Cousin couple

A cousin couple is a pair of cousins who are involved in a romantic or sexual relationship. In some jurisdictions and cultures, such marriages are legal, accepted, or even actively encouraged, while in others cousin-cousin relationships are regarded as incest and marriages are prohibited. Still other cultures may tolerate marriages between first cousins, but at the same time these unions are not encouraged. Any random two people have a common ancestor and are cousins to some degree, but most people don't know their common ancestor. Usually, unless otherwise qualified, "cousin" means first cousin, someone with whom one shares one pair of grandparents.

History

In earlier times, and still today in some cultures, it was relatively common for cousins to get married. Since people tended not to move far from their place of birth, the closest eligible spouse was often a cousin. As a result, it has been estimated that up to 80% of all marriages in history have been between second cousins or closer. Cousin marriage has often been chosen as a way of keeping cultural values intact through several generations, as well as ensuring the compatibility of spouses residing in an alien environment. Finally, marrying a cousin is also a way of keeping land and property in the family. Traditionally, such arranged marriages have been facilitated by the extended family.^[1]

In Islam

In Muslim communities, marriages between cousins are in general allowed and in many cases preferred, with the most common type often being father's brother's daughter.^[2]

The Qur'an states that marriages between first cousins are allowed. In surat an-Nisa' (4:22-24), Allah mentioned the women who are forbidden for marriage: to quote the Qu'ran, "… Lawful to you are all beyond those mentioned, so that you may seek them with your wealth in honest wedlock…" In surat al-Ahzab (33:50), Allah mentioned to the Prophet that he may marry the daughters of his uncles and aunts from the father's side or the mother's side. It is the consensus of the jurists that this permission was not only for the Prophet, but it is also a permission for other believers. Muslims have practiced marriages between first cousins in all countries since the time of the Prophet.

Many of the love stories included in Arabian Nights depict love between first cousins.

In Judaism and Christianity

Cousin couples existed in the Old Testament. Two of the most famous are prominent in Genesis. Isaac was married to Rebekah, his first cousin once removed (Genesis 24:12-15). Also, Rachel and Leah were both cousins of Jacob. Jacob loved Rachel upon seeing her and worked seven years for her father Laban in return for permission to marry (Genesis 28-29). According to many English Bible translations, a third example is the five daughters of Zelophehad, who married the "sons of their father's brothers" in the later period of Moses, although other translations merely say "relatives." (Compare the Catholic RSV-CE and NAB in Numbers 36:10-12.) The Bible does not define cousin marriages as right or wrong, although it does firmly prohibit sex and marriage between other closer relatives, as incest (Leviticus 18:6-18).

In Catholicism, before 1983, marriages between second cousins were prohibited except through a dispensation from a bishop or other ordinary. Rudy Giuliani received an annulment of his first marriage to Regina Peruggi after determining that his wife was his second cousin once removed. Today, all marriages more distant than first-cousin marriages are allowed,^[3] and first-cousin marriages can be contracted with a dispensation.^[4]

The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia refers to a theory by the Anglican bishop of Bath and Wells speculating that Mary and Joseph, the mother of Jesus and her husband, were first cousins.^[5]

In Hinduism

Hindu attitudes on cousin marriage vary sharply by region. In Northern India a marriage alliance between cousins is mostly looked down upon and may well be rigidly proscribed and seen as incest, as for example is the case in the state of Rajasthan. In fact it may even be undesirable to marry within one's village or for two siblings to marry partners from the same village.^[6]

However, in Southern India, it is common for cross cousins to marry, with matrilateral cross-cousin (mother's brother's daughter) marriages being especially favored, and this may be arranged deliberately by parents. Matrilateral cross-cousin marriage results in especially strong ties between a nephew and his maternal uncle, who is then also his father-in-law.^[7]

Central India for the most part follows the Northern model, though not entirely.^[8]

In the Mahabharata, one of the two great Hindu Epics, Arjuna marries his first and cross cousin Subhadra, the sister of Krishna. Their son is the tragic hero Abhimanyu.

History and current status in the United States

Laws regarding first-cousin marriage in the United States      First-cousin marriage      Allowed with restrictions or exceptions      Banned with exceptions¹      Statute bans first-cousin marriage¹      Criminal offense¹

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¹Certain states may recognize marriages performed elsewhere.

