Legalizing gay marriage

From Wikipedia, a great rundown on some of the reasons anthropologists have cited for the creation of reason. Contrary to liberal media myth, homosexual relationships have not been documented in hunter-gatherer societies, which represent the majority of modern human history: "Legitimate sexual access" Edvard Westermarck defined marriage as "a more or less durable connection between male and female lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of the offspring."[8] In The Future of Marriage in Western Civilization (1936), he rejected his earlier definition, instead provisionally defining marriage as "a relation of one or more men to one or more women that is recognized by custom or law".[9] Drawing on Westermarck, Duran Bell describes marriage as "a relationship between one or more men (male or female) in severalty to one or more women that provides those men with a demand-right of sexual access within a domestic group and identifies women who bear the obligation of yielding to the demands of those specific men." In referring to "men in severalty", Bell is referring to corporate kin groups such as lineages which, in having paid brideprice, retain a right in a woman's offspring even if her husband (a lineage member) deceases (Levirate marriage). In referring to "men (male or female)", Bell is referring to women within the lineage who may stand in as the "social fathers" of the wife's children born of other lovers. (See Nuer "Ghost marriage")[7] However, the necessary connection between marriage and sexuality is being questioned by asexual marriages.[10] "Legitimacy of offspring" The anthropological handbook Notes and Queries (1951) defined marriage as "a union between a man and a woman such that children born to the woman are the recognized legitimate offspring of both partners."[11] In recognition of a practice by the Nuer of Sudan allowing women to act as a husband in certain circumstances (the Ghost marriage), Kathleen Gough suggested modifying this to "a woman and one or more other persons."[12] In an analysis of marriage among the Nayar, a polyandrous society in India, Gough found that the group lacked a husband role in the conventional sense; that unitary role in the west was divided between a non-resident "social father" of the woman's children, and her lovers who were the actual procreators. None of these men had legal rights to the woman's child. This forced Gough to disregard sexual access as a key element of marriage and to define it in terms of legitimacy of offspring alone: marriage is "a relationship established between a woman and one or more other persons, which provides a child born to the woman under circumstances not prohibited by the rules of relationship, is accorded full birth-status rights common to normal members of his society or social stratum."[13] Bell criticized the legitimacy-based definition on the basis that some societies do not require marriage for legitimacy. He argued that a legitimacy-based definition of marriage is circular in societies where illegitimacy has no other legal or social implications for a child other than the mother being unmarried.[7] "Collection of rights" Edmund Leach criticized Gough's definition for being too restrictive in terms of recognized legitimate offspring and suggested that marriage be viewed in terms of the different types of rights it serves to establish. Leach argued that no one definition of marriage applied to all cultures. He offered a list of ten rights associated with marriage, including sexual monopoly and rights with respect to children, with specific rights differing across cultures. Those rights included: "To establish a legal father of a woman's children. To establish a legal mother of a man's children. To give the husband a monopoly in the wife's sexuality. To give the wife a monopoly in the husband's sexuality. To give the husband partial or monopolistic rights to the wife's domestic and other labour services. To give the wife partial or monopolistic rights to the husband's domestic and other labour services. To give the husband partial or total over property belonging or potentially accruing to the wife. To give the wife partial or total over property belonging or potentially accruing to the husband. To establish a joint fund of property " a partnership " for the benefit of the children of the marriage. To establish a socially significant 'relationship of affinity' between the husband and his wife's brothers."[14] And so on...nearly everything ties back to resources on one form of another.