Inbreeding in Florida

By BRUCE LOWITT

If Florida Man and Florida Woman are more than just kissin’ cousins, Florida says, they can still make the state of their union legal and presumably make Florida Babies that, technically, won’t be bastards.

This was the decision of the one hundred and twenty representatives who make up three-quarters of the Florida legislature (the remaining forty being state senators), some of whom have, in more contentious moments of legislating, accused each other of being born to parents not married to each other.

In this case, though, it was more a case of laissez-faire, a French term which translates to “leave it alone” but among a vast number of politicians of every stripe is more accurately defined as “fuck it.”

The decision, in which the legislators of the twenty-seventh state decided to not pass a bill known numerically as HB733 and whose name was the incredibly ambiguous Department of Health, is explained as “… revising eligibility requirements for dentists and dental hygienists participating in the Dental Student Loan Repayment Program; revising requirements for department approval of qualified physicians and …”

Okay, let us skip to the, um, meat of the bill: “… prohibiting marriage between certain related individuals …”

A-ha!

This was the tiny part of the bill, an amendment which Rep. Anne Gerwig, R-Chaste (and possibly chased) slipped into the very wordy bill most likely unread by most of her colleagues until one of them probably stumbled upon the phrase and thought, “Hey, that sounds like Lulabelle and Rusty.”

And not wanting to turn the family’s next engagement party into a choose-up-sides free-for-all, the decision was made to call the colleagues’ attention to the six-word phrase, whereupon the legislators actually legislating decided to laissez it.

Rep. Dean Black, R-Pork Barrel, whose original omnibus bill wound up with Gerwig’s amendment hiding in plain sight, said there are “plenty of people here you can find to be your lifelong partner without looking to your first cousin – but let me tell you about Ellie May, my father’s brother’s daughter. I wouldn’t want to marry her but, I mean, hoo–wee! What I wouldn’t give …”

As a result of the bill’s failure, while most states have banned marriage between first cousins, Florida remains one of an estimated sixteen states in which it is still legal, and whose offspring of those marriages have a greater chance of carrying genetic disorders and risks of developmental issues, including running for president or any other political office.

“Whether or not we have a bunch of so-called or actual bastards running around in our state doesn’t really matter to me,” Black said, “but I wouldn’t mind legislation that’ll rid us of a lot of Tallahassee’s sons of bitches.”