The tryptophan hangover has long since departed, but I can't seem to shake the lingering Turkey Day distaste from reading the New York Times Thanksgiving edition's piece on "cusbands." Every satire of liberals one day becomes true. Two months from "An Outbreeder's Modest Proposal for Inbreeder Tolerance" is a little quick, no? By sympathetically profiling several conjugal cousins, the Old Gray Lady attempts to mainstream the marginal by marginalizing the mainstream. Borrowing rhetoric from the gay marriage template, the Home & Garden section piece informs that the anti-cousin marrigage "laws [were] enacted mostly in the nineteenth century" and that the United States is "one of the few countries in the world where such unions are illegal." Get it? The laws are antiquated and out of step with the rest of the world. Yesterday's rural embarrassment is today's urban cause du jour. Backward is the new forward.

"the anti-cousin marriage 'laws [were] enacted mostly in the nineteenth century'"
lol. My first reaction wasn't to think that "The laws are antiquated. . . " but that they are too new to be given authority of tradition. Perhaps I'm living in the past.

Like many of the taboos going back to ancient times, there was a logical reason for the many supporting rules and traditions that appeared sometimes to be mysterious.

But it was recognized a long time ago that consummating relations with close blood relatives resulting in the production of offspring often have disastrous effects on the gene pool going forward. Not to mention the fact that it's pretty darn icky.

To the greater societal point here, isn't this what $ame $ex marriage and the overall acceptance of that lifestyle all about? Break down a norm here or there and any aberration seems just fine.

19th century American Protestant fad moral laws enacted by selective states but pushing for universality and critical of the non-participating states for being degenerate? Prohibition anyone?

the idea of cousin-marriage has, in this day and age, an "ewww" factor.

however, they were, if not the rule, then very common at one time. As recently as the 1940s, I believe, the psychologist Abraham Maslow married his first cousin, as did Charles Darwin (Emma Wedgewood)!

I know nothing about the prohibition of marriage between cousins. I suspect that, rather than being a result of Protestant extremist, they came about bec. of growing eugenicist beliefs (if true, this is ironic, since the father of eugenics, Francis Galton, was also Darwin's cousin).

I find it funny that as an expert and founder of the Theory of Evolution, Darwin married his first cousin. As a scientist, did he not know the genealogical perils or did he not care?

And why can't these guys and gals find somebody to love outside of their immediate gene pool?

*I find it funny that as an expert and founder of the Theory of Evolution, Darwin married his first cousin. As a scientist, did he not know the genealogical perils or did he not care*

Darwin did not yet know about `genes' - nor did anyone except for Linneas.

To him (i.e. Linneas), they were just an theoretical abstraction, and of course their exact character was not unveiled until the 1950s.

Ok. I'll admit my ignorance on that subject as I thought he was a botanist and studied plant cross breeding and the like.

Apparently that wasn't the case.

Anyway he evidently enjoyed his cousin/wife because they had ten kids. And he and she were both very bright and much aware of the genetic pitfalls of breeding closely within a family.