After bride is left at altar, guest steps up to marry her

[Donjeta]

Ponradha is 23. I think that is considered old enough to marry in just about any culture. It's not her age that is the issue here IMO.

 

[Sonya610]

... inbreeding doesn't just happen in India. And it's a total myth that it always results in malformed offspring.

No one said it always results in malformed offspring but in cultures where 50% are marrying close relatives obviously they ARE doing it to an extreme. They do it intentionally generation after generation often for financial reasons and not just because everyone that lives around them is a relative of some sort and that is all they have to fall in love with.

Oddly there is one silver lining to the whole inbreeding thing in cultures where females have little value and are often abused by the groom's family.

If she is also a part of that family genetically then she is less likely to be abused by them and the close family ties give her allies. A woman who married into a family that was totally unrelated may end up completely cut off from her own family and find herself alone in a house of strangers with no allies whatsoever to protect her.

 

[MissJ]

Actually it is illegal to marry first cousins in Kentucky. My great uncle was married three times. Each woman was his first cousin. The most shocking thing I ever knew was a woman I worked with in Ohio married her own uncle, who was her mother's brother.

 

[AnaTeresa]

Actually it is illegal to marry first cousins in Kentucky. My great uncle was married three times. Each woman was his first cousin. The most shocking thing I ever knew was a woman I worked with in Ohio married her own uncle, who was her mother's brother.

While it's illegal in Kentucky, it's legal in a lot of other states.

http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/state-laws-regarding-marriages-between-first-cousi.aspx

 

[MissJ]

While it's illegal in Kentucky, it's legal in a lot of other states.

http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/state-laws-regarding-marriages-between-first-cousi.aspx

Thats true. Just odd that it is illegal at all. JMO

 

[Ausgirl]

Regarding the first example given.
"A study of the scientist's family tree suggests inbreeding was to blame, with frequent cousin to cousin marriages lowering immunity to disease and raising the odds of infertility."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...les-Darwins-family-paid-price-inbreeding.html

While this is true, there's no indication that this is habitual, in this particular family. The marriage to the cousin (and we don't know the exact relationship there) seems like an emergency measure taken by the family in order to save face.

I am not at all defending this practise, no way - but there's no evidence this family is habitually inbreeding.

MOST ironically, here's an example of -actual- habitual inbreeding within a family, from my own country: http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?p=10038867&posted=1#post10038867

Definitely issues with genetic disorders, but then the inbreeding is probably the most severe case I have ever heard of, outside of the Sawney Bean story.

 

[Donjeta]

Dunno but UPI is saying he is a distant relative.

http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2013/11...es-place-of-missing-groom/UPI-11791384975153/


Many people count among their relatives a number of people who are not related by blood at all.