1st cousin marriage

End.

Oh the thread is at an end now! Didn't realise.

I do agree with you. (That it's incest..) It is legal though - inexplicably. It needs to be made illegal though, for sure. Never mind if it's '2 consenting adults' (as a previous poster said,) first cousins getting married and having children?! No. Just NO.

It IS a very close kin, and it has been proven that health issues in the children of two cousins, are far more likely than that of the children of a couple whose parents aren't brother and sister!

!

The monetary cost is not the important thing, but that's the only language some people understand.

Me too!

Evidence for that? I don't think the culture is the same in every Muslim country. I expect it concerns certain communities in particular.

What benefits do second wives get? Maybe I’ll sign up.

Whatever - ban cousin marriage,
ban 2nd wives and their benefits,
ban sharia,
ban benefits for non British, ban free health care for non British, ban sub letting council houses and on and on - let’s have a referendum just stop the pull for a start!

First cousin marriage is predominant amongst Islamic communities not Asians! There is a difference between the two

Yes, sorry, should have quoted the post I was replying to (yours!) which was drawing a parallel between accepting sibling marriages and accepting first-cousin marriages. There's very good reason to treat them differently.

My grandparents were first cousins so I can't get worked up about it. If it's a one off, I don't think genetic issues are much of a concern whereas if it happens more frequently in a family it becomes more risky.

My comment was more about those who keep talking about the monetary cost, as if other things don’t carry questionable costs too.

The number of cousin marriages is rapidly falling and I think that’s positive.

Yes most prople know that
Its the repeated generation after generation of first cousin marriage in one family thats an issue
As the risk increases massivley .

Yes, but the point many people are making is that if cousin marriage is repeated over many generations, the risks increase.

It's not just about the cost to the NHS. It's about the cost to the children and their descendants and society.

For full siblings there is a high risk of genetic abnormalities in any child. For first cousins the risk is very much lower, and not hugely concerning.

In medical genetics, the elevated risk for isolated first cousin parents is an extra 1.7% to 3% which is considered comparable to the increased genetic risk seen in pregnancies where the mother is over the age of 40.

For full siblings, the risk jumps to 20% to 50%, alongside significantly elevated infant mortality.

But it might change soon, which is the whole point of the discussion.

Also, I suppose there are different laws for sexual relations and marriage, because the law you posted didn't include step-parents or uncle/aunts and nieces/nephews, which I also thought were not allowed.

In that case people who don’t drink could object to their taxes paying for people who drink alcohol and get alcohol related diseases, and those that get into accidents due to alcohol misuse. The cost of that to the NHS is £5 billion per annum.

The legal definition has been the same for hundreds of years in the UK.

So the same for brother and sister???

I don't feel an ick either, I just don't think it's a good idea.
It might depend on how close you are to your cousin. If you grew up playing together it might feel different to being more distant.

"Because the dictionary assumes you would know the law."

No, because the legal definition varies by time and place.

Personally I don't have a problem with it if it's just the occasional couple who get married as first cousins. I'm not very close to my cousins and didn't see them much growing up.

The problem lies with communities who practice this as a norm, generation after generation. Disabled children. Cost to the taxpayer. Women unable to escape marital abuse. Less integration. Clan based structures.

But there are communities for whom marrying a cousin, far from being seen as 'icky', is a cultural norm.

For me, that's the problem. If we have communities in the UK who practice this generation after generation, then we have children being severely disabled and the taxpayer being burdened.

Personally I'm not worried about the occasional couple getting married who are cousins, but when its practiced as a cultural norm, it's a problem.

If they look alike, it's likely because of previous inbreeding, in which case it is indeed highly undesirable to continue it. But not all cousins look similar at all.

Humans have evolved not to interbreed with people with whom they've grown up, which usually does mean close relatives; but, for example, I understand that children who've grown up together in Israeli kibbutzim rarely fancy each other, despite being biologically unrelated.

Cousin marriage has been common in many societies, while sibling marriage has almost always been banned.

Don't get me wrong- I'm not a fan of first cousin marriage, but it's not equivalent to, or a gateway to, reproducing with your sibling!