Republicans are making a lot of noise right now, accusing the Supreme Court of “changing the definition of marriage.” (They’ve done focus groups and market research and found out that this meme is the one that has the most positive response from potential donors.) But in fact, the Supreme Court has not changed the definition of marriage at all, and here’s how you can prove it.
First of all, remember that there are many different types of marriage. There’s polygamous marriage, for example, where one man has many wives. This is one of the traditional forms of marriage, appearing in the very earliest books of the Bible (for those that are interested in such things). Then there’s Levirate marriage, another Biblical tradition, in which a widow is passed on to her brother-in-law if her husband dies before she produces a son. This is the source for the New Testament story where the Sadducees tell Jesus about a woman who was married to seven different brothers, each one of whom died without her giving birth to a son.
And of course, there’s the so-called “traditional” one-man-one-woman marriage, of which there are several varieties. There’s faithful monogamous hetero marriage, and there’s adulterous marriage, and bigamous marriage, and open marriage and serial marriage, not to mention varieties of interracial, interdenominational, multi-ethnic marriages, as well as arranged marriages and marriages of convenience and sham marriages and so on.
And of course there’s also same-sex marriages. So we know of lots of different kinds of marriage. The question is, which one of them now has a different definition as a result of the Supreme Court’s recent decision? Has the definition of “traditional” one-man-one-woman marriage (and its many variants) been changed? Of course not, which is why conservatives can still declare themselves to be its defenders.
Then has the definition of same-sex marriage changed? No again, which is why conservatives can still declare themselves to be opposed to it.
How about polygamy? Nope. Bigamy? Nope. Arranged marriages? Interracial marriages? Multi-ethnic marriages? Nope, nope and nope. Name any kind of marriage you want, and you’ll find its definition is the same today as it was before the Supreme Court ever sat down. And if every different type of marriage has the same definition it has always had then the definition has not changed.
The did change one definition, that of “legal marriage in the US”. Which is kind of the point, they can say: “The Supreme Court changed the definition of legal marriage! Now we don’t get to say the gays getting married is against the law which is wrong because we should be the ones saying who can and can’t get legal recognition!
Yes, how dare activists for equality before the law want to change the law…
That’s more a redefinition of the law than a redefinition of marriage, though, since it was the law that changed, not the definition of the types of marriage covered by the law.
in my younger more agile days i used to “marry” steel structural members. Was that wrong of me?
And also famously is the real is of Onanism and explains his crime and story -he refused to make his brother’s widow preggerss by “spilling his seed on the ground” and God kileld him for it. Which helped the poor widow a great deal I’m sure ..
See also : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onan
Typo fix for clarity, : And also famously is the real sin of Onanism .. D’oh!
Adulterous marriage and serial marriage? I thought the buybull said these were the same thing.
It certainly is the favourite of the US’s far right politicians.
http://jesusnorepublican.org/+Reasonable/gopimmorality.html
http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/RepMarriage.htm
> “… a woman who was married to seven different brothers, each one of whom died…”
Anyone thinking ‘black widow’ here?
Back in my Christian days, our pastor was preaching a sermon on that story, and he read the verse that said “And last of all the woman also died,” and under his breath he muttered, “I should think so…”
One of the other streams on here linked and quoted a very good article on how it isn’t really the “definition” of marriage that is changing, it is the underlying culture. The piece talked about how in conservative old culture marriage was not really about love but property exchange, the woman viewed as a housekeeper and baby carrier and the man the worker / hunter. (BTW, I am just paraphrasing to make a point and I don’t agree with this being what marriage should be about).
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Even with marriage changing as women worked and men helped raise children with the “one man one woman” mentality individuals could delude themselves into thinking that the culture had not changed. By having to recognize 2 people of the same sex being married, even legally if not religiously, it gets harder to delude onself into thinking that the culture is not changing. It becomes obvious in their questions. A conservative talking about their two male friends getting married and adopting children may ask, “who is the woman?” (this indicating an underlying belief in “gender roles” of course) or conversely, “who is the man?” if it is a lesbian couple.
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It never seemed so strange to me but I am opened to extended families and non traditional gender roles. Then again I am opened to a lot of non traditional thinking.