Sociology of Marriage and Family - Essay Example

Running head: Sociology of Marriage and Family Sociology of Marriage and Family By ___________________ Sociology of Marriage and Family The homosexual marriage plays a key part in shaping the best example of mutual understanding in many ways. Although a life full of artificiality but better than today's traditional marriages in which the couple seeks understanding, unable to reach the physical as well as emotional union. Often it is assumed that homosexual couple lives something paranormal, but the issues related to such life are also beyond traditional concerns. Those concerns gives raise to various sensitive issues and processes, inclusive of major concerns like home, family, raising kids and moving in local community life, present homosexual marriage a concern beyond the commonsensical inevitability. No doubt children of such individuals grow up with an unproblematic sense of the possibility of being non-heterosexual, but still they are not followed by those psychic activities, which are common in children of traditional couples (heterosexual). While homosexual couples try to lead a normal life, artificiality becomes a major part of a wider struggle over meaning in their lives, as both partners while gays or lesbians participate in reflecting a broader crisis over family relationships. First of all they find it difficulty to convince their parents for such marriage. Even after somehow if the parents get convinced there are a number of difficulties ahead of them. As the couple is unable to have their own children, they have to adopt kids thereby raising them with responsibility and care. In this context it is not the same case as it happens in heterosexual marriages. Both partners divide their responsibilities equally with love and care. If we talk about lesbians, they are very much aware of the fact that children should be dealt with affection rather than what happens in usual marriages, kids are followed by many bitter experiences throughout their lives. As Andrew Sullivan (1997) has argued, if the future of marriage is a critical ground of contestation in the wider world, it is hardly surprising that lesbians and gays should focus their demands on it. If parenting is perceived as in major need of rethinking, then why should non-heterosexuals be excluded from the debate They should be given equal rights and norms like heterosexuals. If families get ever more complex as a result of divorce, remarriage, recombination and step-parenting, why should the chosen families of lesbians and gays, composed of lovers, ex-lovers and friends, be denied a voice (Catherine, 2001, p. 25) Even the ghost of uncontrolled homosexuality has been downplayed in today's recent sexual world, it is amazing that despite the greater public presence of homosexual couples, researchers suggest that self-identified non-heterosexuals form a tiny percentage of a given population. There is still a surprisingly high degree of stability in family relationships, even if, as the form is changing. (Catherine, 2001, p. 25) One of the most fundamental issue, lies in the decline of the traditional heterosexual centrality of marriage as it is seen that heterosexual marriages involves the contribution of two partners more tended towards the family issues. At its most evocative, this type is seen as a haven of trust, mutual involvement and shared responsibilities, which many argue offers the best hope for a communitarian culture. But the fact, which is neglected today, is this haven of trust which builds communitarian culture serves as the basis for today's major issues like break-up, divorce, separation etc. So, in these circumstances what is the harm if one seeks his/her satisfaction in homosexual affair. The privileging of homosexual patterns is vividly apparent even in the most liberal discussions of the family and sexual diversity. On the one hand, many theoreticians give verbal recognition to the variety of family forms, and shift their concerns to the quality of relationships, and to the care of children, whatever the formal links between parents or carers and children. This underlies the moves in various jurisdictions towards giving greater recognition to non-heterosexual relationships (though, usually, they specifically exclude rights to adoption). On the other hand, most western politicians, no matter how 'progressive', pay verbal obeisance to the need to bolster the traditional family, and the defence of family values has, of course, become a crucial element in the armoury of social conservatives. (Catherine, 2001, p. 72) Incomplete Possibility of Homosexual Marriage The reactions of parents to the disclosure of homosexuality are often unpredictable, making the decision to come out difficult. Many homosexual youth fear rejection by their parents and other relatives should they choose to reveal their sexual orientation. A study of gay males by Cramer and Roach (1988) found that sexual revelation causes stress in the parent-adolescent relationship. Over time, however, the relationship with parents tends to improve. In some cases, the relationship becomes better than before the disclosure of sexual orientation. (Beaty, 1999) Infact the study of the nature of homosexuality, as