Question Is it wrong to fall in love and have a relationship with your first cousin even if you did not grow up together and met as adults? There are many taboos about this kind of relationships and some cultures see it as a very bad thing and others don't. I am very curious to know what philosophers have to say about this.

Accepted:
March 15, 2013

Comments

On the one hand, there are no doubt good reasons for incest taboos. For one thing, family life might become hopelessly complicated if sexual liaisons between first-degree relatives were common. To that we can add that when close relatives have children, the risk that their child will have birth defects goes up, and to that we can add further that if such situations became common, there might be unfortunate effects on the genetic variability of the larger population.

That said, your first cousin is not a first-degree relative. Furthermore, the fact that a practice would be problematic if everyone engaged in it doesn't mean that it's automatically wrong. After all, if everyone were to practice celibacy, the human race would die out. But even if you think that would be a bad thing, you presumably don't think it means that no one should decide to be celibate. More relevantly: while it's true that when first cousins have children the risks of birth defects increase somewhat, the increase is on a par with the risk of birth defects for children of mothers over 40. Here is a brief discussion. To this we could add that if that were the worry, then birth control would address it.

So it's hard to see that there's much in the way of serious objections to the case you describe. True, some people/cultures feel differently, but as you point out, others don't. There's no reason to think that groups who approve of first-cousin relationships are somehow morally confused.

Of course, some people will have a sort of surd "Ick" reaction. But that doesn't tell us much. After all, some people have that reaction to interracial marriage, or to homosexual relationships. The reaction doesn't stand up to scrutiny in those cases, and it's hard to see why it would fare any better here.