``A great deal is at stake in this matter,'' Bush said. ``For ages, in every culture, human beings have understood that traditional marriage is critical to the well-being of families. ... And changing the definition of traditional marriage will undermine the family structure.''
This statement demonstrates how completely oblivious Bu$h is to other cultures and the world around him in general. Bu$h is, bottom line, simply not smart enough to be pResident, and he is too linearly educated, intellectually challenged, and experientially deficient to make blanket statements about anthropological subjects.
Same sex marriage in the non-European world
Same sex marriage is a controversial issue in the United States. This is hardly surprising, considering that it had stirred much debate in other Western countries prior to gaining acceptance in Scandinavia and Canada. But the fact is, same sex marriage is not new to the 20th or 21st century, nor is it unique to the Western world. Various cultures in the Americans, Africa, and Asia had, or have the custom of same sex marriage. This is not to say that same-sex marriages in one society are equivalent to, or should serve as models for, same-sex marriages in another.
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Woman-woman marriage has been documented in more than 30 African populations, including the Yoruba and Ibo of West Africa, the Zulu and Sotho of South Africa, and the Kikuyu and Nandi of East Africa.1 Typically, such arrangements involved two women undergoing formal marriage rites; the requisite bride price is paid by one party as in a heterosexual marriage. The woman who pays the bride price for the other woman becomes the sociological 'husband'. The couple may have children with the help of a 'sperm donor', who is a male kinsman or friend of the female husband, or a man of the wife's own choosing, depending on the customs of the community. The female husband is the sociological father of any resulting offspring. The children belong to her lineage, not to their biological father's.2
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Many indigenous societies in the Americas supported alternative gender roles for both biological men and women. These identities have been termed 3rd and 4th genders (though some cultures recognized up to 6 genders) and are usually coupled with supernatural powers and shamanistic roles. These gender-bending social roles sometimes begin in childhood preferences for dress and work roles.4 Among the Mohave, men have married alyha (biological males who are officially initiated into a 'female' gender role) and women have married hwame (the female equivalent of alyha).5
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In Guangdong province, a marriage tradition existed in the Golden Orchid Sisterhoods, traditional social organizations for women. Two women go through a ceremony similar to a heterosexual marriage ceremony, witnessed by other society members. These married couples could then adopt female children, who had inheritance rights from the couple's parents.6
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In the neighboring province of Fujian, same-sex marriages between males were also recognized. Similar to the Zande model in Africa, Fujian boy-marriages involves a man paying bride price to a teenage boy's parents, and the union typically ended when the boy came of age, though there were exceptions. Sometimes same-sex couples adopted and raised children.7
http://www.colorq.org/Articles/2004/ssmarriage.htmLancaster is the designated spokesman for the American Anthropological Association, the world's largest group of cultural experts, and the author of "The Trouble With Nature: Sex in Science and Popular Culture" (University of California Press, $21.95, 455 pages).
Anthropologists study a wide range of marriage practices, Lancaster says, including cultures where one man marries a group of women or one woman marries a group of men or, rarely, groups of men marry groups of women. Same-sex unions are also in evidence, as are marriages that take place outside the realm of religion.
"A wide swath of cultures have allowed or encouraged or celebrated same-sex unions," Lancaster says.
"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," his group says in a prepared statement.
http://www.oregonlive.com/living/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/living/1082807705251704.xmlIn Europe: Same-sex couples in the Netherlands and Belgium can marry. These countries do not differentiate between same-sex and opposite-sex couples, except that there are restrictions on same-sex couples where one spouse is from another country.
A few European countries -- Denmark, France, Iceland, Norway and Sweden -- offer similar legal status to civil unions.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_mar4.htm