Cousins Marrying

Cecil’s Quote: “Jerry Lee Lewis got a buttload of flak for marrying his first cousin once removed in 1957”

I believe it was his second cousin, twice removed. As for his marriage to Myra, I don’t see the big deal at that time as it was a way of life for them. No one said anything about Priscilla living with Elvis and unmarried at that!!! He was dating her when she was 14.

Second cousin, definitely. I can’t find clear information on being “removed”.

As to Priscilla, by all accounts I can find, she was a virgin until they were married.

“Removed” refers to being of different generations.

Example:
Alice and Abe are cousins.
Alice’s daughter Betty and Abe’s son Bruce are second cousins.
Betty’s daughter Clara and Bruce’s son Charles are third cousins.
Clara and Bruce are second cousins once removed, as are Charles and Betty.
Alice and Charles are first cousins twice removed, as are Abe and Clara.

I know what it means; I can’t find reliable information about the exact blood relationship between Jerry Lee Lewis and Myra Gale Brown.

Oh, sorry. I misunderstood the question.

Widescale cousin marriage can have a big impact on a groups genetic health. For example, in the UK, over half :eek: of the marriages in the Pakistani community there are between cousins. The result? While British Pakistani’s make up 3.4% of the births in the UK, their children account for 30% of British recessive disorders in children.

How solid is all this linked info? I have a problem which makes it extremely difficult for me to read long articles and such, but that aside, little alarm bells go off when I read or hear of something, especially something “dirty”, attributed to a specific group.
And if the press is to be believed, Pakistani people are not presently held in high regard in England.
I’ll go back and try to re-read that story.
mangeorge

Here is a direct link from the BBC - I presume that most people here hold the BBC as pretty reliable.

So would this scenario muddle the genetic waters even more?

A set of female identical twins marries a set of male identical twins.

Couple one has a girl, couple two has a boy.

Boy and girl decide to get married. Aaaaand, Gasp! have children.

In my mind I would see the children of these identical twin couples as being closer genetically than your average set of cousins.

Am I wrong?

You are correct in that scenerio; two cousins produced by two sets of identical twins would have a genetic coefficient of relationship of 50%, the same as a normal brother/sister pair. For normal cousins, this would only be 12.5%.

Thanks, RL. It seems that the practice is also common in Pakistan. And other areas, like in some parts of the USA.
One of the very few things I miss for no longer having cable is BBC news, and other of their programming.

As gay marraige becomes legal in the US, will gay (and lesbian) first cousins be allowed to marry?
Maybe I should search and see if this has already been discussed.
mangeorge

Genetically, identical twins are interchangeable. So if you have a pair of identical twins, any child of one might as well be a child of the other. So as RandomLetters says, the cousins would genetically be siblings. Which I think we can all agree is a bad idea.