Prime Minister refused to ban 1st cousin marriage

[happydappy2]

Even though there is clear evidence of serious birth defects to babies born from 1st cousin marriages. It is deeply worrying that the bride and groom will have the same Grand Parents.....this is unsafe for women in a patriarchal family system.

Who takes on the bulk of the work caring for the disabled child-the woman...

Why is the British gov't promoting incest?

https://x.com/Basil_TGMD/status/1974371215629578344

I hope this is not true...but does anyone know any more about it?

If males are considered superior to females, as they are in some cultures, and young women are given little choice about who they marry and are expected to marry a 1st cousin-the whole dynamic of the family tree very much falls beneath the control of the eldest male. Presumable the grooms father holds a lot of power....it's not really a great set up for women is it?

It is one of the forgotten ways that Christianity had this benifit in the West -
the Catholic Church's decision in the 6th Century to ban between first cousin's was one reason why our civillisation started to pull ahead of the rest.
For every 500 years a country was under the influence of the Western Catholic Church there was a 90% reduction in rates among cousins.

A 2025 study showing almost half (46%) of Pakistani mothers in certain Bradford areas were married to a first or second cousin.

The consequences of cousin marriage are-
Deformaties and terminal illness disorders -doubled risk
An average 10 IQ points lower
1/3 birth defected children of Pakistani marriages in the UK at the time only 4% of births.

There's another benifit to not having cousin marriage as well-
If you have to look outside your own family for a match then it makes you less tribal, more trusting of strangers:

...Globally, we show that countries with longer historical exposure to the medieval Western Church or less intensive kinship (e.g. lower rates of cousin marriage) are more individualistic and independent, less conforming and obedient, and more inclined toward trust and cooperation with strangers.(Science Magazine)

If you are only marrying within your own family your society tends to be more insular, more conformist, family elders have more say, a functioning government is less important to you than your 'tribe.'

We have been very lucky to be born into a society without this as a social norm, but with mass migration it has to be re-established that our values and norms are better for society, and cousin marriage should not be allowed to flourish here.

I don’t think banning first cousin marriage goes far enough. I’d like a law that also banned marrying girls to their (often much older) uncles tbh. I don’t care if that means the family home/business leaves the family.

I think the issue is that the only communities who do it will do it anyway but be not protected as will use sharia law marriages. I do think it’s a tricky one though.

Pretty sure that’s already illegal!

Yes

I’m not trying to shut anything down. These threads are always ridiculous and never get beyond people saying ‘Eww, incest is gross.’

The risk of a baby being born with a genetic anomaly being the same in a cousin marriage as in a baby born to a white British mother over the age of 35 (double the usual risk) is from the huge Born in Bradford study of 2013. It’s available online to read.

Worth saying also that this is only an issue if both cousins carry the same defective gene. This can be screened for in advance via genetic counselling.

The incidence of birth defects and infant mortality is pretty high.

Children born of cousin marriages face an increased risk of genetic disorders and childhood mortality[3][4] and are thus prohibited in some countries.[5][6] One study estimated infant mortality at 12.7 percent for married double first cousins, 7.9 percent for first cousins, 9.2 percent for first cousins once removed/double second cousins, 6.9 percent for second cousins, and 5.1 percent among non-consanguineous progeny. Among double first cousin progeny, 41.2 percent of pre-reproductive deaths were associated with the expression of detrimental recessive genes, with equivalent values of 26.0, 14.9, and 8.1 percent for first cousins, first cousins once removed/double second cousins, and second cousins respectively.

From https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Cousin_Marriage_in_Islamic_Law

It would be illegal. Sharia does not trump British law.

As we see by the reaction of many, first cousin marriage is socially unacceptable. This is clearly an area where practises of Islam are incompatible with British values.

Again - 1st cousin marriage is, and has been, accepted in the UK.

Posters do themselves no favours, when trying to speak about what is a serious problem, by muddying the waters this way.

I can only find reports that the increased risk of infant mortality to mothers 35-39 is 0.89 so can you link to something that backs your claim please.

