Legislation to ban 1st Cousin Marriage

"Incentivise the private genealogy sector with performance-related rewards for identifying nuptials found to be in breech of the regulations after the fact."

This is not nonsense and makes no sense. It's not even a Government proposal anyway.

I would like to see the civil servant who would write down the bounty hunter idea 😀

@SheilaFentiman I think marriage between cousins ought to be prevented, I just don't see a realistic or practical control to enable it to be enforced.

Unless you put a bounty on them and let Ancestry members do it for you!

Agree with @DogInATent - and ditto sex between first cousins that is consensual. Who is going to police or report this?

As a general principle, we should always consider whether legislation is the best way to achieve the end result or whether something else would be more effective. This is one of the things the civil service does - the minister has a policy objective, the CS come up with possible ways to achieve it and try to test those. Maybe health visitors in schools and churches explaining the risks. Or trying to get religious leaders and celebrants on side for a pre-marriage talk on the matter. Both off the top of my head and there are probably a bunch of other possibilities too.

There's also a limit to the practicality of banning marriage between cousins.

Who checks? How do they check? How long does the check take/cost?

Cousins can't be identified from birth certificates. If it's going to be based on a declaration by the couple, how effective will that be? If it pushes these marriages to take place overseas, how could these marriages be identified in order to not recognise them?

@Huffalumps

"I do find it hopeful however that younger generations of incestuous communities are going off the idea. Let it die a death and good riddance."

Whilst the practice in the UK Pakistani community dropped off in the last ten years from 60% to 46% it is dangerously and morally unacceptably high.

Those poor babies and children are the ones that suffer from this barbaric behaviour.

The fact most uninitiated people of this country already thought cousin relationships and marriage was illegal reveals our society's views. It's incest. It's taboo.

Argue it all around the houses. Even if there were no inherited genetic issues, the UK populace considers 1st cousin marriage as taboo as parent-child and sibling relationships.

The issue of the communities which widely practice this type of incest is a separate matter. I personally think that within family marriage reveals how those communities see outsiders i.e. white British culture. It reveals a lack of desire to integrate into the wider community. As such there is concern about how the practice of incest might affect community relations into the future. Imagine the determination to continue a practice that your adopted culture views as taboo? Would you emigrate to Iran and refuse to veil in public? Of course not. Total disrespect and disregard for your adopted fellow countryfolk.

I do find it hopeful however that younger generations of incestuous communities are going off the idea. Let it die a death and good riddance.

Whilst visiting a children's hospital, I met a girl aged 16 who had an inherited lung disease, her sister also had this and was awaiting a heart and lung transplant. Her parents were cousins. I am a cystic fibrosis carrier and my cousins are also carriers. One strong reason that cousins cannot marry.

@woffley

Me asking you to clarify your position does not imply anything about my position. (That’s a general point about how discussions work, FYI.)

There are many posters on this thread who are using the genetics of potential children as the basis for their objection. Hence me asking the question.

FWIW, since you have now asked me, I do not agree with incest between a brother and sister, or other close family members as per the current law, whether children are a result or not.

Having worked in a school, in Reading, with a unit for those with disabilities, the majority of the children in the unit were from close family / cousin marriages. I'd not wish some of the disabilities on any child and I have no idea what percentage of children this degree of close genetic marriage affects, but even one child is too many imo.

That's a bizarre take on this. Does that mean you have no problem with incest in general providing there are no offspring?
It's a means to an end. While incest in most cultures is socially taboo the reasons for that are because of the potential impact on progeny.

A law that says it's legal for X & Y to have sex but illegal to have children is totally impractical. You cannot meaningfully enforce the illegal children bit.

Then your problem (and I note you are not the person I quoted, but it is of course a free forum) is with first cousins having sex at all rather than only the potential genetic consequences for any offspring. Is that correct?

Is that why the farming community were parking their tractors in Whitehall this week?

Regarding incest - the genetic issue is if first cousins procreate - it is of course perfectly possible to have sex without it leading to babies, or for same sex first cousins to be in a relationship. Assume you would make all those illegal?

We already have laws against incest. It's still against the law to have sex with a sibling even if there is no child.

They have the option to have children without getting married
They wouldn't if it was incest.

It's not true that a man in a polygamous marriage can claim for more than one wife.
Unless they have changed the law it is true. I worked in DWP for many years. Second and subsequent wives were administratively treated as "dependant children" for benefit purposes. This may be out of date now but I certainly saw it frequently.

Yes embryo screening is an interesting development for families with an inherited condition in the family. I know a family who used similar due to a predisposition to muscular dystrophy.

Cousin marriage is only an issue if its repeated across generations and "in breeding" used to be common in more isolated communities of all types (hence "normal for Norfolk" type phrases). As per PP - not all marriages plan children and age can be a bigger factor than cousin status in terms of genetic risk.

To me it would make more sense if all couples had genetic screening and counselling before marriage to understand any risks if they choose to have children. This would also alert families where the common genetic condition arises as a shock. Education and genetic counselling could be more effective than bans which could be circumvented and which provide no actual education.

I think that multiple generations of cousin marriage causes a higher incidence of genetic disease. Take the Hapsburgs, the Romanovs, and all of the European royal families.

One incidence of first cousin marriage/ children in a family is not a problem, health-wise, and PP have pointed out statistics vs children born to women over 40. The children of one first cousin marriage are not automatically destined to suffer genetic or other diseases, as some posters on this thread seem to be saying.

My father's parents were cousins. My father and his brother are normal healthy individuals, and all of their children are likewise healthy.

I don't see how legislation could protect from multiple generation first cousin marriage without unnecessarily penalising one- off occurrences

I have have Huntington's Disease - you can have children by IVF.

My cousin has two children born by IVF who are not at risk.

I mean if this is really based in health concerns of children shouldn’t we address the higher risks of geriatric pregnancies?

I agree with the point you're making here.

We don't ban people with genetic illnesses from having children on the grounds that it's cruel to the child eg if you have the Huntington's gene, there is a 50% chance your child will inherit the gene, and if they do, a 100% chance they will develop Huntington's - a fatal and incurable disease. But we (rightly imo) do not ban people from having children for this reason.

Max penalty is 7 years imprisonment.

sexualviolence.idas.org.uk/about-sexual-violence-and-abuse/what-is-incest/

I have a friend who had an arranged marriage with her cousin, her parents were also cousins and his parents were cousins (although I think they were using the term to mean related more than anything else). She had 2 severaly disabled children and acknowledged that the reason was genetics, she had wanted to stop having children after the first one but was pressured to continue and her fears dismissed.She was actually blamed and was told there must be something wrong with her.
She eventually left her H and got divorced and married someone else, they had a child who was perfectly healthy.
Cousin or other relation marriage is a real issue in the area where I live but its difficult to talk about it, I believe that there are now some people within the communities where its an issue who are starting to try and raise awareness and I think that amongst the younger generations its not as accepted.

Very good point ... that is what they should do.

I was a carer at a day centre in the northwest, it's clearly a problem and needs sorting now. I lasted 6 months.

Not only is it cruel to the babies being born into these marriages, it's an unfair burden to the taxpayer.

One family had 3 late teen kids born with disabilities due to interbreeding and it's not right.