title: Cousin marriage

text: According to anthropologist Ladislav Holý, cousin marriage is not an independent phenomenon, but rather one expression of a wider Middle Eastern preference for agnatic solidarity, or solidarity with one's father's lineage. According to Holý, the oft-quoted reason for cousin marriage of keeping property in the family is, in the Middle Eastern case, just one specific manifestation of keeping intact a family's whole "symbolic capital". Close agnatic marriage has also been seen as a result of the conceptualization of men as responsible for the control of the conduct of women. Honor is another reason for cousin marriage: while the natal family may lose influence over the daughter through marriage to an outsider, marrying her in their kin group allows them to help prevent dishonorable outcomes such as attacks on her or her own unchaste behavior. Pragmatic reasons for the husband, such as warmer relations with his father-in-law, and those for parents of both spouses, like reduced bride price and access to the labor of the daughter's children, also contribute. Throughout Middle Eastern history, cousin marriage has been both praised and discouraged by various writers and authorities.


title: Cousin marriage

text: A 2009 study found that many Arab countries display some of the highest rates of consanguineous marriages in the world, and that first cousin marriages which may reach 25–30% of all marriages. In Qatar, Yemen, and UAE, consanguinity rates are increasing in the current generation. Research among Arabs and worldwide has indicated that consanguinity could have an effect on some reproductive health parameters such as postnatal mortality and rates of congenital malformations.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Andrey Korotayev claimed that Islamization was a strong and significant predictor of parallel cousin (father's brother's daughter – FBD) marriage, bint 'amm marriage. He has shown that while a clear functional connection exists between Islam and FBD marriage, the prescription to marry a FBD does not appear to be sufficient to persuade people to actually marry thus, even if the marriage brings with it economic advantages. According to Korotayev, a systematic acceptance of parallel-cousin marriage took place when Islamization occurred together with Arabization.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Cousin marriage rates from most African nations outside the Middle East are unknown. An estimated 35–50% of all sub-Saharan African populations either prefer or accept cousin marriages. In Nigeria, the most populous country of Africa, the three largest ethnic groups in order of size are the Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo. The Hausa are overwhelmingly Muslim, though followers of traditional religions do exist. Muslim Hausas practice cousin marriage preferentially, and polygyny is allowed if the husband can support multiple wives. The book "Baba of Karo" presents one prominent portrayal of Hausa life: according to its English coauthor, it is unknown for Hausa women to be unmarried for any great length of time after around the age of 14. Divorce can be accomplished easily by either the male or the female, but females must then remarry. Even for a man, lacking a spouse is looked down upon. Baba of Karo's first of four marriages was to her second cousin. She recounts in the book that her good friend married the friend's first cross cousin.


title: Cousin marriage

text: The Yoruba people are 50% Muslim, 40% Christian, and 10% adherent of their own indigenous religious traditions. A 1974 study analyzed Yoruba marriages in the town Oka Akoko, finding that among a sample of highly polygynous marriages having an average of about three wives, 51% of all pairings were consanguineous. These included not only cousin marriages, but also uncle-niece unions. Reportedly, it is a custom that in such marriages at least one spouse must be a relative, and generally such spouses were the preferred or favorite wives in the marriage and gave birth to more children. However, this was not a general study of Yoruba, but only of highly polygynous Yoruba residing in Oka Akoko.


title: Cousin marriage

text: The Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria, who are predominantly Christian, strictly practice non-consanguineal marriages, where kinfolks and cousins are not allowed to marry or have intimacy. Consequently, men and women are forbidden to marry within their recent patrilineage and matrilineage. Before the advent of Christianity through colonization, the Igbos had always frowned upon and specifically prohibited consanguineal marriages, both the parallel and cross-cousin types, which are considered incestuous and cursed. Arranged marriages, albeit in great decline, was also done to consciously prevent accidental consanguineal and bad marriages, such that the impending in-laws were aware of each other's family histories. Currently, like in the old days, before courtship commences, thorough enquiries are made by both families to not only ascertain character traits, but to also ensure their children are not related by blood. Traditionally, parents closely monitor whom their children relate intimately to avoid having them commit incest. Proactively, it is customary for parents to groom their children to know their immediate cousins and, when opportune, their distant cousins. They encourage their adult children to disclose their love interests for consanguineal screening.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In Ethiopia, most of the population was historically rigidly opposed to cousin marriage, and could consider up to third cousins the equivalent of brother and sister, with marriage at least ostensibly prohibited out to sixth cousins. They also took affinal prohibitions very seriously. The prospect of a man marrying a former wife's "sister" was seen as incest, and conversely for a woman and her former husband's "brother". Though Muslims make up over a third of the Ethiopian population, and Islam has been present in the country since the time of Muhammad, cross-cousin marriage is very rare among most Ethiopian Muslims. In contrast to the Nigerian situation, in Ethiopia, Islam cannot be identified with a particular ethnicity and is found across most of them, and conversions between religions are comparatively common. The Afar practice a form of cousin marriage called "absuma" that is arranged at birth and can be forced.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Roman civil law prohibited marriages within four degrees of consanguinity. This was calculated by counting up from one prospective partner to the common ancestor, then down to the other prospective partner. Early Medieval Europe continued the late Roman ban on cousin marriage. Under the law of the Catholic Church, couples were also forbidden to marry if they were within four degrees of consanguinity.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In the 9th century, however, the church raised the number of prohibited degrees to seven and changed the method by which they were calculated. Instead of the former practice of counting up to the common ancestor and then down to the proposed spouse, the new law computed consanguinity by counting only back to the common ancestor. In the Catholic Church, unknowingly marrying a closely consanguineous blood relative was grounds for a declaration of nullity. But during the 11th and 12th centuries, dispensations were granted with increasing frequency due to the thousands of persons encompassed in the prohibition at seven degrees and the hardships this posed for finding potential spouses. Eventually, the nobility became too interrelated to marry easily as the local pool of unrelated prospective spouses became smaller; increasingly, large payments to the church were required for exemptions ("dispensations"), or retrospective legitimizations of children.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council reduced the number of prohibited degrees of consanguinity from seven back to four. After 1215, the general rule was that while fourth cousins could marry without dispensation, the need for dispensations was reduced.


title: Cousin marriage

text: For example, the marriage of Louis XIV of France and Maria Theresa of Spain was a first-cousin marriage on both sides. It began to fall out of favor in the 19th century as women became socially mobile. Only Austria, Hungary, and Spain banned cousin marriage throughout the 19th century, with dispensations being available from the government in the last two countries. First-cousin marriage in England in 1875 was estimated by George Darwin to be 3.5% for the middle classes and 4.5% for the nobility, though this had declined to under 1% during the 20th century. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were a preeminent example.


title: Cousin marriage

text: The 19th-century academic debate on cousin marriage developed differently in Europe and America. The writings of Scottish deputy commissioner for lunacy Arthur Mitchell claiming that cousin marriage had injurious effects on offspring were largely contradicted by researchers such as Alan Huth and George Darwin. In fact, Mitchell's own data did not support his hypotheses and he later speculated that the dangers of consanguinity might be partly overcome by proper living. Later studies by George Darwin found results that resemble those estimated today. His father, Charles Darwin – who married his first cousin – had initially speculated that cousin marriage might pose serious risks, but perhaps in response to his son's work, these thoughts were omitted from a later version of the book they published. When a question about cousin marriage was eventually considered in 1871 for the census, according to George Darwin, it was rejected on the grounds that the idle curiosity of philosophers was not to be satisfied. In Southern Italy, cousin marriage was a usual tradition in regions such as Calabria and Sicily, where first-cousin marriage in the 1900s was near to 50 percent of all marriages. Cousin marriage to third cousins is allowed and considered favorably in Greece.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Cousin marriage were legal in ancient Rome from the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), until it was banned by the Christian emperor Theodosius I in 381 in the West, and until after the death of Justinian (565) in the East, but the proportion of such marriages is not clear. Anthropologist Jack Goody said that cousin marriage was a typical pattern in Rome, based on the marriage of four children of Emperor Constantine to their first cousins and on writings by Plutarch and Livy indicating the proscription of cousin marriage in the early Republic. Professors Brent Shaw and Richard Saller, however, counter in their more comprehensive treatment that cousin marriages were never habitual or preferred in the western empire: for example, in one set of six stemmata (genealogies) of Roman aristocrats in the two centuries after Octavian, out of 33 marriages, none was between first or second cousins. Such marriages carried no social stigma in the late Republic and early Empire. They cite the example of Cicero attacking Mark Antony not on the grounds of cousin marriage, but instead on grounds of Antony's divorce.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Shaw and Saller propose in their thesis of low cousin marriage rates that as families from different regions were incorporated into the imperial Roman nobility, exogamy was necessary to accommodate them and to avoid destabilizing the Roman social structure. Their data from tombstones further indicate that in most of the western empire, parallel-cousin marriages were not widely practiced among commoners, either. Spain and Noricum were exceptions to this rule, but even there, the rates did not rise above 10%. They further point out that since property belonging to the nobility was typically fragmented, keeping current assets in the family offered no advantage, compared with acquiring it by intermarriage. Jack Goody claimed that early Christian marriage rules forced a marked change from earlier norms to deny heirs to the wealthy and thus to increase the chance that those with wealth would will their property to the Church. Shaw and Saller, however, believe that the estates of aristocrats without heirs had previously been claimed by the emperor, and that the Church merely replaced the emperor. Their view is that the Christian injunctions against cousin marriage were due more to ideology than to any conscious desire to acquire wealth.


