Cheaper by the Cousin

Apparently, some people want to marry their cousins. We're not talking distant cousins here, but rather, those close family members who happen to be the children of your parent's siblings. You know, cousins. Quite frankly, the whole "cousin" thing kind of pisses me off, come to think of it. We have second cousins, cousins once and twice removed, and even more bizarre relationships.

For example, the drummer for Cream is apparantely my second cousin, once removed. At least he is according to one of my great aunts. Who never lies. At least, she has never once lied to me on the one visit we had together. My dad took me to visit her, despite my obvious lack of interest. I was seven years old, and I had never seen this woman before. Who the hell was "Aunt" Ruby? Why had I never seen her before? It all sounded shady to me. I was forced to meet her, we left, and I never saw her again.

But I digress.

Why do we have all these bizare cousin categories? Nobody has a second brother, twice removed. As far as I am concerned in the cousin cateogry, there are only two kinds: cousins, and people I am not related to. If someone has to involve more than three family relationships in order to explain how I am related to someone, then as far as I am concerned, I'm not really related to them ("Jeffery? You know Jeffery! He's Sally's husband's sister's cousin on Grandma's side." Yeah, whatever. Jeffery is a fucking stranger).

Ok, so I'm still digressing (I think perhaps I should change the name of my blog to "Digress-i Junior High". Aha. Ha. Ha. Ah yes, good times).

So, some people apparently want to marry their cousins. Now, I had always assumed that this particular act was illegal, unless you were Jerry Lee Lewis. Sure, he married his cousin (who was 14 at the time), but that was back in the olden days, when marrying cousins was probably cool or something. Maybe it was a fad. They used to do some pretty stupid things in the olden days, like build castles, burn witches, and vote Republican. The marriage also took place in the South where, to be honest, the idea of inter-cousin-breeding quite frankly seems to explain a whole lot.

So evidently, marriage amongst first cousins is not illegal in the United States. At least, not in all 50 states. If you would like to marry your cousin, you can do so legally in: Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Conneticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Ilsand, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virgina.

That's a lot of hot cousin-on-cousin action.

But what about those poor people who don't live in one of these states, and still want desperately to marry their cousins? Well, maybe not desperately enough to travel to another state, but what about them? Luckily, there are still options. Arizona, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin will allow cousins to marry, provided you promise - cross your heart and hope to die - not to have kids. Because if you can't trust a cousin-fucker, who can you trust?

Maine stands alone in that it will allow cousins to marry, but only if they undergo "Genetic counseling" first. Apparently, with counseling, you can talk your genes into rearranging themselves sufficiently to eliminate your risk of producing a child that would end up ringing the bells at Notre Dame (or, alternatively, being adopted into the Bush family and becoming president).

Its nice to see the US has such a liberal attitude towards cousin-fucking (come on, lets face it ... once they're married, you know those cousins are going to fuck). Its good to see them spearheading the rights of cousins to breed, and to produce babies with extra toes, fingers, and noses. It's heart-warming to see the US finally taking a hard stand on human rights issues, and allowing cousins to marry.

Unless of course they're of the same gender.