All those times we’ve all talked about the slippery slope of gay marriage leading to a lifting on the ban on polygamy and incest, the elites all harumphed and accused us of hyperbolic-itis.
But here it is. In today’s Scientific American, an editorial pushing for a lifting on the ban on incestuous marriage.
Here’s my new rule: All truly ridiculous and evil changes in the future will all first be raised by scientists.
But right now us non-scientist types should all be doing our “We told you so” dance around our living rooms. And then when we’re good and tired we should be very very sad that such things will likely come to pass in the very near future.
Inbreeding is the source of jokes about British royalty and is associated with increased birth defects among offspring. The practice is so reviled that 31 U.S. states ban marriage between first cousins or allow it only if the couple has undergone genetic counseling or at least one partner is sterile or no longer fertile because of age.
But those laws “seem ill-advised” and “should be repealed,” a geneticist and medical historian write in today’s PLoS Biology. “Neither the scientific nor social assumptions that informed them are any longer defensible.”
The US “cousin marriage” prohibition stretches back to the 1858, when Kansas barred such marriages; Texas was the most recent state to pass a ban, in 2005, write Diane Paul, a political scientist emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Hamish Spencer, head of zoology at the University of Otago in New Zealand. (European countries didn’t ban the practice because there, “the rich and noble were marrying” their cousins, Spencer tells us. “In America it was immigrants and the rural poor — a much easier target of legislation than your monarch.”)
First cousins share about an eighth, or 12.5 percent, of their genes, according to a 2002 study in the Journal of Genetic Counseling. Because of that overlap, there’s a 1.7 percent to 2.8 higher risk of intellectual disability and genetic disorders, including seizures and metabolic errors among children whose parents are first cousins than among the general population, says Robin Bennett, a certified genetic counselor and lead author of that research.
That elevated risk is “comparable to a 40-year-old woman having children and we consider that perfectly acceptable,” Spencer tells ScientificAmerican.com. “I can’t imagine a law saying they’re not allowed to have children.”
The father of evolution, Charles Darwin, married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, as did Albert Einstein when he walked down the aisle with cousin Elsa. But while marriage between first cousins occurs often in some parts of the world, and was not uncommon among immigrants and the rural poor during early American history, the practice is rare in the West, Spencer says.
“It’s not an issue because most people aren’t interested in their first cousin,” Spencer admits. “But it does affect some individuals and it doesn’t seem particularly fair.”
Kinda’s weird that scientific journals have all adopted the rhetoric of liberal social scientists. “Science” has become so corrupted that it has become cover for the liberal agenda. Just as environmentalists begat a “scientific consensus” on global warming, science will now serve as an unimpeachable cover for every other wild eyed agenda of secularists and liberals. And if you question them they’ll just accuse you of believing in God or something awful like that.
December 23, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Well, should marrying one’s first cousin ever become legal, it’ll at least eliminate the awkward argument of “whose family do we celebrate the holidays with this year?”
December 23, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Hey now, not all scientists are evil and crazy folks cleverly plotting to take over the world for the sake of secularism (and I’m not accusing these researchers of this). I’m a scientist in training and while I’m not perfect I don’t think of myself as especially nefarious.
December 23, 2008 at 8:27 pm
doorholder,
Neither do these scientists for that matter.
You’ll know that you’ve hit rock bottom when you become an expert witness for lawyers. 🙂
December 23, 2008 at 8:36 pm
You do realize that marriage between first cousins is perfectly natural and in accordance with canon law, right?
Matthew, there’s nothing alarming about repealing laws banning marriage between cousins. Such a thing is perfectly acceptable, and I myself once had a huge crush on a cousin. She’s very attractive and has an awesome personality.
Now, when they start talking about people having at least one parent in common getting married, which you know they will eventually, then you can sound the alarm bells.
But as for the present, more power to these scientists who are challenging unjust marriage laws, which were originally created with anti-Catholic intentions. After all, Catholic royalty marry their cousins, and if Catholics do it, it must be perverted, no?
That’s why these laws were made in the first place. Why else would the Know-nothings have backed them?
I say good riddance to the Puritans’ ridiculous, superstitious, anti-papist legislation, and I bid them a good day!
December 23, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Still Eo you need permission from a bishop to do so. The church does not promote marriage between cousins but tolerates it, largely because of situations with royalty in the past. Cousins marrying was better then war… which is why they intermarried so much, to prevent wars. (Cause after all reletives don’t fight… 😉 )
December 23, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Eo Nomine is wrong and then right. Canon law does forbid marriage between first cousins, (it actually forbids marriage down through the 4th degree of consanguinity, which would be a first cousin once removed; second cousins are fine) but since this is merely an ecclesiastical law, it can be easily dispensed for first cousins (The point to which it can be dispensed is the subject of some theological contention; some theologians admit of uncle/niece marriages while others do not, but all agree that one’s siblings and any persons related in the direct line are strictly forbidden).
So cousin marriage is actually very acceptable in the eyes of God and the Church once you have the appropriate red tape cut. Needless to say, the same is not true of homosexuality and same-sex unions. This is contrary to both natural and positive Divine law, from neither of which the Church has any power whatsoever to dispense.
December 23, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Right, what Christopher said.
December 24, 2008 at 12:53 am
… and so a son can then marry his mom (hey, as long as he’s of legal age and she is in menopause, why not?), and a dad can marry his daughter, and you can marry your dog (no worries about genetic progeny issues there!), and I can marry my oak tree…
*sigh*
December 24, 2008 at 3:03 am
“Well, should marrying one’s first cousin ever become legal…”
Hey, didn’t Jerry Lee Lewis already do that?
December 24, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Yeah, ok… . So, you just know that when birth defects and prenatal screening get factored in (by the dark forces, i.e., eugenicists), this is just one more bizarre way to create opportunities to profit (by aborting children with birth defects). You can bet that Planned Barrenhood is rubbing together their greedy blood soaked hands when people talk of creating more demand for their “services”.