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Defending Marriage | by Illiad | 2006-11-19 12:55:59 |
| Okay, so it's convenient... |
by jdelphiki |
2006-06-22 11:16:06 |
...for the anthropologist to examine marriage entirely from the perspective of its historical scientific function, but the more I read the guy's article, the more it seemed like he was angling his conclusions to fit his predetermined expectations.
It's not so much the examples he provided that I found a little off. It's that he chose to use very narrow definitions to illustrate where the marriage and classic nuclear family used to be meaningful in our culture of the past, and very wide criteria to define why it is meaningless in today's culture.
Now, before I go further, please keep in mind that I'm not making any kind of statement against same-sex marriage. I'm not even trying to say that his conclusions are necessarily wrong.
I just feel that the guy in the article led himself to the conclusion he wanted to find. That he's a scientist makes it worse, because his argument was a tad sloppy...too narrow and leading, depending too much on trying to prove why the right (the far right, religious right, etc.) are wrong about marriage.
He brings up quite a few very valid points. The West's view of marriage is quite a bit different than that of many other parts of the world. Our view today is much different from that described in the Bible. But I think the guy overreached when he assumed that the cultural "need" for marriage or the nuclear family could disappear in a little over a single generation. That's where he lost me.
He's flat wrong, IMO, when he implies that the countries of the West don't need to carry on its traditions anymore...especially those governing relationship bonding and family groups. It's convenient to his argument, but untrue.
I believe that our culture IS going through a transition from what we valued in the past to some state of reality for the future. But we're not there yet and whatever our culture looks like on the other end of this transition, I think it's scientifically irresponsible for the guy in the article to automatically discount the value of family units (including pair-bond types of relationships) because he's completely discarding the social nature of human beings and our inherent need for such close relationships.
Will marriage last the transition? I don't know. I tend to believe that, as a pair-bond, "marriage" shouldn't have to depend on the respective genders of the people involved. But I feel very strongly that such a bond is still very important to our culture and society.
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I agree 100%. | by Peace_man | 2006-06-22 11:26:51 |
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