Oh man, what ISN’T next after gay marriage? People will be marrying household appliances, bodies of water, literary concepts, vehicles with more than two axles…
IT WILL BE A MADHOUSE!!!
Don’t forget religious figures!
Oh, wait…
I think John Mace correctly points out that the AAA thing is more to undercut arguments being used by the anti-SSM crowd lately. The argument that some in the anti-SSM have been saying lately is the whole ‘Threat to our civilization, just look at what happened to rome and other cultures in the past who have gone down this road’ thing. I think the AAA statement is addressed to this argument in particular; rather than taking a side on the issue one way or another, they are merely pointing out the (what should be) obvious idiocy of this particular anti-SSM argument.
I love this anti-elitist anti-ivory-tower mindset. You can just toss away in a few sentences the well-educated opinion of a group of people who study exactly what is being discussed for a living, because they are “elitist” and “ivory-tower”.
So when you have various symptoms (shortness of breath, weakness, pain in chest), are you going to ask Bob, your barber, or Bob, your ivory-tower elitist doctor what is wrong with you? If you find out that you have heart disease, are you going to ask Sue, your mail carrier, or Sue, your ivory-tower elitist cardiac surgeon to perform the triple bypass?
Please, I beg you, follow your anti-elitist anti-ivory-tower instincts (and let Darwin take care of the rest).
Sorry if it seemed like I was implying otherwise. I just wanted to point out that while some people seem to think that granting gays the right to marry is the rational thing to do, in reality the rational thing to do is to keep the government out of that facet of a peson’s life altogether.
I think I agree that separating marriage and gov’t is the most rational thing, but it’s also the most unlikely thing. Although perhaps less rational, it seems much easier to fight for gov’t sponsored marriage of same sex couples in the meantime.
Revtim: Yes, the odds of the government bowing out of marriage altogether is as close to ZERO as it gets.
This is America, and I’d prefer to use my Constitutional right to free speech to persuade the 11% on your side to go to my side (assuming your figures are correct), thus making me part of the voting majority which will approve of gay marriage. 
To get back to the OP…
Are they? I suppose it depends on what you mean by “BushCo”, aside from an exceedingly clever reference to the Administration. However, I don’t recall Bush saying that gay marriage would cause the downfall of society. Rather, Bush has implied that it is necessary to stop gay marriage to protect straight marriage. Has the AAA found a significant number of societies where gay marraige as an institution has co-existed with straight marriage? Unless you find a quote from Bush (or more clearly redefine “BushCo”) saying or implying that gay marriage will keep our society from being sustainable, the AAA’s statement doesn’t refute anything except what a few nuts on FreeRepublic.com may have been whinging about.
Of course it can be considered biased. Every person’s reporting of the facts can be considered biased, and certainly when those people get together in non-random groups which may combine and even reinforce bias, then bias must be taken into account. Undoubtedly the AAA has political tendencies which would influence their reporting of the facts. Rather like asking a security think tank about civil liberties and terrorism: they may have something relevant to say, but people who work at a security think tank likely already have their own beliefs about whether protecting CLs or stopping terrorism is more important which would prompt them to stress the terrorism side of things.
Furthermore, I’m not even sure the AAA is in the most important place to discuss Bush’s arguments, which have had a very strong moral (i.e. not exclusively sociological component) to them. Anthropology is notoriously known as the field of moral relativists, and the wisdom of asking a moral relativist to discuss the importance of a moral consideration is questionable. Now in truth this does not prove anything one way or the other, but between political/moral bias and the relevance of the response to the initial question, I think it should be pretty clear that the AAA is not the ultimate arbiter on the validity of Bush’s argument.
FWIW, I do support gay marriage, or at least civil unions.
Part I:
OK, everybody, deep breaths… reading for comprehension, the Anthropological Associations is NOT advocating that we change our culture. They are doing two things:
One, stating that this claim: that the very existence of A civilized social order is sine-qua-non dependent on the traditionally-accepted form of marriage, is contrary to evidence. This would not be polemical, except that there HAVE been some members of our government who have stated that either explicitly or implicitly in such a manner as to give the impression that it is “a proven fact” (or rather, an axiom, since they usually provide zer0 supporting proof). As The_Broken_Column shows, there are many who seem to believe that even considering the alternative is a deliberate attempt to destroy our culture.