Cousin marriage was legal in all US states in the Union prior to the Civil War. However, according to Kansas sociology professor Martin Ottenheimer, after the Civil War the main purpose of marriage prohibitions was increasingly seen as less maintaining the social order and upholding religious morality and more as safeguarding the creation of fit offspring. Indeed, writers such as Noah Webster and ministers like Philip Milledoler and Joshua McIlvaine helped lay the groundwork for such viewpoints well before 1860. This led to a gradual shift from concerns with affinal unions, like the relationship between a man and his deceased wife's sister, to consanguineous unions. By the 1870s, Lewis Henry Morgan was writing about "the advantages of marriages between unrelated persons" and the necessity of avoiding "the evils of consanguine marriage." Morgan himself had married his mother's brother's daughter in 1851.^[9]

In 1846 the Governor of Massachusetts appointed a commission to study "idiots" in the state which implicated cousin marriage as being responsible for idiocy. Within the next two decades numerous reports appeared coming to similar conclusions, including for example by the Kentucky Deaf and Dumb Asylum, which concluded that cousin marriage resulted in deafness, blindness, and idiocy. Perhaps most important was the report of physician S.M. Bemiss for the American Medical Association, which concluded "that multiplication of the same blood by in-and-in marrying does incontestably lead in the aggregate to the physical and mental depravation of the offspring." Despite being contradicted by other studies like those of George Darwin and Alan Huth in England and Robert Newman in New York, the report's conclusions were widely accepted.^[10]

These developments led to thirteen states and territories passing cousin marriage prohibitions by the 1880s. Though contemporaneous, the eugenics movement did not play much direct role in the bans, and indeed George Louis Arner in 1908 considered them a clumsy and ineffective method of eugenics, which he thought would eventually be replaced by more refined techniques. Ottenheimer considers both the bans and eugenics to be "one of several reactions to the fear that American society might degenerate."^[11] In any case, by the period up until the mid-1920s the number of bans had more than doubled.^[12] Since that time, the only three states to successfully add this prohibition are Kentucky in 1943, Maine in 1985, and Texas in 2005. Significantly, no state has dropped its prohibition in that period.^[13]

The United States has the only bans on cousin marriage in the Western world. The US also prohibits first-cousin-once-removed marriages in six states.^[14] For example, Ohio only allows marriage between those "not nearer of kin than second cousins."

Data on cousin marriage in the United States is sparse. It was estimated in 1960 that 0.2% of all marriages between Roman Catholics were between first or second cousins, but no more recent nationwide studies have been performed.^[15] Public opinion polling on whether first-cousin marriage should be legal is nonexistent. While recent studies have cast serious doubt on whether cousin marriage is as dangerous as is often assumed, professors Diane B. Paul and Hamish G. Spencer speculate that legal bans persist in part due to "the ease with which a handful of highly motivated activists—or even one individual—can be effective in the decentralized American system, especially when feelings do not run high on the other side of an issue."^[16]

Among supporters of repealing the laws, perhaps the largest group is Cousin Couples, which describes itself as "the world's primary resource for romantic relationships among cousins including cousin marriage." This group likens laws against cousin marriage to the anti-miscegenation laws of decades past.^[17] Their website includes information on state and international laws, world religious viewpoints, famous cousin couples and the genetic risk due to cousin marriage. It also includes a message board with several messages posted daily as of November 2009, which allows cousin couples to provide each other with emotional support, share pictures and love stories, and comment on the legal situation.^[18]

A bill to repeal the ban on first-cousin marriage in Minnesota was introduced by Phyllis Kahn in 2003, but it died in committee. By training Kahn is a biophysicist and holds a PhD from Yale. Republican Minority Leader Marty Seifert criticized the bill in response, saying it would "turn us into a cold Arkansas."^[19] According to the University of Minnesota's The Wake, Kahn was aware the bill had little chance of passing but introduced it anyway to draw attention to the issue. She reportedly got the idea after learning that cousin marriage is an acceptable form of marriage among some cultural groups that have a strong presence in Minnesota, namely the Hmong and Somali.^[20]

In contrast, Maryland delegates Henry B. Heller and Kumar P. Barve sponsored a bill to ban first-cousin marriages in 2000.^[21] (Barve later became Majority Leader.) It got further than Kahn's bill, passing the House of Delegates by a vote of 82 to 46, but then died in the state Senate. In response to the 2005 marriage of Pennsylvanian first cousins Eleanor Amrhein and Donald W. Andrews Sr. in Maryland, Heller said that he might resurrect the bill because "It's like playing genetic roulette."^[22]

