Don’t marry your cousin
by James Price, Artillery Row:
And don’t knock culture wars — they can save lives.
Let’s check in on the health of multicultural Britain — literally. Assimilation and integration are so unsuccessful that tribal practices from faraway lands are being imported here and causing enormous health problems, both to the body politic and to the individual body. Try to hide away from these horrid truths if you like, but without direct government intervention, these problems are only going to get worse.
Helpfully, a recent private member’s bill has been introduced to Parliament that seeks to ban one such practice — that of first cousin marriage. This bill has been introduced by former Conservative Party Chairman Richard Holden, whom I have criticised heavily in these pages. But Holden deserves a lot of credit for being one of the few parliamentarians to stick his head above the parapet on this issue. I don’t imagine his mailbox will be very pleasant for a long while now, and certain groups will correctly feel that this targets their culture, and will be likely to express their unhappiness.
Because this bill is indeed targeting an aspect of certain cultures that have grown in number in these islands in recent decades. Holden also paired this practice, again not without risk to himself, to the horrors of forced or arranged marriages inside the UK, and “strict honour codes — where expressions of individuality can be subject to social isolation, violence and even death — dominate thinking”.
A newly elected independent MP, Iqbal Mohamed, rose to object to the ban. It felt like a watershed moment. In many ways, I respect the courage it took Mr Mohamed to rise to his feet and defend what could delicately be termed a “controversial” opinion. But of course, to many in Britain today this isn’t a controversial opinion. It is their everyday family life. Many disbelieve the medical facts and attribute the resulting genetic defects of their own children to other factors.
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