A senior White House official identified the practise as a contributing factor underpinning the United States’ concern over Europe’s “civilisational erasure.”
Cousin marriage remains legal in the UK (Image: Getty)
The White House has launched a scathing criticism of Sir Keir Starmer’s refusal to ban cousin marriage. Donald Trump’s free speech Tsar, Sarah Rogers, shared a clip of a debate in Parliament on the practice of first-cousin marriage, to illustrate concerns the US Government had previously expressed over civilisational erasure in Europe.
Responding to a video on X, Rogers said: “I’ve received some questions about what we mean, in our National Security Strategy, when we invoke ‘civilisational’ concerns. So I’m tweeting a relevant news item.” Last month, President Trump warned that Europe faces “civilisational erasure” as he questioned the reliability of the country’s longstanding allies.
The video shared by Rogers showed a Conservative MP speaking during PMQs as he warned of the health implications endured by the offspring of cousin marriages.
He said: “On Friday, this Government has a chance to let my bill go through to ban first-cousin marriage to committee stage. Will the Prime Minister think again before instructing his whips to block this legislation?”
The Prime Minister replied: “We’ve taken our position on that bill, thank you.”
Rogers, who has previously hit out at the UK over female genital mutilation and British critics of the Trump administration, also shared a Wikipedia article which made a link between the practice of honor killings in some Middle Eastern countries, stating that the family of a woman married to her cousin “may be responsible for killing her, or sometimes her lover, if she commits adultery”.
She added: “Since we know the British Government wants to make sure women are safe both online and offline (thus contemplating a Russia-style X ban, to protect them from bikini images), here’s more from Wikipedia on cousin marriage – and its connection to honour killing.
“A sardonic reader might wonder whether Ofcom’s response to such affronts would be ‘ban Wikipedia’. You don’t need to wonder! All wikis face an uncertain future in Britain if they allow anonymous editing.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has previous spoken out against the practise (Image: Getty)
Marrying a first cousin is legal in the UK.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has previously warned of the dangers of the practice.
He said: “The medical science and evidence is clear.
“First-cousin marriages are high risk and unsafe; we see the genetic defects it causes, the harm that it causes.”
Research, including from the long-running Born in Bradford study, has found children from first-cousin marriages are more likely to have speech and language difficulties, less likely to reach a “good stage of development”, and have more GP practice appointments.
The study also found that, after allowing for risk factors such as age, obesity and smoking, the risk of congenital anomalies was doubled (3% to 6%) in first-cousin marriages and accounted for 30% of genetic disorders.
Interviews among 13,500 families between 2007 and 2011 for the study found 60% of couples of Pakistani heritage were related by blood (first cousin, second cousin or other blood relative), with 37% first-cousin marriages.
This compares with less than 1% in white British couples.
