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?

By marrying within small, tightknit groups, they ensure everything is kept within the baradari, or brotherhood — property, secrets, loyalty — binding them closer together while sequestering them from wider society.

So same as the Royal houses of Europe then.

The only difference is quite early in they twigged this wasn't a good idea and so illegitimacy became quite a complex arrangement. As our own conquering Norman shows.

That BBC article about Ruba and Saqib shows why cousin marriage should be banned IMO. At least the younger cousins seem to be saying no, but the weight of the law behind them could help. And might have helped Ruba stand up to her parents years ago. Why can’t we change the law and have a targeted education programme?

Genetic mutation is also common in the orthodox Jewish community so it might help their community too.

I hate how prevalent this is in the uk. I hate how we ignore the abuse of these poor women. I hate how anyone who expresses concern is admonished.

We have to be brave and tackle it.

First cousin marriage is legal in the UK and has been for centuries - though you used to need a dispensation (this cost you) and constant marriage of cousins through generations was frowned on in the Middle Ages (and you needed an expensive dispensation so only aristocrats and the RF did it). You will remember that Fanny Price marries her first cousin, Edmund, in Mansfield Park, of course - and this was seen as very acceptable.
The problem comes when generations of first cousins marry because if this is constant then 'first cousins' are genetically virtually siblings (hate this word - reeks of trans 'we don't know their gender'ism). And banning first cousin marriages won't stop them in the communities that do it - they will just carry out the marriages outside UK dispensation or use religious marriages over which the state (in this case) has no control because the marriages have no legal standing in the UK - which is another danger to women who can find themselves dumped, with little recourse to legal redress.
One look at the Hapsburg family tree shows why people should not keep marrying cousins.
It can be made illegal. It won't stop it. And why should the UK change its laws to deal with a minority that won't learn genetics?
Other communities outright ban first cousin marriages, treating a first cousin as being the same as a brother or sister. Perhaps education might help?
One thing to do is to recognise priests of other religions as competent to carry out legal weddings (as we do Jews and Catholics (RC because they are not the CofE, not because they are not Christians btw), for example). Then religious marriages of all kinds would have to be legally registered in the UK - so no multiple 'religious' marriages as they would have to conform to the UK law of marriage which is serial monogamy.
Then you can outlaw first cousin marriage. Though it would mean that marriages of UK citizens abroad would have to be made illegal unless also registered in the UK (a problem for everyone, but doable).
There is not a simple solution (indeed - sorry for slight derail - the whole idea of just banning first cousin marriages reminds me of the LibDems desperation to get absolute primogeniture on the statute book before the Cambridge's first child was born - so keen were they that they forgot that is is now possible to choose the sex of a child, and to know the sex well before 24 weeks - which means a clause should have been added that the child must be naturally conceived and that if a princess had an abortion/miscarriage for any cause the sex of the child must be published to parliament - as it stands there is now even less chance of a regnant queen of the UK than with male preference primogeniture) and so a convulated way round must be found.

I have a relative who works at the labs at Birmingham Women's Hospital. They say it has become an increasing problem over the last few years increasing birth defects and late losses.

The UK does not have to automatically recognise marriages from other countries and obviously doesn’t if they breach our laws, just like with child “marriages”.

The fact that people might try to break a law is not a reason not to implement the law, it is a reason to ensure there is robust enforcement.

It is widespread in some communities. In the 80s when I was a student i worked on playschemes for disabled children in Bradford. One of the families whose children used the scheme had nine children, seven of whom had disabilities. The mother was pregnant with her tenth child. The parents were first cousins, as were their parents. I do believe it should be banned.

I agree it should be made illegal.

But for everyone saying that the marriage of first cousins Queen Victoria and Prince Albert was almost two hundred years ago, it is still relevent.

Queen Victoria's son, King Edward VII married his third cousin Alexandra. Third cousin is quite distant, but not a good idea when Edward was the product of a first cousin marriage

Their son, George V, married his second cousin Mary of Teck. Three consecutive generations of cousin marriage to some degree.

Fortunately their son, George VI married a non-relative, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

But their daughter, Queen Elizabeth married Prince Philip, who was her third cousin by one route (both descended from the first cousin marriage of Victoria and Albert) and also her second cousin once removed as they were both descended from Queen Alexandra's father.

I don't know what the combination of being both third cousins and second cousins once removed is, but I think genetically Elizabeth and Philip were close to being the equivalent of first cousins.

That's much closer to the present day than the 1840 marriage of Victoria and Albert!

That's why we need to stop more immigration so that we can consolidate the improvements that were being made.

Educating the women seems to have more of an effect? I suspect (no evidence just gut) that women from these communities may be more receptive to modernising somewhat since the brunt of negative traditions falls on them. If they have a severely disabled child, they'll be the one doing the caring.

I had a Google and it's honestly crazy how many famous examples of European cousin marriage there have been fairly recently.

The greatest irony is that Darwin of all people married his first cousin, so did Einstein!

Marriage is not just about producing children. Lots of couples get married with no intention to have children. Lots of couples have children without getting married. Lots of young women from families with particularly patriarchal traditions are pressured into marriages in all sorts of unhealthy anf inappropriate ways which are no less problematic if the groom isn't a first cousin. There is no argument for banning first-cousin marriage that isn't very obviously shown to be banning the wrong thing

If your concern is about children being produced from two parents with the same grandparents then marriage isn't the problem, conceiving a child is the problem, so you need more public education about why it's a bad idea. Couples who are cousins need to know about it whether or not they are married. Couples not having any expectations for child rearing don't need to care. Vulnerable young women from patriarchal families need more protection from being pressured into any marriage where the groom has been chosen for the benefit of him, or the wider family, or anyone other than her own best interests

It’s 16 in Scotland to get married.

