Changing Dimensions of marriage rules
The deviations in the marriage rules and the coming up of new types of kinship and family due to a change in the pattern of mate selection. In the present era two new types of relationship has emerged which were not prominent in the earlier days – lesbian and gay relationship.
A lesbian relationship is based on the liking of a girl for another girl instead of a man as it happens in the normal course. However, Anthropologist Gill Shepherd explored female sexual relationships among Swahili Muslims in Mombasa, Kenya, and found that relationships between females were perfectly acceptable, as were relationships between men. Women were allowed to choose other women as sexual partners after they are married; so many such women also have a husband at home, or are widowed or divorced. In other cases in the present day a women has sanction by law to take up another women as legally wedded. Such marriages are certified by law in a few American States like Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, plus Washington, D.C. and the Coquille Indian Tribe in Oregon. In 2005 Canada through the enactment of the civil marriage act became the fourth country in the world to accept same sex marriages.
On the other hand a ‘gay relationship’ is based on a man having a liking for other man commonly known as homosexual relationship. In Nicaragua, the ideal for masculinity is “machismo”, and being described as a man who is dominant, active, and violent. However, in Nicaragua, this can also be applied to the sexual relationship between man. Greek mythology and Greek history is galore with reference to homosexual relationships. One example is the story of Apollo and Hyacinthus; Apollo fell in love with a mortal boy, Hyacinthus, and became a mentor to the youth. He taught Hyacinthus the art of war and sports and visited him often. Other Greek gods and Greek heroes have stories attributed to them about their same-sex relationships, Zeus and Hercules among them.