Should incestuous marriages be illegal? [Updated]

EU flag by Giampaolo Squarcina

In the next 50 years, the concept of marriage in Europe is going to change. Guaranteed. And no, I'm not just talking about gay marriage, although that is a related debate. Now that debate is shifting to marriages between family members, which are far more common than gay marriages. They are already legal in the Netherlands, and the Germany's highest court is about to decide on the issue in the case of a brother and sister who are married (Several of their children have had health problems). But a brother-sister marriage is the very rare exception (for now).

The much more common situation is marriage between first cousins in immigrant families, particularly Muslim families, since the Koran doesn't consider this to be incest. In Britain, the cousin marriage rate among Pakistanis is a whopping 55%. This has had a predictable effect:

British Pakistanis are 13 times more likely to have children with genetic disorders than the general population - they account for just over 3% of all births but have just under a third of all British children with such illnesses.

Bradford is a city in the UK well known for its high concentration of Pakistani immigrants (and riots). According to the British Medical Journal:

Bradford paediatricians noted an unusually high rate of autosomal recessive disorders among children. Peter Corry, a paediatrician at the Bradford Royal Infirmary, said an "informal data collection" among colleagues showed that approximately 140 different autosomal recessive disorders had been seen locally in the past few years.

Dr Corry said that in a typical health authority the number of such disorders would be about 20 to 30. Recent years have seen a "gradual increase" in the number of cases, he said. The number of paediatric neurodegenerative conditions being treated in Bradford has risen from eight in 1986 to 45 today. Bradford's high rate of such conditions was confirmed in a 2004 study in the Archives of Disease in Childhood ( 2004;89: 8-12).

Of course, the custom is not just related (no pun intended) to Pakistanis. The Dutch News today reported that one-quarter of Turkish and Moroccan marriages in the Netherlands are between related persons. Some of them are bending the religious rules a bit, since some of the reported marriages are not only cousins, but uncles and nieces.

So why do people do it? It is a common custom in much of Asia and Africa with a long history, born at a time when people didn't understand the genetic risks. In 2003, Steve Sailer wrote an article titled "The Cousin Conundrum", in which he explained how cousin marriage may have shaped Middle Eastern history greater than most people would imagine, and why this practice has remained so common among immigrants in Europe today:

European "family reunification" laws present an immigrant with the opportunity to bring in his nephew by marrying his daughter to him. Not surprisingly, "family reunification" almost always works just in one direction -- with the new husband moving from the poor Muslim country to the rich European country.

If a European-born daughter refused to marry her cousin from the old country just because she doesn't love him, that would deprive her extended family of the boon of an immigration visa. So, intense family pressure can fall on the daughter to do as she is told.

Needless to say, this isn't very useful in helping immigrants to assimilate into European societies.

But in spite of the alarming health risks, you have to be careful what you say. Simply speaking out against this issue can lead to calls for your dismissal and accusations of "islamophobia" and "racism". The PC police would much prefer to keep raising taxes to cover the health care and long-term costs, rather than confront any issue that is largely associated with a minority ethnic group.

Of course, simply being related doesn't guarantee health problems for your children. Not at all. Horse breeders raise quality racing horses all the time by breeding brothers and sisters. While it can magnify defective traits, it also reinforces positive ones. So in theory, one possibility to get around the issue entirely is to encourage couples to use genetic counseling to identify beforehand if there are any potential genetic conditions that could endanger their children.

But in practice I suspect it wouldn't make much difference. Families can put a lot of pressure on a couple to have children, and people who are genuinely in love throw all caution to the winds anyway. They would prefer to simply throw the dice and hope for the best. Unfortunately, this is patently unfair: they are not gambling with their own lives, but someone else's.

UPDATE 13/03/2008 08:17:00 PM:
Regarding the brother and sister mentioned above, today Germany's highest court ruled against the couple, declaring that that sexual relations between siblings "do not affect them exclusively, but also can have an effect on family and society, and have consequences for children who arise from the relationship." He now faces going back to prison for two and a half years.

The magazine Stern reported that the man has already had a vasectomy, so he cannot have any more children in any case. This changes my mind on this a bit. I'm not terribly sympathetice, but he has already done prison time; I don't see what is to be gained by sending him back again. Moreover I don't understand why the brother was repeatedly prosecuted but not the sister? She is also a legal adult and should be equally held accountable for her actions. Many people have asked this question on CNN's blog, and no answer is forthcoming. If nothing else, it's a valid basis for another appeal, but the man might not want to take the risk that they both might end up incarcerated.

His only recourse now is to either claim asylum in another European country, or appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. On the blog above, a poll on the subject: "Should incestuous relationships be illegal?". Right now the results read 64% in favor (of keeping illegal), 36% against.



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