The work of the cultural anthropologist, Margaret Mead (1901-1978)  --  her younger brother Richard Mead (1904-1975) was a professor of business -- on the mating rituals and customs of South Pacific and Southeast Asian cultures made Mead a controversial figure in the field; her book Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), which compared the lives of Samoan youth to their American counterparts and found the Samoan young people happier and better adjusted because they suffered less psychological stress as a result of greater sexual permissiveness, engendered a lively debate that would add fuel to the fire during the sexual revolution of the 1960s and continue blazing beyond those tumultuous years.  Even, one might argue, to the present day.

Make what you will of the fact that Margaret was born a Quaker, was a devout Anglican and deeply fond, perhaps even romantically, of her colleague Ruth Benedict; the point is that Mead's interpretations of what she observed in the field must necessarily have been filtered, at least to some extent, through her own life experience, no matter how objective she strived to be.  It is a truism to say that in the social sciences, as in other aspects of Life, we can only see what we know.  The temptation, of course, is not only to ascribe meaning to what you observe in the field but value as well (the Naturalistic Fallacy as G. E. Moore defines it in his 1903 Principia Ethica).  We watch a ritual and interpret it as something akin to our own experience, which makes it possible for us to talk about the tireless devotion of mama birds and the industrious nature of bees when explaining things to children.  How do you really know  what's going through the mind of that female bird as she regurgitates worms into her offsprings' incessantly gaping mouths?  How can you be so certain that busy bumblebee isn't a lazy good-for-nothing?  You see my point.  

We can be a little selective in what we choose to see, can't we, which only complicates the situation, as anthropologists studying the recent struggle for marriage equality have long observed.  I always get nervous when people tell me what God sees and finds abhorrent.  Where was He exactly?  What were they wearing?     

I am a younger brother, like Richard was to Margaret, and I am not an anthropologist.  But I freely admit that like everyone else, I can only see what I know.  I have known the bride since she was born and her father for longer, in fact for as long as I've been alive.  I know things about them both.  But when I see them dance, what I know is that every bride is beautiful and every father is proud of his little girl.  I can't see it any other way.  And I have been to a few weddings in my time.  They can vary widely, weddings.  In lots of ways.  For instance, at this wedding the bride ordered glowsticks for her guests, and they were a big hit.  I now know that there is nothing like a good glowstick, turned into a halo or a necklace or a pretend-tamborine or a limp magic wand, to liven up the dance floor.  True story.  I have pictures. 

I've seen lots of things at weddings.  And yes there may have been some regrettable behavior here and there, even tears and spills, but mostly I would say as I review my data that weddings are always about the fact that, if nothing else, two people are involved who are, in the eternal moment of that place and that time, in love. 

And although I can't speak for God, I don't know how anyone could possibly find that abhorrent.