As I read frantic screed after frantic screed about the horrors we'll get if we allow homosexuals to marry (none of which we've seen of course), I find myself drifting to the why-not-divorce argument. Marriage, after all, was defined to be "til death do us part", or at least its been that way a long long time. Allowing divorce redefined marriage significantly, putting the lie to the argument that the definition of marriage has remained unchanged for thousands of years, even more recently than did the dominance of polygamy in the no-so-distant past. It also did so in arguably a more fundamental way than does allowing gays to marry.
Nonetheless, the real power, in this context, of considering divorce is in the threat it poses to marriage, at least from the social conservative point of view. Allowing people to marry, divorce, and remarry an unlimited number of times, reportedly caused one unknown anthropologist to describe the American social system as "group marriage, one at a time". Surely the aliens categorizing human social groups are going to see that as stranger than allowing any two people to join for life, regardless of whether their naughty bits match.
In fact, I think the right is missing out on an opportunity here. They shouldn't say "no homosexual marriage", but rather "no homosexual marriage with divorce", or better yet "no divorce at all". Of course they'd be in the small minority, especially since many of them are divorced, but at least their position would have some coherence. It has none now.
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When you wrote, "Allowing divorce redefined marriage significantly" I got confused. The oldest source I'm familiar with that discusses marriage is the Bible. And it plainly allows for divorce, (while not implying what was allowed before that time.) Granted, I'm not really up on the code of Hammurabi, but even if it didn't allow for divorce, that doesn't mean that other communities at the time didn't disallow it.
Have a great day.
I was thinking in terms of the easy, no-fault, serial divorce we have now, as opposed to Jesus' teachings: "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery". Mark 2: 11-12
Oh, I was going back to Deuteronomy. Well, since I'm on a history kick...
I'm also curious about this statement, "the dominance of polygamy in the no-so-distant past." I realize it was "around," but I never heard percentages. Was it really over 50% of all marriages?
> "Marriage, after all, was defined to be "til death do us part", or at least its been that way a long long time." >
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Common_Prayer says that this phrase appeared in this book in 1549. No telling how much older it is than that.
When I, and I think most people making similar statements, discuss polygamy being the dominant form of marriage, we are referring to societies, not marriages. IIRC even in polygamous societies the majority of men had one or fewer wives, due to limitations of prestige and wealth. After all, in a traditional single male earner arrangement, how many of us could afford 2 wives?
This is the sort of thing that convinces me that not only will the defintion of marriage change over time, it will eventually include more than two people. I see this happening in real life already, just without any labels. One guy I know refers to his ex-wife's current husband as his "husband in law", because in many ways their relationship is polyandrous.
Given enough informal arrangements over enough time, surely legal niceties will follow.
"IIRC even in polygamous societies the majority of men had one or fewer wives, due to limitations of prestige and wealth."
But doesn't that require us to know the percentages, just like Ronaldo asked about? After all, if only 2 percent of a society was polygamous, can we call it a polygamous society?
Obviously not, because what makes a society polygamous is that it allows polygamy, not that everyone in it has a polygamous relationship.
Do you mean "obviously YES, because what makes a society polygamous is that it allows polygamy" ?
I guess I should have said "Obviously we don't need to know the percentages", which is what I was getting at. I was blinded by the obtusity.
I look at it this way: If an ancient city, lets call it SantaBarbopolis, existed in which all of its marriages were polygamous, it would obviously be called a polygamous society. If it were 75% polygamous, I think I'd still call it polygamous society. If it were 2%, I don't think I could. I don't know, maybe. The question then, is, what is the cutoff point?
You guys are trying too hard to be argumentative and fogetting the issue here, which is how a society DEFINES marriage, not what proportion of society has what sort of marriage. And it happens that historically many many societies have defined marriage as "a man and as many wives as he can get", which puts the lie to the claim that the definition of marriage has not changed in thousands of years. Exactly what proportion of marriages in those societies actually had multiple wives is irrelevant.
Unless someone has something new (and relevant) to add, that's the end of the discussion.
Its that old 'do as I say, not as I do' bit from the same old crowd. I recall LImbaugh once claiming on his radio show that the best thing that could be done for society would be to make divorce illegal.
And he would know, being thrice divorced, after all.
Come to think of it, maybe conservatives should support gay marriage - as they claim it will destroy traditional marriage, it will give them a new handy reason to bag their current wives!
It appears that not only the fringes are pushing for polygamy. Get a load of this:
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=330
"A group of self-identified “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender and allied activists, scholars, educators, writers, artists, lawyers, journalists, and community organizers” has released a statement explicitly endorsing www beyondmarriage.org “committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner.” Got that? More than one conjugal partner.
The people putting out this statement are not fringe figures. The more than 300 signatories include feminist icon Gloria Steinem, NYU sociologist Judith Stacey, Columbia University anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli, Georgetown law professors Robin West and Chai Feldblum, the Rev. Cecil Charles Prescod of Love Makes a Family Inc., Yale law professor Kenji Yoshino, Princeton religion professor Cornel West, writer Barbara Ehrenreich, and Pat Clark, former executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation"
The question remains, however, whether the arguments for gay marriage imply polygamy, as the anti-gay marriage crowd implies. Of course there are people out there who favor polygamy or group marriage. In my case that happened to predate my opinion on gay marriage, as it has no doubt for many people. After all, once again, let's remember the historical order was polygamy, moogamy, gay marriage. It's pretty tough to claim the last step in the chain will cause the first.
I'm not arguing with that.
I'm not sure, however, about how we know that the historical order was polygamy then monogamy. Records are pretty darn sparse that far back in time.
I know I shouldn't be getting back into this history. It's not the main thrust of your post.
You'll hate this video of Steven Crowder on the topic of gay marriage, but maybe get a chuckle or two anyway:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmEux9PlOj4
What an idiot. Every time he opens his mouth, bullshit comes out. It's a good example of that warped view so many have that the government preventing them from forcing their views on others amounts to the government forcing its views on them.
I particularly liked the line that "without its tax exempt status, a church would cease to exist". Making shit up was never so blatant.
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