title: Cousin marriage

text: For some prominent examples of cousin marriages in ancient Rome, such as the marriage of Octavian's daughter to his sister's son, see the Julio-Claudian family tree. Marcus Aurelius also married his maternal first cousin Faustina the Younger, and they had 13 children. Cousin marriage was more frequent in ancient Greece, and marriages between uncle and niece were also permitted there. One example is King Leonidas I of Sparta, who married his half-niece Gorgo. A Greek woman who became "epikleros", or heiress with no brothers, was obliged to marry her father's nearest male kin if she had not yet married and given birth to a male heir. First in line would be either her father's brothers or their sons, followed by her father's sisters' sons.


title: Cousin marriage

text: According to Goody, cousin marriage was allowed in the newly Christian and presumably also pre-Christian Ireland, where an heiress was also obligated to marry a paternal cousin. From the seventh century, the Irish Church only recognized four degrees of prohibited kinship, and civil law fewer. This persisted until after the Norman conquests in the 11th century and the synod at Cashel in 1101. In contrast, contemporary English law was based on official Catholic policy, and Anglo-Norman clergy often became disgusted with the Irish "law of fornication". Ironically, within less than a hundred years of the Anglo-Norman Invasion of Ireland the Catholic Church reformed Canon Law on cousin marriage at the Fourth Lateran Council, with the effect bringing the Catholic Church's teaching back into alignment with the Irish Church and the original Christian Church's teachings. The Catholic Churches' teachings had proved unworkable in practice as they required people to know, and not marry, all relations back as far as their common Great Great Great Great Great Grandparents (i.e. as far as their sixth cousins) or else purchase a dispensation from the church. Finally, Edward Westermarck states that marriage among the ancient Teutons was apparently prohibited only in the ascending and descending lines and among siblings.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Anthropologist Martin Ottenheimer argues that marriage prohibitions were introduced to maintain the social order, uphold religious morality, and safeguard the creation of fit offspring. Writers such as Noah Webster (1758–1843) and ministers like Philip Milledoler (1775–1852) and Joshua McIlvaine helped lay the groundwork for such viewpoints well before 1860. This led to a gradual shift in concern from affinal unions, like those between a man and his deceased wife's sister, to consanguineous unions. By the 1870s, Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881) was writing about "the advantages of marriages between unrelated persons" and the necessity of avoiding "the evils of consanguine marriage", avoidance of which would "increase the vigor of the stock". To many (Morgan included), cousin marriage, and more specifically parallel-cousin marriage, was a remnant of a more primitive stage of human social organization. Morgan himself had married his cousin in 1853.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In 1846, Massachusetts Governor George N. Briggs appointed a commission to study mentally disabled people (termed "idiots") in the state. This study implicated cousin marriage as responsible for idiocy. Within the next two decades, numerous reports (e.g., one from the Kentucky Deaf and Dumb Asylum) appeared with similar conclusions: that cousin marriage sometimes resulted in deafness, blindness, and idiocy. Perhaps most important was the report of physician Samuel Merrifield Bemiss for the American Medical Association, which concluded cousin inbreeding does lead to the "physical and mental deprivation of the offspring". Despite being contradicted by other studies like those of George Darwin and Alan Huth in England and Robert Newman in New York, the report's conclusions were widely accepted.


title: Cousin marriage

text: These developments led to 13 states and territories passing cousin marriage prohibitions by the 1880s. Though contemporaneous, the eugenics movement did not play much of a direct role in the bans. George Louis Arner in 1908 considered the ban a clumsy and ineffective method of eugenics, which he thought would eventually be replaced by more refined techniques. By the 1920s, the number of bans had doubled. Since that time, Kentucky (1943) and Texas have banned first-cousin marriage, and since 1985 Maine has mandated genetic counseling for marrying cousins to minimize the risk of any serious health defects for their children. The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws unanimously recommended in 1970 that all such laws should be repealed, but no state has dropped its prohibition.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In the Far East, South Korea is especially restrictive with bans on marriage out to third cousins, with all couples having the same surname and region of origin having been prohibited from marrying until 1997.


title: Cousin marriage

text: China has prohibited first-cousin marriage since 1981. Currently, according to the Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China, Article 7, "No marriage may be contracted under any of the following circumstances: (1) if the man and the woman are lineal relatives by blood, or collateral relatives by blood up to the third degree of kinship." This was then encompassed in the Civil Code, which takes effect in 2021, as its Article 1048.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Unlike China mainland, the two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau, place no restrictions on marriage between cousins.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In Vietnam, Clause 3, Article 10 of the 2000 Vietnamese Law on Marriage and Family forbids marriages of people related by blood up to the third degree of kinship. Cousin marriage is also prohibited in the Philippines.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Several states of the United States have bans on cousin marriage. , 24 U.S. states prohibit marriages between first cousins, 19 U.S. states allow marriages between first cousins, and 7 U.S. states allow only some marriages between first cousins. Six states prohibit first-cousin-once-removed marriages. Some states prohibiting cousin marriage recognize cousin marriages performed in other states, but this does not hold true in general despite occasional claims to the contrary.


title: Cousin marriage

text: World map showing prevalence of marriage between cousins, up to and including second cousins, according to data published in 2012 by the United States National Center for Biotechnology Information.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Recent 2001 data for Brazil indicate a rate of cousin marriage of 1.1%, down from 4.8% in 1957. The geographic distribution is heterogeneous: in certain regions, the rate is at typical European levels, but in other areas is much higher. found paternal parallel cousin marriage to be the most common type. In his 1957 study, the rate varied from 1.8% in the south to 8.4% in the northeast, where it increased moving inward from the coast, and was higher in rural regions than in urban. Consanguinity has decreased over time and particularly since the 19th century. For example, in São Paulo in the mid-19th century, the rate of cousin marriage apparently was 16%, but a century later, it was merely 1.9%.


title: Cousin marriage

text: China has prohibited first-cousin marriage since 1981, although cross-cousin marriage was commonly practiced in China in the past in rural areas. An article in "China Daily" from the 1990s reported on the ban's implementation in the northeastern province of Liaoning, along with a ban on marriage of people who were physically and mentally disabled, all justified on "eugenic" grounds. Limited existing data indicate some remaining cousin marriage of types besides father's brother's daughter in many villages, with percentages usually in the lower single digits. A 2002 "Time" article claims that an increasing imbalance in the number of males and females is causing more cousin marriages, as "desperate" males struggle to find brides.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Cousin marriages remain legal in Germany. In fact, a fourth of all marriages among Turks in Germany are between relatives. There has been discussion of whether laws prohibiting cousin marriage should be enacted. Families may encourage cousin marriage as way of assisting relatives wishing to immigrate to Germany.


title: Cousin marriage

text: The Netherlands has also had a recent debate that has reached the level of the Prime Minister proposing a cousin marriage ban. The proposed policy is explicitly aimed at preventing "import marriages" from certain nations like Morocco with a high rate of cousin marriage. Critics argue that such a ban would contradict Section 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, is not based on science, and would affect more than immigrants. While some proponents argue such marriages were banned until 1970, according to Frans van Poppel of the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, they are confusing cousin marriage with uncle-niece marriage.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In the English upper and upper-middle classes, the prevalence of first-cousin marriage had remained steady at between 4% and 5% for much of the 19th century. However, after the First World War, there was a sudden change, and cousin marriage became very unusual. By the 1930s, only one marriage in 6,000 was with a first cousin. A study of a middle-class London population conducted in the 1960s found that just one marriage in 25,000 was between first cousins.


title: Cousin marriage

text: There has been a great deal of debate in the United Kingdom about whether to discourage cousin marriages through government public relations campaigns, or ban them entirely. In the 1980s researchers found that children to closely related Pakistani parents had an autosomal recessive condition rate of 4% compared to 0.1% for the European group. For example, Environment Minister (later Immigration Minister) Phil Woolas said in 2008, "If you have a child with your cousin the likelihood is there'll be a genetic problem" and that such marriages were the "elephant in the room". Physician Mohammad Walji has spoken out against the practice, saying that it is a "very significant" cause of infant death, and his practice has produced leaflets warning against it. However, Alan Bittles of the Centre for Comparative Genomics in Australia states that the risk of birth defects rises from roughly 2% in the general population to 4% for first cousins, and therefore that "It would be a mistake to ban it". Aamra Darr of the University of Leeds has also criticized what she called an "alarmist presentation of data" that exaggerates the risk.


title: Cousin marriage

text: A 2008 analysis of infant mortality in Birmingham showed that South Asian infants had twice the normal infant mortality rate and three times the usual rate of infant mortality due to congenital anomalies.


title: Cousin marriage

text: The Middle East has uniquely high rates of cousin marriage among the world's regions. Iraq was estimated in one study to have a rate of 33% for cousins marrying.


title: Cousin marriage

text: All Arab countries in the Persian Gulf currently require advance genetic screening for prospective married couples. Qatar was the last Persian Gulf nation to institute mandatory screening in 2009, mainly to warn related couples who are planning marriage about any genetic risks they may face. The current rate of cousin marriage there is 54%, an increase of 12–18% over the previous generation. A report by the Dubai-based Centre for Arab Genomic Studies (CAGS) in September 2009 found that Arabs have one of the world's highest rates of genetic disorders, nearly two-thirds of which are linked to consanguinity. Research from Ahmad Teebi suggests consanguinity is declining in Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, and among Palestinians, but is increasing in the United Arab Emirates.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Ahmad Teebi links the increase in cousin marriage in Qatar and other Arab states of the Persian Gulf to tribal tradition and the region's expanding economies. "Rich families tend to marry rich families, and from their own – and the rich like to protect their wealth," he said. "So it's partly economic, and it's also partly cultural." In regard to the higher rates of genetic disease in these societies, he says: "It's certainly a problem," but also that "The issue here is not the cousin marriage, the issue here is to avoid the disease."


