The executive board of the 11,000-member American Anthropological Association has come out with a statement criticizing Bush’s assertion that straight marriage is the universal foundation of civilization.
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.
I’d feel a bit better if the statement weren’t drafted by a Pitzer anthro prof, or its thesis corroborated by a Berkeley anthro prof. But, still, it seems to confirm of what I know of history.
(via Les)
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I’ve been waiting (and yelling at my TV) for some anthropologist to bring up this issue. And to mention the fact the plural marriage is legal in many countries in the world(not to mention illegal, but practiced in part of Utah and Arizona). This one man, one women thing is not the “norm” throughout the world, past or present.