Study downgrades cousin risks

The Washington Times ^ | April 4, 2002 | Unattributed

[Loyalist]

Loyalist: So it isn`t an issue of morality but of class differences. It`s all right for the First Families of Virginia but not for the worst families of West Virginia.

twigs: How do you read that???

It's the underlying theme of the comments generated so far.

Cousin marriage seems to be acceptable provided it's within the best and brightest families so as to keep the bloodlines producing more of the best and brightest. That's not just the attitude among European royalty and aristocracy; it also seems to be one among some people descended from old-stock American families.

But when the poor white trash in the Appalachians marry their cousins, it's one comment after another semi-retarded slack-jawed yokels playing duelling banjos on the front porch drinking moonshine and watching the rungs fall off the DNA ladder.

[twigs]

It's the underlying theme of the comments generated so far. Cousin marriage seems to be acceptable provided it's within the best and brightest families so as to keep the bloodlines producing more of the best and brightest. That's not just the attitude among European royalty and aristocracy; it also seems to be one among some people descended from old-stock American families. But when the poor white trash in the Appalachians marry their cousins, it's one comment after another semi-retarded slack-jawed yokels playing duelling banjos on the front porch drinking moonshine and watching the rungs fall off the DNA ladder.

I think you're reading something that isn't there. While I do come from an old American family, we were never part of the blue bloods. We were on the edge of Appalachia and some of my collateral ancestors married into all sorts of lines, including the rural "yokels." The reason cousins married cousins is that they lived in a rural region where travel was difficult. Families lived nearby. Sometimes their cousins were the only people they had a chance to meet, or at least, they were the ones they had the opportunity to get to know. The north, with laws against cousin marriage, was more urbanized and the people could get to know potential spouses other than just their cousins.