I am so disgusted by the ignorance and bigotry being spouted by clergy and laity alike that I could puke. For example in her Los Angeles Times story posted today on MSN.com, Tina Susman quotes this Mississippi "victim" of gay marriage:
"It's a question of God and what God wants for us," said Cynthia Jackson, who was getting her hair done at a small salon in Tupelo. "He says marriage is for procreation, and that is something only a man and woman can do. If gays want to live together as couples, nobody is stopping them, but don't let them steal marriage away from the rest of us." This poor woman is only repeating what she's been told from pulpits by people she trusts with her soul, but the rhetoric doesn't pass the reality test.Here from live science.com are some tidbits about marriage that the pious have apparently overlooked in the rush to their imaginary exclusive entitlement.
To summarize some of the more salient points live science has pointed out (many of which I must admit I was unaware myself):
In ancient times...
"What marriage had in common was that it really was not about the relationship between the man and the woman," said Stephanie Coontz, the author of "Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage," (Penguin Books, 2006). "It was a way of getting in-laws, of making alliances and expanding the family labor force." In other words these were arranged affairs. There was no relationship between marriage and religion or the state, for that matter. It was a contract between families and/or tribes for their mutual benefit, not the benefit of the actual persons being married.In early religious history marriage was often "all in the family."
In the Bible, the forefathers Isaac and Jacob married cousins and Abraham married his half-sister.And then of course as you undoubtedly learned in Sunday School (you didn't?) guys like David and Solomon had numerous wives, concubines, etc., but yeah, okay, that's the Old Testament, I get it.
That's fine if you insist on splitting hairs, but it's still part of the story of marriage and facsimiles thereof that form the history leading to where we find ourselves today.
And irony of ironies, the Church itself, through it's own dogmatic practice, maintained that while procreation was a good thing, it was not a requirement for marriage:
"The early Christian church held the position that if you can procreate you must not refuse to procreate. But they always took the position that they would annul a marriage if a man could not have sex with his wife, but not if they could not conceive," Coontz told LiveScience. So much for the "gays can't procreate, so..." argument.According to Coontz, until the 19th century, extramarital affairs on the part of supposedly monogamous men were commonplace and, you might say, "winked at," (some guys today are a couple centuries behind).
But of course women were expected to be monogamous (with a capital "M," or else you would be sporting a capital "A").
The Church and the state stayed out of marriage altogether until the Catholic Church interjected itself in the 13th century. Even then, the extent of the Church's involvement was minimal. You had to post a notice of your intent to marry, but...
...until the 1500s, the Church accepted a couple's word that they had exchanged marriage vows, with no witnesses or corroborating evidence needed. Imagine, the 15th century's blessed union was only a "cross my heart and hope to die" away from what Christians today would call "shacking up."The state first interjected itself into American marriages when:
Massachusetts began requiring marriage licenses in 1639 What?!? Christian cohabitants were running loose in the colonies without papers? You'd think they'd be sympathetic to the concept, yet today, many of them want to build a fence. Okay, okay, that's another story. Still...Archaic but "Christian" practices surrounding marriage continued well into the 20th century. The modern concept of equality - and indeed civilized behavior - in "Christian" marriages is recent, even in dog years.
For instance, in the United States, marital rape was legal in many states until the 1970s, and women often could not open credit cards in their own names, Coontz said. Ironically, relatively recent changes in heterosexual ideas of marriage unwittingly set the stage for gay marriage: "One of the reasons for the stunningly rapid increase in acceptance of same sex marriage is because heterosexuals have completely changed their notion of what marriage is between a man and a woman," Coontz said. "We now believe it is based on love, mutual sexual attraction, equality and a flexible division of labor." In other words the bigoted attitude toward marriage of some Christians is spawned by ignorance of the history of their own religion, as well as the history (and pre-history) of marriage itself.It's time that these folks be introduced to themselves.
Maybe then they could get over themselves.