1st cousin marriage

[Wiseplumnet]

AIBU to ask your opinion on 1st cousin marriage?.I have read that the government is looking to ban it. I know it is more prevelent ( but declining) in the UK among people of Asian origin. I am not coming from a judgemental or racist angle. I am just interested to know how mum'snetters of all ethnicities feel about marriage between 1st cousin's. I know it used to be more common in the west at one time, apart from keeping money/property in families, people travelled less widely, so there was less choice of marriage partners.I worked with a girl ( White British) who was in a secret relationship with her 1st cousin and they are very reluctant to tell their family, so there seems to be a cultural taboo in 1st cousins being romantically involved.Genetic factors resulting in disabilities (statistically twice as many as in unrelated parents) is sometimes given as a reason for banning cousin marriage, however we have genetic screening now, and disabilities aren't always serious.As so many babies died in infancy before we had vaccines, better health care etc , it was probably difficult to differentiate whether the close relationship between parents was the cause of any disabilities their children . Speaking for myself,I can't imagine wanting to marry any of the cousins I was brought up with as they seem more like brothers to me, but I could understand why someone may be attracted to a 1st cousin who they first met as adults. Or does it give you the instant 'Yuk' ? Also is banning 1st cousin marriage the same as banning 1st cousin sexual relationships and children, or would that become illegal? Maybe there's no need for a legal ban as the tradition will just die out over time

Yes, that study was linked to the documentary I posted.

Per my other posts, you can never “stop” anything taking place entirely, but by outlawing it you significantly decrease its incidence. In the case of marriage we can stop cousins marrying entirely: we simply prohibit it and do proper checks when people apply for a marriage licence, as we do already to ensure they are not siblings. And we require the same evidence to prove that their marriage is valid under UK law and not a “cousin marriage” to recognise in the UK any marriages that took place in other countries, including when it comes to visa applications/ family reunification (an ironic term, in such cases, given how often this is the motive for such “marriages”, often in exchange for money).

And when we finally prioritise science over people’s medieval “cultural practices” and recategorise this as incest, with the prospect of a 7 year prison term for those convicted, this will obviously significantly reduce the number of people prepare to engage in this activity, which more often than not is not something the women involved would have chosen freely and have been coerced into doing, and obviously has completely unnecessarily appalling outcomes for a significant proportion of their children as well as them.

I.e. Making these legal changes will have a very beneficial impact on society, reduce human suffering (particularly of women and children) significantly over time, reduce the levels of completely unnecessary and avoidable severe disability and painful/ life-limiting medical conditions in our population, reduce abuse of women, increase average IQ, reduce the number of birth defects per capita, encourage more integration between communities perhaps (or at least within them, reducing the tribalism in some backwards isolationist communities in the UK), make it clear that science and evidence-based policy is the UK priority not pandering to medieval traditions which have been proved to be harmful, reduce abuse of our immigration system and using women as a tool to do this often by effectively “selling” them to extended family from which they then cannot possibly escape because who can they go to for help when their parents are the siblings of their abusive “husband”’s parents and ordered the marriage in the first place?

And the drawbacks to making cousin marriage illegal and adding sex with a cousin to the legal definition of incest would be….

very little at all, especially over the longer term.

It’s literally a no-brainer for anybody who has the faintest grasp either of the genetic/ statistical/ medical facts, or of the abhorrent motivations of those who continue to enforce this “tradition” on women (and men, but mostly women) the majority of whom would not choose this freely without family coercion. Why would anybody? Basics genetics are taught in compulsory education as part of the national curriculum to the necessary extent for it to be blatantly obvious that marrying your cousin is not just quite a repellent idea but also highly likely to cause immense genetic problems for your descendents.

Gives me the ick, but maybe that’s just my cousins 😂

I will admit to not having read the whole thread.

So IMHO the major issue is I suggest one of consent and that many people having 'Cousin Marriages' are in fact in arranged marriages.

So either...............

Ban sexual relationships between first cousins or
Ban marriages between First Cousins.
There is then the issue of 'Muslim Religious' marriages which are not legally recognised, should a specific prohibition exist?

Going against the grain, but I have no problem with it being legal. I have known two people who married their cousins, neither of them Asian by the way. In both cases, they did not know their cousins as children and were not raised alongside them. In one of the cases the couple married around the age of 60, so children not an issue.

I just asked chatGPT as I was shocked by that too. It said:

“It isn’t 27% of all marriages in Bradford. The figure comes from the Born in Bradford study and refers specifically to Pakistani-heritage women who had babies in the 2016–19 cohort: 27% were first cousins with the father of their baby.

Interestingly, that is actually a substantial decline. In the earlier 2007–10 cohort, the equivalent figure was about 39%.

The distinction is important because quoting it as “27% of marriages in Bradford are between first cousins” makes it sound like a citywide statistic, which it isn’t.”

to be honest though even with the qualification I’m surprised. A good sign it is dropping I suppose

Should be banned, I think. It did happen here, but it was a rarity- in other cultures, cousins have intermarried so often within the same family that it's really causing genetic problems.
(Charles Darwin married his 1st cousin. You'd think he'd have had more sense, given his knowledge.)

It should be banned. In fact, it should have been banned years ago.

Socially, I think its probably ok as I, for example, barely know my cousins and marrying one would not be different to marrying a friend. But, genetically, its insect, full stop. So yes, should be banned.

