It really is OK to fancy your cousin

We've all been single and wondered if we'd ever find someone. Hands up who thought about dating their cousin? In the UK it is legal to marry your cousin; in parts of West Africa there's a saying, "Cousins are made for cousins"; but in America it is banned or restricted in 31 states. Restrictions include genetic counselling or that couples are past the age of reproduction.
I've never lusted after my cousins, and I'm confident the feeling is mutual. My cousins are people I've known from childhood; I've been bathed with them and we've accompanied each other to weddings and funerals. Not as close as a brother, but close enough, thanks.
The actor Greta Scacchi encountered small-minded attitudes similar to mine when she married her first cousin Carlo Mantegazza. "People were scandalised," she said, "but it is perfectly legal. I was really upset at all the fuss, but I came through it – we both did – and we are very happy." The American website cousincouples.com is full of couples too scared to tell their parents they are "kissing cousins". It also attracts comments: "Here you all are flaunting your incestuous ways… I bet $10,000 that you all smell like polecats and are too socially backward to get real dates."
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Last year the environment minister Phil Woolas caused a row by attributing the higher than average rate of genetic birth problems in the Pakistani community to their practice (around 55% of marriages) of marrying first cousins. He told the Sunday Times, "If you have a child with your cousin, the likelihood is there'll be a genetic problem."
Supporters of marriage between cousins (or just people who care about truth) cried foul and cited findings from a panel published in the Journal of Genetic Counselling (based on studies of thousands of births over 35 years) showing risks of between 1.7% and 2.8% above the background risk for congenital or genetic abnormalities (which meant a doubling of what is still quite a small risk for having a condition such as cystic fibrosis or spina bifida).
Martin Ottenheimer, an American anthropologist, has long argued against the US ban on cousin marriages. "The ban is due to a deep-seated prejudice, an expression of stereotype," he says. "Humans have to define closeness, who is too close to marry. But if that closeness is decided on the basis of wrongly interpreted genetics, then it is not justified.
"It is not unusual, especially for elderly couples, to feel comfortable with and be attracted to their cousins. To say they shouldn't marry if they fall in love is unfair."
But as cousincouples.com points out, unlike with other relationships, if things don't work out, you'll still be cousins for the rest of your life.

Is it normal to romantically love your cousin?
Albert Einstein married his first cousin. So did Charles Darwin. So did Malthus, Maslow, Werner von Braun, Stravinsky, and H.G. Wells. In fact it's historically been quite acceptable for first cousins to be romantically involved. In populations where people are continually expected to marry close relatives generation after generation, say in certain royal families trying to consolidate power, you can eventually weaken the genetic diversity, but as an occasional thing it's not a huge problem.

In fact, marriage to a first cousin is currently legal basically everywhere in the world but China, India, and the United States. (In parts of India the rule is basically that people with the same last name can't marry, so some first cousins can marry. In the United States laws vary by state, with many states allowing first cousins to marry.)

The bans in China and India can be explained easily: the Indian ban is based on Hindu principles, and the Chinese ban is based on the writings of Confucius. The American bans are more interesting. They didn't exist until the late 19th century. The official reasons given for the bans were to avoid the downsides associated with inbreeding, but there is an alternate theory.

Marriages between first cousins happened primarily in tight-knit immigrant communities where someone wanting to marry inside the group would have a relatively limited selection. Such communities are trouble for those in power in many ways -- they often vote in blocs, and might even start advancing their own political candidates, building their own businesses, and so forth. Powerful Americans were looking for ways to disperse and assimilate immigrant communities. Banning marriage between second and closer cousins would force people to marry outside of their community and hopefully dilute their ethnic identities and thereby weaken its political power. Now, you can argue that in the end we're all the richer for the "melting pot" created by the eventual dispersal of these ethnic communities into the mainstream, but any such benefits are only side effects.

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