Matrimonio, algo público

Matrimony, Now a Political Affair

Marriage has certainly become the subject of much debate recently, with the controversies over same-sex marriage bans being put into affect in some of the statesof the country.

The case brought to the table by advocates of those bans, and those who support bans on same-sex couples’ rights to adoption, is that a stable home consists of a nuclear family withtwo parents raising the child: the natural, and only stable way.

However many cultures around the world will test that theory. It is known that in many rural communities and nonindustrialcommunities it is the entire village which fittingly takes part in raising a child. We, the suburban and urban Americans, are no different. What is a school if not a capacity of the state to hold the entiresociety accountable for the success or failure of the children in its community?

The Na culture written about by Clifford Greetz and Cia Hua is certainly one which tests the ethnocentric beliefs ofpatrilineal and nucleic family oriented societies. Perhaps, from an evolutionary standpoint, those who have begun to impose monogamy upon the Na have enforced maladaptive behavior.

Is it sonecessary that one man and one woman found a household in matrimony? And what is it about matrimony that makes legitimate children so much more privileged than their out-of-wedlock counterparts? In the Nasociety which lacks words to express “bastard” and “infidelity,” these questions are irrelevant and possibly absurd.

On the other hand, there is something about the one man, one woman, one householdideal that just seems to make sense in our heads. Our age old society even has wonderful molds and positions to hold these members of a nucleic family; for example, a woman can tend to the home andchildren, while the father performs extra domestic duties, and the children learn these domestic responsibilities to one day take their parents positions in households of their own.

That model...