Chapter 7 - Marriage

After reading Chapter 7, my personal views on marriage have not changed. I have just learned many new outlooks on the topic. People around the world get married for many different reasons. I have learned through the readings that people get married for the sake of a child. Others could get married for the sake of being married and establishing their own family, whether they are homosexual or heterosexual. One of the questions in the readings was, Can marriage be defined? I believe that marriage can be defined as a man and a woman, but there are also many different kinds of marriage that go along with the subject, such as a man and a man or a woman and a woman. This type of marriage normally happens for a reason or it is just a part of the culture. In the passage of Gay Marriage and Anthropology, I read that a woman in the Nuer tribe would divorce her husband and marry a woman. After doing this she would arrange for a surrogate to impregnate this woman. Also in this same passage I read that same-sex couples are not trying to redefine marriage, but are trying to find recognition in the US by constructing a marriage for themselves. The topic of marriage and how it should be can go many different ways. Depending on the situation at hand it was what makes up whether it is right or wrong I believe.