Time to outlaw cousin marriages?

[mrsruffallo]

Interesting article here
Would you support it being made illegal?

Yes,I agree it's a red herring probonbon. Two cousins just shouldn't be putting themselves in this situation in the first place imo. Even if their children are fine, it's just storing up problems for future generations if this is considered the norm in their community.

often though maggie it isn't a choice the cousins make - it is there family that choice who they marry.

Ivy for every child of first cousins you have seen with problems, there are probably countless ones who don't. Not everyone is doing it for cultural reasons and if it's a one off then there is no reason why future generations would be affected.

Are you suggesting electrofags that we keep letting women go through miscarraiges and still births rather than address the problem?

Vets even warn dog breeders against interbreeding to a point once there are defects appearing but humans shouldn't be warned against this - bonkers - why would you want more kids to suffer or women to lose kids rather than addressing the problem?

I knew this would descend into the right for life of the disabled debate when it really isn;t to do with that at all.

For the people who want legislation to stop cousins marrying, do you also want to extend that legislation if they don't marry but just live together?

The incest laws could be applied to cousins could they not?

What are the incest laws? Do they preclude people from living together/having sex or just from actually marrying?

I have no idea except that it's illegal and like everything people won't always stick to the law but it makes a bloody good framework for a decent society.

The incest laws cover sex, including homosexual, between a number of people. It doesn't just cover sex with your brothers and sisters (including half brothers and sisters) but also your ancestors up to your grandparents, your descendants down to your grandchildren, your aunts and uncles and your nieces and nephews.

For those that say that the law shouldn't intrude on consenting adults's sex lives, well it already does.

When I say law I mean English Law, different countries do have different laws over this.

So you can't have sex with your Uncle but with his child you can?

The incest laws include homosexual relationships? I'm amazed at that. It makes nonsense of any claim that the laws are to protect against defects doesn't it. How do they justify that? "because god doesn't like it"?

"So you can't have sex with your Uncle but with his child you can?"

Your Uncle's child would be your cousin, and that's what this discussion is about.

"The incest laws include homosexual relationships?'

Yes it does.

Incest is a deep cultural taboo and it's religion that reflects that rather than the other way around. I would be surprised if there was support to change the law to allow non-reproducing sexual relationships between consenting adults.

There is a brother and sister that are trying to change the law where they live, I believe that they're German.

Can't think why it would become taboo before people knew about genetics as without that bit of knowledge it seems a pointless rule. That's why I have assumed it was based on religion.

I could understand it if evolution caused us to be repulsed by relatives (hey I'm repulsed by many of mine ) to encourage outbreeding, but if that was it then it's not working or people wouldn't be having sexual relations with cousins (and closer relatives)

To the original point I wouldn't favour a law about it, but generally to educate people on all the things that might affect the child including age etc.

where a brother and sister have not grown up together and not seen each other - it is known that there is a great sexual atraction by nature - I think the siblings that want to change the law in german have been in this situation. recently there was twins that had married - they had no idea that they were related and I can't remember how they found out, but they did.

In the US it is illegal for first cousins to marry in around 30 state, not though for medial reasons.

Does anyone know how frequent marrying of first cousins is in the uK?

"where a brother and sister have not grown up together and not seen each other - it is known that there is a great sexual atraction by nature "

Yes, I can relate to that re the person who was supposedly my half-brother when I was in my teens. As soon as the maths were redone and it was established that he wasn't infact related, my interest in him evaporated.

"Can't think why it would become taboo before people knew about genetics as without that bit of knowledge it seems a pointless rule. That's why I have assumed it was based on religion."

People wouldn't have known why but they could see the effects that it had both on people and on animals. A fair few religious laws are actually codifications of things that just made sense but that they couldn't actually explain. People wanted explanations, religion then gave them.

There's a famous study somewhere about some farmers. They had a complex religious system that explained what they should plant for each year otherwise the God(s) would be angry. Modern farmers turned up and advised the locals to tinker with the system as they knew best and the current system was just based on religious "nonsense". The crops failed.

As it turned out the religious system actually described pretty much a perfect crop rotation system for that ecosystem. The ancestors of the people had probably hit upon it without knowing about the nutrient science behind it. People like explanations so it was because the God(s) wanted it that way, people kept doing it, the crops flourished.

Likewise ancient people saw the defects that inbreeding would cause, decided to reject it, couldn't explain why, so just said that the Gods didn't approve of such a union.

I think Badgerspaws is Stephen Fry in disguise.

That's meant as a compliment

I do wonder how the ancient Egyptians achieved so much given they were all married to their daughters and their dad was their brother.

"I do wonder how the ancient Egyptians achieved so much given they were all married to their daughters and their dad was their brother."

They didn't "all" do that but yes it was "common".

And we do have evidence of there being health problems and some physical deformities such as overbite or strange head shape.

There was a recent report which claimed to reveal that King Tut's parents were brother and sister and also show that he was not a healthy individual who was generally weak and apparently had to walk with a cane.

I knew I shouldn't have highlighted just that bit but I thought it would at least draw people's attention to the article.

The next bit was pretty telling as well:
"Perhaps, deleterious recessive genes for birth defects have been "bred out", because of continuous inbreeding over generations in this population" but I sort of assumed people would read the rest after seeing the highlighted bit. Perhaps I assumed wrong.

Morloth posted; I am also a great believer in evolution, I think these things will take care of themselves. I do willingly admit that this is quite cold though because evolution does not give a damn about individuals and so individual people and kids will suffer as people breed themselves out of existence.

Why not just stop people doing it?
Or is it okay to let children die/suffer so as not to offend different cultures and their traditions?

How will you stop people though? If it's an ingrained practice making marriage illegal won't stop people, they just won't do it legally.

I don't know missus-what do you think?