Lots of laws get passed due to problems.

The problem of increased risk of birth defects that justifies banning 1st cousin marriage would also justify sterilising or chemically inducing menopause in all women aged 36+

in fact, in many of these cultures posters are going off on p- these cultures actually adopted 1st cousin marriage (plus other views like virulent homophobia) from the British Empire invading them and imposing on them good old British values.

Yep. And you can have kids with them with or without marriage. A marriage ban is not going to stop 1st cousins from having babies together.

Others who did :Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Milhaud, Grieg, Wernher von Braun, David Lean, Mario Vargas Llosa, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Friedrich Hayek, HG Wells, Abraham Maslow, Christopher Robin Milne.

It feels especially weird that people like Einstein, Hayek & Maslow married cousins- maybe they did it when young but weren't they smart enough to be aware of the risks? Plus it's just 🤢, to me at least...

Also odd that HG Wells did since he was concerned with eugenics...☹️ . He married his cousin fairly on though, probs before he got into that...

Greta Scacchi is one of the most recent. Fortunately not many of those! She married an Italian first cousin (her father's Italian though she was raised here) & I think I've read before the norms in Italy are less strict on this, though I could be wrong...

It's disturbing how many people even fairly recently didn't seem to see anything wrong with it. The majority of these seem to have known their cousins from a young age, too..

All the more reason we must NOT let it take root here again. It shouldn't be happening at all, let alone through the generations.

That's not true that first cousin marriage was imposed by British. There are examples in the Bible, Torah & Quran (which overlap), plus Muhammad married his first cousin. They were already doing it.

British influence did make Japan & China less tolerant of homosexuality than before & brought in anti-sodomy laws in India & many others.

But the Quran also has the story of Lot, the British didn't bring that.

The Ottoman & Mughal empires weren't super fazed by homosexuality. It's the 18th century rise of fundamentalist Salafism & Wahhabism that brought more virulent homophobia & many other terrible problems.

What misinformation?

Base rate is 3%
If you’re 35+ risk is 6%
If it’s a 1st cousin marriage risk is 6%
If you are both 35+ and 1st cousins the risk is 12%

if you’re all up in arms about banning 1st cousin marriage because it doubles risk, but not up in arms about banning geriatric pregnancies then you have bias and are not looking at it objectively.

Great post. I'd point out that when Fanny gets adopted the Bertrams are worried that she may fall in love with a cousin. But they don't think marrying first cousins is wrong, it's more that they think it would be icky since they're being raised 'always together, like brothers and sisters.' However, at the end when she marries him there's no issue.

Irl, Jane's brother Henry married their first cousin Eliza, who had contemplated also marrying Jane's other brother James. There wasn't any disapproval of this, so I don't think Jane Austen herself would have disapproved of Fanny & Edmund marrying, but to us now it seems disquieting.

You're missing the point. The issue is a huge amount of the Pakistani community doing it again & again which makes the risk huge. If they weren't doing this, it wouldn't be worth a ban.

I personally think we should nan it on the grounds of morality even if we didn't have the genetic problem, but obvs not everyone agrees.

Now? Last century, yes. But now?

Well if true, they can go to jail too, it's disgusting.

Yes, Queen Victoria married her first cousin Albert just under 200 years ago, and many others did too — Charles Darwin married his first cousin Emma Wedgwood, and even Jane Austen’s family had cousin unions. But just because something was common 200 or so years ago doesn’t mean it was right or acceptable: child labour, slavery, and lack of women’s rights were also widely accepted then, and we rightly reject them today.

Historical precedent is not a moral argument.
By the time Queen Elizabeth II married Prince Philip in 1947, cousin marriages were already unusual, even among royals. They were related as third cousins and second cousins once removed, and the union was not typical of broader British society — showing that these marriages were becoming increasingly rare and socially exceptional.

I didn’t mean imposed as in forced to marry only 1st cousins, but as in imperial -shown as the example of civilised, superior way of life that the “natives” should emulate and imposed by the laws we put in place over their country/our colony.

The Quran is to the Bible what the Bible is to the Torah.

So the West brought it to the Middle East and East.

I disagree with you there, as many of these former colonies kept the British laws on the books when they got their Independence from the British Empire.

So their laws from British colonial rule included (as examples):
no ban on 1st cousin marriage, and a ban on homosexuality

Our empire determined what was right and what was wrong which we put into laws while we ruled them. By the time they became independent, our laws had become their social norms.

Pakistan was part of the British Empire.

I've read that Haredi & other Ultra-Orthodox Jews who marry in-community do tests like this. Not bc they regularly marry first cousins (I think) but bc the gene pool is already small ( non-Ultra Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews are known in the medical community for risk of certain disorders). .

I don't know if the genetic testing works better for this than it would for first cousin marriage, need to research.

I pointed out that Victoria and Albert were married in 1840 because that was given as the example of first cousin marriage in the Royal Family.

None of the above is repeated first cousin marriage though but thanks for raising it. The Royal family are often criticised for their marriages/family structure, underlining the fact that it is generally viewed as socially unacceptable. We have also learnt important lessons from the House of Hapsburg and they are often held up as a warning not to have cousin marriage.

I don't know what the combination of being both third cousins and second cousins once removed is, but I think genetically Elizabeth and Philip were close to being the equivalent of first cousins. - I don’t think it works like that. If you look at family trees you will see that relationship widening the gene pool, not narrowing it.
I’m glad you agree re the law though.