A recent New York Times map lays out the areas in the US where it’s okay to marry your cousin. Can it be as big of a taboo as it seems at first blush when it’s legal in 25 states?
While gay marriage is permitted in 10 % of U.S states, marriage between cousins is permitted in 50%.
Photo and feature photo: masochismtango
H.G. Wells, Albert Einstein and Darwin all married a cousin. While gay marriage is still illegal in most of the nation, marrying your aunt or uncle’s kid is okay in half the states in the Union including four of the five most populated.
While many right wingers assert that the main reason to prevent gay marriage is to protect children, the risk of genetic mutation and birth defects resulting from shared DNA doubles in marriages between cousins (from 3% – 6%). There is no risk of birth defects to children from gay unions.
While many would cite confusion about the roles of relatives as a secondary harmful factor to children of gay unions, it may be even more confusing when it becomes necessary to explain how Andy is little Craig’s uncle and his grandpa or that Mommy and Daddy are both aunt and uncle and mommy and daddy.
For your information, marriage between cousins is permitted in Tennessee, Virginia, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Alaska, Hawaii and Washington D.C., and with conditions (such as state mandated genetic counseling or that one or both of the parties be beyond breeding age) in Utah, Arizona, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina, Maine.
Gay marriage is currently permitted in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, and Vermont, and will begin in New Hampshire on January 1, 2010.
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Want to read more about gay marriage? Check out MatadorTrips’ Best American Spots for a Same Sex Wedding.
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10 Comments... join the discussion!
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It’s weird but marriage between cousins is considered okay in many parts of the world. I’ve never understood it.
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I must’ve missed the point.
Is it that some abberant behavior should be allowed because other abberant behavior is allowed, or that some abberant behavior should be denied because other abberant behavior is denied?
I can’t tell from the article.
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I’m sure you are the sort who being told what to think would become enraged, so you should consider yourself lucky that that’s not my style.
Also, I believe the condemnation here is all yours, so you can keep it.
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Thanks for sharing these statistics Kate.
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Jeez, and I thought the state map of gay marriage vs cousin marriage was just a joke… that’s brilliant! A double standard if I ever saw one.
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“While many right wingers assert that the main reason to prevent gay marriage is to protect children, the risk of genetic mutation and birth defects resulting from shared DNA doubles in marriages between cousins (from 3% – 6%). There is no risk of birth defects to children from gay unions.”
This is a pretty poor comparison. It’s apples and oranges. Obviously gay marriage results in no defects since it can result in no natural children. However I’m sure that right wingers (despite their perceived stupidity in the media at times) don’t have this in mind when they talk about “protecting” children by preventing of gay marriage. They must obviously mean protecting children who might be adopted by said gay couple from being exposed to people of the same sex showing affection for each other and possibly experimenting along the same lines (since naturally, for many right wingers this kind of activity is not natural and hence not something they want children to be emulating). Cousin marriages and marriages between non-cousins (or rather non-first cousins since no matter what you believe whether it is creation or evolution we all MUST be cousins to some degree) can also result in zero birth defects if the couples in those kinds of marriages acquire kids the same way gay couples would: by adoption. The kids may still have birth defects, but at least they won’t be birth defects passed on from the “parents”.
“….explain how Andy is little Craig’s uncle and his grandpa or that Mommy and Daddy are both aunt and uncle and mommy and daddy.”
Well this kind of weakens the aim of the article if it was intended to show why marriage between cousins is supposedly bad.
Andy cannot be Craig’s uncle and grandpa unless what happened was an uncle (Andy’s brother) marrying a niece (Craig’s mother and Andy’s daughter) or an aunt marrying a nephew. It doesn’t even take 1 minute to work out the relationships on a scrap of paper.
The second example is even worse. Mommy and Daddy can’t be aunt and uncle to the kids unless mommy and daddy are brother and sister. This is something that even a child should be able to figure out.
The correct examples would be that Mommy and Daddy are simply also cousins to the children (but that’s hardly anything to get worked up about that since geneticists believe everyone is at most a fiftieth cousin to everyone else on the planet – or less if you take the Bible literally with Adam and Eve and then Noah and his 3 surviving sons). Also in the case of Andy and Craig, if Andy was Craig’s uncle, he would be at most uncle and a cousin (has to be brother to one of the parents and cousin to the other).
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Oh, thank god there are people like you out there to set me straight, Jon. Here I thought I was making humorous points and that was the reason for the popularity of this post. But you’ve shown me the light. It’s much better to monotonously belabor my points so everyone stops reading before the end of the article. Thanks for the lesson. I’ll be sure to keep it in mind.
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That’s odd, nothing about your article or even the nature of this site indicates that it was meant to be humorous as opposed to being genuine mistakes or a simple lack of application on your part.
Certainly none of the comments appear to indicate that anyone but you got the humour in your post.
However I can detect the sarcasm in your reply to me, which I guess is to be expected. Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit after all.
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Actually, I found the article very witty.
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