Coup de Culture: Promoting Incest Between First Cousins
I have opined that there are three cultural paradigms that threaten to supplant traditional Judeo-Christian/humanistic values as the foundational value system of society; utilitarianism (which we have addressed often here at SHS), hedonism (which we have rarely addressed here), and radical environmentalism (which we are beginning to get into more often). Put this story in the hedonism file. Scientists are saying that the legal prohibition against marriage between first cousins should be lifted. From the story:
Babies born as a result of marriage between first cousins have the same risk of having genetic defects as babies born from women over 40 years old.Well, then why not let siblings marry if they agree to be sterilized?
Two scientists, who call for the lifting of the taboo on first-cousin families, say that cousins who want to get married should not feel ashamed about it. Women in their forties, who decide to get pregnant, are not made to feel guilty about their decision and the same should be applied to first-cousin families, consider Professor Diane Paul of the University of Massachusetts in Boston and Professor Hamish Spencer of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.
I don't see the issue of genetic difficulties in offspring as the primary problem here. Introducing sexuality within families would be disastrous, it seems to me. But in the modern age, hedonism--by which I mean indulging in every sensual or emotional desire of the moment, whether sex between cousins or stampeding and killing an employee of Walmart to make sure you get that sale item, etc.--is becoming all the rage. We are told there should be few limits and no moralizing. This advocacy "study" is just one more example of the struggle we are in.
Labels: Coup de Culture. Hedonism. Marriage Between First Cousins.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 2:39 PM
44 Comments
44 Comments:
I think it's destructive for more reasons than just genetic risk, morality, and destruction of family structure. Males and females need the security and socialization benefits of knowing that there are members of the opposite gender to whom one relates merely as fellow people, not candidates for romantic relationships; this has a value for women, who gain a sense of safety and security by having "menfolk" to protect them, and by extension the security of women protects life and the value that is placed on it; for men it also has a value. People, like other animals, need to feel that at a certain level they are not prey. Further, it ensures that humans will explore mate beyond their own immediate social, as well as genetic, structure, and in turn protects the family structure. If the object is to destroy the family system (which often is a pain in the neck) and turn people into autonomous beings without family ties, who might have well have been born in test tubes, it's an interesting, but very risky, social experiment, and one that may have to do with eugenics. As for "no more risk than for children born to mothers over 40," I'm not convinced that there is a big risk to over-40 maternity, as a healthy offspring of an over-40 mother myself, but if the odds are better for both mother and child when the mother is younger than 40, why lower the odds for younger-mother offspring? It's just nuts, in my opinion, and rings of an agenda of some kind. It's not as if myriad cousins were beating down the doors of scientists demanding scientific permission; it sounds more s if the scientists thought this one up themselves. They think up some pretty bad stuff for laboratory experimentation on animals, too, and they keep their paychecks by coming up with new theories, doing "studies," publishing, gaining publicity, etc. We were better off when everybody was farmers.
Well said, Ianthe.
Thanks. Your point about the Wal-Mart incident reminds me of the increasing "consumerism," "anything-goes," lack of discipline that creates chaos, and just hearing about one crazy thing arriving with breathtaking, head-spinning speed on the heels of another, announced as now "legitimate" by the "scientific establishment" in the media on the news is enough to destabilize society. The National Enquirer went mainstream; now the Weekly World News is out of business, with nothing being bizarre any more and no place for it to reside and be regarded properly as bizarre. It's as if science has become a freak show, and we're all living in a funhouse, including with mirrors giving distorted reflections and no place left in which normality and sanity can retain a foothold.
A frightening struggle.
But one that must be fought.
Your voice is so needed.
Thank you!
After all, there's a new pharmaceutical on the market every five seconds, complete with list of side-effects and people take them anyway (and then hear, while under their influence and having Lord only knows what physiological effects on their bodies, minds, and DNA, which doesn't help the head-spinning problem any) of the new developments by those who also may be on the stuff; the "researchers" have to "produce" too. PETA has brainstorming sessions; imagine the ones the researchers have.
Rhonda. Nice poetry. My portfolio keeps expanding. I don't mean for it to, but I keep seeing the dots connecting.
You seeing the connections and pointing them out makes it more possible for people (and other animals, too) to escape ending up as dots.
Wow. I'm actually on the other side of the coin from you, Wesley.
I 100% disagree with you.
First of all, we live in a society where we have a nuclear family - Mom, Dad, Kids. Not an extended family unit, where aunts and uncles are close and living either nearby or in the family home, where children are raised together and grow up like siblings. You're talking about situations where many cousins may meet once a year at the family Christmas party, and by the time they hit their teens and early twenties, they're meeting as if for the first time. The blood relationship between them might exist, but no other real relationship does.
Second of all, culturally first-cousin marriages have been accepted throughout the world, and while I don't think that cultural relativism is necessarily a good thing, keep in mind that in societies that allow first-cousin marriage, it wasn't a matter of incest. It was a matter of uniting the family fully. In many cases it was a way to "adopt" a son into a family to carry on the family name. Such occurrences are common among the Japanese, for example.
Yeah, I know, the Japanese are also famous for having once allowed vending machines that sold girl's used underwear to pervs, but as I said, I'm not being culturally relativistic. I'm just pointing out that through history, first cousin marriages have served the community in a positive aspect.
Finally, in some instances you won't find a more suitable mate than someone who is in the family (and thus shares a heritidge) but is not in the immediate family (and thus doesn't have the experience of growing up together as a sib).
Sibling marriage is obviously wrong - it violates the kinship bonds of two children raised as sibs. Marriage between first cousins who were raised together is also wrong, because the same bonds have come up.
If Girl A is 17, and her mother marries Boy A's father, and Boy A is 17 or thereabouts, these two haven't been raised together, have nothing in common (assuming as I am that they are not biologically related at all), and are already maturing. If Boy A proposes to Girl A when they are 21, you won't see me twitch. The same goes for first cousins who live distant from each other and were not raised together.
