Parted-at-birth twins discover truth...after getting married

[Dartzap]

BBC

Parted-at-birth twins 'married'
A pair of twins who were adopted by separate families as babies got married without knowing they were brother and sister, a peer told the House of Lords.

A court annulled the UK couple's union after they discovered their true relationship, Lord Alton said.

The peer - who was told of the case by a High Court judge involved - said the twins felt an "inevitable attraction".

He said the case showed how important it was for children to be able to find out about their biological parents.

'Truth will out'

Details of the of the identities of the twins involved have been kept secret, but Lord Alton said the pair did not realise they were related until after their marriage.

The former Liberal Democrat MP raised the couple's case during a House of Lords debate on the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill in December.


"They were never told that they were twins," he told the Lords.

"They met later in life and felt an inevitable attraction, and the judge had to deal with the consequences of the marriage that they entered into and all the issues of their separation."

He told the BBC News website that their story raises the wider issue of the importance of strengthening the rights of children to know the identities of their biological parents .

"If you start trying to conceal someone's identity, sooner or later the truth will out," he said.

"And if you don't know you are biologically related to someone, you may become attracted to them and tragedies like this may occur."

Pam Hodgkins, chief executive officer of the charity Adults Affected by Adoption (NORCAP) said there had been previous cases of separated siblings being attracted to each other.

"We have a resistance, a very strong incest taboo where we are aware that someone is a biological relative," she said.

"But when we are unaware of that relationship, we are naturally drawn to people who are quite similar to ourselves.

"And of course there is unlikely to be anyone more similar to any individual than their sibling."

That's quite bizarre. At least it wasn't on purpose like rednecks do, heh.

[The Grim Squeaker]

That's quite bizarre. At least it wasn't on purpose like rednecks do, heh.

Not really, as the bloke said, we're attracted to people who are similar to ourselves, and a twin is you with breasts (or dangly bits). .

Cut out the taboo, and age and a hell of a lot of people would probably marry their parents or siblings

[ray245]

That's quite bizarre. At least it wasn't on purpose like rednecks do, heh.

Not really, as the bloke said, we're attracted to people who are similar to ourselves, and a twin is you with breasts (or dangly bits). .

Cut out the taboo, and age and a hell of a lot of people would probably marry their parents or siblings

What about genetic defects?

[Spin Echo]

That's quite bizarre. At least it wasn't on purpose like rednecks do, heh.

Not really, as the bloke said, we're attracted to people who are similar to ourselves, and a twin is you with breasts (or dangly bits). .

Cut out the taboo, and age and a hell of a lot of people would probably marry their parents or siblings

Reminds me of the movie Code 46.

[Sidewinder]

Life imitates art-- in the worst way.

[The Spartan]

What about genetic defects?

That hasn't stopped people in the past...

[Rahvin]

That's quite bizarre. At least it wasn't on purpose like rednecks do, heh.

Not really, as the bloke said, we're attracted to people who are similar to ourselves, and a twin is you with breasts (or dangly bits). .

Cut out the taboo, and age and a hell of a lot of people would probably marry their parents or siblings

What about genetic defects?

From an ABC news article recently:

A report from the Journal of Genetic Counseling indicates that cousin couples have only 2 percent more of a chance of having children with birth defects as compared to unrelated couples.

2% isn't horrible. No studies have been done on birth defects from actual siblings, however, for reasons that should be pretty obvious.

Aside from that, the sole purpose of marriage is not to procreate. If a couple has no intention of having children, the only thing keeping the practice "immoral" is the socially inherited squick factor (and we know how the "ideal parents" argument goes from the gay marriage discussions).

[CaptainChewbacca]

Its not the first generation of inbreeding that's bad, is the 2nd or 4th or 5th that starts to cause real problems.

One thing the article doesn't say, though, is how they found out and how long they were married for.

[Battlehymn Republic]

It's like a Star Wars Infinities gone wrong!

[tim31]

I'd love to see a picture of the two so I could try to make an objective opinion on whether they looked related...

[Broomstick]

What about genetic defects?

Because there is such a strong taboo against incest, the odds of such an accidental pairing of siblings produce significant problems are very low, not much greater than two much more distantly related people doing so.

It's repeated inbreeding that causes problems.

So many generations of first cousin matings problem (I would guess) incur more risk that a rare mating of twins in a culture were known cousins of any sort usually do not marry.

[Adrian Laguna]

The Egyptian Pharaohs married their sisters by custom, and the records indicate the majority of their children were quite healthy. The infamous Cleopatra VII was the product of several generations of brother-sister incest, and despite that she was by all accounts strikingly beautiful as well as very intelligent and cunning. Much like most Ptolemaic women, in fact. Incest not only concentrates bad traits, it does the same for good traits. Not that it was all great for the Ptolemaics, also due to their incestuous practices, their males tended to be mentally unstable.

Really, there should be no reason to anull the marriage if the two twins still wanted to remain together.

[CaptainChewbacca]

The Egyptian Pharaohs married their sisters by custom, and the records indicate the majority of their children were quite healthy. The infamous Cleopatra VII was the product of several generations of brother-sister incest, and despite that she was by all accounts strikingly beautiful as well as very intelligent and cunning. Much like most Ptolemaic women, in fact. Incest not only concentrates bad traits, it does the same for good traits. Not that it was all great for the Ptolemaics, also due to their incestuous practices, their males tended to be mentally unstable.

Really, there should be no reason to anull the marriage if the two twins still wanted to remain together.

Akhenaton was a rather grotesquely deformed pharoah, even though his intellect was intact. Its still not a good idea.