title: Cousin marriage

text: In many Middle Eastern nations, a marriage to the father's brother's daughter (FBD) is considered ideal, though this type may not always actually outnumber other types. One anthropologist, Ladislav Holý, argued that it is important to distinguish between the ideal of FBD marriage and marriage as it is actually practiced, which always also includes other types of cousins and unrelated spouses. Holý cited the Berta people of Sudan, who consider the FBD to be the closest kinswoman to a man outside of the prohibited range. If more than one relationship exists between spouses, as often results from successive generations of cousin marriage, only the patrilineal one is counted. Marriage within the lineage is preferred to marriage outside the lineage even when no exact genealogical relationship is known. Of 277 first marriages, only 84 were between couples unable to trace any genealogical relationship between them. Of those, in 64, the spouses were of the same lineage. However, of 85 marriages to a second or third wife, in 60, the spouses were of different lineages. The Marri have a very limited set of incest prohibitions that includes only lineal relatives, the sister, and aunts except the mother's brother's wife. Female members of the mother's lineage are seen as only loosely related. Finally, the Baggara Arabs favor MBD marriage first, followed by cross-cousin marriage if the cross cousin is a member of the same "surra", a group of agnates of five or six generations depth. Next is marriage within the "surra". No preference is shown for marriages between matrilateral parallel cousins.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Consanguineous marriages are legal and relatively common in Afghanistan. The proportion of consanguineous marriages in the country stands at 46.2%, with significant regional variations ranging from 38.2% in Kabul province to 51.2% in Bamyan province.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Attitudes in India on cousin marriage vary sharply by region and culture. The family law in India takes into account the religious and cultural practices and they are all equally recognized. For Muslims, governed by uncodified personal law, it is acceptable and legal to marry a first cousin, but for Hindus, it may be illegal under the 1955 Hindu Marriage Act, though the specific situation is more complex. The Hindu Marriage Act makes cousin marriage illegal for Hindus with the exception of marriages permitted by regional custom. Practices of the small Christian minority are also location-dependent: their cousin marriage rates are higher in southern states with high overall rates. Apart from the religion-based personal laws governing marriages, the civil marriage law named Special Marriage Act, 1954 governs. Those who do not wish to marry based on the personal laws governed by religious and cultural practices may opt for marriage under this law. It defines the first-cousin relationship, both parallel and cross, as prohibited. Conflict may arise between the prohibited degrees based on this law and personal law, but in absence of any other laws, it is still unresolved.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Cousin marriage is proscribed and seen as incest for Hindus in North India. In fact, it may even be unacceptable to marry within one's village or for two siblings to marry partners from the same village. The northern kinship model prevails in the states of Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and West Bengal.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Cross-cousin and Uncle-niece unions are preferential and jointly account for some 30% of marriages in Andhra Pradesh in 1967 and declined to 26% in 2015–16. These practices are particularly followed in landed communities such as the Reddys or Vellalars, who wish to keep wealth within the family. Also unlike North India, this practice is also common in Brahmins in the region.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Practices in West India overall are closer to the northern than the southern, but differences exist here again. For instance, in Mumbai, studies done in 1956 showed 7.7% of Hindus married to a second cousin or closer. By contrast, in the northern city of New Delhi, only 0.1% of Hindus were married to a first cousin during the 1980s. At the other extreme, studies were done in the South Indian state of Karnataka during that period show fully one-third of Hindus married to a second cousin or closer. Pre-2000 Madhya Pradesh, from which Chhattisgarh has now split, and Maharashtra, which contains Mumbai, are states that are intermediate in their kinship practices.


title: Cousin marriage

text: India's Muslim minority represents about 14% of its population and has an overall rate of cousin marriage of 22% according to a 2000 report. This may be a legacy of the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan, when substantial Muslim migration to Pakistan occurred from the eastern parts of the former unified state of Punjab. In south India, by contrast, the rates are fairly constant, except for the South Indian Malabar Muslims of Kerala (9%) who claim descent from Arab traders who settled permanently in India in the eighth century. Most Indian Muslims, by contrast, are the result of Hindus' conversions to Islam in the 16th century or later. The lowest rate for a whole Indian region was in East India (15%). Consanguinity rates were generally stable across the four decades for which data exist, though second-cousin marriage appears to have been decreasing in favor of first-cousin marriage.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In Pakistan, cousin marriage is legal and common. Reasons for consanguinity are economic, religious and cultural. Data collected in 2014 from the Malakand District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (KPK), Pakistan showed that around 66.4% of marriages among rural couples were to a first or second cousin. In some areas, higher proportion of first-cousin marriages in Pakistan has been noted to be the cause of an increased rate of blood disorders in the population.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Data on cousin marriage in the United States is sparse. It was estimated in 1960 that 0.2% of all marriages between Roman Catholics were between first or second cousins, but no more recent nationwide studies have been performed. It is unknown what proportion of that number were first cousins, which is the group facing marriage bans. To contextualize the group's size, the total proportion of interracial marriages in 1960, the last census year before the end of anti-miscegenation statutes, was 0.4%, and the proportion of black-white marriages was 0.13%. While recent studies have cast serious doubt on whether cousin marriage is as dangerous as is popularly assumed, professors Diane B. Paul and Hamish G. Spencer speculate that legal bans persist in part due to "the ease with which a handful of highly motivated activists—or even one individual—can be effective in the decentralized American system, especially when feelings do not run high on the other side of an issue."


title: Cousin marriage

text: A bill to repeal the ban on first-cousin marriage in Minnesota was introduced by Phyllis Kahn in 2003, but it died in committee. Republican Minority Leader Marty Seifert criticized the bill in response, saying it would "turn us into a cold Arkansas". According to the University of Minnesota's "The Wake", Kahn was aware the bill had little chance of passing, but introduced it anyway to draw attention to the issue. She reportedly got the idea after learning that cousin marriage is an acceptable form of marriage among some cultural groups that have a strong presence in Minnesota, namely the Hmong and Somali.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In contrast, Maryland delegates Henry B. Heller and Kumar P. Barve sponsored a bill to ban first-cousin marriages in 2000. It got further than Kahn's bill, passing the House of Delegates by 82 to 46 despite most Republicans voting no, but finally died in the state senate. In response to the 2005 marriage of Pennsylvanian first cousins Eleanor Amrhein and Donald W. Andrews Sr. in Maryland, Heller said that he might resurrect the bill because such marriages are "like playing genetic roulette".


title: Cousin marriage

text: Texas passed a ban on first-cousin marriage the same year as Amrhein and Andrews married, evidently in reaction to the presence of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). Texas Representative Harvey Hilderbran, whose district includes the main FLDS compound, authored an amendment to a child protection statute to both discourage the FLDS from settling in Texas and to "prevent Texas from succumbing to the practices of taking child brides, incest, welfare abuse and domestic violence". While Hilderbran stated that he would not have authored a bill solely to ban first-cousin marriage, he also said in an interview, "Cousins don't get married just like siblings don't get married. And when it happens you have a bad result. It's just not the accepted normal thing." Some news sources then only mentioned the polygamy and child abuse provisions and ignored the cousin marriage portion of the bill, as did some more recent sources. The new statute made sex with an adult first cousin a more serious felony than with adult members of one's immediate family. However, this statute was amended in 2009; while sex with close adult family members (including first cousins) remains a felony, the more serious penalty now attaches to sex with an individual's direct ancestor or descendant.


title: Cousin marriage

text: The U.S. state of Maine allows first-cousin marriage if the couple agrees to have genetic counseling, while North Carolina allows it so long as the applicants for marriage are not rare double first cousins, meaning cousins through both parental lines. In the other 25 states permitting at least some first-cousin marriage, double cousins are not distinguished.


title: Cousin marriage

text: States have various laws regarding marriage between cousins and other close relatives, which involve factors including whether or not the parties to the marriage are half-cousins, double cousins, infertile, over 65, or whether it is a tradition prevalent in a native or ancestry culture, adoption status, in-law, whether or not genetic counseling is required, and whether it is permitted to marry a first cousin once removed.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Robin Bennett, a University of Washington researcher, has said that much hostility towards married cousins constitutes discrimination.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In a different view, William Saletan of "Slate" magazine accuses the authors of this study of suffering from the "congenital liberal conceit that science solves all moral questions". While readily conceding that banning cousin marriage cannot be justified on genetic grounds, Saletan asks rhetorically whether it would be acceptable to legalize uncle-niece marriage or "hard-core incest" between siblings and then let genetic screening take care of the resulting problems.


