Marriages between first cousins will remain legal in Florida\u2026 At least for the time being.<\/p>\n
In Florida, it\u2019s illegal to marry your parent, grandparent, child, aunt, uncle, niece, or nephew.<\/p>\n
But first cousins, at least as far as the law is concerned, are fair game.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, at least 32 states currently prohibit or severely restrict cousin marriage.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n State Representative Dean Black (R-Yulee) argued it\u2019s high time Florida joins that list as well.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a time when I think first cousin marriages were allowed because population densities were not great, and you know it was hard to find a mate back when Florida was a wilderness,\u201d Black said.<\/p>\n 25 states have blanket bans on marriages between first cousins.<\/p>\n Nine others mostly ban the practice but have various exceptions to the rule, like in cases where one partner is infertile, both partners are above a certain age, or if the two partners are of the same sex.<\/p>\n Florida is among just 16 states with no restrictions on first-cousin marriages.<\/p>\n Others in that group include California, New York, Massachusetts, and our neighbor to the north, Georgia.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll leave things in New York and California to them. They have their own way of looking at things, but I think we need to do the right thing for Floridians here,\u201d Black said.<\/p>\n This session, Black snuck an amendment onto a bill dealing with the Department of Health that would have made it illegal for first cousins to marry starting in July of this year.<\/p>\n It was adopted without any discussion or pushback and flew under the radar for the remainder of the session.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n That was until the final day, when Black explained disagreements over other elements in the bill created an impasse, and the legislation died as the clock on the session expired.<\/p>\n Despite the bill\u2019s unceremonious demise, cousin lovers may want to make their proposals sooner rather than later, as Black expects this proposal will likely be back next year.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are plenty of people here, and there are plenty of people you can find to be your lifelong partner without looking to your first cousin,\u201d Black said. \u201dSo, yes. I think it should come back whether it\u2019s a standalone bill, whether it\u2019s tagged onto some other bill. Not really sure. We\u2019ll have to see.\u201d<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marriages between first cousins will remain legal in Florida\u2026 At least for the time being. In Florida, it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,41119],"class_list":["post-193969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-florida-state-capitol-in-tallahassee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}