last few generations (I think it's three). 

Here in Canada, a cousin by marriage recently got married, and the family went to great lengths to hide from her new (anglo-Canadian) in-laws the fact that her parents are first cousins, even though she obviously doesn't have six toes or a Hapsburg lip or anything like that.  Her father grew up in Canada and her mother grew up in Italy, and they didn't meet until they were teenagers--I think a lot of the people who go "Ick!" at the thought of cousin marriage are thinking of their own cousins who they've known since they were in diapers. 

If the initial reasons for outlawing cousin marriage was justified by genetic disorders (such as the Hapsburgs), then we have to recognize that our science has progressed in leaps and bounds since the writing of these laws. Not only do we know more about the basics of genetics, but we also have the capability of mapping a person's entire genome for -- if memory serves -- ~$10,000 (which is MUCH less than the billions that it took to map the first one). The "ick" factor isn't a good (rational) reason for banning something.

Arguments for marriage being only for procreation aren't valid, since it is not a legal requirement for a couple to produce children. Nor is it legal for a man to exchange his post-menopausal wife for a younger one that can continue to bear him children. Furthermore, we do not diminish the validity two senior citizens getting married to each other. Also, as an increasing number of nations and US states legalize same-sex marriage, the procreation justification becomes increasingly untenable.

The eugenics justification for miscegenation was legally overturned in Loving, and the number of multi-racial people in the US has been increasing (and I count myself among them). Similarly, the value of multi-racial people has also changed from being "muddied" and "impure" to actually being "people". It's obvious, therefore, that the eugenic justifications for miscegenation do not form a valid basis for determining who can marry whom.

If we are concerned about the role of genetic disease itself, then why allow people from populations that have certain known genetic diseases to get married with each other? Also, why do we allow people who have a prevalence of a particular genetic disease in their family to get married and have children? Obviously, it isn't because of the concern over any one person's genetics that we allow or disallow marriage.

So this does beg one question: how do you rationally define marriage (i.e., have it based on something other than the "ick" factor or outdated and questionable science) to allow for all the governmental rights that come with that institution without limiting the civil rights that are guaranteed to all citizens?

perhaps the point of the graphic is to show that 'procreation' is not the point of marriage

An old professor of mine published his book on cousin marriage in America back in 1996: 'Forbidden Relatives: The American Myth of Cousin Marriage' by Martin Ottenheimer.

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/76rws4ss9780252065408.html

Is Dr. Bittles unaware of the fact that forced sterilization of persons with disabilities is still happening right now, and is not, in fact, some theoretical thing that can be brought up and applied to every hypothetical situation?

A doctor cited in the study suggests that disallowing their marriages or
rights to have children are tantamount to “eugenics or forced
sterilization.”

uh, no. being denied the legal right to marry is absolutely nothing like having a medical procedure forced on you against your will. it's just not.

If you were a fan of 'Arrested Development', reading this article in George Micheal's voice makes it funny as hell.

In Illinois, first cousins may not marry unless both are over age fifty. 

Another way in which cousin marriage (and stereotypes about its regionality) are making news:

According to a recent Mother Jones article, coal companies in WV are using inbreeding to explain birth defects, trying to pull upon regional stereotypes to explain away why birth defects are on the rise in areas where maintaintop removal occurs.http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/07/mountaintop-removal-inbreeding-coal-mining

i think another reason people might be opposed to cousin marriage (or any other kind of relative-to-relative marriage) whether consciously or not is having a confusing family tree and the complications that might arise from it. for example, two cousins get married and their children are their own first cousins once removed, or a child marries their step-parent and the stepparent is both the younger person's lover and disciplinarian. the more distant the relatives, and the smaller the age gap between them the less of a problem there is, of course, but there's still sort of a 'hick-ish' stereotype that comes along with it, at least in the u.s.

Stupid comparisons. Gay marriage is like pet marriage! Homosexuality is not a sin but a curable mental sickness. It is like being a junkie, pedophile or like bestiality and incest. Marrying a cousin is not recommended but not forbidden in Europe. They need help urgently man!

I fucked my first cousin twice and loved it. I wish I would have gotten her pregnant