If Girl B is ten years old, however, and Boy B is ten, and their parents marry as above, then they are younglings who are raised together and treated like sibs through the formative years of their lives. They should be greatly discouraged from marrying because of their kinship ties. Likewise with cousins who grow up next door to each other.
I also feel the same way about Godparents who help raise their Godchildren along with their own kids - those kids should act like sibs.
And yes, I have a little bit of a personal stake here. My father's first cousin's grandson (who has always lived in New Jersey) is only a year or two younger than me (I have lived in Texas since I was 2), and when we were teens, the family was sort of nudging us into a budding romance. Nothing major, but nobody found it unacceptable. Granted, we're not first cousins, but we almost never have contact with each other, since they *never* came down here to Texas and I only went up there once every three or four years. We barely knew each other when we met up in the 1990's
Tabs: First, you can't say it is okay for first cousins not raised near each other but not for those who were. That won't work.
Second, there should be some urges and desires, that if they arise, we have a moral obligation to resist. I think this is one.
Third, Ianthe nailed it most eloquently when she wrote: "I think it's destructive for more reasons than just genetic risk, morality, and destruction of family structure. Males and females need the security and socialization benefits of knowing that there are members of the opposite gender to whom one relates merely as fellow people, not candidates for romantic relationships; this has a value for women, who gain a sense of safety and security by having "menfolk" to protect them, and by extension the security of women protects life and the value that is placed on it; for men it also has a value. People, like other animals, need to feel that at a certain level they are not prey. Further, it ensures that humans will explore mate beyond their own immediate social, as well as genetic, structure, and in turn protects the family structure. If the object is to destroy the family system (which often is a pain in the neck) and turn people into autonomous beings without family ties..."
Siblings aren't enough of a safe zone, and not everyone has them, or enough of them, or even the right ones, to constitute a safe zone, people who are there to turn to and can be called on to look out for one for no reason other than blood ties and the automatic sense of place that comes with them. A romantic relationship is a whole other kind of dynamic and would throw everything into chaos, plus take away the safe zone of the rest of the family, who didn't do anything to deserve that. Every once in a while there might be a case of true love (with even more of a sense of mission because of both affinity and its being forbidden) and if the two in question married there might be no genetic problem, but it just isn't a good idea to narrow the safe zone to nuclear family, plus nuclear families keep breaking up. The aunts in one generation now past of one side of my family had such a sense of the family that anyone who married into it was, to them, always an outsider, which I'm sure goes on with many families; the line also is necessary to make sure that people can get away from that kind of dynamic. It can be important to know that one "has people," even if they are thousands of miles away and we only met them once decades ago and we never see them, even if we've never met them and never will, even when one doesn't even like them, even when we wouldn't lift a finger for them and vice-versa. That is a kind of relationship that is necessary and part of being human and that could not exist if the possibility of romantic relationship with them did. And it just wouldn't feel right to regard a cousin as a potential mate. It just wouldn't. Plus with some relatives it's bad enough as it is to have to be related to them as it is, and they want us to include them in the category of people we'd deal with if we had a choice? "You can't choose your relatives," but one is supposed to choose one's mate, from outside the circle with whom one's relationship is by definition involuntary.
I wonder whether this study has anything to do with the issue of young people who are unrelated to one another but members of the same "blended family," step-family, etc. wanting to marry.
Ianthe: That was why I totally went off Woody Allen, who I quite liked at the time. When he "dated" the adopted daughter of his live-in girl friend Mia Farrow, it crossed an ethical line that should be firmly fixed. His defense, "The heart wants what it wants," or something to that effect, illustrated much of what has gone wrong with our age.
WAIT a minute -- they are CALLING for "lifting the taboo" and saying that people "SHOULD not" hesitate or be ashamed, or whatever the exact quote is? Who ASKED them? What is their JOB in the first place? Where is the detachment vaunted by scientists? Which of them or both wanted to marry a cousin of their own? Where did this come from? How is this their business? When did science become a matter of "should" in any respect except the ethical one which it ignores? This is consistent with saying "I'm a doctor and so and so should die."
Ianthe: This is an increasing phenomenon; scientists conflating science with ethics. It is very dangerous because we are told that to disagree with their ethics makes us anti science, which is, of course, baloney.
Wesley -
I don't believe this is a matter of urges that need suppressing. Keep in mind that we're all sort of the decendents of incest (Mitochondrial Eve for the evolutionists, Adam and Eve for the Creationists). We had to start somewhere, and it's precisely in "inbreeding" that we get racial differences. Science has shown that people are more likely to want to mate to others who are within a group but outside the immediate family. It's the way we're wired, for genetic purposes. That also means we sometimes see people who are attracted to those completely outside their ethnic group, which is excellent because that allows the exchange of different genetic information and increases the heatlh of the next generation. But for the most part we're inclined to mate within our own ethnicity.
I'm not saying that first cousin marriage is the same thing, but one can see where it crops up: we feel close to someone who loves us and who is familar without being a sibling. Sibling marriage violates more than genetic bounds, it completely violates the kinship bonds of the kids and is totally destructive in the long run.
But I've never seen a society that permitted first-cousin marriage that had its family structure destroyed. Many Native American (First Nation's Peoples) societies permitted first cousin marriage, but they also emphasised the importance of the family, and parents remained faithful to their spouses and to their children for the good of the next generation.
If you're talking about a genuine marriage designed specifically for the parents to be faithful to each other and the kids, then I don't see an issue.
Put it another way - You said distance doesn't matter. Well, what about cases where children of sperm doners meet and marry (not unlikey, since the donor usually inseminates women who live in the same area as the fertility clinic), and only later find out they're related. Does society force them to divorce? Are their children branded as "mutants"? No, because this is a case of accident and distance - these kids never knew each other until they were adults and married. Now, gratned, they *should* have tried to find out about their sibs and build a sibling bond, and the fact that they didn't may or may not be their fault.