title: Cousin marriage

text: An article in "The New York Times" by Sarah Kershaw documents fear by many married cousins of being treated with derision and contempt. "While many people have a story about a secret cousin crush or kiss, most Americans find the idea of cousins marrying and having children disturbing or even repulsive," notes the article. It gives the example of one mother, Mrs. Spring, whose daughter Kimberly Spring-Winters, 29, married her cousin Shane Winters, 37. She stated that when she has told people about her daughter's marriage, they have been shocked and that consequently she is afraid to mention it. They live in a small Pennsylvania town and she worries that her grandchildren will be treated as outcasts and ridiculed due to their parental status. Another cousin couple stated that their children's maternal grandparents have never met their two grandchildren because the grandparents severed contact out of disapproval for the couple's marriage. This couple withheld their names from publication.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In most societies, cousin marriage apparently is more common among those of low socio-economic status, among the illiterate and uneducated, and in rural areas. This may be due in part to the token or significantly reduced dowries and bridewealths that exist in such marriages and also the much smaller pool of viable marriage candidates in rural areas. Some societies also report a high prevalence among land-owning families and the ruling elite: here the relevant consideration is thought to be keeping the family estate intact over generations. The average age at marriage is lower for cousin marriages, the difference in one Pakistani study being 1.10 and 0.84 years for first and second cousins, respectively. In Pakistan, the ages of the spouses were also closer together, the age difference declining from 6.5 years for unrelated couples to 4.5 years for first cousins. A marginal increase in time to first birth, from 1.6 years generally to 1.9 years in first cousins, may occur due to the younger age at marriage of consanguineous mothers and resultant adolescent subfertility or delayed consummation.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Predictions that cousin marriage would decline during the late 20th century in areas where it is preferential appear to have been largely incorrect. One reason for this is that in many regions, cousin marriage is not merely a cultural tradition, but is also judged to offer significant social and economic benefits. In South Asia, rising demands for dowry payments have caused dire economic hardship and have been linked to "dowry deaths" in a number of North Indian states. Where permissible, marriage to a close relative is hence regarded as a more economically feasible choice. Second, improvements in public health have led to decreased death rates and increased family sizes, making it easier to find a relative to marry if that is the preferred choice. Increases in cousin marriage in the West may also occur as a result of immigration from Asia and Africa. In the short term, some observers have concluded that the only new forces that could discourage such unions are government bans like the one China enacted in 1981. In the longer term, rates may decline due to decreased family sizes, making it more difficult to find cousins to marry.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Cousin marriage is important in several anthropological theories by prominent authors such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Sir Edward Tylor, and Lewis Henry Morgan. Lévi-Strauss viewed cross-cousin marriage as a form of exogamy in the context of a unilineal descent group, meaning either matrilineal or patrilineal descent. Matrilateral cross-cousin marriage in societies with matrilineal descent meant that a male married into the family his mother's brother, building an alliance between the two families. However, marriage to a mother's sister daughter (a parallel cousin) would be endogamous, here meaning inside the same descent group, and would therefore fail to build alliances between different groups. Correspondingly, in societies like China with patrilineal descent, marriage to a father's brother's daughter would fail at alliance building. And in societies with both types of descent, where a person belongs to the group of his mother's mother and father's father but not mother's father or father's mother, only cross-cousin marriages would successfully build alliances.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Lévi-Strauss postulated that cross-cousin marriage had the two consequences of setting up classes which automatically delimit the group of possible spouses and of determining a relationship that can decide whether a prospective spouse is to be desired or excluded. Whereas in other kinship systems one or another of these aspects dominates, in cross-cousin marriage they overlap and cumulate their effects. It differs from incest prohibitions in that the latter employs a series of negative relationships, saying whom one cannot marry, while cross-cousin marriage employs positive relationships, saying whom should marry. Most crucially, cross-cousin marriage is the only type of preferential union that can function normally and exclusively and still give every man and woman the chance to marry a cross-cousin. Unlike other systems such as the levirate, the sororate, or uncle-niece marriage, cross-cousin marriage is preferential because for obvious reasons these others cannot constitute the exclusive or even preponderant rule of marriage in any group. Cross-cousin marriage divides members of the same generation into two approximately equal groups, those of cross-cousins and "siblings" that include real siblings and parallel cousins. Consequently, cross-cousin marriage can be a normal form of marriage in a society, but the other systems above can only be privileged forms. This makes cross-cousin marriage exceptionally important.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Cross-cousin marriage also establishes a division between prescribed and prohibited relatives who, from the viewpoint of biological proximity, are strictly interchangeable. Lévi-Strauss thought that this proved that the origin of the incest prohibition is purely social and not biological. Cross-cousin marriage in effect allowed the anthropologist to control for biological degree by studying a situation where the degree of prohibited and prescribed spouses were equal. In understanding why two relatives of the same biological degree would be treated so differently, Lévi-Strauss wrote, it would be possible to understand not only the principle of cross-cousin marriage but of the incest prohibition itself. For Lévi-Strauss cross-cousin marriage was not either socially arbitrary or a secondary consequence of other institutions like dual organization or the practice of exogamy. Instead, the "raison d'etre" of cross-cousin marriage could be found within the institution itself. Of the three types of institution of exogamy rules, dual organization, and cross-cousin marriage, the last was most significant, making the analysis of this form of marriage the crucial test for any theory of marriage prohibitions.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Matrilateral cross-cousin marriage has been found by some anthropological researchers to be correlated with patripotestal jural authority, meaning rights or obligations of the father. According to some theories, in these kinship systems a man marries his matrilateral cross-cousin due to associating her with his nurturant mother. Due to this association, possibly reinforced by personal interaction with a specific cousin, he may become "fond" of her, rendering the relationship "sentimentally appropriate". "Patrilateral" cross-cousin marriage is the rarest of all types of cousin marriage, and there is some question as to whether it even exists.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In contrast to Lévi-Strauss who viewed the exchange of women under matrilateral cross-cousin marriage as fundamentally egalitarian, anthropologist Edmund Leach held that such systems by nature created groups of junior and senior status and were part of the political structure of society. Under Leach's model, in systems where this form of marriage segregates descent groups into wife-givers and wife-takers, the social status of the two categories also cannot be determined by "a priori" arguments. Groups like the Kachin exhibiting matrilateral cross-cousin marriage do not exchange women in circular structures; where such structures do exist they are unstable. Moreover, the exchanging groups are not major segments of the society, but rather local descent groups from the same or closely neighboring communities. Lévi-Strauss held that women were always exchanged for some "prestation" which could either be other women or labor and material goods. Leach agreed but added that prestations could also take the form of intangible assets like "prestige" or "status" that might belong to either wife-givers or wife-takers.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Anthropologists Robert Murphy and Leonard Kasdan describe preferential parallel cousin marriage as leading to social fission, in the sense that "feud and fission are not at all dysfunctional factors but are necessary to the persistence and viability of Bedouin society". Their thesis is the converse of Fredrik Barth's, who describes the fission as leading to the cousin marriage. Per Murphy and Kasdan, the Arab system of parallel cousin marriage works against the creation of homogenous "bounded" and "corporate" kin groups and instead creates arrangements where every person is related by blood to a wide variety of people, with the degree of relationship falling off gradually as opposed to suddenly. Instead of corporate units, Arab society is described as having "agnatic sections", a kind of repeating fractal structure in which authority is normally weak at all levels but capable of being activated at the required level in times of war. They relate this to an old Arab proverb: "Myself against my brother; my brother and I against my cousin; my cousin, my brother and I against the outsider." "In such a society even the presence of a limited amount of cross-cousin marriage will not break the isolation of the kin group, for first cross cousins often end up being second parallel cousins." Instead of organizing horizontally through affinal ties, when large scale organization is necessary it is accomplished vertically, by reckoning distance from shared ancestors. This practice is said to possess advantages such as resilience and adaptability in the face of adversity.


title: Cousin marriage

text: A recent research study of 70 nations has found a statistically significant negative correlation between consanguineous kinship networks and democracy. The authors note that other factors, such as restricted genetic conditions, may also explain this relationship.


title: Cousin marriage

text: This follows a 2003 Steve Sailer essay published for "The American Conservative", where he claimed that high rates of cousin marriage play an important role in discouraging political democracy. Sailer believes that because families practicing cousin marriage are more related to one another than otherwise, their feelings of family loyalty tend to be unusually intense, fostering nepotism.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Cousins are not included in the lists of prohibited relationships set out in the Hebrew Bible, specifically in and and in Deuteronomy. However, the Bible prohibits relationships with any blood relative in .


title: Cousin marriage

text: There are several examples in the Bible of cousins marrying. Isaac married Rebekah, his first cousin once removed (). Also, Isaac's son Jacob married Leah and Rachel, both his first cousins (). Jacob's brother Esau also married his first half-cousin Mahalath, daughter of Ishmael, Isaac's half-brother. According to many English Bible translations, the five daughters of Zelophehad married the "sons of their father's brothers" in the later period of Moses; although other translations merely say "relatives". (For example, the Catholic RSV-CE and NAB differ in .) The Hebrew Bible states: בְּנ֣וֹת צְלָפְחָ֑ד לִבְנֵ֥י דֹֽדֵיהֶ֖ן which translates literally as "the daughters of Zelophehad to their cousins/to their uncles' sons".


title: Cousin marriage

text: During the apportionment of Israel following the journey out of Egypt, Caleb gives his daughter Achsah to his brother's son Othniel according to the NAB (), though the Jewish Talmud says Othniel was simply Caleb's brother (Sotah 11b). The daughters of Eleazer also married the sons of Eleazer's brother Kish in the still later time of David (). King Rehoboam and his wives Maacah and Mahalath were grandchildren of David (). Finally, according to the book of Tobit, Tobias had a right to marry Sarah because he was her nearest kinsman (Tobit 7:10), though the exact degree of their cousinship is not clear.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In Roman Catholicism, all marriages more distant than first-cousin marriages are allowed, and first-cousin marriages can be contracted with a dispensation. This was not always the case, however: the Catholic Church has gone through several phases in kinship prohibitions. At the dawn of Christianity in Roman times, marriages between first cousins were allowed. For example, Emperor Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor, married his children to the children of his half-brother. First and second cousin marriages were then banned at the Council of Agde in AD 506, though dispensations sometimes continued to be granted. By the 11th century, with the adoption of the so-called canon-law method of computing consanguinity, these proscriptions had been extended even to "sixth" cousins, including by marriage. But due to the many resulting difficulties in reckoning who was related to whom, they were relaxed back to third cousins at the Fourth Lateran Council in AD 1215. Pope Benedict XV reduced this to second cousins in 1917, and finally, the current law was enacted in 1983. In Catholicism, close relatives who have married unwittingly without a dispensation can receive an annulment.