Texas actually did pass a ban on first-cousin marriage the same year as Amrhein and Andrews married, evidently in reaction to the presence of the polygamous FLDS. Texas Representative Harvey Hilderbran, whose district includes the main FLDS compound, authored an amendment^[23] to a child protection statute to both discourage the FLDS from settling in Texas and to "prevent Texas from succumbing to the practices of taking child brides, incest, welfare abuse and domestic violence."^[24] News coverage at the time largely concentrated on the polygamy and child abuse provisions and ignored cousin marriage,^[25] as it also does today.^[26] The new statute makes sex with an adult first cousin a more serious felony than with adult members of one's immediate family.^[27]

Other regions

In the East, South Korea is especially restrictive with bans on marriage out to third cousins, with couples having the same surname having been prohibited from marrying until 1997.^[28]

The Netherlands has been having a debate in the past few years about banning cousin marriage, a policy explicitly aimed at preventing "import marriages" from certain nations like Turkey and Morocco with a high rate of cousin marriage (roughly one quarter according to one study). Critics argue that such a ban would contradict Section 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, is not based on science, and would affect more than immigrants. While some proponents argue such marriages were banned until 1970, according to Frans van Poppel of the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, they are confusing cousin marriage with uncle-niece marriage.^[29]

One form of cousin marriage in Ethiopia known as absuma is an arrangement made at birth. The male cousin and his family then have the right to make decisions about the girl's education and when the pair will marry.^[30]

Some cultures have an intermarriage taboo on parallel cousins but not on cross cousins. It has been suggested that the children of two brothers run the risk of actually being half siblings if there was clandestine sexual activity. The taboo against this type of cousin marriage prevents the possibility of an accidental incestuous marriage.^{[citation needed]}

Genetic aspects

The percentage of consanguinity between any two individuals decreases fourfold as the most recent common ancestor recedes one generation. Consanguinity means the amount of shared (identical) DNA, the genetic material. For example, first cousins have four times the consanguinity of second cousins. First cousins once removed have half the shared DNA as full first cousins. Half-fourth cousins sometimes cannot be detected at the DNA level.^[31] Finally, double first cousins share twice the consanguinity as first cousins and are as related as half-siblings.

In April 2002, the Journal of Genetic Counseling released a report which showed that the potential risk of birth defects in a child born of first cousins was slightly higher than the risk associated with a non-cousin couple. The report estimated the increased risk for first cousins at 1.7-2.8% over the base risk of about 3%, or about the same as that of any woman over age 40. ^[32] Put differently, first-cousin marriages entail roughly the same increased risk of birth defects as a woman faces when she gives birth at age 41 (roughly 6%) rather than at 30 (roughly 3%). Critics argue that banning first-cousin marriages would make as much sense as trying to ban childbearing by older women. These numbers were reported only for first instances of cousin mating; repeated generations of cousin coupling can increase this risk, especially if the original ancestors were carriers of deleterious recessive genes (a founder effect).^[33]

A BBC report^[34] studied Pakistanis in Britain, 55% of whom marry a first cousin. Given the high rate of such marriages, many children come from repeat generations of first-cousin marriages. The report states that these children are 13 times more likely than the general population to produce children with genetic disorders, and one in ten children of first-cousin marriages in Birmingham either dies in infancy or develops a serious disability. The BBC also states that Pakistani-Britons, who account for some 3% of all births in the UK, produce "just under a third" of all British children with genetic illnesses.

However, according to a statement by the Human Genetics Commission on cousin marriages:

One recent media report estimated that British Pakistanis were 13 times more likely to have children with genetic disorders than the general population. Taken out of context, this figure implies that ALL British Pakistanis are equally at risk irrespective of marriage patterns, and fails to clarify that the risk relates specifically to recessive genetic disorders which can arise in cousin marriages. Other types of genetic conditions, including chromosomal abnormalities, sex-linked conditions and autosomal dominant conditions are not influenced by cousin marriage.

There are clear similarities between cousin marriage and increased maternal age. Both represent complex cultural trends. Both however, also carry a biological risk. The key difference, GIG argue, is that cousin marriage is more common amongst a British minority population, whilst increased maternal age is more prevalent within the general population. ^[35]

The BBC story contained an interview with Myra Ali, who is the product of at least two generations of Pakistani cousin marriages (and possibly three). She has a very rare recessive genetic condition, known as Epidermolysis bullosa which will cause her to lead a life of extreme physical suffering, limited human contact and probably an early death from skin cancer. Knowing that cousin marriages increase the probability of recessive genetic conditions, she is understandably against the practice.

Famous cousin couples

See also

• Genealogy
• Incest
• Inbreeding
• Prohibited degree of kinship
• Types of marriage
• Imprinting (psychology)
• Genetic sexual attraction
• Pedigree collapse
• Mahram

Notes

External links

• State Laws Regarding Marriages Between First Cousins compiled by the US National Conference of State Legislatures