One step closer to keeping it out of the family.
Connecticut is set to place a firm ban on marriages between first cousins at the start of October in a rare instance of unanimous agreement between both parties in the Democrat-dominant state.
The legislation simply states that “no person may knowingly marry such person’s first cousin,” according to the text of the bill passed during the state’s General Assembly session earlier this year.
State law already prohibits marriages between immediate family members, ranging from a related parent to a stepchild. Every possible incestuous avenue was patched previously — save for the cousin caveat.
State Rep. Devin Carney, a Republican who represents Old Saybrook, proposed the bill not in response to a demand or controversy stemming from his constituents, but because he wanted to follow in another state’s footsteps.
“Somebody actually sent me an article about it. Tennessee recently banned it. They passed a law to ban it. I was told it’s not banned in Connecticut, so I started looking into it and over 30 states do ban it, and Connecticut is not one of them,” Carney told the Connecticut Post.
His gumption pushed other representatives to reexamine the state’s legislature and found that there really was no firm stance or penalty for people who wed their first cousins.
“We looked at it and saw we were sort of an outlier state that didn’t ban it. Science shows that procreation between first cousins increases the chances of birth defects. We also didn’t want to penalize or jeopardize any marriages that occurred when it was legal,” said State Rep. Steve Stafstrom, a Democrat representing Bridgeport who co-sponsored the bill.
Connecticut will be the 26th state to outright ban first-cousin marriages. Many other states have restrictions placed on the bizarre union instead of a full outlaw.
Connecticut and New Hampshire are the only states in New England that strictly prohibit the union. It’s loosely permitted in Maine between same-sex couples or those with proof of genetic counseling, according to the state legislature.
Every other state in the region permits it with zero caveats or punishments.
Some other states beyond New England, like Arizona, Illinois and Indiana, permit the marriages if both parties are near-geriatric or are infertile.
As Stafstrom asserted, procreation between family members is proven to spur a wide variety of birth defects, including limb deformities, heart conditions, premature birth, and neonatal mortality, according to the National Library of Medicine.
In Minnesota, first cousin marriages are only permitted under “established customs of aboriginal cultures,” according to the 2024 statutes.
In North Carolina, only double first cousins, meaning children of two sisters who married two brothers, can be legally wed, according to the state’s judicial branch.
Cousin marriage was legal in all the then-34 states during the Civil War. It’s currently legal in at least 16 of the 50 states.
In 2021, the same year New York officially outlawed child marriage, one Empire State parent filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn an incest ban that prevented them from marrying their own adult child.
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