Two, they are advocating a let-what-happens-happen approach to the constitutional amendment issue. This is potentially polemical but hardly radical.
But as far as I can see, at no point do they advocate establishing a redefinition of marriage. Then again, they are anthropologists. Their job IS to observe what happens to societies.
Part II:
No, I don’t believe ANYONE can be considered the “final word” on this. Bias is inevitable, humans are fallible, and conclusions in social science address only the question asked. In this case, the issue addressed by the first paragraph is: can there exist families, social order, culture and civilization with a definition of marriage other than our traditional one? NOT “what is better for our society”. Anyone trying to use this as supporting evidence FOR gay marriage will find it weak
You need to reread their statement.
That sounds like it’s taking a side on the issue to me. They say that their research supports families built upon same-sex partnerships. Anyone who makes the claim that their statement is neutral is blinded by something.
That is not at all what I said. I said that the problem is when the self-styled “enlightened” (and I’ve seen just as much narrowmindedness in that crowd as any other) decides that browbeating and sneering are the way to get the job done. Unfortunately, browbeating and sneering seem to be the methods of choice for the “enlightened” these days.
Do you really think that anthropologists are identical to physicians? That is not what anthropology does. They are not medical personnel, nor are they in any way equivalent to medical personnel. They have determined that, as a general rule, a society is not NECESSARILY set up in a specific fashion. Only a completely out-of-touch ivory-tower elitist would come to the conclusion that this means that altering a society in a certain way CANNOT do great damage to that society.
There is a vast difference between anthropology and its applicability and medicine and its applicability.
Allow me to put forth the matter in concrete terms:
There are both air-breathing and water-breathing vertebrates. An ivory-tower, out-of-touch conclusion from that would be to conclude that air breathing is not at all necessary for human life, since humans are vertebrates, and it can be shown that air breathing is not necessary for vertebrates to live. Therefore, all humans should breathe water, since it can be shown that there is no necessity for vertebrates to be air breathers.
Oddly enough, I’ve seen plenty of put-downs and browbeating from the self-styled “enlightened” on this issue, all denouncing opponents as inferior beings. It’s not “already prepared”–it’s an observation of reality.
Ages of experience? Bush isn’t that old, so who is his authority on the “ages of experience”? Bush sounds like an elitist in an “Ivory Tower” of his own when he starts making statements like that.
Well, Bush himself mentions the “stability of society” and the “good influence of society” in the above quotes. How is that for starters? Maybe one of the problems is that Bush hasn’t really gone on record saying exactly what he thinks might happen to society (other than by using various weaseling phrases like “threaten the sanctity of” and “undermine the foundation of”) if SSM becomes federally permissable.
I’m curious, then. What group would you select to issue a statement on the matter? Keep in mind that we’re not looking for any kind of ruling for or against the issue itself, just a statement on the question of “what might happen, based on the available research, if SSM becomes commonplace in our society”.
The example is utter nonsense. Give me one concrete example of such an “ivory-tower, out-of-touch conclusion” from a scientist that remotely resembles your example. This is in no way analagous to the statements of AAA.
I agree with JRDelerious. AAA’s pronouncements only came as a reaction to Bush’s unfounded assertions. That they strongly oppose limiting the definition of marriage to a man and a woman say nothing about their actual stance about gay marriage. They just see that there are no justifications for such a move given the anthropological evidence they’ve seen. (Since this is the only type of justification that Bush and company espouses, the rationale behind AAA’s pronouncement is all the more apparent.)
I don’t think the AAA is at even qualified to speak to the issue. They should stick to what they do best - jumping dead batteries, towing cars, and providing maps.
If by “self-styled” you mean, “I, dogface, myself have called them ‘enlightetend’” then you’ll get no argument from me.
Tomayto tomahto.
Notice. It doesn’t say “our research supports the normalization of same-sex marriage in America”. It says “our research supports a conclusion that many different kinds of family can work out just fine w/o necessarily causing a downfall of civilization”. Hardly some sort of concerted effort to destroy all that America stands for.
Do they have a stand on the issue? Of course they do. I thought I summarized it as “let it happen if it happens” – laissez-faire.
you seem to have something very specific in mind when you say this. however, i have no idea what you’re talking about. perhaps you could share a few examples, expecially whatever one it is that makes you see this article as browbeating or insulting, where i can see nothing of the sort?