DAVID MARCUS: UK's promotion of first-cousin marriage at odds with western culture
There is a roiling debate in the United Kingdom over the practice of first cousins marrying, which is fairly common in some immigrant communities, but still taboo to most of the indigenous population. Which side wins could have broad implications not just for Brits, but for the entire West.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently blocked a vote to ban first-cousin marriage in the UK and then the National Health Service put out guidance in which the supposed benefits of the incestuous arrangement were touted despite real medical concerns.
After acknowledging that children who are the product of first-cousin marriage are indeed substantially more likely to suffer genetic defects, the official guidance to midwives went on to say those concerns "must also be balanced against the potential benefits."
Listed among these benefits are "collective social capital" as well as "financial and social security at the individual, family and wider kinship levels." Finally, there was a government note claiming that critics have placed an "unwarranted, narrow focus on close-relative marriage."
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Let’s set to one side the absurdity of balancing legitimate and serious medical concerns against social justice, something we remember from being told the only acceptable large gatherings during COVID were protests, because racism was supposedly also a health risk. There is something deeper at play here.
They may not know it, but these leaders in the UK are pulling on a thread that threatens to unravel the fabric of Western culture, which was, in many ways, built on just the prohibition they seek to undo.
Research done by Joseph Henrich, chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, and a team of collaborators, published in the jounal "Science" in 2019, argued convincingly that the Roman Catholic church’s ban on cousin marriage in the Middle Ages was essential to developing the individualism that is a hallmark of the West.
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The Harvard Gazette summarized Henrich’s hypothesis: "Kin-based institutions reward conformity, tradition, nepotism, and obedience to authority, traits that help protect assets — such as farms — from outsiders. But once familial barriers crumble, the team predicted that individualistic traits like independence, creativity, cooperation, and fairness with strangers would increase."
When the team looked at 24 personality traits associated with individualism, they did indeed find far higher rates in societies that scorn cousin marriage.
They also found, somewhat hilariously, that UN diplomats from nations with cousin marriages were more likely to get New York City parking tickets and less likely to pay them, presumably because they feel little responsibility to those outside their tribe.
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The prohibitions on intrafamily marriage in the West for over a thousand years compelled the wealth, be it genetic, monetary, land, titles or education to be spread; clans and tribes were far less able to operate as mini-societies.
One of the underreported stories of the Minneapolis mayor's race was that Jacob Frey won in part by exploiting internal clan or tribal divisions within the Somali community, something that is entirely foreign to anyone in the West.
The fear here is not that those of the Western tradition in the UK, or the U.S., where several states allow first-cousin marriage, will take up the practice. Aside from side plots in "Arrested Development" or "Godfather III," its not a thing for us. But if allowed, it will stand in the way of assimilation.
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One of the researchers in the study said, "We’re not saying that less-intensive, kin-based institutions are better. Far from it. There are trade-offs."
Better, is of course a subjective concept and not the proper subject of science, but from the point of view of the western tradition, and specifically that of the English-speaking world, it is hard to argue that the individualism our tradition sparked was anything other than a wild success.
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Whether it is the UK or here, those who wish to live in the West must adhere to certain standards that make the West what it is, just as you or I would if we moved to China or Dubai. It is not bigotry or chauvinism to protect one’s own culture.
For reasons we neither fully understand, nor have full access to, the great doctors of the Catholic church in the Middle Ages decided that marrying within one’s own family ran afoul Christ’s message. They could not have known how much it would change the future.
Marriage in the West from then on would be far more focused on uniting disparate clans and families than in ensuring they stay insular and "pure." It is essential to the social DNA of the West.
America should be ready for this issue to emerge. Often these social issues start in England or Canada before migrating here, and on this one there must be no compromise. Obviously, first cousins should not get married, and of course, that should never change.