I'm not relating the homosexuality and kissing cousins, save that I think people should keep an open mind about other people being both. (Which you clearly have with homosexuals) I could just as easily have used the example of a particular religion or like topic, I just picked up on homosexuality because earlier in the thread you hit on the feel of what I'm trying to get at.
I'm simply stating that I don't think it should be knocked as wrong by basis that you don't personally support it.

I do, however, recognize that your reasoning behind thinking it's wrong may have nothing to do with that and everything to do with your thinking it's wrong for anybody to do it, regardless of personal feelings toward the subject. In fact, your reasoning could have everything to do with another reason that I have yet to understand (your writing is often very good and complex, meaning I sometimes have to read through a few times before I get everything out of it). If that is the case, I don't have an argument against you, save that I think you're wrong for doing so, just as you think I am for my view. With that as the situation, there's no argument save the equivelent of a shouting match... which would accomplish nothing in way of argument and most likely cause feelings of bad blood, of which I've no wish with you.

I'm really not going after you so much because I think you're the most out of line in here, but rather because you're in opposition to me and seem to have the most coherent/well-thought-out opinions and can express them with more than a "Dude... gross."

No thanks. All my cousins were men (much older than I).

I just wanted to say... this thread rocks! :D

And no, I've never fucked a cousin... or even a distant relation as far as I know.

We're not a particularly handsome family, tho...

Roger that. This started off as some pretty interesting discussion but got way off track.

*Whew* I was just glad Mississippi wasn't brought up here...lol! Though I do know some first cousins that are married to each other and have 3 children together. And NO they aren't deformed or 'mentally challenged'. I still have to go with '0' myself. My philosophy... whatever floats your boat! That just doesn't float my boat though. Interesting points brought up in this post as well.

Number of cousins I have: 3
Number of male cousins I have: 3
Number I've had sex with: 0
Number I've wanted to: 0
Being that I'm not interested in having sex with another guy it's really easy for me to answer this one in regards to myself. As far as other people, I guess the ick factor would depend on how close you are/have been to that cousin.
Example, my mother's cousin lived with my grandparents, my mother and my uncles when she was younger due to her parents not being able to raise her themselves. As a result my mom has always referred to her as "her sister". For her to sleep with one of her cousins would absolutely raise the Ick Factor.

One of my male cousins got married a long time ago... At his wedding I met his bride to be's little sister. The wedding reception was at the same hotel everyone was staying at.

A few drinks and a joint later.

I have yet to see her since. She was hot.

It is good to see this thread pulled back on to the topic. And special thanks to ShaniFaye for her succinct discussion of the cousin relationship, especially the "removed" part, which I had never really understood.

When I was sixteen I had a brief (and I do mean brief) encounter --President (at the time) Bill Clinton wouldn't have called it sex-- with one of my cousins, so I guess in the spirit of the times, I wouldn't call it "laid." At the time, I was quite the little slut. Why say no to my cousin, I hardly ever said no to any guy. Now we are both thirty plus and it is far away in the past. I bet that I haven't seen him in about ten years. I do remember that he was very well endowed but popped off in about two minutes.

This discussion reminds me of a science fiction short story about a culture or race that encouraged what we call incest as a way of "improving the breed" just like livestock breeders do. I read this maybe ten years ago, and it was in a second hand paperback that was already old and yellowed. I think that the title was If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Want Your Sister to Marry One? by Harlan Ellison, or maybe he was the editor of the collection, not the author of that story. Anyone here familiar with that story?
Where I grew up in southwest Kansas the Okies were always the butt of our jokes: Q. What is an Oklahoma virgin? A. An ugly twelve year old. (long pause) That can outrun all her cousins. Q. Why wasn't Jesus born in Oklahoma? A. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.

Also there was a song from the 1930s that touched on widows, cousins, divorces, remarriages, intermarriages, etc. called I'm my own Grandpa Who sang that?

Lindy

nevermind.

wow same here.....

:thumbsup: and a few more girls across the street!

auto,erged doublepost

I don't think I would view it as disgusting. If I have a cousin who's hot enough I certainly wouldn't mind. Maybe it's due to the fact that I'm not very much close to my first cousins. I am more disturbed by homosexuality and etc, as well as closer relation incest, such as siblings or half siblings. However, to me, I think I'd be able to accept cousin-to-cousin relationships.

Why is homosexuality disturbing if incest (even a lesser form) is not? Incest degenerates the race as a whole, so I could see your reasoning there, while homosexuality does nothing to contribute to the gene pool, so it's as if they're in their own little world. Why discriminate against them?

