Scientists counter Bush view: Families varied, say anthropologists

SFGate ^ | Feb. 27, 2004 | Charles Burress

[DemWatch]

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.

[Kaslin]

And as everyone knows, scientists are never wrong. RIGHT!!(sarcasm)

It's a well known fact (at least to me) that scientist are clueless just about everything

[squarebarb]

Well, another professional organization down the drain.

Along with the APA, and ALA, and ....

Is there anything they haven't invaded? The Jackson Mississippi Police Association, maybe?

[baltodog]

These people invent history.

Oh, well. They satisfy my thirst for knowledge....I'm off into the 'net to find about about these Native American berdache traditions.

I may be wrong, but I don't think this was ever addressed in any John Wayne movies.

[I got the rope]

LOL.

[templar]

"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,"

Wonder why he doesn't mention any? The Greeks and Romans, both collapsed civilizations, are hardly good examples, and certainly not ones that would be considered 'stable and humane' by todays standards at all.

[mrsmith]

FEC: "SEGAL, DANIEL CLAREMONT, CA 91711 PITZER COLLEGE/TEACHER
KUCINICH, DENNIS J VIA KUCINICH FOR PRESIDENT INC. 09/30/2003 200.00 23992110530 "

A Kucinich supporter... Well that fact certainly isn't relevant to the article LOL!

[Redcoat LI]

"The statement was proposed by Dan Segal, a professor of anthropology and history from Pitzer College in Claremont (Los Angeles County)"

Impressive academic credentials.

[GaltMeister]

It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

Why is it after three days Bush moved to protect marriage that homosexuals can research ancient Rome and come up with definitive answers that family was phucked up since time immemorial, but after three decades they still don't understand their promiscuous affairs shorten their lives by decades? That the male side. On the female side they get meaner and meaner until a junkyard dog looks like a pussy cat by comparison. The more that homos do promos, the more I get disgusted.

[uncbob]

Yeah Anthies we is talking about the history of civilized man not some collection of bones proving how savages lived

[vpintheak]

Wow! Go figure a bunch of athiest, leftist, intellectual elitists used skewed "proof" to disagree with the President. Who'd a thunk it?!

[FormerACLUmember]

Anthropology, especially at Berkeley, has no relation to science. You should hear my son the engineer get apoplectic at some of the socialist liberal arts professors he has had to stomach.

[DWPittelli]

The anthropologists might be right that Bush has made an incorrect statement abut the universality of heterosexual marriage. Bue even if so, they don't really have a point that's relevant to the marriage debate. At least, not unless they're willing to concede to the slippery slope argument that once marriage is treated as a mere contract made by and for consenting adults, then other forms, more disruptive to the social order, such as polygamy, will have to be permitted. (Polygamy is of course far more common than same-sex marriage, found in almost half of all studied cultures.)

Also, the fact that some other culture permits something shouldn't mean much of a prescriptive nature to people who would of course object to the notion that we should change some other culture by imposing our values and lifestyle upon it.

[ontos-on]

sarcasm on ----It is amazing how well-timed such a "finding" is for those who wish to assail the institution of marriage. -----sarcasm off

[mrsmith]

FEC: "NADER, LAURA MS. BERKELEY, CA 94707 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA/PROFESSO
NADER, RALPH VIA NADER 2000 PRIMARY COMMITTEE INC 04/14/2000 1000.00 20990112970"

And a Nader supporter to give the story 'balance' LOL!

[LiteKeeper]

INTREP

[daffyduct]

"families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies,

The society in Sodom and Gomorrah is still thriving isn't it.

[Esther Ruth]

You think they might start running commercials with testimonials -- I was raised in a Christian family and it was hell, just plain living hell, until at the age of 12 I ran away, I found a new family, they took me in, and I want you to meet my new family, Jim and Joe, who have been lovers for 10 years, Joe's mother and her lover of 30 years, Barb, and Barb's youngest son Eddy and his lover Mary who used to be a man but is now a women, and all our cats and dogs and.... I have never been happier and had more joy in my life, tears... I tell you this true story today, because right next to you in your neighborhood are children who you can reach also, who are trapped in Christian families, who have been taught to limit the possibilities of whom they can love, they are lonely, sad and - well it is time to reach out and spread the love around. .....

[DestroytheDemocrats]

"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."

Actually it is God who has cast the union between male and female as the only proper form of union. He commanded this through his REVEALED world. People without benefit of his word or those who ignore it, deny it or twist it, will form all kinds of improper sexual unions. No surprise there.

You can't force people of the same gender who want to get married, not to do it even though God forbids it. So IMO the legal recognition of gay marriage is inevitable.

I worry that if gay marriage is LEGALLY recognized it is going to be dangerous to teach your own children that regardless of what others are doing, God forbids it. I fear that it will be seen as the moral equivalent of racism. And people's freedom to pass their moral values down to their own children will be supressed.