Looking at Consanguineous Ancestors at Reddit

Via Full Marriage Equality:

My parents are first cousins. My dad's parents were first cousins. [...] When the family began moving to the States, they came to discover that most Americans find (or some pretend to find) cousin [marriage] nasty, so nobody spoke about the relationships to anyone. Well, except one of piece of shit cousins and his bitch mom, who was my dad's youngest sister.

My cousin would publicly mock my brother and I about our parents being cousins because he thought himself to be a special snowflake since his mom and dad weren't related. His mom also would publicly ask my brother and I stupid questions, like "Why don't you guys call your dad 'Uncle Dad' and your mom 'Aunt Mom'?"

In 2012, my cousin ended up marrying his own first cousin! lol I haven't spoken to him or his family since 2010, but I always want to just hit them up and be like, "Hey, auntie, why don't you call your son's wife 'Daughter-in-Law Niece'?" If I ever see them in public, I'm going to make it an embarrassing encounter just like they'd do to my brother and I when we were kids. Let's see how they handle strangers close by looking at them and judging them.

[...] On the Puerto Rican side of my family, my [great great] Grandparents were siblings. It's the only known incest and no genetic disorders expressed in my generation. My [great great] grandfather did have an uncle who had a "blue child" (like as in the kid was blue. Not sure how much to believe it but they insist it's true. Sadly, no color photos in the 1800s) and his brother had extra fingers. But aside from them, no weird genetics.

Unless his great grandfather is the product of consanguinamory too, that information about his great great granduncle is totally irrelevant. That's not how genetics works.

I was looking at that family line, and twice a woman saw her own daughter marry her brother. Yeesh.

How naive people are, to think it couldn't be in their own family.

My daughter was diagnosed at age 18 with mosaic turners syndrome. She has no physical features like webbed hands or feet, but after the doctor told us that, I recalled that my grandfather's sister had webbed feet and hands. She never had children either. So did a little genealogy search, did not have to go back far on that side of my family to find a great - many times back - grandfather who widowed, then wait, what..? wasn't she his sister? You can't marry your sister...Yep.

Once again, consanguinity that far back in a family tree has no bearing on modern generations' health. It's negative effects come from receiving two copies of certain genes, one from each parent. Different negative side-effects can continue perhaps one generation beyond, through the mother, if the mother gained reproductive disorders.

Child of incest here. My dad was my mom's uncle. They met at a family reunion for extra points lol. Haven't really noticed much on my end. No major issues like physical deformities or anything. Mental issues (bipolarism, depression, etc) tend to run in my family, so I deal with some of that. Depression mostly, and occasional hallucinations. Not sure if that's been made worse by the fact that my parents were related or not.

[...] My great grandparents were first cousins AND step siblings. I was shocked when I found out but it seems it was pretty common in small European villages at the time. I don't inherited any genetic disorders from that side of the family, but my father is color blind so I might pass that to my hypothetical children.

No he won't. Color-blindness is carried by the X chromosome. Whether your son gets it or not has nothing to do with how closely related your spouse is to you. He gets it from his mother.

My family history on my mother's side has always been something of a blip in our otherwise 'normal' family. My grandmother was a product of incest, her mother and father also being siblings. It came out during my great-grandmother's pregnancy that this baby was the result of incest [...]. Obviously, my family was not okay with that in the slightest and so my grandmother was raised in a very toxic environment and the effect this had on her was enormous.

[...] [My] great-grandparents [...] definitely did not end up together. My grandmother was brought up by her grandparents (my great-great grandparents) as the incestuous siblings were quite young when this happened, around early 20s. My great-grandmother got married, had two more healthy children and (to my knowledge) never told her husband about her other child. My great-grandfather is more of a mystery, I'm only aware that he moved very far north and had nothing much more to do with the family. 

[...] I wish I could tell you more, but my mother only told me the basics just so I knew about it and she refuses to talk about it in any more detail as she is quite ashamed of it. If you need anything clearing up, don't hesitate to ask!

The thread is absolutely swamped with tales of distant cousin-couple ancestry. The American taboo against cousin sex and marriage is ridiculous. We're one of the few countries that harbors such beliefs. Past 1st-cousins, the probability of genetic defects is no higher than the general population. In fact, 3rd and 4th cousins are less likely to have kids with defects. Why is this even still an issue? The American obsession with condemning cousin-couples is bizarre.