Mixedmedia: Being very curious is a valuable thing!
Willravel: I sort of thought you were even touchier than I am.
McDuffie: 2 1/2. While young and just for fun. Whoops.

Hahahah. :thumbsup:

I have this bad childhood memory of getting caught naked with my cousins. It was that "show me yours and i'll show you mine thing" ...... I think.

....actually I think it was just me convincing them that naked is better.

I was ahead of my time.

No cousin booty for me.... Though I did have a huge crush on one...There was just something about his southern draw...haha

OK...DUH... Going back and rereading I see where I made my misunderstanding...dont I feel dumb...lol.

On a side not, a little off track, but similar to the cousin-cousin relationships...
How does the majority in here feel about step-relations? In specific two parents with children get married, and the son of one and daughter of the other are hooking up. I have a spoiler that I will reveal later, but this is a true situation I had a friend in when I was in highschool with her. Let me know your opinions.

Even though the step-thing is outlawed, since it doesn't involve the genes, I wonder why?

OK, well since there have been no other replies, I will give the spoiler. The good friend of mine is a girl. She had been daing this guy when we were in highschool for a year, and they were pretty crazy about each other. They had been having sexual relations (pretty much everything except actual intercourse) for several months, and on a weekend where she was cheering and he was playing football, her mom and his dad met each other. Both were single parents. They hit it off, and started dating. almost right off the bat they told each of their kids that they had to break it off with the other, because THEY started dating, and eventually got married. Now the two of them are still madly in love, but can't get married now because their own parents got married. Currently the two of them are living together. (they have been together now for almost 22 years, and have two wonderful kids)
But STILL the state of Texas will not let them get married, and they had to fight the courts in order to keep their kids! Sometimes I think the laws are pretty stupid.

Yeah, that's TOTALLY ridiculous.

Fortunately, though, there was nothing intergenerational going on. If I fell in love with a woman whose daughter fell in love with my father--not only would nobody be able to marry anybody, but if we all DID get married, suddenly I'd be my own grandpa!

hmmm texas law allows steps to marry, the only time they cant is if they are adopted....did one of the parents adopt the other child? cause unless they did I dont see why they arent married

I can't believe no one has pointed out the other obvious interpretation of the original question ("How many first cousins have you laid?")... surely if you laid one person, and that person's first cousin (possibly at a later date), then you have laid first cousins?

If this poll had said "How many twins have you laid?", we wouldn't expect that to mean having sex with your own twin brother or sister...

Anyway, as you were. :)

so out of curiosity, in the case posed by deltona, what happens if the parents get a divorce, and then everyone immediately gets married all at the same time?

All of my cousins are a good 10+ years older than me, so there was never any possibility for me. I do think it could be kind of hot to have this forbidden relationship, and to keep it a secret between the 2 of you.

The woman who lives next door to me married her first cousin and they were together for 40+ years. She's now in her 80's and a widow. They had 2 children from adoption because they were afraid to make their own due to the possibility of genetic defects.

Shani, your post made me curious, so I called my friend and asked her. I guess I was in error when I mentioned that Texas was not allowing it. I was incorrect. It is their church that refuses to allow them to marry, and as she is pretty religious, she refuses to marry any other way, and Mike has accepted that, so they just live together.

I absolutely hate all my first cousins so that isnt ever gonna happen. Though on of them is a huge slut though.

Sooooo...what's her number?

Luckily all of my cousins are a little young for me, because now that they're getting a little older, it looks like they'll turn out very quite nicely.

Mercifully I never had to sink so low as to start screwing my cousins...and if you saw them you'd know why I'm glad it never had to come to that.

I've only got one male cousin of age, and although he's kind of cute he's deep inside the closet. And besides, he's from the west coast. Ick. :P One of my aunts is married to her first cousin though, so their kids (adopted!) are both my cousins and my second cousins.

For the original question, I consider any kind of sexual relations with close blood relatives gross - that's just personal opinion and I wouldn't presume to judge what other people find appealing or unappealing.

That's independent of the science, though. I certainly do think it's irresponsible of people to procreate with close relatives when they (a) are aware of the risks to the resultant child, (b) live in a community in which there is no justifiable social advantage to procreating with a relative, and (c) there is opportunity to be with a nonrelative.

Several people have mentioned the genetics, but nobody has explained it in detail, and a few people just made vague universal but completely unsupported statements, maybe because they were convenient for their argument? Anyway, for those who are interested, genetics is a very important consideration. I know this thread is about personal opinion regarding consanguineous relations, but I feel obliged to clear up the misinformation.