(Editorial: Personally, if one finds out one is married to one's unexpected sib, I say that the only decent thing to do is divorce, not just because of the genetic issue, but because it's a violation of the kinship that *should* have been there. That's just me.)
So in cases of distance, why shouldn't first cousins be allowed to marry, if allowances are made for kids in the above statement? At least there are no implied kindship bonds being broken, and the genetics holds better...
On the other hand, I can sort of see where you're coming from if you suggest that there *should* be a kinship bond between the cousins, much like the kinship bond that *should* be between the sibs, and see the marriage as violating that.
Again, I suppose that would depend on how the kids were raised. I was raised as a virtual stranger to all of my cousins, only seeing them once in a great while. Heck, I just recently found out that a girl that was at a family reunion several years ago is my aunt's daughter. I thought she was my uncle's new wife (oy vey). I don't know half of my mother's sisters' kids from Adam. My father grew up differently. He had no brothers or sisters, so he was raised with his cousins as his sibs. They grew up like brothers and sisters, and there was never any thought of romance between them because they were "family." Then again, these are the same people who thought that Little Nickie and I were a cute couple. But we barely knew each other, too. And granted, he and I are much further distance of relation than Dad's cousins, but still, it's the way we lived our lives - he was right in the middle of a big extended family, and I grew up on the far side of the moon from everyone else.
So I'm not saying I don't see the problem from your perspective, but I'm saying that you're going to have a tough time convincing me that first-cousin marriage is *always* unacceptable.
Finally, to the matter of Lanthe's statement about families needing members who are of the opposit sex but not marriage material, I have to say that modern society is what forces you to look at cousins as acceptable opposit-gender friends without sexual benefits.
Most of my friends are male, and I wouldn't sleep with any of them if you PAID me, because to me it would be as disgusting as incest. We have a kinship bond even though we're not biologically related.
Modern society says that it's impossible for a male and a female to be "Just friends" without some kind of sexual tension. I scoff at that regularly. I've been alone in the house with a guy who is not blood related to me, and the most exciting thing that happened was I beat him at Cribbage three time in a row. (After that he trounced me royally and then his wife came home.)
It's all a matter of how you *choose* to interact with the opposit sex. I think that society pressures us to feel like we're required to think sexually about anyone who isn't related and is of the opposit gender, but that certainly wasn't the case among the first Apostles or among the Monks who built convents for the education of nuns and then taught them Hebrew and Greek and science back in the middle ages.
Perhaps cousin relationships are the final "safety net" for people who want friendship without sexual pressure, but I don't see it.
P.S. - You identify first-cousin marriage as a "coupe de culture," but first cousin marriage goes back to ancient history. I'm giving a Biblical example only because it's an old example, and not for religious reasons:
Abraham and Sarah went into Egypt and he asked her to say that she was his sister to avoid him being killed so someone else could marry her. Now, they were indeed related, but there are arguments about the way "sister" is translated, and frequently it's translated as "female cousin."
As I said, I use the example for its age, not for any other purpose.
But you know that the Hebrews were firm believers in strong marriages and families, and at no time did such a marraige undermine the sanctity of the family.
So I don't think that this is a coupe de culture because it's been around longer than we Americans have, and usually done in cultures that promote the family.
Please Tabs. The ancients practiced polygamy too. Sarah allowed Abraham to "know" her handmaiden so he could have a child--and we suffer the resulting troubles to this day. Those were different times with a different morality and needs.
That isn't what this is about. This is hedonism. It is not about family but breaking barriers and sanctioning the scratching of every itch.
Wesley: When I was younger, I couldn't stand Woody Allen; I found the whole whining, weakling thing unwholesome. Then I found another reason not to like him, when I noticed that in every one of his movies there was a gratuitous and disparaging line about astrologers, and I suspected that the reason was that an astrologer had once told him something about himself that he hadn't liked hearing. As I've mellowed, I've come to appreciate and respect his talent; I've always respected his work ethic and dedication to his weekly clarinet playing at Michael's, I think it is, in New York. From what I've read, his parents at the very least weren't easy on him, and he has his "stuff." I've also read that Mia Farrow has recounted what a little emperor he was about how his food was to be prepared and served, and I didn't admire his serial relationships with actresses who are remarkable women and whose careers he made, or his behavior re Soon Yi, and the "heart wants what it wants" stuff. But aside from all that, I have three sightings to recount: While living in Manhattan, one day I was walking by what must have been Mia Farrow's apartment building on Central Park West, and saw her was standing outside on the sidewalk in front of the building, dressed in t-shirt and jeans, directing some movers or carpenters or some such thing, and I got the sense that she is a good, nice, decent, down-to-earth person with her feet on the ground and her head on straight. (I'm getting homesick as I write this, remembering how much of living in Manhattan is walking around the city as one goes about one's day.) Early on during the Soon Yi scandal, I was crossing the street and saw Soon Yi getting out of a limo, probably this was in front of Woody Allen's apartment building on Fifth Avenue and she was arriving there, and she looked absolutely miserable, stressed, and unhappy. Later on in time, after the relationship was established and the scandal had died down somewhat, I was walking down Madison Avenue on the upper east side when something in a shop window caught my eye; I was in law school at the time and there was no way I could afford whatever it was, than which few things could be more annoying to someone from my sector of the zodiac, and I must have had a few-seconds-long expression of annoyance on my face as a result when, at that very moment, I saw Woody Allen walking up Madison, about to cross lateral paths with me on the sidewalk, already looking very unhappy and miserable, I mean notWoody-Allen-angst unhappy and miserable, but unhappy and miserable with situational provenance. When he saw my expression, which had nothing to do with him, the expression on his face turned to one that clearly said, "They all hate me." It was so clear that I wasn't sure whether I should say "No, it's not you, I'm annoyed about something else," but not only would that have been awkward and I only had a second to make up my mind about it, but, my sense of justice when already in a state of annoyance, combined with hesitation, led me to rationalize to myself, serves him right for all those derogatory lines about astrologers. I've always felt I should have said something to correct his misimpression, and that if fate ever put him in my path again I still should. Even though I feel the same way about the Soon Yi thing as you do. But wait, there's more: A few seconds later, who came into view, not merely walking, but literally skipping and tripping along with happiness, at least the proverbial 10 feet behind him but Soon Yi, obviously delighted that she'd won and that she had her man -- who was walking ahead of her already looking miserable when he saw on someone's face a momentary frown for a reason having absolutely nothing to do with him, but he assumed that he was having to pass on the sidewalk yet another person who thought ill of him. From what I've seen in New York of the phenomenon of men who seem to prefer to get into relationships with young oriental women and of those young women, the guys have certain kind of issues and the girls in question are quite aggressive and know exactly how to hang on. (One, a neighbor on my block when I lived on the upper west side, put his dog down "because he put three people in the hospital" (well of course he did, he was a Gordon Setter), because the young lady worked the whole giggling, clinging, fearful thing every time she saw a dog.) Well, that's my Woody Allen story.
