PULSE POINTS
❓WHAT HAPPENED: The White House criticized Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer for not supporting a ban on first-cousin marriages.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers and Prime Minister Starmer.
📍WHEN & WHERE: Rogers criticized the British government on X over the weekend.
💬KEY QUOTE: “I’ve received some questions about what we mean, in our National Security Strategy, when we invoke ‘civilizational’ concerns. So I’m tweeting a relevant news item,” Rogers posted, sharing footage from Britain’s House of Commons showing Starmer declining to support a ban on first-cousin marriage.
🎯IMPACT: The debate highlights national and international tensions over minority cultural practices and public health in the United Kingdom.
The Trump administration has criticized Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and his Labour Party government in Britain for declining to support legislation that would have banned marriage between first cousins, calling the issue a matter of “civilisational” importance.
Sarah Rogers, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy at the U.S. State Department, described President Donald J. Trump’s free speech tsar, posted a video on X highlighting Starmer’s refusal last year to back a bill that sought to outlaw cousin marriage, which is extremely common among certain minority groups in the country, such as Pakistanis. Rogers framed Labour’s stance as a “civilizational” issue, of the type recently highlighted in a national security report.
Rogers also tied the issue to moves by the British government to ban X, supposedly because its Grok AI has been used to alter images of people to show them wearing bikinis—characterized as image-based sexual abuse. “Since we know the British Government wants to make sure women are safe both online and offline (thus contemplating a Russia-style X ban, to protect them from bikini images), here’s more from Wikipedia on cousin marriage – and its connection to honour killing,” she posted, alongside a screenshot from the left-leaning online encyclopedia highlighting the way women in first cousin marriages can be subject to violence by their families.
The debate over cousin marriage in Britain has intensified in recent months. It remains legal across the United Kingdom despite well-documented health risks: children born to closely related parents have a higher likelihood of inheriting recessive genetic conditions compared with the general population, and such unions are also associated with lower IQ and psychosis.
While there are some historic examples, such as the marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, first-cousin marriage is extremely uncommon among the White British population, and is even rarer in Catholic Europe, due to the Church banning the practice in the Middle Ages. Instead, its growth in the modern era is due almost entirely to immigrants from Africa and Asia, as well as their descendants.
The controversy has also engulfed Britain’s socialized National Health Service (NHS). NHS England’s Genomics Education Programme published guidance last autumn that sparked intense backlash for suggesting first-cousin marriages can offer benefits such as “stronger extended family support systems and economic advantages” while downplaying the increased risks of congenital anomalies.
Public opinion surveys conducted in recent years show significant opposition among Britons to keeping cousin marriage legal, with broad majorities across the political spectrum saying the law should be changed. It is regulated at the state level in the U.S., with most states either prohibiting it or restricting it only to elderly or infertile couples. However, it is unrestricted in Alabama, Alaska California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., with North Carolina also permitting it except for “double first cousins” who share two sets of grandparents.
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