Marriage between cousins is still 500% more legal than gay marriage in the US

Thanks for sharing these statistics Kate.

“While many right wingers assert that the main reason to prevent gay marriage is to protect children, the risk of genetic mutation and birth defects resulting from shared DNA doubles in marriages between cousins (from 3% – 6%). There is no risk of birth defects to children from gay unions.”

This is a pretty poor comparison. It’s apples and oranges. Obviously gay marriage results in no defects since it can result in no natural children. However I’m sure that right wingers (despite their perceived stupidity in the media at times) don’t have this in mind when they talk about “protecting” children by preventing of gay marriage. They must obviously mean protecting children who might be adopted by said gay couple from being exposed to people of the same sex showing affection for each other and possibly experimenting along the same lines (since naturally, for many right wingers this kind of activity is not natural and hence not something they want children to be emulating). Cousin marriages and marriages between non-cousins (or rather non-first cousins since no matter what you believe whether it is creation or evolution we all MUST be cousins to some degree) can also result in zero birth defects if the couples in those kinds of marriages acquire kids the same way gay couples would: by adoption. The kids may still have birth defects, but at least they won’t be birth defects passed on from the “parents”.

“….explain how Andy is little Craig’s uncle and his grandpa or that Mommy and Daddy are both aunt and uncle and mommy and daddy.”

Well this kind of weakens the aim of the article if it was intended to show why marriage between cousins is supposedly bad.

Andy cannot be Craig’s uncle and grandpa unless what happened was an uncle (Andy’s brother) marrying a niece (Craig’s mother and Andy’s daughter) or an aunt marrying a nephew. It doesn’t even take 1 minute to work out the relationships on a scrap of paper.

The second example is even worse. Mommy and Daddy can’t be aunt and uncle to the kids unless mommy and daddy are brother and sister. This is something that even a child should be able to figure out.

The correct examples would be that Mommy and Daddy are simply also cousins to the children (but that’s hardly anything to get worked up about that since geneticists believe everyone is at most a fiftieth cousin to everyone else on the planet – or less if you take the Bible literally with Adam and Eve and then Noah and his 3 surviving sons). Also in the case of Andy and Craig, if Andy was Craig’s uncle, he would be at most uncle and a cousin (has to be brother to one of the parents and cousin to the other).