I just remembered a couple of more details: Soon Yi was crying that time I saw her getting out of a limo that had just brought her to Woody's apartment building, there was relief in the mix when she was skipping down the street behind him, and he looked as if he'd been through a wringer with the scandal and knew that his reputation had been damaged and that he had made his bed and was going to have to lie in it, and wasn't happy about it; his sun is in Sagittarius, sign of the bachelor, and what his particular heart wants more than anything else is freedom, as well as to run the show, which Soon Yi obviously was running that day; similarly, the possibility of prison was so anathematic to Marc Rich that he fled the country.)
On science, this cousin edict thing is an example of what it brings (not to mention animal experimentation) when it's not kept in its place.
I think the "anti-science" accusation is a way to try to put on the defensive those who stand in the way of their gaining and retaining more power than they know darned well than they're entitled to, and who went into the field with that agenda. These are psychologically insecure people whose identities are not fully formed, whose characters are lacking, and whose identities formed on the basis of their being "smart" when they are, in fact, second-rate minds at best. Because a mind can't be first-rate without character, ethics, and humanity. (Just as science can't be at its best without humanity and when it depends on animal experimentation. I know -- I'm getting to be like Cato the Elder ending every speech in the Roman Senate with "Et Carthago delenda est!")
Better than ending up like Cato the Younger!
Absolutely!
I'm trying to figure out what we need to do in order to win the struggle. Otherwise we end up like Carthage.
Nothing can be done before enough people see that there are dots and that the dots connect, though.
The university whose hospital killed my mother (the hospital likes to use the university's name and distance itself from its own) published a study recently about the difference in reaction to the same person wearing a red vs. a blue shirt. A whole study it did on this, to "find out" what any woman it asked could have told it and saved it quite a bit of money. The results of the study got published in the media. This was a huge discovery, whose results could be ultimately useful in other research, the landmark finding re the girl wearing blue vs. the red. Only science could have provided the answer. I say fire them all and only rehire those willing to do actual work who have had to put up with the rest of them all these years. After all it's a bad economy and people are being let go, and these marmalukes don't belong in "science." I don't know that a person would be safe eating at a fast food restaurant where they worked. It's hard to agree with SHS that every human has the same intrinsic worth when there is an example like this before one's eyes.
First timer, here. I've been following Secondhand Smoke for quite a while, and I appreciate the perspectives provided. I've rarely disagreed strongly enough to even consider leaving a comment, but here I am.
Wesley: I'm surprised you'd suggest that cousin marriage is hedonism that threatens Judeo-Christian values. Never saw it coming.
It was practiced by the ancients (as mentioned), never forbidden in the Old Testament, still common by the time of the New Testament, and continued all the way up to modern times. It's never really been uncommon in the Judeo-Christian culture (or any culture) as a whole. Such marriages are legal in most of the world and nearly half the states in the US. Legal cousin marriage actually lost a state (Texas) in the last year or so. With that kind of record, comparison to ancient polygamy just isn't warranted.
In the West, equating cousin marriage to incest seems to stem from an overzealous interpretation of Leviticus 18:6. This grew into a secular taboo through conflation with bad science of decades past. The secular taboo is really the worst part. The Catholics would at least issue dispensations. Good luck finding neighbors that tolerant. If cousin relationships became legal throughout the entire US tomorrow, I wouldn't expect any outburst of incestuous hedonism, because the "icky" stigma is so strong.
Everything I've ever read has supported the idea that such marriages strengthened the extended family. That outcome would be explicitly intended were such marriages arranged. I've even heard it argued that cousin marriage is an obstacle to building strong democratic nations, by creating stronger ties to family than to country.
Judeo-Christian/humanistic values Whats this conjuration?
"Laws barring cousin marriage use coercive means to achieve a public purpose and thus would seem to qualify as eugenics...It is obviously illogical to condemn eugenics and at the same time favor laws that prevent cousins from marrying."
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2605922
1st cousin marriage historically isn't incest or hedonism. Cultures rich in family tradition arrange marriage between cousins for numerous reasons - no of which are to satisfy some 'itch'. Frequently these marriages are arranged to inherit family wealth and maintain cast. Its been happening since the dawn of history.
http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/anthropology/tutor/case_studies/hebrews/patriarchs.html
"Even as the LORD commanded Moses, so did the daughters of Zelophehad: For Mahlal, Tirzah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, were married unto their father's brothers' sons: And they were married into the families of the sons of Manasseh the son of Joseph, and their inheritance remained in the tribe of the family of their father." Numbers 36.
