Originally posted by Beowulf:
Since we are tossing out links to article that support our views, here is a link that challenges the "common conception" of marriage as being only between a man and woman.

Quote:

The primary organization representing American anthropologists criticized President Bush's proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage Thursday and gave a failing grade to the president's understanding of human cultures.

"The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution," said the executive board of the 11,000-member American Anthropological Association.

Bush has cast the union between male and female as the only proper form of marriage, or what he called in his State of the Union address "one of the most fundamental, enduring institutions of our civilization."

American anthropologists say he's wrong.

"Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies," the association's statement said, adding that the executive board "strongly opposes a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples."

The statement was proposed by Dan Segal, a professor of anthropology and history from Pitzer College in Claremont (Los Angeles County), who called Bush's conception of the history of marriage "patently false."

"If he were to take even the first semester of anthropology, he would know that's not true," said Segal, a member of the anthropological association's Executive Committee.

Ghita Levine, communications director for the association, said the issue struck a nerve in the profession.

"They feel strongly about it because they are the people who study the culture through time and across the world," she said. "They are the people who know what cultures consist of."

Segal pointed to "sanctified same-sex unions in the fourth century in Christianity" and to the Greeks and Romans applying the concept of marriage to same-sex couples, not to mention the Native American berdache tradition in which males married males.

UC Berkeley anthropologist Laura Nader, an expert in anthropology and the law who played no role in drawing up the association's statement, called it a "correct assessment."

Nader, who is an association member, said Bush's proposal "serves the views of the religious right, and that has to do with getting votes."









The author is twisting word usage to the breaking point here and pulling one HELL of a bait and switch. I HAVE taken Anthropology courses back in college and studied the Greek and Roman empires quite a bit (the Roman empire well enough to have a department head check his notes on a particular topic during an argument).

There is NO common and widespread connection or evidence that exists that shows a long-standing social/religious ceremony that strictly bonds a same-sex couple together to the exclusion of all others.

True, the practice of homosexuality was widespread among Roman and Greek elites and there were certain rituals developed around the practice, though I've yet to see ANY documentation or research that points to a WIDESPREAD and COMMON ceremony that was both held sarcosanct by the MAJORITY of the religious and secular populations in any meaningfully developed civilization that has lived on this planet.

Key word being MAJORITY.

Grabbing a few examples out of the past doesn't change the common definition of marriage that has lasted and survived millenia of social and religious change throughout any number of civilizations. That is a cold, hard FACT. Pagan AND Christian values/norms as well as human nature itself has defined marriage throughout the ages. Also pointing to Roman emperors condoning the practice should IMMEDIATELY set alarm bells off, as some of the beliefs and practices of the emperors and thier decrees were often the polar opposite of commonly-held social and religious norms held at the time.

I'm smelling a large load of BS with that article.

Don't get me wrong; I have absolutely no issue with gays and wish that the US would come to grips with this and offer civil unions as the solution. Marriage throughout all common religions of today (pick your poison: Christianity, Islam, Shintoism, Bhuddism, etc., etc.) and most societies involve (1) man and (1) woman, though.

I think civil unions should have an elevated status that equates marriage and all of the benefits thereof, reflecting a joining of same-sex couples; marriage should reflect man and wife, as it has done throughout the ages in 99.999% of the time.

It is splitting hairs to an extent (as a concept and defition of that concept is being argued here), but for the same reason most societies split hairs over other long-held religious and social practices.

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