Yet, there are MPs who speak out against a ban. Why?

Yes and we already do btw.
Its already illegal in the UK to have sex with or marry your parent, sibling, half sibling, your parents siblings and/or half siblings. They are classed as incestuous relationships and cousins should be included under that legal definition imho

What do you mean?

Adult consenting incest relationships are heavily under reported, to the extent many police force areas report zero or one of two cases per year.

Will cousin relationships be targeted more seriously and why?

What?

I don’t care what colour the people’s skin is.

Read my posts.

What a depressing and pathetic response to people discussing a practice that is scientifically evidenced to be harmful regardless of who is doing it. Public policy should be based on science and evidence not culture/ race/ religion etc, that’s my entire point.

Are you one of these posters that tries to pretend that criticism of any behaviour/ practice is “racist” if certain groups in society happen to do it more than others? So all of the geneticists and their data should all be silenced because their data is racist?

Actually the communities which have the highest prevalence of these awful practices would be those that benefit the most from them being banned. And as other posters have pointed out, some of them are white, like traveller communities. So you can cease your silly attempts to try to turn this into some attempt to pretend science is racist if it happens to demonstrate that higher concentrations of people within certain ethnic groups (both specific white and specific other ethnic groups) are doing something unnecessary and damaging to their own children, and our society in general because of the cost (both human and financial).

How pathetic to try to imply it’s somehow “racist” to discuss it. Though I’m sure you’ll deny you did so, as I’ve seen your baiting of people with disingenuous comments on other threads (mysteriously anything like this or to do with immigration, but nowhere else) and then backtracking to pretend you didn’t say what you were clearly trying to imply without saying it outright. It’s so transparent so don’t bother.

And can you please explain your invented hyperbole about aborting babies? I’ve not seen a single person on the thread suggest anything of the kind. What has been said is that the number of poor children born with these completely avoidable defects will reduce vastly when “marrying” cousins is made illegal and having sex with a cousin is recategorised as incest and subject to the appropriate criminal penalties for this, as having sex with other similarly close relative is (aunts and uncles, for example). The whole point is to protect children from the needless harm that these irresponsible people are inflicting on them by procreating with their cousins. It can never be stopped entirely, like any crime, but defining it as a crime now that genetic evidence demonstrates unequivocally that there are very good reasons to define it as such will significantly decrease the rate of occurrence.

When people cause deliberate and completely avoidable harm to children which vastly exceeds the normal level of risk, and the state can do this very simply without this significantly restricting individual rights (e.g. Nobody is banned from marrying/ having children at all, just that they have to choose one of the 3bn adults of the opposite sex to whom they are not closely related to do it with), the state absolutely should step in to prevent them causing that harm to their own children and to society. The balance of rights in this case is very firmly on the side of banning this practice which has been proved beyond doubt to cause harm.

Can you provide a single reason why we shouldn’t ban “cousin marriage” going forward and categorise sex with your cousin within the crime of incest? What benefits does allowing this to continue offer to society which outweigh the harm it causes?

I mean, there must be some benefits to having six fingers.

😆

Yes to banning it

Perhaps the potential healthcare savings could pay for the legislation 🙄

To make this work, the incest laws need to be extended to include first cousins. There needs to be an amnesty for anyone who has shagged/been shagged by their cousins in the past.

Has a quick google - The BMJ study “Birth outcomes in Bradford: a cohort study” (2013) looked at 13,776 Bradford pregnancies and found first‑cousin marriages had a 6.1% congenital anomaly rate, with 98% of those cases in families of Pakistani origin.

Stats line up.

I’ve not suggested that anyone wants to abort the babies, I’m asking what is the endgame in the event you have this law? Abort the baby, remove it from the parents or let it stay with the parents to raise it?

My view is that you might be taking a sledgehammer to an issue that is falling steeply through education campaigns about the risks.

And you might be causing many couples not to marry officially in a UK civil ceremony which would defeat the purpose of the law.

Cousin marriage was banned in the dark ages and it was the religious beliefs of the church that enforced the ban

Doesn't look like they were far wrong

It is great that it’s dropping. However, it’s not dropping anywhere near quickly enough for the hundreds of babies being born there with extremely painful and avoidable genetic conditions that they wouldn’t have if their parents weren’t closely related, where they live severely limited lives and often die as children.

We can make the rate at which this decreases far faster and the number of children affected far lower by simply making marriage between cousins illegal and applying the same check to it that we do to ensure siblings, or nephews/ uncles/ aunts/ neices etc don’t marry. Not hard. And changing the incest laws to include this.

Why subject more children to harm and sit here hoping that the rate continues to drop slowly on its own when we can ensure that it decreases much faster, with proper penalties for those coercing people into this (which various members of the community there reported as part of the study) and needlessly inflict this suffering on yet more children?

I genuinely can’t see what the rational argument is to allow it to continue and not take action to amend our laws to ensure that the instances of it going forward are a fraction of what they are now.

Does anybody have a single rational reason to put forward why we shouldn’t make it illegal immediately?

@nomas

You could easily have an offence of encouraging sexual
relations between cousins, which would be proven by having arranged an Islamic marriage (ie not a civil marriage) and punish the arrangers rather than the couple themselves

Consanguineous couples can also have IVF & NHS screening, but by that time they will have had at least one child affected by an avoidable genetic condition. Either severely affected or sadly didn’t survive.