An interesting observation is that Red states have many laws against 1st cousin marriage while Blue states like California and New York have never had any such laws - oh yeah Tennessee too =) Texas did not create this law until 3 years ago - so much for historical reasoning. No European country Im aware of has a ban on first cousin marriage either.
The idea of first-cousin marriage strengthening family ties brought to my mind that if one were to marry one of their first cousins, they'd have to have even MORE to do with some of their relatives than they already have to endure. That in itself would be an effective deterrent to some people, and it's yet another "ick factor"! Seriously, I can believe that in some cultures it's been common and may actually have strengthened family ties, but that doesn't reduce the "ick factor" as far as I'm concerned. As for the "ick factor" itself (that's a good phrase by the way), it doesn't seem to have stood in the way of the trend of legalizing assisted suicide, euthanasia by hospitals, etc. I think the issue goes beyond incest, genetics, the Bible (to me it doesn't make logical sense to base social policy on what's in the Bible unless the Bible is attached to the Constitution, which would mean we don't have freedom of religion), etc. and that SHS is right on this. Now, if the the study had included an analysis of the effect of first-cousin marriage on family ties, society, etc. in other cultures and countries as well as the U.S. state by state, etc., and published its conclusion in that respect as part of its findings, with the "shame" issue and the "over-40-mother" issue relegated to their appropriate position in the context of the overall study, and if it stated what the reason/s was/were for undertaking the study in the first place, and made clear what its agenda, if any, was, that would be one thing. But this is another; all of a sudden a couple of researchers come out with "shouldn't be ashamed" on the heels of the relatively recent trend of mothers giving birth over age 40 having become more common than it used to be in this society, and that's what hits the public eye, as the researchers know full will it will do. It is, at the very least, disorganized, and that's not proper science. If the media has twisted something here for purposes of sensationalism, which would be concerning in itself, the researchers are obliged to make a fuss about that. Science and the media have become partners in a way that is not in society's best interest, that's for sure.
It would be interesting to know whether ban on first-cousin marriage has to do with the breakdown of the family ethos in the U.S. and with all the chaos we've got going on in society these days. It would also be interesting to know how often it occurs in states where it is legal, and what results when it does happen. But I still say that just because something has been done anywhere in the world, no matter how often or for how long, and just because it's in the Bible (which also talks of a father sacrificing his son, e.g. Abraham as well as "the man upstairs," and a number of customs that were practised in the cultures in question back then, but why do we have to follow suit), doesn't mean it makes sense for us, and the human race, everywhere, has been making wrong turns for as long as it has existed. Moreover, what works in one culture, and/or at one time, doesn't necessarily work in another. A lot of things in the Bible and in other cultures have an "ick" factor for us, and it's not the place of "science" to tell us what we should or should not consider icky or of what we should or should not be ashamed. Especially when science does some pretty icky things itself, including in animal experimentation. But then, its own lack of shame, like the failure of society, which instead worships it, to keep it in its proper place as the servant that, properly, it is, naturally would lead to it telling society to divest itself of shame. After all, it has its own salaries to be concerned about. My father had a saying whose truth he wanted to make sure I understood (he had a lot of them, such as don't pay more for the economy size; remember that advertising and marketing assume that the average American female consumer does not know how to think, and do everything they can to discourage that tendency in her, so that they can sell their products), to the effect that people who are up to something do whatever they can to bring others down to their level lest they be shown up and turned in to the authorities. That's one of the phenomena of which this "announcement" rings to me.
There HAS to be a "right and wrong" in a society, no matter what that particular society's designation of right and wrong happens to be, in order for the society and its usefulness to those for whose sake it exists to survive, just as each person has to have a moral code in order to survive, or at least in order not to risk having to go up the river (unless we prefer a situation in which it's every man for himself, there are no police to call when one's house is robbed, no nothing except what we can do for ourselves, etc.) That phenomenon has nothing to do with the Judaeo-Christian tradition (with which, as I've noted before here, I am not entirely pleased); other cultures have found likewise since long before the Bible came along. Standards may vary, particular standards may not even make sense, but without them, we're nowhere, and, in fact, they are being knocked down left and right these days at the same time as people are deciding they want to be able to be nowhere, which is putting at risk those who would prefer to be able to continue to be somewhere on this side of the line between life and death. If we abandon them, and say there is no right and wrong, whatever we consider right or wrong to be, we no longer even have a chance to stop the animal experimentation which goes on in absence of consideration of right v. wrong, and saying that wrong is right ("don't be ashamed to marry a first cousin," "it's better to be dead than alive," "it's ok to experiment on animals because it helps humans," "it would be immoral not to do something immoral," etc. is just as destructive, regardless of the merits of the individual case, is the way to get rid of having the moral standards we need to survive at all. The WalMart clerk, animals in laboratories, and Mia Farrow and her children, among many others, are the victims of the "to heck with morality and restraint" syndrome, which, if it continues, will destroy all of us. Every society that has survived has understood and adhered to this principle, and every one that has failed has disrespected it.
HullH: Glad you jumped in.
The tying together of clans and extended families in the difficult world of yesteryear is not what the current issue is all about. Those days are gone, at least in the West.
This is not about strengthening extended families through arranged marriages. What I was referring to is that this proposal is solely about breaking down sexual taboos and sanctioning the hedonistic idea that there is almost no desire or sensual impulse that it is wrong to act upon--assuming consent.
Ianthe expressed it best. Family is a place that should be safe and secure from such matters. Smiling upon conjugal relations between first cousins would weaken families, not strengthen it.