title: Cousin marriage

text: There are several explanations for the rise of Catholic cousin marriage prohibitions after the fall of Rome. One explanation is increasing Germanic influence on church policy. G.E. Howard states, "During the period preceding the Teutonic invasion, speaking broadly, the church adhered to Roman law and custom; thereafter those of the Germans ... were accepted." On the other hand, it has also been argued that the bans were a reaction "against" local Germanic customs of kindred marriage. At least one Frankish King, Pepin the Short, apparently viewed close kin marriages among nobles as a threat to his power. Whatever the reasons, written justifications for such bans had been advanced by St. Augustine by the fifth century. "It is very reasonable and just", he wrote, "that one man should not himself sustain many relationships, but that various relationships should be distributed among several, and thus serve to bind together the greatest number in the same social interests". Taking a contrary view, Protestants writing after the Reformation tended to see the prohibitions and the dispensations needed to circumvent them as part of an undesirable church scheme to accrue wealth, or "lucre".


title: Cousin marriage

text: Since the 13th century, the Catholic Church has measured consanguinity according to what is called the civil-law method. Under this method, the degree of relationship between lineal relatives (i.e., a man and his grandfather) is simply equal to the number of generations between them. However, the degree of relationship between collateral (non-lineal) relatives equals the number of links in the family tree from one person, up to the common ancestor, and then back to the other person. Thus brothers are related in the second degree, and first cousins in the fourth degree.


title: Cousin marriage

text: The 1913 "Catholic Encyclopedia" refers to a theory by the Anglican bishop of Bath and Wells speculating that Mary and Joseph, the mother of Jesus and her husband, were first cousins. Jack Goody describes this theory as a "legend".


title: Cousin marriage

text: Protestant churches generally allow cousin marriage, in keeping with criticism of the Catholic system of dispensations by Martin Luther and John Calvin during the Reformation. This includes most of the major US denominations, such as Baptist, Pentecostal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Methodist. The Anglican Communion has also allowed cousin marriage since its inception during the rule of King Henry VIII. According to Luther and Calvin, the Catholic bans on cousin marriage were an expression of Church rather than divine law and needed to be abolished. John Calvin thought of the Biblical list only as illustrative and that any relationship of the same or smaller degree as any listed, namely the third degree by the civil-law method, should therefore be prohibited. The Archbishop of Canterbury reached the same conclusion soon after.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In contrast to both Protestantism and Catholicism, the Eastern Orthodox Church prohibits up to second cousins from marrying. But, according to the latest constitution (of 2010) of The Orthodox Church of Cyprus, second cousins may marry as the restriction is placed up to relatives of the 5th degree. The reasoning is that marriage between close relatives can lead to intrafamily strife.


title: Cousin marriage

text: The Qur'an does not state that marriages between first cousins are forbidden. In Sura An-Nisa (4:22–24), Allah mentioned the women who are forbidden for marriage: to quote the Qur'an, "... Lawful to you are all beyond those mentioned, so that you may seek them with your wealth in honest wedlock…" In Sura Al-Ahzab (33:50),


title: Cousin marriage

text: Muslims have practiced marriages between first cousins in non-prohibited countries since the time of Muhammad. In a few countries the most common type is between paternal cousins. Muhammad actually did marry two relatives. One was a first cousin, Zaynab bint Jahsh, who was not only the daughter of one of his father's sisters but was also divorced from a marriage with Muhammad's adopted son, Zayd ibn Haritha. It was the issue of adoption and not cousinship that caused controversy due to the opposition of pre-Islamic Arab norms.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Many of the immediate successors of Muhammad also took a cousin as one of their wives. Umar married his cousin Atikah bint Zayd ibn Amr ibn Nifayl, while Ali married Fatimah, the daughter of his paternal first cousin Muhammad and hence his first cousin once removed.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Although marrying his cousin himself, Umar, the second Caliph, discouraged marrying within one's bloodline or close cousins recurringly over generations and advised those who had done so to marry people unrelated to them, by telling a household that did so, "You have become frail, so marry intelligent people unrelated to you."


title: Cousin marriage

text: Though many Muslims practice cousins marriage now, two of the Sunni Muslims madhhabs (schools, four in total) like Shafi'i (about 33.33% of Sunni Muslims, or 29% of all Muslims) and Hanbali consider it as Makruh (disliked). Imam Shafi'i, the founder of the Shafi'i madhab, went further in his condemnation of persistent generational bloodline marriages and said, "Whenever the people of a household do not allow their women to marry men outside of their line, there will be fools among their children."


title: Cousin marriage

text: The Hindu Marriage Act prohibits marriage for five generations on the father's side and three on the mother's side, but allows cross-cousin marriage where it is permitted by custom.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Hindu rules of exogamy are often taken extremely seriously, and local village councils in India administer laws against in-gotra endogamy. Social norms against such practices are quite strong as well.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In the 18th and 19th Centuries, Hindu Kurmis of Chunar and Jaunpur are known to have been influenced by their Muslim neighbors and taken up extensively the custom of cousin marriage.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In the Mahabharata, one of the two great Hindu Epics, Arjuna took as his fourth wife his first and cross cousin Subhadra, the sister of Krishna. Arjuna had gone into exile alone after having disturbed Yudhishthira and Draupadi in their private quarters. It was during the last part of his exile, while staying at the Dvaraka residence of his cousins, that he fell in love with Subhadra. While eating at the home of Balarama, Arjuna was struck with Subhadra's beauty and decided he would obtain her as his wife. Subhadra and Arjuna's son was the tragic hero Abhimanyu. According to Andhra Pradesh oral tradition, Abhimanyu himself married his first cross-cousin Shashirekha, the daughter of Subhadra's brother Balarama. Cross cousins marriages are evident from Arjuna's marriage with Subhadra, Pradyumna's (Eldest son of Krishna) marriage with Rukmi's (Brother of Rukmini) daughter. Also Krishna married his cross cousin Mitravinda (Daughter of Vasudeva's sister Rajadhi who was Queen of Avanti) and Bhadra (Daughter of Vasudeva's sister Shrutakirti who was the Queen of Kekaya Kingdom.)


title: Cousin marriage

text: Buddhism does not proscribe any specific sexual practices, only ruling out "sexual misconduct" in the Five Precepts. Zoroastrianism allows cousin marriages. Sikhism largely follows the pattern of ban on the same clan marriages, many Sikhs choose to marry their children with a partner from a different village or town, just to avoid chances of consanguinity between them.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Cousin marriages have genetic aspects that increase the chance of sharing genes for recessive traits. The percentage of consanguinity between any two individuals decreases fourfold as the most recent common ancestor recedes one generation. First cousins have four times the consanguinity of second cousins, while first cousins once removed have half that of first cousins. Double first cousins have twice that of first cousins and are as related as half-siblings.


title: Cousin marriage

text: In April 2002, the "Journal of Genetic Counseling" released a report which estimated the average risk of birth defects in a child born of first cousins at 1.1–2.0 percentage points over an average base risk for non-cousin couples of 3%, or about the same as that of any woman over age 40. In terms of mortality, a 1994 study found a mean excess pre-reproductive mortality rate of 4.4%, while another study published in 2009 suggests the rate may be closer to 3.5%. Put differently, a single first-cousin marriage entails a similar increased risk of birth defects and mortality as a woman faces when she gives birth at age 41 rather than at 30.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Repeated consanguineous marriages within a group are more problematic. After repeated generations of cousin marriage the actual genetic relationship between two people is closer than the most immediate relationship would suggest. In Pakistan, where there has been cousin marriage for generations and the current rate may exceed 50%, one study estimated infant mortality at 12.7 percent for married double first cousins, 7.9 percent for first cousins, 9.2 percent for first cousins once removed/double second cousins, 6.9 percent for second cousins, and 5.1 percent among nonconsanguineous progeny. Among double first cousin progeny, 41.2 percent of prereproductive deaths were associated with the expression of detrimental recessive genes, with equivalent values of 26.0, 14.9, and 8.1 percent for first cousins, first cousins once removed/double second cousins, and second cousins respectively.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Even in the absence of preferential consanguinity, alleles that are rare in large populations can randomly increase to high frequency in small groups within a few generations due to the founder effect and accelerated genetic drift in a breeding pool of restricted size. For example, because the entire Amish population is descended from only a few hundred 18th-century German-Swiss settlers, the average coefficient of inbreeding between two random Amish is higher than between two non-Amish second cousins. First-cousin marriage is taboo among Amish, but they still have several rare genetic disorders. In Ohio's Geauga County, Amish make up only about 10 percent of the population but represent half the special needs cases. In the case of one debilitating seizure disorder, the worldwide total of 12 cases exclusively involves the Amish. Similar disorders have been found in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who do allow first-cousin marriage and of whom 75 to 80 percent are related to two 1830s founders.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Studies into the effect of cousin marriage on polygenic traits and complex diseases of adulthood have often yielded contradictory results due to the rudimentary sampling strategies used. Both positive and negative associations have been reported for breast cancer and heart disease. Consanguinity seems to affect many polygenic traits such as height, body mass index, intelligence and cardiovascular profile. Long-term studies conducted on the Dalmatian islands in the Adriatic Sea have indicated a positive association between inbreeding and a very wide range of common adulthood disorders, including hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer, uni/bipolar depression, asthma, gout, peptic ulcer, and osteoporosis. However, these results may principally reflect village endogamy rather than consanguinity per se. Endogamy is marrying within a group and in this case the group was a village. The marital patterns of the Amish are also an example of endogamy.


