Originally Posted by Drew Curtis

The details:


Twins, a brother and a sister, were adopted shortly after birth by different parents. They later accidentally married each other. They later found out and got a divorce.

David Alton, a member of the House of Lords (UK parliament), told a story as an argument that people who are adopted should be able to later find out who their parents are.


That's it. Alton doesn't name the people, he doesn't name the high court judge involved in their subsequent divorce, he doesn't give a timeframe when this happened. He's also a politician pushing a pet issue through a lawmaking body of government.

Politicians lie to get laws passed, folks. Yes shocking I know. This "news" story is complete crap.

Judging from the article CNN ran, the big media folks think so too. CNN's article pins all the details on the UK Press Association. The CNN article in it's distilled basic form is: "UK Press Association says stuff." The UK Press Association's information, distilled to basic form, is: "David Alton says stuff." Both articles are therefore factually correct, these things were said. It's a hedge used often by media companies use to get around taking blame later on for accidentally reporting unsubstantiated facts as news. You see it fairly often in gossip articles, quoting unnamed sources for juicy celebrity details.

I have yet to see any article about these supposed married twins that did any fact checking to see if there was any truth to this story. No one bothered. Why? Because it's sensational. Brother and Sister Hardcore Action. It's a top story on every major international news outlet today.

Whose fault is this? Don't blame the media, blame the audience. This stuff is red hot as far as clicks and pageviews go. You can see this on CNN, FoxNews, and any other site that displays Top Stories of the Day based on traffic. Don't blame media for serving this stuff up as news, blame the media-consuming public for wanting it to be news.

The chances of adopted twins marrying each other actually happening are damn near impossible. Two people adopted and separated at birth would have to randomly meet, fall in love, and get married. They would have to not suspect anything during this courtship, even though they both know they're adopted, they kind of look like each other, and they have the same birthday. Their parents would know they both came from the same adoption agency. To me this would raise all kinds of red flags. Maybe these two people were that dumb. Maybe the impossible happened and they met and got married without suspecting anything.

Or maybe, just maybe, David Alton, a politician, made the whole thing up to get legislation passed.