CLAIM
According to a viral post, the Supreme Court of United States recently ruled in favour of siblings getting married. The post carries pictures of alleged brother and sister from New Jersey celebrating the order.
The claim reads: “The United States Supreme Court has ruled that a brother and sister can now get married. A New Jersey brother and sister have won the right to marry after a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States.”
You can find the archived version of the tweet here.
The claim was not just viral on Facebook and Twitter, but multiple websites also carried it as a news report.
TRUE OR FALSE?
The claim is false and the picture is of a couple from the United Kingdom and not US.
WHAT WE FOUND
On conducting a Google reverse image search, we found that the people in the photo are not brother and sister, but couple who had been fighting a civil partnership case.
A BBC report confirmed that the photos were taken in 2018 after the Supreme Court in UK ruled in favour of Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan to have a civil partnership instead of a marriage.
The couple had appealed to the SC after the Court of Appeal rejected their claim in 2017.
We also came across the viral claim published by a satirical website called World News Daily Report.
It runs a disclaimer “World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website – even those based on real people – are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle.”
WHAT DOES LAW IN NEW JERSEY SAY?
Laws regarding incest in United states, except in the state of New Jersey and Rhode Island, criminalise it among two consenting adults. The term incest refers to sexual relations between family members or close relatives.
Although the law in New Jersey doesn't criminalise incest between two consenting adults, marriage between related adults is still illegal.
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