title: Cousin marriage

text: The Latin American Collaborative Study of Congenital Malformation found an association between consanguinity and hydrocephalus, postaxial polydactyly, and bilateral oral and facial clefts. Another picture emerges from the large literature on congenital heart defects, which are conservatively estimated to have an incidence of 50/1,000 live births. A consistent positive association between consanguinity and disorders such as ventricular septal defect and atrial septal defect has been demonstrated, but both positive and negative associations with patent ductus arteriosus, atrioventricular septal defect, pulmonary atresia, and Tetralogy of Fallot have been reported in different populations. Associations between consanguinity and Alzheimer's disease have been found in certain populations. Studies into the influence of inbreeding on anthropometric measurements at birth and in childhood have failed to reveal any major and consistent pattern, and only marginal declines were shown in the mean scores attained by consanguineous progeny in tests of intellectual capacity. In the latter case, it would appear that inbreeding mainly leads to greater variance in IQ levels, due in part to the expression of detrimental recessive genes in a small proportion of those tested.


title: Cousin marriage

text: A BBC report discussed Pakistanis in Britain, 55% of whom marry a first cousin. Given the high rate of such marriages, many children come from repeat generations of first-cousin marriages. The report states that these children are 13 times more likely than the general population to produce children with genetic disorders, and one in ten children of first-cousin marriages in Birmingham either dies in infancy or develops a serious disability. The BBC also states that Pakistani-Britons, who account for some 3% of all births in the UK, produce "just under a third" of all British children with genetic illnesses. Published studies show that mean perinatal mortality in the Pakistani community of 15.7 per thousand significantly exceeds that in the indigenous population and all other ethnic groups in Britain. Congenital anomalies account for 41 percent of all British Pakistani infant deaths. The BBC story contained an interview with Myra Ali, whose parents and grandparents were all first cousins. She has a very rare recessive genetic condition, known as epidermolysis bullosa which will cause her to lead a life of extreme physical suffering, limited human contact and probably an early death from skin cancer. Knowing that cousin marriages increase the probability of recessive genetic conditions, she is understandably against the practice. Finally, in 2010 the "Telegraph" reported that cousin marriage among the British Pakistani community resulted in 700 children being born every year with genetic disabilities.


title: Cousin marriage

text: The increased mortality and birth defects observed among British Pakistanis may, however, have another source besides current consanguinity. This is population subdivision among different Pakistani groups. Population subdivision results from decreased gene flow among different groups in a population. Because members of Pakistani biradari have married only inside these groups for generations, offspring have higher average homozygosity even for couples with no known genetic relationship. According to a statement by the UK's Human Genetics Commission on cousin marriages, the BBC also "fails to clarify" that children born to these marriages were not found to be 13 times more likely to develop genetic disorders. Instead they are 13 times more likely to develop "recessive" genetic disorders. The HGC states, "Other types of genetic conditions, including chromosomal abnormalities, sex-linked conditions and autosomal dominant conditions are not influenced by cousin marriage." The HGC goes on to compare the biological risk between cousin marriage and increased maternal age, arguing that "Both represent complex cultural trends. Both however, also carry a biological risk. They key difference, GIG argue, is that cousin marriage is more common amongst a British minority population." Genetic effects from cousin marriage in Britain are more obvious than in a developing country like Pakistan because the number of confounding environmental diseases is lower. Increased focus on genetic disease in developing countries may eventually result from progress in eliminating environmental diseases there as well.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Comprehensive genetic education and premarital genetic counseling programs can help to lessen the burden of genetic diseases in endogamous communities. Genetic education programs directed at high-school students have been successful in Middle Eastern countries such as Bahrain. Genetic counseling in developing countries has been hampered, however, by lack of trained staff, and couples may refuse prenatal diagnosis and selective abortion despite the endorsement of religious authorities. In Britain, the Human Genetics Commission recommends a strategy comparable with previous strategies in dealing with increased maternal age, notably as this age relates to an increased risk of Down syndrome. All pregnant women in Britain are offered a screening test from the government-run national health service to identify those at an increased risk of having a baby with Down syndrome. The HGC states that similarly, it is appropriate to offer genetic counseling to consanguineous couples, preferably before they conceive, in order to establish the precise risk of a genetic abnormality in offspring. Under this system the offering of genetic counseling can be refused, unlike, for example, in the US state of Maine where genetic counseling is mandatory to obtain a marriage license for first cousins. Leading researcher Alan Bittles also concluded that though consanguinity clearly has a significant effect on childhood mortality and genetic disease in areas where it is common, it is "essential that the levels of expressed genetic defect be kept in perspective, and to realize that the outcome of consanguineous marriages is not subject to assessment solely in terms of comparative medical audit". He states that the social, cultural, and economic benefits of cousin marriage also need to be fully considered.


title: Cousin marriage

text: Higher total fertility rates are reported for cousin marriages than average, a phenomenon noted as far back as George Darwin during the late 19th century. There is no significant difference in the number of surviving children in first-cousin marriages because this compensates for the observed increase in child mortality. However, there is a large increase in fertility for 3rd and 4th cousin marriages, whose children exhibit more fitness than both unrelated individuals or 2nd cousins. The total fertility increase may be partly explained by the lower average parental age at marriage or the age at first birth, observed in consanguineous marriages. Other factors include shorter birth intervals and a lower likelihood of outbreeding depression or using reliable contraception. There is also the possibility of more births as a compensation for increased child mortality, either via a conscious decision by parents to achieve a set family size or the cessation of lactational amenorrhea following the death of an infant. According to a recent paper the fertility difference is probably not due to any underlying biological effect. In Iceland, where marriages between second and third cousins were common, in part due to limited selection, studies show higher fertility rates. Earlier papers claimed that increased sharing of human leukocyte antigens, as well as of deleterious recessive genes expressed during pregnancy, may lead to lower rates of conception and higher rates of miscarriage in consanguineous couples. Others now believe there is scant evidence for this unless the genes are operating very early in the pregnancy. Studies consistently show a lower rate of primary infertility in cousin marriages, usually interpreted as being due to greater immunological compatibility between spouses.


title: United States Football League

text: The United States Football League (USFL) was a professional American football league that played for three seasons, 1983 through 1985. The league played a spring/summer schedule in each of its active seasons. The 1986 season was scheduled to be played in the autumn/winter, directly competing against the long-established National Football League (NFL). However, the USFL ceased operations before that season was scheduled to begin.


title: United States Football League

text: The ideas behind the USFL were conceived in 1965 by New Orleans businessman David Dixon, who saw a market for a professional football league that would play in the summer, when the National Football League and college football were in their off-season. Dixon had been a key player in the construction of the Louisiana Superdome and the expansion of the NFL into New Orleans in 1967. He developed "The Dixon Plan"—a blueprint for the USFL based upon securing NFL-caliber stadiums in top TV markets, securing a national TV broadcast contract, and controlling spending—and found investors willing to buy in.


title: United States Football League

text: Though the original franchise owners and founders of the USFL had promised to abide by the general guidelines set out by Dixon's plan, problems arose before the teams took the field, with some franchises facing financial problems and instability from the beginning. Due to pressure from the NFL, some franchises had difficulty securing leases in stadiums that were also used by NFL teams, forcing them to scramble to find alternative venues in their chosen city or hurriedly move to a new market. The USFL had no hard salary cap, and because of this, some teams quickly escalated player payrolls to unsustainable levels despite pledges to keep costs under control. While a handful of USFL franchises abided by the Dixon Plan and were relatively stable, others suffered repeated financial crises, and there were many franchise relocations, mergers, and ownership changes during the league's short existence; however, none of its teams actually folded during any given season. These problems were worsened as some owners began engaging in bidding wars for star players against NFL teams and each other, forcing other owners to do the same or face a competitive disadvantage.


title: United States Football League

text: On the field, the USFL was regarded as a relatively good product. Many coaches and team executives had NFL experience, and many future top NFL players and coaches got their start in the new league, including several who were later inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and/or the College Football Hall of Fame. The Michigan Panthers won the first USFL championship in 1983. The Philadelphia Stars won the second USFL championship in 1984, and after relocating to Baltimore, won the final USFL championship in 1985 as the Baltimore Stars in what was effectively a rematch of the first USFL title game.


title: United States Football League

text: In August 1984, the USFL voted to move from a spring to a fall schedule in 1986 to compete directly with the NFL. This was done at the urging of New Jersey Generals majority owner Donald Trump and a handful of other owners as a way to force a merger between the leagues. As part of this strategy, the USFL filed an antitrust lawsuit against the National Football League in 1986, and a jury ruled that the NFL had violated anti-monopoly laws. However, in a victory in name only, the USFL was awarded a judgment of just $1, which under antitrust laws, was tripled to $3. This court decision effectively ended the USFL's existence. The league never played its planned 1986 season, and by the time it folded, it had lost over US$163 million (over $389 million in 2021 dollars).


title: United States Football League

text: Three consecutive Heisman Trophy winners signed with USFL teams directly out of college: Georgia running back Herschel Walker and Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie signed with the New Jersey Generals, and Nebraska running back Mike Rozier signed with the Pittsburgh Maulers.