As far as the Bible is concerned (and I'm not trying to argue religion here, just making an observation), it talks a lot about what so and so did, indicates what may have been the prevailing customs of the time, presents examples, in its own terms, of what the Romans called fas v. what they called nefas, presents accounts of what someone did, sometimes with the inference that this is the way things are supposed to be done, sometimes with a moral lesson of do that or don't do that, but sometimes neither, and just this is what happened, how it's been done, etc. At least as far as I can understand. I don't see how something can be justified just because it's mentioned in the Bible, or just because it's been done in other cultures, or just because of a study by Diane whoever in Massachusetts and by some guy from Peter Singer's neck of the woods where, incidentally, everything is upside down from here, by which I mean no to cast no aspersion whatsoever on Australia, but only a reference to what he himself has made obvious goes on in Peter Singer's head. Their statistical conclusions re the level of risk are interesting, and, if correct, valuable in themselves as statistical conclusions, and saying that well, if you're first cousins who are already married or contemplating marriage or who have already reproduced together or who are contemplating reproducing for the first or a subsequent time, according to our study, these are the risks, is valuable, including to first cousins everywhere where the custom is "fas." Everyone the issue may affect can draw their own conclusions and decide accordingly, as is supposed to happen in a free society and an intelligent world, and proceed according to their own standards. But dragging over-40 motherhood into it as anything other than an incidental comparison constitutes a conflation of issues continues in the conflation of the issues of "shame" re possibly producing genetically impaired offspring and of "shame" re incest, which brings in the element of confusion, head-spinning, going and being taken off track, etc. It's sloppy thinking in itself, which doesn't reflect well on the research conclusion, but then, we're talking about intellects here that consider themselves superior and would have a hard time holding a job at Wendy's. In fact, this is an effort to make "fas" what has been considered "nefas," so that they themselves don't have to end up having the world find out that they couldn't even put an edible sandwich together. If the world weren't already in disorder, they wouldn't be where they are, which is where they want to stay, and they are promoting what's in their own interests. If people aren't kept confused, they're out of jobs, and telling people what they "don't have to be ashamed about" keeps people confused. How is it their business whether people are ashamed? Of course it isn't, and that's the point. I think what's going on here also also has to do with the women's movement, but don't start me on that. It also reminds me of social work types who feel it is their mission in life to "make people feel better" while butting in to what's none of their business and causing havoc -- and profit for the institutions that support them, whether it comes from the assets of the person "helped" (fleeced) or "government funding." But if more first cousins marry, the pool of embryos, foetuses, children, etc. now produced by over-40 mothers, including those who aren't as healthy, expands, which increases the population of the disabled, and the number of people undergoing genetic testing, fertility procedures, etc., and the "need" for more "science" to "remedy" the situation "for the good of mankind," and the amount of experimentation that takes place, and the number of grants these marmalukes can get for doing them, which enable them to continue to walk among us, which is bad enough to start with, and to hold positions of "authority" in the society they are destroying. The study, and the media, conveniently neglect to mention any of that to the public. God forbid the government of any state should enact a law intended to protect good social order and reduce the suffering resulting from higher risk of genetic defect (obviously the laws were on the right track in the latter respect; with "statistics" not yet available, they were on to a problem that does exist, and by the way the practice being customary in other societies doesn't mean that they have understood or care about its effects). Such laws must be labelled as "based on eugenics" before the finger can be pointed at the researchers themselves who have that agenda. Further, the risk may be higher for first cousins in general than for over-40 mothers, because many first cousins who breed may be under 40, and only the strongest and healthiest over-40 mothers reproduce in the first place. Further, the study doesn't seem to mention consideration of ethnic background, which I doubt is not a genetic factor, with reference both to over-40 mothers (who seem to be more prevalent, and able to reproduce without incident, among those of Mediterranean background, from what I've seen) and to first cousins. Well, that would be an awful lot of work, wouldn't it, and it might not produce the desired results, and people are so dumb it won't occur to them to raise the question, and it would be politically incorrect, right? Meanwhile, the claim that state laws are unfounded and "eugenic" in intent is concerning; it's an attempt to disarm in advance objections from those on whom society relies to protect itself from the myriad ilk of these "researchers," and it's an attempt to weaken, co-opt unto themselves, and overturn the authority of a government whose role is to protect the people -- the people they want to be idiotic enough so that they can experiment on them, and of whom they want the disabled and the helpless to constitute a larger percentage; the more people there are with whom they can do whatever they please, and for ending the lives of whom they can give plausible excuse that the dummies will accept just as they have accepted "living wills," the more power, and all that goes with it, they can get.
Wesley: "Difficult world of yesteryear" is right. Don't wives brought into arranged marriages in India get made miserable by their mothers-in-law and dispensed with via "the stove blew up"? Didn't they used to have to climb onto their husbands' funeral pyres and be burned alive in the custom of the suttee? How much do these cultures know of birth defect resulting from cousin-marriage, and, if they do, how much do they care? As noted above, the custom sometimes has something to do with keeping inheritance in families. As for "extended families," that verges over into "tribes," and we can see how nicely that has worked out in the Middle East, Iraq, the Balkans, and elsewhere. It doesn't seem to correspond with respect for women, whom some these "extended-family" cultures stone to death. This, we should want more of? Extended families, in this culture, from what I've seen, cause enough of a nightmare between the stifling of the individual, nobody being able to mind their own business, etc. without marriage between cousins thrown into the mix, and in this culture, it doesn't work. I think it's a good idea to keep it straight who everybody is, and to have that safe zone and the people within it to turn to, to provide a sense to one another of identity and place, to reinforce one's sense that one is intrinsically and unconditionally loved, to help provide a sense of one's own tradition as separate unto oneself and one's own family, etc., which is even more important as the number of children who don't have siblings increases. Cousin marriage may work in other societies, but in this one, it is hedonistic. Yes, every once in a while it may work out, but we can't have it as an approved social norm, even for the sake of the gene pool. Plus, what kind of a family produces offspring that nobody from anybody else's family wants to breed with?
