After years of making fun of people from West Virginia for being backwards and marrying their first cousins, it turns out Florida is the one we should have pointed at.
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That’s right. Florida — a state that now has Wall Street South-sleek, sophisticated, and perpetually “on the move” — is still one of roughly 16 states where you can legally marry your first cousin. And in a moment that feels almost scripted, a last-minute attempt to fix that just quietly died in the Florida House.
This is 2026.
West Virginia, the state everyone loves to mock in this department, banned first-cousin marriage in 1955. Nineteen fifty-five. Before Palm Beach became shorthand for luxury, before Miami became global, before Florida arguably became what, if we’re lucky, will be the future of America, with one glaring error that should be a no-brainer to fix.
Apparently, not so easy.
The failed fix came from State Representative Dean Black, who filed an amendment that would have finally prohibited first-cousin marriage in Florida. It wasn’t radical. It wasn’t partisan. It wasn’t even controversial. It was the legislative equivalent of replacing a broken lightbulb that everyone has been ignoring for decades.
And yet — darkness prevails.
Not because anyone stood up to defend cousin marriage as a cherished Florida value. No one made that argument, for obvious reasons. Instead, the amendment was folded into a sprawling health care bill that collapsed under its own weight, taking this long-overdue update down with it.
In Tallahassee, this is how common sense dies: not with a bang, but buried in subsection (g) of a bill no one can pass.
Black framed the proposal as a simple effort to bring Florida in line with “the overwhelming majority of the nation.” Which is true. Most states banned first-cousin marriage generations ago. A few others allow it only under restrictions that read less like law and more like quiet discouragement — requiring couples to be past childbearing age or medically infertile.
Florida’s approach? No restrictions. No conditions. No apparent urgency.
And that’s what makes this less of a moral issue and more of a branding problem. Florida has spent years aggressively marketing itself as the place where the future happens — where people move for opportunity, innovation, and a better quality of life.
But legally speaking, it’s still holding onto a relic that even West Virginia ditched under Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The states that remain on this list — California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Alabama, Colorado, Vermont — at least have the excuse of complexity, population size, or sheer legislative inertia. Plus, they’re places that are progressive and pride themselves on accepting the idea that a man with a penis is a woman. Florida, by contrast, a state that knows full well that women are the only ones who can give birth, just had the chance to fix this backward atrocity.
And didn’t.
Because in Florida’s Legislature, timing is everything, and attaching a clean, obvious fix to a doomed bill is the policy equivalent of leaving your Gucci murse (man purse) in a public restroom, and expecting it to be there when you go back for it.
So no, Florida lawmakers didn’t vote to protect cousin marriage.
They couldn’t quite get around to ending it.
Which, for a state that prides itself on being ahead of the curve, is an impressively awkward place to land.
Other stories you may want to read:
- Florida Lawmakers: Love Thy Neighbor..Or Just Your Cousin - March 22, 2026
- Welcome to Florida-From Two Egg to Taintsville - March 18, 2026
- Glazer Hall is Palm Beach’s New Hot Spot - March 16, 2026