title: United States Football League

text: Future Pro Football Hall of Fame members defensive end Reggie White of the University of Tennessee, offensive tackle Gary Zimmerman and quarterbacks Jim Kelly of the University of Miami and Steve Young of Brigham Young University began their professional careers with the USFL's Memphis Showboats, Los Angeles Express, Houston Gamblers, and Los Angeles Express, respectively. A number of NFL veterans of all talent levels played in the USFL. Certain NFL backups such as quarterbacks Chuck Fusina and Cliff Stoudt, G Buddy Aydelette, and WR Jim Smith had limited success in the NFL but became major stars in the USFL. But many NFL backups struggled or never made it in the USFL. Additionally, the USFL also lured in NFL starters, including a handful in the prime of their careers including 1980 NFL MVP, Cleveland Browns' quarterback Brian Sipe, Buffalo Bills' three-time Pro Bowl running back Joe Cribbs and Kansas City Chiefs' three-time Pro Bowl safety Gary Barbaro.


title: United States Football League

text: For many decades after its inception, American football was widely regarded as a second-tier sport behind baseball which was long-regarded as America's national pastime. As a result, the elite levels of American football lacked the financial wherewithal to consistently finance their own facilities and instead played primarily in ballparks hastily re-purposed for football. However, since gridiron football in particular is responsible for excessive wear and tear on a grass playing field, baseball clubs were not keen to see football played in their parks throughout the entire baseball season. Thus, the need to use ballparks played a large part in ensuring that the National Football League and early rivals would delay the start of their seasons until September when the baseball season was winding down, thus affording baseball teams the exclusive use of their facilities in the spring and summer.


title: United States Football League

text: Starting in the 1950s, a number of technological changes and trends eventually caused some to question the traditional timing of the American football season. In particular, football became a much more lucrative sport, the invention of artificial turf and developments in the growth and maintenance of natural grass made it more practical for baseball and football to be played at elite levels in the same facility at the same time, and the increasing influence of television combined with the prevalence of a farm system in which Major League Baseball controlled the rights to baseball levels in all levels of play caused many minor league baseball clubs (some of whom played in large facilities that could be easily re-purposed for major league football) to be much less lucrative in their own right.


title: United States Football League

text: It was in this environment, in 1965, that David Dixon, a New Orleans antiques dealer, who would be instrumental in bringing the New Orleans Saints (and building their current home stadium, the Superdome) to his hometown, began to envision football as a possible spring and summer sport.


title: United States Football League

text: This was not the first time the United States Football League name was used; there had been a previous, short-lived attempt in 1945 to start up a league with that name.


title: United States Football League

text: Over the next 15 years, Dixon studied the last two challengers to the NFL's dominance of pro football—the successful American Football League and the troubled World Football League. In 1980, he commissioned a study by Frank Magid Associates that found promising results for a spring and summer football league. He had also formed a blueprint for the prospective league's operations, which included early television exposure, heavy promotion in home markets, and owners with the resources and patience to absorb years of losses—which he felt would be inevitable until the league found its feet. He also assembled a list of prospective franchises located in markets attractive to a potential television partner.


title: United States Football League

text: Dixon was well aware that many attempts to challenge the NFL had foundered due to financial troubles. The WFL, for instance, was plagued by teams that were so badly underfinanced that they could not meet the most basic expenses. With this in mind, Dixon wanted to ensure that USFL teams had the wherewithal to put a credible product on the field. To that end, the league required potential owners to submit to a detailed due diligence and meet strict capitalization requirements. They were also required to post a $1.5 million letter of credit for emergencies.


title: United States Football League

text: With respected college and NFL coach John Ralston as the first employee, Dixon signed up 12 cities—nine where there already were NFL teams and three where there were not. The Dixon Plan called for teams in top TV markets to entice the networks into offering the league a TV deal. All but two of the 12 initial teams were located in the top 13 media markets in the US at the time.


title: United States Football League

text: After almost two years of preparation, Dixon formally announced the USFL's formation at the 21 Club in New York City on May 11, 1982, to begin play in 1983. ESPN president Chet Simmons was named the league's first commissioner in June 1982.


title: United States Football League

text: According to the Dixon Plan, if the league was going to be a success, it needed television revenue and exposure. In 1983, the league signed contracts with both over-the-air broadcaster ABC and a cable TV broadcaster, the four-year old ESPN, to televise games. The deals yielded roughly $13 million in 1983 and $16 million in 1984, including $9 million per year from ABC. ABC had options for the 1985 season at $14 million and 1986 at $18 million. Each week, there would be a nationally televised game, as well as the USFL's own version of Monday Night football.


title: United States Football League

text: Like almost all startup pro football leagues, the USFL had some off-the-field factors that prevented the league from starting out with their preferred membership. The problems started when the original owner of the Los Angeles franchise, Alex Spanos, pulled out and instead became a minority owner (and eventually majority owner) of the NFL's San Diego Chargers.


title: United States Football League

text: Jim Joseph, a real estate developer who had lost out to friend Tad Taube for the USFL's San Francisco Bay Area franchise, had thought he would be content to be a part-owner of the Oakland Invaders. When the potentially more lucrative Los Angeles franchise became available, Joseph snapped up the rights to the area. The owners of the USFL's San Diego franchise, cable television moguls Bill Daniels and Alan Harmon, were denied a lease for Jack Murphy Stadium. While this was in part due to pressure from the Chargers, the main opposition came from Major League Baseball's Padres who held the lease to the stadium at the time and did not want to see football played at the facility throughout the baseball season. Los Angeles was seen as critical to the league's success, and Dixon and Simmons felt that two cable moguls would be better suited to head the league's efforts there. Joseph was forced to move his operation. The team opened play in Phoenix, Arizona, where it became the Arizona Wranglers. Daniels and Harmon's team became the Los Angeles Express.


title: United States Football League

text: The League's Boston franchise, the Breakers, also had stadium problems. The Boston ownership group wanted to play in Harvard Stadium, but were unable to close a deal with the university; Sullivan Stadium was owned by the New England Patriots, who were unwilling to share their venue with a rival, while Fenway Park was being used in the spring by the Boston Red Sox and was also unavailable, and Alumni Stadium on the campus of Boston College, for reasons never made public, also declined. Finally they were able to negotiate a lease to play at Nickerson Field on the campus of Boston University, a facility that seated only 21,000 people.


title: United States Football League

text: There were plans to establish four franchises in Canada prior to the inaugural season, located in Vancouver, Edmonton, Montreal and the Toronto/Hamilton metroplex (with the last of these to play at Ivor Wynne Stadium). The proposal was pushed by John F. Bassett, the Canadian who would go on to own the Tampa Bay Bandits USFL team. However, Senator Keith Davey warned that the Canadian government would act to protect the Canadian Football League (the league in which in all four of the aforementioned Canadian cities had teams in) from competition. The Canadian Football Act had been proposed, but not approved, when Bassett had tried to establish the Toronto Northmen in the World Football League in 1974. Such legislation would have banned US football leagues from playing in Canada. In particular, Montreal's CFL team, the Concordes, was on precarious financial ground, having just been established to replace the recently folded Alouettes. This led Bassett to drop the idea.


title: United States Football League

text: Once play actually started, the league experienced the same kind of franchise instability, relocation, and closures that almost all pro football leagues, including the NFL, experienced in their early years.


title: United States Football League

text: On the whole, the inaugural season was a success for the league. Attendance was in line with league expectations at about 25,000 fans per game, and television ratings slightly exceeded projections (an average Nielsen rating of 6.1, when the league had aimed for 5.0). The brand of play was exciting and entertaining, and the 1983 championship was generally recognized as being a more entertaining game than most of the Super Bowls of the era. Even in cities where the fans were not numerous, the fan base was passionate; the documentary "Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?" made note of a regular-season game in which Boston Breakers fans stormed the field following a come-from-behind victory at Nickerson Field.


title: United States Football League

text: Arizona, Baltimore, Birmingham, Jacksonville, Memphis, New Jersey, Orlando and a newly reorganized Tampa Bay team were scheduled to play an ultimately aborted 18-game fall schedule season in 1986. At the time, only New Jersey and Tampa Bay shared markets with an NFL team (in New Jersey's case, they shared with two NFL teams).


title: United States Football League

text: It was announced that the USFL will be returning in March 2022 with at least eight teams and a broadcasting deal with Fox Sports. Despite claims that this was a reactivation of the old league, no figures from the original league are involved in the new league, which is instead being backed by the principals of the extant developmental showcase The Spring League, Brian Woods and Fox Sports. On June 3, 2021, the new USFL confirmed a return in the spring of 2022. The league plans a minimum of eight teams for its first season and will retain rights to original team names.


title: United States Football League

text: At first the USFL competed with the older, more established National Football League by following the Dixon plan. The plan allowed the league to compete not just by playing its games on a March–June schedule during the NFL off-season, but also by having the following conditions:


title: United States Football League

text: The Dixon plan laid out a budget to allow all teams to manage losses in the initial lean years. As mentioned earlier, prospective owners had to meet strict capitalization requirements and post a $1.3 million line of credit for emergencies.


title: United States Football League

text: The league's TV revenue met the requirements of the Dixon plan. The Plan called for first year attendance over 18,000 per game. In 1983, 10 of the 12 teams exceeded that threshold. Player spending was where the league deviated from the plan, in the name of pursuing stars.


