THE PERCEPTION OF SAME SEX MARRIAGE IN IGBO CULTURE.

Christian O. Ele

Abstract


Human sexuality as a private affair is fast becoming history. In contemporary trends, individuals and groups are openly professing their sex identities, choices and tendencies. These dispositions or deviations influence marriage sex preferences. The debate to justify or condemn same sex marriage is sweeping across cultures and continents. This paper investigates traditional Igbo society to find out whether same sex marriage is a fact inherent in it or whether it is foreign to it. The findings will help put gender choice in marriage in Igbo culture in its correct perspective to the outside world. The anxiety that surrounds the future of homosexual or heterosexual choice in marriage is calmed more by enculturation based on Igbo cosmology than by pressure, advertisement and acculturation that tend to promote and enhance sex identities and activities by western influences and prejudices. The methodology employed in this study is historico-descriptive. This means that marriage as a social fact among the Igbo is described and interpreted in the context of the people’s cultural heritage.


Keywords


Perception; marriage; same sex marriage; culture; Igbo culture

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References


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