I am obviously not advocating for Catholics starting First Cousin marriages, just for not over demonising them from a medical point of view in Protestants, Jews and Muslims.
And obviously for not pretending such marriages in the first generations after the Flood or first but the very first generations after Adam would have doomed us.
The UK pushes COUSIN MARRIAGES as 'NET POSITIVE'!
The Body Language Guy | 29 Sept. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLrbIygReZo
1:05 It so happens, first cousin marriages are legal in the UK, and this is part of a debate on banning them. Not of legalising, that was already done, because First Cousin marriages are OK in the Torah, the NT actual text doesn't specify any more, and at a certain point, England or Scotland or both, being Protestant, legalised First Cousin marriage, which had been banned according to Catholic Canon law prior to the Reformation.
Here is an excerpt on genetic risks, they depend also on population:
The risk of having a baby with birth defects – usually heart or nervous system problems which can sometimes be fatal – is still small, but it rises from 3% in the general Pakistani population to 6% among those married to blood relatives. The researchers also found a doubling of the risk in the babies of white British women who were over the age of 34. That increased risk, rising from 2% to 4%, is already known.
So, British women have a risk of 2 % and Pakistanis a risk of 3 % for birth defects. First Cousin marriage doubles 3 to 6 %, woman waiting to 34 or more doubles 2 to 4 %.
Speaking of 30 % is ridiculous. I know of Carlos II, but he was the umpteenth generation since about the Renaissance of Habsburgs marrying First Cousins and Nieces.
2:13 You are basically saying that England went "full retard" in the 1660's.
From a reddit thread, acknowledging that prior to the Reformation, First Cousin marriages were illegal, but the Pope could dispense:
European aristocrats also historically favored it for the way that it helped keep property under the control of one family, as well as the fact that both spouses would be well-known to each other and to their immediate families, and they would also have had the means to get dispensations with ease. In general, you don't have to worry that your daughter's suitor comes from unsuitable origins if he's your brother's son, and he probably won't mistreat her. In England, however, the split from Rome meant that cousin marriages were impossible, as the pope was no longer an authority.* Cousin marriages were declared legal there in the 1660s, but it took some decades for people to really become comfortable with it.
Instead of having the Pope dispense in certain cases (a little too often with the Habsburgs), England and in parallel or a bit later Sweden and Denmark dispensed in all cases, aligning on the Torah.
The US isn't as anti-first-cousin marriage in law as it is in culture. It seems 25 states outright ban first cousin marriages and 7 more restrict them (like Arizona basically only allows it when the couple aren't expected to have children). 50 - 32 = 18 states allow first cousin marriages, including fertile ones, and place no special restrictions on them.
3:32 The poor people in Appalachia certainly have some degree of inbreeding, but they equally have a degree of late marriages, due to women finding marriage delayed by poverty.
Retarded usually comes from Down's, where the main factor is age of mother.
Billy Redden, from Duelling Banjos, apparently isn't retarded. He does have a condition on the eyes which makes him kind of "look the part"**
3:49 The irony is, she's from Singapore and isn't aware that with no Muslim minority worth mentioning, First Cousin marriages are legal*** in her own country:
Vietnam prohibits marriage out to second cousins.[121][122] First cousin marriage (but not second cousin marriage or first cousin once removed marriage) is also prohibited in the Philippines.[9][123]
However, first cousin marriage is allowed in most countries in Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, and Thailand, even avunculate marriage (uncle/aunt-niece/nephew marriage) is allowed in Malaysia and Thailand.
Philippines = Spain. Vietnam = France. Catholic countries that ban First Cousin marriages.
[Banned, neither does today.]
4:07 It's not a change of science, it's a weighing of science (genetics) and science (sociology).
Some people have a hard time imagining that a hard science should not all by itself call the shots on morals and legislation from one particular point of view. That's why we saw vaxx and mask mandates recently.
4:48 Does Josh Ferme actually link to the 2002 study?
It's actually not 30 % of birth defects overall, but of autosomal recessive disorders.
Here is an actual° quote:
Consanguinity is relevant to UK health care as there are now large settler populations from South Asia, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa (Ahmad 1994; Bittles 2009; Hoodfar and Teebi 1996) who practice consanguineous marriages. The Pakistani/Kashmiri community1 is one of the largest ethnic groups in the UK (ONS 2011) and is highly consanguineous (Shaw 2009). Autosomal recessive disorders are also higher amongst this group (Taylor 2013b), with Pakistani babies accounting for 30 % of autosomal recessive disorders among all babies born in the UK, while accounting for only 4 % of total births (Modell and Darr 2002).