An increased risk of 0.89 is clearly not as high as 12% as reported for repeated first cousin marriages. Your claim is not relevant as it is only making the (unverified) claim for one off first cousin marriages which is not what is happening here.

I don’t view it as ‘ridiculous’ to discuss a perilous public health issue that is only going to get worse as the Muslim population increases. You accuse people of being ‘inflammatory’ to mention incest but many people would view marrying your first cousin as incest - jokes are made about it in rural communities and ‘red neck’ states in America. It’s only technically not incest because it’s not illegal - hence the attempt to bring the law in.

It can be changed though if the electorate think it shouldn’t be accepted?

Are you actually serious? Who do you hang out with that finds it socially acceptable?

Queen Victoria married her first cousin, Albert. It's a long standing British value - in the 19th century about 1 in 30 marriages were of first cousins. Henry VIII changed the law away from Catholicism.

True - but it would also need Parliament to think it shouldn't be accepted as we live in a representative democracy, not a direct democracy (referendum) For example, the electrorate think we should have the death penalty, Parliament doesn't

The lancet published an article about it quite a while back. There is a lot of research available on both paternal age and maternal age. There is also a lot of research about the risks of IVF. I think information rather than banning is the way forward.

Yes we should ban inbreeding, unless we want to regress back to a primitive tribal state.

There is a huge difference between historical practices and the law. First cousin marriages are not a central feature of British culture. The practice has dwindled to near zero. There has been no necessity to legislate.
If cousin marriages were happening at the level of immigrant communities I dare say we'd have legislated before now.
It is done to girls not by them. These are not romantic marriages but part of a patriarchical clan system which is detrimental to a western multi cultural democratic society.

I never knew this. But was it actually ever illegal in Common Law? The Church going with the science in the 6th century , counterintuitive.

Back to Starmer. As I recall ID cards were acceptable to a majority, or at least a plurality , of British people recently. Then Starmer announced their introduction. Suddenly they are a monstrous assault on civil liberties and he is a raving Marxist working for the secret world government etc. Now opinion polls seem to be showing opposition to them. Personally I used to be very opposed , now I'm more agnostic. Since my movements can be tracked on this phone.

The point is Starmer is obviously the Jonah of politics and anything he says or does is poison to the media and subsequently to the voters. You must get him to voice support for anything you wish to abolish. Get Morgan McSweeny to back first cousin marriages. In 6 months Steer Calmer will be forced into a U turn . Job done.

The Prime Minister is about as much use as a chocolate teapot. Too scared of offending people to stick his head up above the parapet. I will give it until the end of the year before he is replaced.

But which replacement will be acceptable to the Media? Elections are obviously a bit passé or the new PM could call one to get a mandate for his or her policies.

Exactly, and this is why education won’t work. It’s inherent in certain cultures so if we don’t want it here with all its attendant problems, it needs to be banned.

There you go again with the inflammatory language. It’s hardly a ‘perilous public health issue’. Cousin marriage is declining in Bradford, as follow-up studies are showing, and the genetic risks can be mitigated by genetic counselling and tests to check whether potential cousin spouses carry the same faulty gene.

The doubled risk of genetic anomalies being the same as for a white British woman having a baby over the age of 34 (I was wrong, it’s 34, not 35) is here, but you would need to read the full study to get more detail.

https://borninbradford.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/HG2954-BIHR-BiB-Evidence-Briefing-Genes-and-Health-4.pdf

Incest is a legal category, specific to certain legal jurisdictions, yes. Cousin marriage is legal (ie it does not constitute incest) in far more of the world than it is illegal.

It's also part of why those cultures get stuck at the organisational level of a primitive tribal system.

I hate to point it out to you but that was in 1840 - in the days where they had only just realised that public sanitation needed to be a thing and believed in illnesses cause by ‘miasma’ - foul smelling air.

In more recent times, as it was realised that repeated cousiin marriage caused birth defects as infamously experienced by the House of Hapsburg, we as a society deemed cousin marriage as unacceptable.

For PPs that say cousin marriage is happening in the UK, therefore it’s socially acceptable, please remember that lots of things are socially unacceptable but that doesn’t stop them happening.