The Decency To Be Honest

I am kicking myself for not previously having spotted the William and Mary thing. They never had children, but the intention was that they would. And they were first cousins whose marriage would not ordinarily have been possible in the Catholic Church, making such marriages the badge of Protestant identity that they were in the eighteenth and the long nineteenth centuries. As Calum Miller writes:

I don’t want to marry my cousin.

And I don’t recommend it to others. As younger people than I might say, it gives me the ick.

It is difficult, however, to see Richard Holden MP’s Bill to prohibit first-cousin marriage as a good-faith attempt to solve a genuine problem. After 14 years of consistent and complete failure to tackle mass immigration or family breakdown, the Tories have decided that now is the time to take a swipe at the immigrant populations they brought to the country but refused to assimilate. [In what way? Since they elected MPs who voted against assisted suicide, unlike 60 per cent of Reform UK’s, and unlike the people who would have remained Prime Minister, Chancellor the Exchequer, Health Secretary, and Work and Pensions Secretary, if the Conservatives had won?] Not with a serious and sober policy to improve integration — for example, facilitating or requiring the learning of English — but with a policy designed to direct our potent disgust reflex towards some of the demographic groups most under fire from anti-immigration rhetoric — Muslims and South Asians in particular (though Irish Travellers were also named, and some orthodox Jews might be included).

This required a considerable amount of historical revisionism. We were told by the appalled commentariat that cousin marriage was fundamentally antithetical to British customs and values. But this requires a thorough misreading of our own history, as any Jane Austen fan knows. William and Mary were first cousins, as were perhaps the royal couple most defining of conservative sexual ethics — Victoria and Albert. The Church of England to this day specifies exactly which relatives may not be married, and first cousins are conspicuously absent. It is true that the Catholic Church has for many centuries frowned upon first-cousin marriage, but even then exceptions are sometimes permitted. Going much further back, the Biblical patriarch Jacob (also known as Israel, and after whom the country of Israel today is named) married his first cousins, Rachel and Leah. This is hardly an imported norm — it has been part of British and Judaeo-Christian society for longer than we’d care to admit.

That Holden appealed to the Catholic Church in his speech is perhaps the most striking illustration of the Bill’s disingenuousness. Since when did Brits turn to papal decree for their understanding of national values? Perhaps most strangely, Holden cited the prohibition on close-relative marriage in Leviticus 18 — you know, the Biblical chapter that calls homosexual sex an “abomination”. It is difficult to take seriously an MP who fervently cheered the legalisation of same-sex marriage before taking cues on sexual ethics from Leviticus and the Vatican. What is the difference? Gay marriage is politically popular, especially amongst White British people. First-cousin marriage allows one to take cheap potshots at some of the most vilified groups of immigrants.

Besides, weren’t we told a decade ago that “love is love”? Don’t get me wrong — serious, good-faith arguments can be made for same-sex marriage. But the vapid sexual ethics of “consent is everything”; “love is love” and “you’re a bigot” were always going to lead to trouble. If two men are consenting adults who love each other, wasn’t it homophobic to object on the grounds that we found it “icky”? To unleash the limitless possibility to love whoever you love, then smack the box back down on minority persons who love their cousin, sounds hypocritical at best and downright discriminatory at worst.

There are some public health reasons for banning cousin marriage. But again, these illustrate inconsistency more than anything else. It is true that marrying your first-cousin can perhaps double the chance of an inherited condition. But having a baby in your late 30s or 40s has a far bigger impact on the likelihood of a genetic anomaly, and no one would dream of banning marriage or sex at later stages of life. After all, “my body, my choice”. Preventing Ashkenazi Jews from marrying each other could likewise significantly limit the prevalence of Tay-Sachs disease, but no one thinks this would be acceptable. Likewise preventing second-cousin marriage, and so on.

Or what about infertile or gay cousins, who can’t procreate at all? Why should they be included in the ban when there is no genetic risk? Of course, they would be included in the ban, which shows that this is really not about public health. It’s about … you guessed it.

It is right to take a stand on British values and family values. But last I recalled, letting people do what they want with their own bodies and love whomever they wish were British values, according to the liberal wing of the Conservatives — where Holden finds his home. After years of failure on family values, the tokenistic attempt at protecting them feels somewhat shallow.

If Holden wanted a serious solution to a serious problem, he wouldn’t have picked a bill that was so riddled with inconsistencies — and that is so anathema to the progressive liberal ethics he otherwise holds dear. Instead of looking to fix the problem, he is looking to fan the flames for cheap political point-scoring in the name of stigmatising immigrants.

If you disapprove of cousin marriage just because it is icky, that is fine. I feel that way myself. But normally I am told that this makes me bigoted, illiberal, and possessed of any number of phobias. 

When the progressive wing of the Tories told us “love is love”, I did not expect them to return to Parliament several years later with a bill based on Leviticus 18 and Catholic canon law. You can oppose cousin marriage all you want — but let’s not whitewash British history and sail closely beside eugenic winds as faux justification for doing so. If you want to win back Reform voters by painting Pakistan-British citizens as incestuous, have the decency to be honest about it.