And on blind spots, such that good intentions and claims that one did not ‘see’ racism in an act (speech acts included) or ‘intend’ to be racist, along with the Faye Harrison article to which Ryan already linked in his previous post:
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/02/peering-into-our-blind-spots/

And no, I am not saying we the two gay marriage cases that went before the Supreme Court last week aren’t hugely historic or incredibly important; nor am I saying that I don’t support marriage equality or equal rights for all regardless of gender presentation, sexual preference, or non-normatively sexed bodies. I am simply asking that anthropologists be more anthropological in their critiques of marriage as monogamous heterosexual couples and realize the ways in which the framing of marriage equality is also very much about race.

For me it is interesting, and noteworthy, that Rex’s post on (gay) marriage should follow Ryan’s post on race, especially given the (unsurprising) scant response to Ryan’s post. Especially given the history of anti-miscegenation laws and the persistence of the One-drop Rule in the US, it is interesting to me the ways in which race continuously gets excluded from anthropological discussions/analysis to which it should be included, and is in fact constitutive, given the ways in which race is about (constructed as being about) kinship (and thus about marriage), and as Rosemary Joyce writes in the same article which Rex lauds and links to: “If you are getting the impression that anthropologists have a lot to say about marriage: well, yes. Kinship is, after all, one of our historic, signature issues.”

One more reason for anthropologists to realize that race/racism should not be concepts which should be continuously ignored by anthropologists, especially for the same reasons that continue to make anthropology ‘white public space’.

That exact same argument was made about interracial marriage:

“This book has been given statistical form and basis to the proposition that from the psycho-sociological point of view, interracial marriages are detrimental to the individual, to the family, and to society.

“I do not say that the author of this book would advocate the prohibition of such marriages by law but we do say that he personally and clearly expresses his view as a social scientist that interracial marriages are definitely undesirable that they hold no promise for a bright and happy future for mankind.

“And that the interracial marriages bequeath to the progeny of those marriages, more psychological problems than parents have a right to bequeath to them.”

That was actually made in the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia in 1967. And one of the products of those interracial marriage would go on to become the 44th President of the United States. So how did that work out?

What’s wrong with “domestic partnership”? Yes, it doesn’t have the same rights and benefits heterosexual marriage has. Shouldn’t gay people clamor then for that same rights and benefits not marriage?

Marriage, matrimony, wedding, wedlock are all heteronormative concepts. If you check their etymological origins, they are obviously about the union of a man and a woman that involves a ceremony. “Wedlock” has the images of locking and fastening. Two phalluses or two vulvas don’t lock or fasten. Also because of that ceremony, marriage, matrimony, wedding, wedlock become cultural. Why would gay people want to ruin that heterosexual cultural practice?

Anthropologists, especially the gay ones, should dig ethnographic accounts about marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples practiced in indigenous communities. Do Native Americans practice same-sex marriage ceremonies for two-spirits and their partners? If they do, the heteronormativity of marriage then is a Western, Christian concept and gays should assert their homosexual definition of marriage that has a cultural history.

In my country, the Philippines, there are no native same-sex wedding ceremonies even when same-sex couples are accepted and respected by their relatives and their entire communities, and we have more than one hundred ethno-linguistic groups.

Fighting for equality in marriage that is heteronormative, gay people, it seems, want to do what is heterosexual. Why? Is it because “domestic partnership” is too homosexual and not normal? Why do they want to usurp the concept that defines heterosexual couples? If they are too proud of themselves, they should not equate themselves to heterosexuals. They should not use what the heterosexuals do as a gauge for normality for, after all, homosexuality is not abnormal.

We need to examine the relationship of normative heterosexual marriage to social class. I recall, dimly, from around the time that my daughter was accepted for the class of 1998 at the U.S. Naval Academy, hearing that a disproportionate number of children of intact nuclear families make it into elite colleges. No reason why this couldn’t be true of children of affluent, intact, gay-parent families as well. On the other hand, children of female single-parents are more likely to suffer the effects of poverty and the disadvantages of education in marginal schools. Not saying that any form of marriage is inherently deleterious; but correlation with other social facts, including in particular social class, may have serious consequences.