well as its etiology whether material or situational, is itself in unclear form stating whatever be the relationship between members of the same sex might be, it is not marriage according to many researchers because marriage is a union physical, emotional, and spiritual formed between one man and one woman. But I consider the opinion that relationship between man and man or woman and woman is much more superior as compared to the common one. A woman can better understand another woman's needs, can take good care of her feelings, emotions, she knows where to concern with the physical relationship and where to not. This unique compassion of sexually akin persons, as male or female, instantiates ontological completeness. No doubt a traditional marriage is a unity in being as well as a unity of purpose. The union in being, which is marriage, can only be constituted by one man and one woman but what if after some time the same marriage becomes a source of embarrassment when one partner betrays another due to dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction comes with misunderstanding. This is not the case in homosexual relationship for the reason is the same sex partners can understand each other much better than opposite sex partners. Marriage requires the complementarily of two specific kinds of persons who in their very nature are mutually ordered to each other, whether they be of the same sex. Marriage is a unity on the level of essence. While other types of complementarily may be possible among human beings as types of moral unions or unions of activity or purpose, the very nature of marriage its "to be" requires a particular kind of complementarily to form its unique kind of union. The new reality, the marriage, lasts as long as the partners live. This union provides a loving matrix for the generation and nurturing of children. The union provides the intimate stable relationship for the appropriate satisfaction of not only sexual pleasures, but sharing of feelings and sentiments. Marriage is not a social construct. Marriage has a nature that is both real and rational with essential properties, which are manifested over time in the being and becoming of the marriage. In the delineation of the essential properties of marriage, human reason confronts an existing reality. When sexual intimacy becomes considered as simply a more intense form of affection limited to those in special committed relationships, it becomes difficult to sustain defensible prohibitions of such intense affection in other important relationships. But for homosexual couples it is not just a matter of physical intimacy, it is a matter of true love highlighting everlasting relationships. (Hogan, 2002, p. 93) If we look through the relationship view of marriage it is an essentially private, intimate, emotional relationship created by two people regardless of their sexes for their own personal reasons to enhance their own personal well-being. Marriage is not by any means limited to 'homosexual' or 'heterosexual' issues. Marriage is created by the couple for the couple. It is wrong and discriminatory, to blame younger generation in this context while choosing their partners. Marriage whether homo or hetero, does not merely reflect individual desire; it shapes and channels it. Marriage as a social institution communicates that a certain kind of sexual union is, in fact, our shared ideal: one where two individuals join not only their bodies, but their hearts and their bank accounts. Of course, not everybody wants or achieves this social ideal. In important ways marriage regulates the relationships and sexual conduct even of people who are not married and may never even get married. Its social and legal prominence informs young lovers about the end toward which they aspire, the outward meaning of their most urgent, personal impulses. It signals to cohabitors the limitations of their own and/or their partners' commitment. The demand for same-sex-marriage benefits is not likely based on filling a huge unmet need for practical benefits. Children or adults are not being deprived of health care because law and social policies favor married couples over unrelated cohabitors. Instead, the drive for same-sex marriage appears to be a largely symbolic cultural issue; the goal (or at any rate the main effect) is not filling a need for health insurance or other practical benefits, but making a powerful social statement: Same-sex unions are the functional equivalent of marriage, traditionally understood, and should be treated as such by law and public policy. References Beaty A., Lee (1999) Identity Development of Homosexual Youth and Parental and Familial Influences on the Coming out Process in "Adolescence". Volume: 34. Issue: 135. Donovan Catherine, Heaphy Brian & Weeks Jeffrey (2001). Same Sex Intimacies: Families of Choice and Other Life Experiments: Routledge: London. Hogan Margaret, (2002). Marriage as a Relationship: Real and Rational: Marquette University Press: Milwaukee. Roesler, T., & Deisher, R. W. (1972). Youthful male homosexuality: Homosexual experience and the process of developing homosexual identity in males aged 16 to 22 years. Journal of the American Medical Association, 219(8), 1018-1023 Read More