And, I'm guessing the twins got it annulled because of the 'ick factor'.

[Adrian Laguna]

[Akhenaton was a rather grotesquely deformed pharoah, even though his intellect was intact. Its still not a good idea.

I said the majority, not all of them. Nor did I say it's a good idea, merely that's it is not quite as bad as people make is sound.

[fgalkin]

[Akhenaton was a rather grotesquely deformed pharoah, even though his intellect was intact. Its still not a good idea.

I said the majority, not all of them. Nor did I say it's a good idea, merely that's it is not quite as bad as people make is sound.

Cleopatra wasn't exactly beautiful in the conventional sense, either. She wasn't deformed, but she was rather...plain-looking.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Broomstick]

The Egyptian pharaohs might have married their sisters by custom, but in many case they were half-siblings, or the unions produced no heirs at all and the throne passed to a child of the pharaoh born to an unrelated woman in the harem. So there were still traits coming in from outside.

Supposedly (and I never confirmed this, so it may be in error) the Hawaiian royalty married brother and sister for many generations - but they ALSO practiced strict elimination of any child born visibly deformed which would help weed out bad traits.

[Adrian Laguna]

Cleopatra wasn't exactly beautiful in the conventional sense, either. She wasn't deformed, but she was rather...plain-looking.

That would be modern conventional sense. Standards of beauty are based on biology and culture. Typically biology only makes it to "okay" and culture makes up the difference between that and "beautiful". I'm fairly certain that Cleopatra was very pretty by the standards of the Hellenic world.

[Broomstick]

And let's face it, being absolute monarch of a nation DOES increase one's sex appeal, male or female.

[Stark]

That would be modern conventional sense. Standards of beauty are based on biology and culture. Typically biology only makes it to "okay" and culture makes up the difference between that and "beautiful". I'm fairly certain that Cleopatra was very pretty by the standards of the Hellenic world.

You mean 'Hellenistic' world, right? She wasn't hundreds of years old when Caesar met her.

[Lord of the Abyss]

That's quite bizarre. At least it wasn't on purpose like rednecks do, heh.

Not really, as the bloke said, we're attracted to people who are similar to ourselves, and a twin is you with breasts (or dangly bits). .

Cut out the taboo, and age and a hell of a lot of people would probably marry their parents or siblings

No, they wouldn't; it's been tried. There used to be a practice among wealthy Chinese families with too many male children that they'd adopt poor girl children, with the eventual intent of her marrying an excess son in an arranged marriage. If you believe in arranged marriages in the first place, it seems a reasonable enough idea; the girl gets lifted out of poverty, the poor family has one less mouth to feed, the son gets a wife. The problem is, it didn't work very well; the prospective husband and wife seldom found each other at all attractive, and such marriages were less likely to result in children than other marriages because of that. The children raised together in the old Israeli kibbutzim also almost never married, despite the lack of taboos.

We are wired so that people raised with us are psychologically labeled as siblings, not potential mates.

[ArmorPierce]

The Egyptian Pharaohs married their sisters by custom, and the records indicate the majority of their children were quite healthy. The infamous Cleopatra VII was the product of several generations of brother-sister incest, and despite that she was by all accounts strikingly beautiful as well as very intelligent and cunning. Much like most Ptolemaic women, in fact. Incest not only concentrates bad traits, it does the same for good traits. Not that it was all great for the Ptolemaics, also due to their incestuous practices, their males tended to be mentally unstable.

Really, there should be no reason to anull the marriage if the two twins still wanted to remain together.

First, no. A recent depiction found of her shown her to be actually short, fat, and ugly. Second, IIRC, it was put forth in a documentary that I vaguely recal that they practiced infanticide on babies born obviously deformed.

[fgalkin]

Cleopatra wasn't exactly beautiful in the conventional sense, either. She wasn't deformed, but she was rather...plain-looking.

That would be modern conventional sense. Standards of beauty are based on biology and culture. Typically biology only makes it to "okay" and culture makes up the difference between that and "beautiful". I'm fairly certain that Cleopatra was very pretty by the standards of the Hellenic world.

That would hold truth, except that ancient chroniclers did not consider her appearance particularly beautiful, either.

For her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her; but converse with her had an irresistible charm, and her presence, combined with the persuasiveness of her discourse and the character which was somehow diffused about her behaviour towards others, had something stimulating about it.

Linky

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[aerius]

I wonder how many times the twins boinked each other...

[fgalkin]

<snip>

We are wired so that people raised with us are psychologically labeled as siblings, not potential mates.

And that proves what, exactly? His point was that a twin is actually you of the opposite gender, and people see that as attractive, not that "people raised together find each other attractive." In any case, the people in question were NOT raised together.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Isolder74]

The Egyptian Pharaohs married their sisters by custom, and the records indicate the majority of their children were quite healthy. The infamous Cleopatra VII was the product of several generations of brother-sister incest, and despite that she was by all accounts strikingly beautiful as well as very intelligent and cunning. Much like most Ptolemaic women, in fact. Incest not only concentrates bad traits, it does the same for good traits. Not that it was all great for the Ptolemaics, also due to their incestuous practices, their males tended to be mentally unstable.

Really, there should be no reason to anull the marriage if the two twins still wanted to remain together.

First, no. A recent depiction found of her shown her to be actually short, fat, and ugly. Second, IIRC, it was put forth in a documentary that I vaguely recal that they practiced infanticide on babies born obviously deformed.

That would be Sparta. Their standards were very strict. A baby a little too small could be considered unworthy.