Now, let's get real about overall birth defects. Autosomal recessive is far from all of them.°
The cultural practice of consanguineous marriage (or cousin marriage) refers to marriage between close biological relatives and has been linked with an increase in genetic risk leading to stillbirths, infant deaths and genetic disorders (Bennett et al. 2002; Hamamy et al. 2011; Modell and Darr 2002). Evidence highlights a 2–3 % risk of genetic disorders in children of unrelated couples which goes up to 4–6 % in children of consanguineous couples and a strong association with rise in autosomal recessive disorders (Bennett et al. 2002; Darr et al. 2013; Hamamy et al. 2011; Shaw 2009).
So, the overall risk of a birth defect is twice normal, not 30 %. And old women also double the risk of birth defects. Down's syndrome is among the latter group, not the autosomal recessive group.
5:43 You are aware Christian Heiens is a US political analyst, perhaps less acquainted in detail with conditions in the UK?
6:19 I have nothing against the Habsburg Lotharingia dynasty.
I'd love to see a grandson of Charles the Last°° rule over Austria or Hungary or both, he was to Austria-Hungary what Nicolas II was to Russia, the one holding back. Taking them out of the way (there was only one Caesar in St. Paul's day) opened the road for Lenin and Bela Kun. (By the way, they haven't been big on cousin marriages since about Carlos II).
6:35 Neither England, nor New England. Charles Darwin married his first cousin Emma Wedgwood. Edgar Allan Poe married his first cousin Virginia Eliza Clemm (when she was 13, perfectly legal at the time, and probably all then states of the Union).
[tried to add:]
From the Spanish°°° wiki:
Únicamente Austria, Hungría, y España prohibieron los matrimonios entre primos durante el siglo XIX, sin embargo en los dos últimos países mencionados era posible solicitar dispensas de dicha prohibición y países como Suecia y Dinamarca buscan prohibirlo. Durante siglos el casamiento entre primos carnales fue bastante común en Europa, pero durante el siglo XIX esta práctica comenzó a caer en desuso cuando las personas y especialmente las mujeres comenzaron a tener mayor movilidad social. En 1875 George Darwin estimó que el matrimonio consanguíneo en Inglaterra representaba el 3,5 por ciento de los matrimonios en la clase media y el 4,5 por ciento de los matrimonios en la nobleza, aunque las cifras disminuyeron a valores inferiores al 1 por ciento durante el siglo XX. Un ejemplo destacado era el caso de la Reina Victoria y el Príncipe Alberto.#
Also states that the reports about the harmful effects on mental health are the fad of a Scotsman named Arthur Mitchell.
* My emphasis. ** Source:
Fundraiser for Billy Redden, Duelin’ Banjos banjo boy
Posted on March 5, 2024 by John Lawless
https://bluegrasstoday.com/fundraiser-for-billy-redden-duelin-banjos-banjo-boy/
*** Quoted source:
Cousin marriage : From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage
° Both quotes:
UK Pakistani views on the adverse health risks associated with consanguineous marriages
Mubasshir Ajaz, Nasreen Ali, Gurch Randhawa | J Community Genet. 2015 Feb 6;6(4):331–342
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4567984/
°° Officially Charles I. Nicknamed Charles the Last, not because he lacked children, but because he gave way to two Republics in his main thrones and a few more states and parts of state in other countries under him, usually Republics, but also the rival monarchy of Yugoslavia, formerly the dynasty of Serbia (with Montenegro).
°°° Casamiento entre primos
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casamiento_entre_primos
# In the XIXth C. only Austria, Hungary and Spain prohibited cousin marriage, however in the two latter countries it was possible to apply for exemption from the ban, and countries like Sweden and Denmark try to ban it [obvious redaction war, adding a counterexample from wrong century in the same sentence instead of adding a paragraph]. During centuries, cousin marriage was fairly common in Europe, but in the XIXth C. the practise began to fall into disuse as persons, especially women, began to have greater social mobility. In 1875, George Darwin estimated that in England consanguine marriages represented 3.5 % of marriages in the Middle Class and 4.5 of them in nobility, though the numbers decreased to less than 1 % during the XXth C. A prominent example was the case of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