Maybe it's also an effort that is part of the same trend that has brought us Muslim footbaths in airport bathrooms, "political correctness" that has destroyed England, debates over headscarves in France, where it's much more important to be able to enjoy the culture that France has created, etc., etc. God forbid Arianna Fallaci spoke up about it, she had to be crucified over it. Let's destroy the value of the individual and the sanctity of the kind of family structure we've got, so that we can all end up being tribes fighting each other just like they do in places that keep the world in a state of upheaval -- yeah, that's the ticket. Let's have stuff goes on that tears apart the fabric of our society even further, takes the ground from under our feet, adds to confusion and chaos, and makes it easier for Al Qaida -- which, meanwhile, will be castigating us for our "hedonism" -- to have its way. I have my own idea of where the roots of the death culture are -- all the way back to Persia, and as I've noted here I'm no fan of anything that's gone on since people lost the good sense to have gods that they knew perfectly well, and rationally, with trust in their own intellects and the sanity of skepticism, and positive human confidence, that they had invented themselves, instead of "believing in" things; they did just fine if you ask me. I'm not arguing religion here, I'm just stating the observations I've made and the conclusions I've drawn which provide the framework for what I see. What I see going on, contemporaneous with and along with the prevalance of Christian fundamentalism and of Islamic terrorism, and more and more of the death culture. And now we're supposed to let first cousins marry and really, it's ok, they do it elsewhere, it's in the Bible, it strengthens families, etc., and no, it's not hedonistic. For us, it IS hedonistic. What made our civilization and allowed for its greatness doesn't come out of the Bible, or out of Persia; it comes out of what preceded Christianity and what beat the hell out of Persia and conquered that part of the world. It's very nice that we allow freedom of religion here, but the very reason we're in a mess is that we refer to religion as a foundation when in fact our foundation is a rationality that everyone seems to have forgotten about. Logic and morality are not separate from one another, logic is enough, and religion only messes up the equation. It's not logical to choose a breeding partner with whom the risk of birth defect is higher when one has other options, or to destroy the safe zone of the family unit, or to say that there's no difference between women over 40 and first cousins reproducing, and nothing is more destructive than dispensing with logic, and dispensing with logic is exactly what the death culture in its every aspect wants us to do.
Wesley: Thanks. I'd be more convinced if this particular sexual taboo had more historical weight to it. The taboo is too recent, limited to a subset of our own culture, and derived from questionable theology or science. Assuming the proposal's motivations are part of the larger hedonistic trend, I'd say they picked an easy target this time.
I should make a note that first-cousin marriage is legal where I live. I also grew up without any awareness of a cousin taboo, so the concept of cousin marriages doesn't have an implicit "ick factor" for me. On the other hand, having grown up with most of my cousins, the thought of being involved with any particular one of them is much less than appealing.
lanthe: I'm catching bits and pieces of interesting points, some of which I might like to reply to, but the walls of unbroken text leave me hesitant.
I second NullH's comments. Lanthe, please break your text into paragraphs and place an extra return between them (space between paragraphs). You make great points, but my aging eyes glaze over...
NullH and K-Man: I'll try. I'm trying to write shorter; every time I get started one thought leads to another; by now I thought I'd have said everything I could possibly say long since, but SHS'subject matter encompasses much and is universally relevant. I'll do my best to remember to paragraph from here on out.
I didn't know that first-cousin marriage is legal in the state where I live. I never would have thought that it is, nor would I ever have thought of marrying one of my cousins. I've never met husband-and-wife first cousins (that I know of) here or anywhere. Either people assume it's illegal, or they just don't do it very often, and if they don't do it very often even when it's legal, it would seem that it's just not the way our culture/society works and does things, and isn't what most people would want or tend to do anyway. Even the instances of distant (third, fourth, etc.) cousins marrying that I know of seem not exactly normal to me. Affinity, for which there is an argument, aside, the gene pool has already done its work in those directions and, it would seem to me, would prefer to move outward. As Mammy said in Gone With The Wind, "It ain't fittin'! It just ain't fittin'!"...(muttering quietly as walks away)..."It ain't fittin'..."
lanthe: The manageable paragraphs are very much appreciated.
You're probably right that many just assume it's illegal. I've seen examples of people doing just that, locally. There are plenty of reasons it is not so common here and now, and I believe nothing will change that so easily.
Distant cousins are another case. How many people today keep track of third or fourth cousins and beyond? It seems all too easy to marry such a person without ever knowing. You may even be genetically inclined to prefer relatives at that distance over other potential mates. I also recall some other research on cousins suggesting increased fertility among 3rd cousins or so.
Once I was on one of my rants while ordering a sandwich in a deli and someone who overheard spoke up in agreement; we seemed to be on a wavelength, and I felt I could trust him, instantly; his eyes looked familiar somehow and at the same time were the reason I didn't feel comfortable when he asked me out, despite his being someone I sensed was a person safe to be around, with similar sensibilities and a member of the same "club," as it were, and I did have that sense of "select group" to which we both belonged immediately; I couldn't understand why until he said his name; he was my fourth cousin, and his eyes were like those of my father and much of his family, which comes from an island where the name is prevalent and the family intellectual and personality traits are well known; over the generations some have married a distant cousin from time to time and they haven't produced any two-headed offspring as far as I know. I've heard the same about increased fertility among distant cousins, and thought at the time it might be nature's way of reinforcing positive genetic traits, as well as a matter of automatic affinity. But it's just not for me, and I think that for genetic purposes, nature wants enough people to feel that it's just not for them, especially after the traits have been sufficiently engrained. I'm not sure that my own preference not to be encumbered with children isn't in part the over-reinforced gene saying "ok, this has been done, can't do this any more," or the independent trait in it having been expressed too strongly for it to continue.