title: United States Football League

text: The league's biggest splash—the signing of Herschel Walker, a three time All-American and the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner—represented a significant breach from the Dixon Plan. Like the NFL, the USFL barred underclassmen from signing. However, league officials were certain that this rule would never stand up in court, so they allowed Walker to sign with the New Jersey Generals. More importantly, Walker signed a three-year contract valued at $4.2 million with a $1 million signing bonus. Due to the USFL's salary cap rules, this was a personal-services contract with Generals owner J. Walter Duncan, and not a standard player contract. Nonetheless, the other owners did not raise any objections, knowing that having the reigning Heisman winner in the fold would lend the league instant credibility.


title: United States Football League

text: Other marquee stars to sign with the league were Craig James, Anthony Carter and Kelvin Bryant as well as some familiar NFL vets like Chuck Fusina and members of the NFL vet laden Chicago Blitz, like Greg Landry, showed that the upstart league was a credible challenger to the NFL. The league also made a serious run at some other stars, such as Eric Dickerson and Dan Marino.


title: United States Football League

text: The pursuit of top-level talent proved to be a double-edged sword. While the presence of many blue-chip stars proved the league could put a competitive product on the field, many teams wildly exceeded the league's player salary cap in order to put more competitive teams on the field. For instance, the Michigan Panthers reportedly lost $6 million—three times what Dixon suggested a team could afford to lose in the first season—even as they became the league's first champions. The desire to compete with other loaded USFL teams and for the league to be seen as approaching NFL caliber led to almost all of the teams exceeding the Dixon Plan's team salary cap amount within the league's first 6–18 months.


title: United States Football League

text: Dixon urged the members of the league to reduce spending. Rather than backing off spending, recommitting to a firmer salary cap, and dispersing some of the larger contracts to expansion teams to alleviate the problem, the league sought other options to take on revenue to cover increased costs overruns. These actions magnified the problem.


title: United States Football League

text: The league added six more teams in 1984 rather than the four initially envisioned by Dixon, to pocket two more expansion fees. This put more pressure on the TV deal, which was not designed to support an 18 team league. A frustrated Dixon sold his stake and got out.


title: United States Football League

text: Additionally, the league was so determined to appear to put a credible product on the field that on some occasions, it set aside its own vetting procedures–all of which backfired disastrously. When Diethrich sold the Blitz to Hoffman in order to clear the way for his purchase of the Wranglers before the 1984 season, they did not take a close look at Hoffman's financial statements. Realizing he was in over his head, Hoffman was forced to scramble to find minority partners. When there were no takers, he walked away from the team after the second preseason game, forcing the league to take over the team.


title: United States Football League

text: In San Antonio, the league was so enamored at Manges' apparent oil wealth that it not only did not closely vet his application, but did not require him to make an initial capital investment. Instead, Manges paid team expenses out of pocket as they arose, resulting in an operation that appeared short of professional standards. The Gunslingers' offices were in a double-wide trailer, and they used folding chairs to bring Alamo Stadium up to minimum capacity. Manges' practices caught up with him in 1985, when the oil market collapsed. The result was a litany of bounced checks, culminating in the team going the last four games without pay. It later emerged that Manges had been in financial difficulty as early as 1980.


title: United States Football League

text: The worst situation of all, however, was in Los Angeles. Original owners Alan Harmon and Bill Daniels sold the Express to mortgage banker J. William Oldenburg before the 1984 season. Swayed by Oldenburg's apparent net worth of $100 million, the USFL took his word as evidence that he would be a solid owner for one of its marquee franchises. However, in June 1984, investigations by the FBI, "The New York Times" and "The Wall Street Journal" revealed that the man who made waves by signing a roster of high-priced young talent did not have even a fraction of the money to buy the team. He abruptly walked away from the team during the playoffs. Gamblers minority owner Jay Roulier took over the team in October, only to be pushed out just months later when it emerged that he too had lied about his net worth. The league was forced to run the team on a shoestring that season.


title: United States Football League

text: With the new wave of teams, more college stars like Marcus Dupree, Mike Rozier, Reggie White, Jim Kelly, Steve Young and other young stars of the day signed high dollar contracts to play for USFL teams in 1984, as did high-profile NFL stars like Doug Williams, Brian Sipe, Joe Cribbs, and Gary Barbaro.


title: United States Football League

text: In 1984, the league began discussing the possibility of competing head-to-head with the NFL by playing its games in the fall beginning in 1986. The strongest proponents of playing in the fall were Chicago owner Eddie Einhorn and Generals owner Donald Trump. Einhorn and Trump argued that if the USFL moved to the fall, it would eventually force a merger with the NFL in which the older league would have to admit at least some USFL teams. They also argued that if a merger did occur, the surviving teams' original investment would more than double.


title: United States Football League

text: A consulting firm recommended sticking with a spring season. Despite the protests of many of the league's "old guard", who wanted to stay with the original plan of playing football in the spring months, on August 22, 1984 the owners voted to move to the fall starting in 1986. On April 29, 1985, the league's owners voted 13–2 to reaffirm their decision to begin playing a fall season in 1986. Tampa Bay Bandits owner John F. Bassett, who had registered one of the two "nay" votes, declared his intention to pull his team out of the USFL and organize a new spring football league. However, failing health (he died from cancer in May 1986) forced Bassett to abandon his plans and sell the Bandits to minor partner Lee Scarfone, who agreed to keep the franchise in the USFL. The spring advocates had lost, and the fall advocates now set their sights on forcing a merger with the NFL, or at the very least winning a sizable settlement and securing a TV network for fall broadcasts. The USFL had jettisoned its original model of spring football in favor of the risky gamble (but potentially lucrative return) of going head-to-head with the NFL.


title: United States Football League

text: As a direct result of this decision, the Pittsburgh Maulers folded rather than compete with the Pittsburgh Steelers, the sale of the struggling Washington Federals to Weiser's Miami-based ownership group collapsed, the New Orleans Breakers and 1984 champion Philadelphia Stars had to relocate, and the 1983 champion Michigan Panthers surprised the commissioner with an announcement that they would not be playing in the Detroit area for the 1985 season. Panthers owner A. Alfred Taubman informed the league at the meeting that he had negotiated a conditional merger with Tad Taube's Oakland Invaders depending on the outcome of the vote, with Taubman as majority owner. With an expectation of fall play in 1986, Einhorn decided not to field a team for the final lame duck spring 1985 season. Within a few weeks of the decision, the USFL had been forced to abandon four lucrative markets, abort a move to a fifth and suspend operations in a sixth. In hindsight, this destroyed the USFL's viability, although the Maulers folding likely would've happened anyway due to the team being owned by shopping mall magnate Edward J. DeBartolo Sr. (who also owned the National Hockey League's Pittsburgh Penguins at the time), whose son Edward J. DeBartolo Jr. owned the Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers (a team now owned by his sister Denise DeBartolo York), causing a potential conflict of interest for the family between the USFL and the NFL.


title: United States Football League

text: ABC offered the USFL a 4-year, $175 million TV deal to play in the spring in 1986. ESPN offered $70M over 3 years. Following all the mergers and shutdowns, there just were not enough spring football advocates left in the league to accept those contracts. The owners in the league walked away from what averaged out to $67 million per year starting in 1986 to pursue victory over the NFL.


title: United States Football League

text: After the 1985 season, more plans were announced to accommodate the fall schedule, pool financial resources and avoid costly head-to-head competition with NFL teams. Two mergers were announced. The Denver Gold merged with the Jacksonville Bulls, with the Bulls as the surviving team. Trump bought the assets of the Houston Gamblers for an undisclosed amount and merged them with the New Jersey Generals. While the Generals were the surviving team, Gamblers coach Jack Pardee was named as the merged team's new coach. Both the Gold and Gamblers had seen their attendance plummet to unsustainable levels, as their fanbases were not willing to abandon the Denver Broncos and Houston Oilers, respectively. In spite of all of these changes, the USFL would never play a fall game.


title: United States Football League

text: In another effort to keep themselves afloat while at the same time attacking the more established National Football League, the USFL filed an antitrust lawsuit against the older league, claiming it had established a monopoly with respect to television broadcasting rights, and in some cases, on access to stadium venues.


title: United States Football League

text: The case was first heard by Judge Peter K. Leisure. The USFL claimed that the NFL had bullied ABC, CBS and NBC into not televising USFL games in the fall. It also claimed that the NFL had a specific plan to eliminate the USFL, the "Porter Presentation." In particular, the USFL claimed the NFL conspired to ruin the Invaders and Generals. The USFL sought damages of $567 million, which would have been tripled to $1.7 billion under antitrust law. It hoped to void the NFL's contracts with the three major networks. The USFL proposed two remedies: either force the NFL to negotiate new television contracts with only two networks, or force the NFL to split into two competing 14-team leagues, each limited to a contract with one major network.


title: United States Football League

text: All but one of the league's 28 teams was named as a co-defendant. Al Davis, owner of the then-Los Angeles Raiders, was a major witness for the USFL and had been excluded from the lawsuit in exchange for his testimony. ABC Sports' Howard Cosell was also a key witness for the USFL.


title: United States Football League

text: The case went to trial in the spring of 1986 and lasted 42 days. On July 29, a six-person jury handed down a verdict that devastated the USFL, even though it technically won its case. The jury declared the NFL a "duly adjudicated illegal monopoly", and found that the NFL had willfully acquired and maintained monopoly status in professional football through predatory tactics.


title: United States Football League

text: However, it rejected the USFL's other claims. The jury found that the USFL had changed its strategy to a more risky goal of forcing a merger with the NFL. Furthermore, the switch to a fall schedule caused the loss of several major markets (Philadelphia, Denver, Houston, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Miami, the Bay Area). The jury also made note of a memo Tad Taube wrote about the dispute, which quoted the comic strip "Pogo": "we have met the enemy and he is us."