The most important issue is with "recessive" hereditary diseases - in which a person must have 2 bad copies of a gene in order to be affected (remember how everybody has 2 copies of every gene?). This is what willravel was referring to when he kept saying "homozygous." In case you just got intimidated by the word and didn't bother to look it up, homozygous means you have 2 identical copies of a gene, but of course willravel was referring to identical bad copies of a gene. There are TONS of bad diseases that are autosomal recessive like cystic fibrosis, PKU, hereditary hemophilia, sickle-cell anemia, Tay Sachs disease, Gauchier's disease.

This is the risk: One of your grandparents either has such a disease, or is a carrier. If they are just a carrier, there is a 1 in 16 chance that both you and your first cousin will be carriers (have a bad copy of the gene). If your grandparent has the disease, there is a 1 in 4 chance that both you and your cousin will be carriers. Those are really scary odds. But that's the absolute minimum. That refers to only 1 bad gene, related to 1 disease in the child. The odds of a bad mix get a little bit higher when you consider homologous recombination during gametogenesis (formation of sperm and ova), and much much higher when taking into account that there are ~25,000 genes, meaning there are more than 25,000 places to get a bad combination in the child.

Think this is all numbers and strange words? Here are some real-world examples:

The Bedouin of the Middle East and North Africa consist of many nomadic groups. Some of the groups in Israel have an incredibly high rate of deafness. Worldwide, early-onset deafness is estimated at about 1/2000 to 1/3000 births, and only about half of these are inherited. In Israeli Bedouin communities the prevalence is about 1/40, and has been confirmed to be due to a single mutation that is propagated by the extremely high rate of first- and second-cousin marriage. Even though deaf-deaf marriages are discouraged, the frequency of the mutant allele (copy of the gene) continues to increase from the inbreeding.

In many isolated Amish and Mennonite communities in North America, cystic fibrosis is dramatically over-represented compared to average North American caucasian numbers. The prevalence in North America is about 1 in 2500-3000 live births, with many different mutations potentially contributing to the disease. In the isolated communities, numbers as high as 1/500 have been found, with an otherwise rare mutation accounting for all cases in the community. There is no doubt that inbreeding within the small communities maintains the mutant allele at a high frequency.


On a final note, most people understand that genetic uniformity (a lack of variation) in a population makes it very vulnerable to epidemic disease. This caused the potato blight in Ireland, and led to the mass exodus of Irish that helped shape a lot of the large North American cities like Boston and Montreal. This is also a common argument against genetically modified crops (although its validity as a legitimate concern is still very contentious). The point is, people generally understand that genetic uniformity is bad, so it should be easy to understand that inbreeding, which contributes to genetic uniformity, can have very dangerous consequences.

Nope, I've never laid a first cousin.

Poloboy: I'm sure you are quite correct about the possible genetic consequences of sleeping with your cousins. However, please read it again and see how it comes across to those readers who are affected by the genetic 'defects' you appear so desperate to warn others about.

I see your good intentions here, but your perspective and mine appear to be different.

I have a striking number of extremely attractive girl cousins, but no I have never considered any of them potential sex partners

Yeah, come to think of it, all the girls i've laid ARE COUSINS of somebody. So that makes 32. That option is not on the poll :p

Manorfire,

You're absolutely right. Firstly, most of the mutations that cause these diseases are very old in the human species and having the disease is by no means an indication that the person is the product of incestual union. A couple with extremely distant common ancestry can still produce a child who is homozygous for the mutation, it's just that the chances are staggeringly higher in couples that are closely related. So this is one very simple reason for such people not to be shunned.

Addressing your main point is more complex. I completely emulate your appreciation for the inherent worth of every individual, regardless of their genetics and biochemistry. The reason I think of the issue as complex is because I can't ignore the horrifying symptoms of some of these diseases and also ignore the link to the underlying genetic mutation. For this reason I've come to attach the worth of the person to what I call their soul, rather than their flesh and bones and genes. A lot of people feel uncomfortable talking about the distinction, and that's why I think it's a delicate subject, and it's also off the topic of the thread so I won't go into it any further. However, I often forget that the explanation of genetics like this can come off as particularly insensitive without an explanation of the difference between defective genes and defective people. Thanks for raising that point.

I Have two boy cousins on my mothers side, one who is about 5 years younger than me. The other who was born the day before my sister who is 7 years older than me.And On my fathers side I have 5 boy cousins, 3 about 10 years older than me, One whos about 6 years younger, one whos married and has a daughter, one who was adopted, One whos just recently married, And one who i'm almost possative is a crack head.

So Nope, never laid any of them, don't plan on it

Thankfully none...that is zero....nada....zip

I could not even imagine that.