As Ottenheimer sees it, given the foolish determination of our forbears to assimilate immigrants, Americans used intermarriage (a modern form of exogamy) as a tool to help break up ethnic communities and encourage a sense of national unity. Laws against cousin marriage fit right into that strategy, helping to break down in-grown traditional cultures and encouraging a shared sense of American identity (even if America never faced anything quite as in-grown as Muslim parallel-cousin marriage). Multiculturalist that he is, Ottenheimer prefers the “cultural continuity” fostered by parallel-cousin marriage among British Pakistani Muslims — a continuity facilitated by Europe’s permissive marriage laws — to America’s tradition of immigrant assimilation.
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