Discontinue The Painful Traditions of The Past

The Supreme Court justices who voted against the legalization of same-sex marriage earlier this year had some strong things to say about the United States’ traditions.

Chief Justice John Roberts, for one, described what he saw as the majority’s fundamental error: “The Court today not only overlooks our country’s entire history and tradition but actively repudiates it, preferring to live only in the heady days of the here and now.”

A few seats down, Justice Samuel Alito identified another issue with the Court’s decision. “This understanding of marriage, which focuses almost entirely on the happiness of persons who choose to marry, is shared by many people today,” he said. “But it is not the traditional one.”

In what Roberts labels “the heady days of the here and now,” people of all races and sexes are able to marry whomever they love. And when they do, they experience exactly what Alito stated—happiness.

It seems, then, that Roberts and Alito aren’t afraid of legalizing a right that makes today’s people happy, at least not as much as they are afraid of doing something else—breaking from tradition.

They aren’t the only ones. Take the almost 30 countries in Africa and the Middle East where female genital mutilation (FGM) is practiced, for example. The Word Health Organization reports that many people there partially or totally remove their daughters’ and wives’ genitalia because religious tradition holds that only then will these women be “clean” and fit cultural ideals of femininity. Even though FGM is a human rights violation, the social pressure to conform to this ingrained tradition is often the reason families choose to perform it on girls.

Around the world, people and communities get anxious at the thought of breaking age-old customs. Jews who are conditioned to marry other Jews are conflicted when love and religion don’t line up. The Running of the Bulls happens yearly in several cities, despite protests that the animals are tortured for entertainment reasons. Greek organizations and other social groups haze new members in spite of highprofile deaths and reports of psychological and physical damage to victims.

But the dissenting justices, FGM practitioners, and much of the human race aren’t completely to blame for shivering at the thought of disobeying tradition. It’s language, really, that’s causing all the problems.

According to etymologists at the Oxford English Dictionary, for almost 170 years between the 15th and 17th centuries, the word tradition was understood to mean “a giving up, surrender; betrayal.” This could partially be because tradition and betray both lend all or part of their origins to the same Latin word, tradere.

These connections don’t only exist in English. Surprising similarities can be found in many other languages between the concept of handing down and that of being disloyal. In Spanish, for example, tradición (tradition) has just one more letter than traición (betrayal).

Although the narratives of our languages’ histories might have us thinking otherwise, to depart from tradition is not to betray; it is to choose to live in today, not yesterday. Lemony Snicket put it best when he wrote, “Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course.”

That’s not to say that traditions have been irrelevant from their beginnings. On the contrary, many customs, even those deemed inhumane by modern standards, at one point had historically relevant reasons for existing. When the institution of marriage was born before Biblical times, for instance, unions were limited to a man and a woman because of property acquisition, hereditary and reproduction reasons. It wasn’t until about 250 years ago that love began to play a major role in Western marriage.

Fortunately, in the 240 years since the United States was founded, many traditions were erased or adapted. Slavery was abolished. Marriage across sexes and races was legalized. Women were allowed to vote and work outside the home. Schools were desegregated. Washington and politics were opened up to more than just white old men.

Evidently, the United States is not its traditional self. In many areas, we’ve done a good job of recognizing that the old way of doing things might not be the right way of doing things.

But there’s still work to do in undoing traditions of suppression and oppression. A tradition of police brutality and mass incarceration still exists. So does a culture of gun violence. Unequal access to higher education is a hallmark of the American tradition. Hazing is, too. Domestic abuse and shaming of sexual assault victims is alarmingly customary.

The list goes on, but in one way or another, all of the abovementioned practices are still “traditions.” None, however, should be assumed to be doing substantial good to the parties involved just because of the label they carry.

We must question our traditions, because keeping historically irrelevant customs is comparable to stagnating in the mud of generations ago. Contrary to what the Latin language says, no betrayal happens when we depart from traditions. What happens, in reality, is us making a smart decision to not let the ways of long ago dictate the actions of today.