the reason many states (and many Christian countries) restrict marriage between cousins has to do with the way in which canon law (the law of the Roman Catholic Church) was assimilated into the local legal system
Can you provide some support for that statement, at least as it applies to the states in the US? The reason I ask is because the early Christian influences in the US were largely Protestant and not Catholic. In fact, I can’t see any of the authorities in Colonial America being all that concerned with Roman Catholic canon law.
The Wolf