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Originally Posted by Ramrod
Marriage is, first and foremost, a religious ceremony.
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To you, yes, but in the grand scheme of things I would disagree and say that marriage is something that is cultural. Just about every single culture that has existed or exists today has a form of marriage ceremony. Take the UK for example, the majority marriage type is Christian, because for the last 1000+ years, we have been a christian country. Before that though, before the Romans brought christianity to Britain, people were still married. I don't know enough about it to say whether it was a strictly religious affair or not (the pagan beliefs are quite complicated).
I've found a cultural anthropology book on my shelf which has a large section on marriage, which it defines to be a union between a man and a woman, the purpose of which is to control sexual activity and provide a channel for things like inheritance in law. Two points quickly, it says a man and a woman, it does not say one, so a man or woman can have multiple marriiages. The second point, it says that gender is not the same as sex, i.e. if two-women are married, one of them is decalred to be male in gender., It has a section on same-sex marriages, which although not overly common, are reasonably frequent in Africa.
These aren't the points I wish to be debating, since I've said all about that further (waayyyyy) back in the thread. I'm just trying to get across that there are many different reasons and explanations of marriage, that I think it completely impossible and unfair to restrict it to one specific type. Need to think of new words, like chirraige
Danielf has made the very good point, that to imply that one particular type is more important than another is quite insulting.
Thought this thread was dead
still, at least it wasn't a waste me getting my book down off of the shelf now
