From the April 2004 Anthropology News

Broadening the Marriage and Family Debate

STACY LATHROP
AN EDITOR

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 on marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built on same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.
The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association strongly opposes a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples.
— AAA Statement on Marriage and the Family, February 26, 2004

From legal definitions of “marriage” to the varied and creative ways real people are forming meaningful relationships, “family” is a dominant feature in America, and often a contested one.

Some have pointed out that the meaning of “marriage” and “family” is a particularly charged political question in the US at this moment precisely because these institutions are in the midst of rapid change. There are now more unmarried households than married ones, and a variety of partnerships and kinship arrangements have displaced any one, fixed model of domestic life.

Focus has most recently turned to the issue of gay and lesbian marriage. Following the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s recent decision that the state must extend civil marriage to same-sex couples, and in the wake of the San Francisco mayor permitting gay couples to marry, President Bush called for a constitutional amendment to limit marriage to unions between one man and one woman. “After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence and millennia of human experience,” the President stated, “a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization,” or heterosexual, monogamous marriage. Editorials quickly responded that Bush was again spurring cultural wars in America.

Anthropology Needed
Noting the absence of anthropology’s voice in this rapidly shifting debate on gay and lesbian marriage, Dan Segal proposed to the Association’s leadership a AAA Statement on Marriage and the Family. As he pointed out: “kinship has, after all, been a mainstay of anthropology.” He also noted that the radical right in the US continues to fall back on “that chestnut of social evolutionary anthropology (and of empire): ‘civilization.’ ” “It seems to me crucial,” he wrote, “that we as anthropologists engage this issue of the relationship between ‘civilization’ and heterosexual marriage.”

Anthropology has dismissed Lewis Henry Morgan’s 19th century social evolutionism, whereby “civilized” whites and their monogamous marriages were thought to have evolved from primitive promiscuity. Rather, anthropologists now largely look at kinship as cultural process and agency. Yet, as seen in recent pronouncements about “marriage” in America, not everybody has made this shift.

The leadership of AAA quickly agreed via discussion on their listserv that this is an area of public discussion that anthropologists can contribute.

“I agree with Dan [Segal] that anthropology can make a real contribution here,” wrote AAA President Liz Brumfiel. “Although it may be true that we will not convince members of the religious right,” a point made during the discussion, “I think there is always an undecided middle, many of my 18-year-old students, for example, who might be inclined one way or the other depending on what they hear. Extremist ideas that go unchallenged have a remarkable way of turning into unchallengeable common sense.”

President-elect Alan Goodman stated, “This is precisely the type of sociopolitical issue in need of anthropological expertise.”

Addressing the Issue
Rapid discussion ensued on how best to address the issue. All agreed the effort required the expertise of anthropologists doing relevant research.

Tanya Luhrman, the 2004 Executive Program Chair, wrote, “It seems to me that the best political strategy is to emphasize the social idiosyncrasy of the nuclear heterosexual family—we have so much easily available data about joint families, families where the husband is not central to the household,” and so forth. She added that we should also point “out the social acceptance of same-sex couples.”

Executive Board member William Beeman took a different view. Even prior to the AAA leadership’s discussion on the issue, he published an op-ed in the February 13 Providence Journal. As he wrote: “Legislative attempts to restrict marriage are doomed to be ground to powder through repeated litigation in the courts because there is no clear, scientific and strict definition of ‘man’ and ‘woman.’ There are millions of people with ambiguous gender in America—many of them already married—who render these absolute categories invalid.”

Some suggested that the AAA state that there is no moral reason to limit the institution of marriage to heterosexual couples. Others argued that AAA should refrain from making claims that cannot be backed by anthropological data. Caution was also suggested in not producing a response that could be attacked as solely “political correctness.”

While stating he believes that “anthropology does provide overwhelming support for an open definition of marriage and alternative forms of conjugal union on a variety of grounds,” Michael Lambek, President of the Society for Religion noted that the statement had not yet fully captured what these grounds are. “If you go the empirical route,” he cautioned, “you have to be ready to acknowledge the prejudice that is also evident in the ethnographic record and that opponents of gay marriage could draw upon.” He recalled Gayle Rubin’s significant essay demonstrating the heterosexual bias in marriage systems conceptualized by Lévi-Strauss as the foundation of society. He agreed with other suggestions to recruit anthropologists doing research in this area to further develop the statement. But as he noted, in Canada “expert witnesses” were called on both sides of the debate.

Executive Board member Linda Bennett, suggested that we also consider the role of “commitment”: “Amid all the publicity (and furor) we have been seeing about same sex marriage in an array of locations around the country, commitment to each other appears to be a major force and reason behind why these couples wish to marry.”

She added that we have the data to help “broaden the debate beyond the limited perimeter of the US.” Realizing the current debate is a US phenomenon, she still thinks “it is important to broaden the discussion culturally and through time as well.”

Society of Medical Anthropology President Mark Nichter agreed adding that to broaden the debate, there is a need to emphasize “the meanings of marriage in terms of particular types of commitments and alliances honored in society, sets of obligations, rights and privileges,” and how “they have changed in time in particular contexts due to particular sets of political and economic circumstances.”

Ed Liebow, the president of the National Association of Practicing Anthropologists, weighed in that he’d like “to see us do our best to call direct attention to the policy problems, rather than another ‘what can anthropology contribute to the discussion’ type-discussion”

Public Response
On February 26, the AAA Executive Board approved the statement above by a vote of nine in favor, zero opposed, and immediately issued it to the press. Already the San Francisco Chronicle and Boston Globe covered it. The Chronicle, on February 27 under the headline: “Scientists counter Bush view/Families varied, say anthropologists.” The Globe, on February 29 under the headline: “Multicultural marriage.” CNN reported the statement, while other media are researching possible coverage.

Following these reports, AAA has received a handful of emails from the public about the statement. One was critical; one just repeated the word “Bravo” numerous times. Another asked about anthropological research on sexuality and religious views on these matters.

Lisa Buchanan wrote, “I’d like to thank the AAA for its reasoned comments about marriage, based on anthropological research. Indeed, I usually wonder where the specialists are in cultural debates—always glad when they speak.”

A rabbi in Houston, after reading in the San Francisco Chronicle article that the early Church may have blessed same-sex marriages, encouraged the Association to continue to provide the public with information about the topic.