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Four down, 46 to go. Last week, in a unanimous opinion, the Iowa Supreme Court followed Connecticut and Massachusetts’s lead and held that restricting same-sex couples from getting married is unconstitutional. On Tuesday, Vermont became the first state to do it through the legislature, overriding a veto from their Republican governor.
And so the gay marriage debate rages on. But this time one wonders if religious conservatives are especially distressed, as “the homosexual agenda” has now found success beyond the kooky socialist haven of New England and has infiltrated America’s corn-growing heartland.
The only popular objections against gay marriage seem to be religious ones. Since most people in the United States are religious, including liberals (believe it or not), it’s not uncommon to hear even welfare-loving bleeding hearts oppose gay marriage, stating that marriage is a religious sacrament not to be tampered with.
These types tend to shy away from supporting full-on gay marriage, but happily back “civil unions” (which are legal in New Hampshire) and “domestic partnerships” (which are legal in Toledo). Indeed, this seems to be the official stance of the Democratic party.
The “religious sacrament” argument tends to hold that “marriage is defined as between a man and a woman,” and generally suggests that this is what the Bible teaches, that this is the way it’s always been and should always be. From this perspective, man-and-woman marriage is celebrated as a great institution that God wants all of us to participate in.
The prevalence of this position is very interesting, particularly considering that it is wrong on all counts. The Bible hardly paints a picture of marriage that is anything like what we currently practice in The United States, or one that any modern society would admire.
First of all, when the Bible was written, marriage was not a union among equals. On the contrary, it was much more like a man acquiring a servant, or even a piece of property. (Don’t forget that Leviticus, the same book that condemns homosexuality, also endorses slavery.)
This view of marriage was built into our legal system. As more than one of my professors has said, “At Common Law (a term referring to the old legal system we inherited from England), the husband and wife were one, and that one was the man.” This is why women take the name of the man after marriage. This is, of course, true of many (if not most) cultures, including Judeo-Christian ones like ours.
This isn’t ancient history either. It wasn’t until half-way through the 20th century that many states finally repealed their “head and master” laws, which gave the husband the sole right to determine where a family would live and even whether the wife would be allowed to work.
Bible-endorsed marriage didn’t just begin with a “man and wife” either. Back in the day, it was more like a man and wives. In The Old Testament, the “great father” Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel were all practicing polygamists.
Although the Bible may speak volumes about family values, it never explicitly defines marriage as “between a man and a woman.” However, if it did define marriage somewhere, it almost certainly would have defined it as between a man and women.
It is a fact that the Holy Book was written in a society that accepted and encouraged polygamy. But our nation considers polygamy objectionable, and every state has banned it. So why is the Bible invoked as an authority on how we should define marriage?
And let us not forget that to the extent marriage has been “defined” by the laws of our society, up until the 60s (around when the “head and master” laws started to disappear), about a third of all states still had anti-miscegenation laws on the books, which legally defined marriage as between a man and a woman, as long as they had the same skin color.
And regarding the pedestal marriage is often placed on: According to an article by Lisa Miller in last December’s Newsweek (“Our Mutual Joy”), the Bible is simply not very enthusiastic about marriage. Miller (herself a Christian) writes that Jesus was “emphatically unmarried,” and instructed his followers to “[l]eave your families and follow me.” She points out that in Mattthew, Jesus said “there will be no marriage in heaven.”
The Apostle Paul was not exuberant about marriage either. “Paul echoed the Christian Lord’s lack of interest in matters of the flesh,” writes Miller. “For him, celibacy was the Christian ideal, but family stability was the best alternative.” She continues, “Marry if you must, [Paul] told his audiences, but do not get divorced.” Jesus, too, roundly condemned divorce, yet our Christian country has a 50 percent divorce rate, and there’s no movement to amend the Constitution to ban divorce.
So in summary, the Bible teaches that marriage is between a man and as many women as he desires, that women have no rights in said marriages and that marriage is unnecessary, perhaps even to be avoided if possible.
This column is not meant to disparage Christianity. My point is essentially that the Bible is not to be taken literally, that it was written for a time long past and hence many of its commands are obsolete. And one of the subjects on which its edicts are dreadfully obsolete is the institution of marriage.
— Robert Switzer is an IC Columnist and a second-year law student.
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