SHS: Re scientists conflating science with ethics, I believe that that comes out of the role of the Church in the history of science, as well as out of what happened in the nineteenth century and grew into what Nuremberg attempted and failed to stop. I had a much more detailed explanation of what I mean that got lost in some crossing of the editing process here, according to a window that came up, but in a nutshell, they don't know that what they don't know exists. At the same time, it's as natural for them to have invented the pseudoscience of bioethics, which they don't even realize is a pseudoscience because they don't know what science is supposed to be and do in the first place, and that it is a servant, not a master, and to assign "ethics" to it while feeling that it is part of science itself, as it is for them to call in a nephrologist when a patient has a kidney problem, an oncologist when cancer is an issue, etc. It's the way they have been trained to think -- and not think. They don't know what they don't know, and that there is something they don't know; therefore, and what with science being a god and all and what with their having been the smart kids according to our culture and according to themselves, they must be ethical. After all, everything is a scientists, and thus ethics must be a science, and therefore they must be ethical. Then we expect them to be able to help humanity? When they have no idea what humanity even is? We didn't think that letting them experiment on ANY living being would only make them worse, and end up costing us? They are defensive and arrogant about it because they are, well, limited, and those who are limited in the way in which scientists are limited don't know that they are limited, and also refuse to acknowledge that limits should apply to them. They're spoiled brats.
Because no one tells them to stop; everyone "depends" on them and they are in the superior position of being looked to for "answers." They're not just spoiled, they're bullies, and narcissists. To try, at least tangentially and momentarily, to bring this back closer to the topic at hand, ever notice how some first-borns, in addition to their wonderful traits, sometimes seem to feel entitled to tell everyone else what to do, to assume that they know better? How the person whose family treated them as the "genius" among their siblings can be problematic? Scientists figure that they know better, that they know everything and that no one can tell them anything. Laboratory animals can't and don't talk back; how dare human patients or anyone else who isn't a "scientist"? They already learned how to ignore the lab animal's sensibilities nd expressions of pain; why should they have to listen to humans? How does anyone else know whether or when they should live or die, when they can't possibly, because it's they themselves who know everything. It's even ethical for them to, after all.
It's nice to see that I'm not the only one who feels that there is merit to not equating first-cousin marriage with incest.
The whole thing boils down to, "Is first cousin marriage really incest or not?"
Incest is a sin, but many Catholics used to arrange marriages and younger siblings would sometimes be married off to cousins to keep the family wealth in the family and at least guarantee that a younger sib would get married in a culture that favored first-borns. This is the kind of cultre that I was raised in, and I've never been able to associate first cousin marriages with incest for that reason.
I'm anti-hedonism and you know that I'm something of a sexual prude. I don't believe in animal-human relations, I don't believe that parents and children should have sex, I don't believe in free sex or multiple sexual partners, I'm anti-polyamory, and I don't believe in common law marriage unless cases of extreme circumstances arise (which is no longer an issue given that we have the technology to get anyone to a court house for a civil ceremony if nothing else).
I just can't see this one issue being part of the culture of death. It's like something uncommon but traditional has been upended and dumped into a grave yard along with all those things I don't believe in. Granted, most of the time if there are cousin marriages the relationship is more distant, but at what point does it break down and stop being incest? Second cousins, third cousins, fifth cousins?
Blah. I do agree that incest is a crime and a sin, but I don't know, Wesley, this is one area that I feel like someone from the other side is slipping into my hall and trying to steel something relatively harmless to turn into poison. I can't say you're over-reacting because I see where you're coming from. All attempts from the Culture of Death to ruin the sanctity of human exceptionalism must be opposed. But I can't say you're *not* over-reacting, because there are plenty of people who do reject the Culture of Death who don't identify cousin marriage as being part of it.
It's not that cousin marriage per se is part of the culture of death per se, though inbreeding producing less viable offspring more often than outbreeding does is in a certain sense and respect. The issue is a breakdown of cultural norms, one of which is that first-cousin marriage is not what this particular society does on a wide scale, or encourages, for more than one reason, and another of which is the value of life. Knock down one wall, another falls, and that's part of what this is about. It's also about the necessity of the integrity and sense of security of the individual in a social order that is the norm for us and supports that sense of integrity and security in the individual, and about the hedonism, in the sense of "I want what I want, for my own reasons, regardless of the consequnces to myself or others" that is destructive to the individual, to others, and to society as a whole and that results from the loss of that sense of security and integrity in the individual as well as in society, and that loss is part and parcel of the death culture and a causative element of it.
Excellent points Lanthe and Wesley and everyone else too.
I'm glad to see the issue of allowing marriage discussed in terms of procreation rights and sexual partner scope. No one thought that these were separate issues when talking about cousin marriage, as people usually insist they are when discussing same-sex marriage. Allowing cousin marriage allows cousins to conceive children together by combining their own genes, and declares that it is OK, regardless of anybody's ick factor, to consider your cousins as potential sex partners and mates. This is one relationship that each state might have a different cultural view on, as some cultures approve of cousin marriage and some don't. But no state should allow procreation but prohibit marriage, or vice versa. States that allow it for older couples or with doctors notes vouching for infertility are muddying the waters a little bit, but actually they are still allowing the couple to procreate, even as they assume they won't.
Lanthe -
I know this is probably old news by now, but I do see your point, having gone through and re-read everybody's posts. You're right that the "I want what I want" issue is bigger than the "is cousin marriage incest or not" issue.
I'm not terribly happy about it, but I guess I'd have to be willing to be over-ruled this time, even though personally I don't see it as a negative issue. Let me say that if a state permits first cousin marriage, and two cousins do marry in that state, I won't be icked out and I won't look down my nose at that couple, but if a state denies first cousins the right to marry, I won't go around holding a picket sign and waving petitions around.
To me the issue was always sort of like arranged marriages. In India, and in many countries with a high number of Muslims, arranged marriages are common even though they're rare to non-existant here in America. Yet, they're not seen as breaking down the family structure, though some people (particulary feminists - I'll find the links later) act like they're the greatest evil on earth. I guess I sort of equate first cousin marriage with arranged marriage because in some culture groups they're both accepted ways of stenghtening the family.
But, as I said, I'm resigned to be over-ruled.
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