On February 15th, The Economist had an article about cousin marriage:
“The law against first-cousin marriage is a major form of discrimination,” says Robin Bennett of the University of Washington’s department of medicine, who was a co-author of the nsgc guidelines. For offspring “the risks are very low and not much different than for any other couple,” she says.
Throughout Western history attitudes about consanguineous marriages have varied. The Bible does not directly ban sexual relations between cousins—how else would all of mankind have descended from Adam and Eve? The Roman Catholic Church did later prohibit first cousins from marrying, though exceptions were made for a fee. Martin Luther, the father of Protestantism, objected to such payments, so many Protestant denominations allowed these marriages free of charge. As is clear from novels such as “Mansfield Park” and “Wuthering Heights”, the people of Georgian and Victorian England were not too squeamish about such relations. Queen Victoria was married to her first cousin, as were both Albert Einstein and Edgar Allan Poe.
In some cultures, marriage between close family members is encouraged today. It secures wealth and reinforces social connections within the family. It might even make marriages easier, on the optimistic assumption that the in-laws are more likely to get along. In some areas of the world (Pakistan, the Middle East), nearly half of all marriages are between close relations. No European countries ban marriages between first cousins (though Norwegian policymakers recently debated doing so).
