A rchive Date
[ 15-06-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/corbella.html
Society wedded to tradition
Yanomami tribe's culture offers insight into origins of the institution of marriage
By LICIA CORBELLA - Calgary Sun
June 15, 2003
Two of my very best girlfriends are lesbians.
I call these gal pals "heart girlfriends" because they truly know me and my core and I theirs and we all care very deeply for one another. Indeed, one of these women has been my friend since Grade 4 - some 31 years ago.
I have a theory as to why they became lesbians - both of them suffered brutal sexual assaults at young ages - but that's a different issue.
The issue before this country now, following the ruling by the Ontario Court of Appeal on Tuesday that extends the right to marry to same-sex couples, is whether or not these friends of mine should have the right to marry another woman and in so doing change the very definition of marriage - an institution inseparable from human history since time immemorial.
My lesbian friends believe they should, I do not. Here, in part, is why.
Marriage has always been the union of a man and a woman. That is not just true in Canada. Every culture and country of the world - from the Stone Age to today - has defined marriage in the same way and each has their own unique marriage traditions and ceremonies.
In the Ontario Court of Appeal's 61-page ruling the court states: "Same-sex couples have been completely excluded from a fundamental societal institution." What the court has apparently refused to recognize is marriage is not some institution that was formed by government.
It is an institution that sprang up spontaneously in every culture in the world by individuals until it blossomed into this so called "institution."
Twelve years ago, while investigating the pressures causing the disappearance of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, I spent some time visiting a stone age tribe of Amazon Indians called the Yanomami. The Yanomami are, as anthropologists pointed out to me, an absolutely "pure" culture.
Unlike European, North American or Asian cultures, which all borrowed extensively from one another, the Yanomami did not derive any of their practices or language from any other cultures for the simple reason that they are completely isolated. They live in the northern Brazilian rainforest, which is akin to living in the middle of an almost impenetrable ocean.
It has only been about 40 years since they were even known to exist.
Giovanni Saffirio, the Roman Catholic priest who did my interpreting for me, told me about their marriage ceremonies. Naturally, there was no white gown. Indeed, they wear no clothes at all. But they all use ukuru - a type of red paste - and decorate their bodies. They add feathers and flowers.
That is black tie for them.
They do some other ceremonial things to "sanctify" the union of the one man and one woman. They even have a word that signifies marriage. Marriage sprung - as if from the ground - for the Yanomami and all other cultures of the world.
That governments have involved themselves in marriage does not mean that it is a creation of government. It is a creation of nature. It is true that gays and lesbians have been treated terribly for most of history.
It was also wrong for governments to deny same-sex couples - who pay taxes like everyone else - the same civil rights as other couples when it comes to issues such as bereavement leave, health-care benefits, pensions benefits, spousal support etc.
But to say that equality can only be achieved if everybody is treated exactly the same, is clearly ridiculous. Men and women are equal but that doesn't mean we all have access to the same experiences. A man can remove his shirt in public and scarcely receive a second glance. Women cannot.
Anyone who says that women's and men's breasts hold the same weight, so to speak, aren't living in the real world.
Because marriage has always been defined as a voluntary commitment between one man and one woman and has been the definition since before recorded history, then it's simply impossible for THAT definition to be changed at the whim of a court and some appellants.
As William Shakespeare wrote all those years ago: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose /By any other name would smell as sweet."
Right.
You can call a rose a violet and a violet a rose, but that does not make them so. You can call the voluntary union of two people of the same sex a marriage too, but that does not make it so either, because the union of one man and one woman holds a distinct and very real place in the history of humankind.
What gays and lesbians should have been pushing for but rejected was the establishment of a new tradition that is like marriage.
They could even come up with their own word.
Aloysius Edmund Pittman, one of the people quoted in the Ontario Court of Appeal stated: "I ask only to be allowed the right to be joined together by marriage the same as my parents and my heterosexual friends."
But therein lies the problem.
It cannot be the same as his parents or his heterosexual friends because marriage is between a man and a woman. When I talk to my gay girlfriends about such issues we agree on most things but disagree on marriage. Ultimately, however, we all want the same things for each other - love and happiness, mostly.
But just as a rose is a rose, marriage is marriage. I want my lesbian girlfriends - whom I love - to to be treated with dignity, respect and equality by all.
That does not require redefining marriage anymore than it requires redefining roses as violets.
Licia Corbella, editor of the Calgary Sun, can be reached at 403-250-4129 or by e-mail at licia.corbella@calgarysun.com. Her columns appear Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Letters to the editor should be sent to callet@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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