Fact: Who
is in charge of "defining" marriage? Each of us, I suppose, can
generate a bulleted list of goals and outcomes. Each of those would be
entirely valid. Let's ask Nathaniel Batts, first European settler to
establish a residence in the Carolina colony. In about 1650, he
redefined his marriage to a European woman by simultaneously marrying a
Tuscarora woman in order to ensure valuable trading rights.
Marriages,
fairly recent developments in the course of human history, have until
the last couple of centuries been arranged by the families of the
betrothed, and quite independently of any wishes the couple may have.
Along with those arrangements came the idea that marrying purely for
love was, at best, slightly irresponsible.
Should we
use our individual religious traditions in deciding how to view
government’s role in regulating marriage? Though our nation was founded
on the bold new idea that lawmakers may not enact legislation which has
only religious justification without other compelling public purpose,
the First Amendment is neutral about private citizens using religious
reasoning in casting votes. In North Carolina, the Bible is referenced
often in discussions of what marriage is about. If we employ these
references, we may be asked to respond, for instance, to the book of
Deuteronomy which reveals instructions that a woman, raped, must marry
her rapist and may never divorce him. Divorce is also dealt with in many
other passages of the Bible, giving it a form we would not recognize
today, and polygamy is mainly regulated rather than banned. NOM reveals
some religious bias when it informs us on its website of “the great
truths of Genesis.” Simultaneously, in Iran, the religious government
gives licenses for temporary marriage, sometimes as short as 15 minutes.
These mini-marriages, called sigheh, seem to be a way to temporarily
legalize extra-marital sex.
History is always
fascinating and complex. King James I of England, who commissioned the
most popular American version of the Bible, was known for his devotion
to male favorites, one of whom he called "my sweet child and wife." This
may say more about history than religion, though this story has many
past and contemporary parallels.
For much of our
nation’s history, women had no standing in marriages, and legally did
not exist. Mothers weren’t involved in laws concerning the parenting of
children, because under the coverture system wives not only didn’t
exist, but wouldn’t have been able to provide for children anyway, since
they didn’t have any legal right to a salary or property. Wives were,
however, considered property themselves - that of their husbands.
Variously
across our history marriage licenses have been denied to substance
abusers and prisoners. Pastor Matt Trewhella of Mercy Seat Christian
Church in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, refuses now to marry anyone with a
state-issued license. He says licenses are "immoral". The current
platform of the national Libertarian Party states that government should
not license any kind of personal relationships whatsoever. The Cherokee
societies of western North Carolina did not use formal marriage vows,
and practiced polygamy.
The concern that only marriage
serves to bring two sexes together for the purpose of parenting may
surprise many of the approximately 200,000 unmarried couples living
together in North Carolina, many of whom are parenting. These couples
would have been thought of as married under the early common law customs
of the Carolina colony and most of world. So, what was then acceptable
as common law marriage became “illegal cohabitation” in North Carolina’s
1805 law, an illustration of two facts: marriage licenses have never
been a prerequisite for two sexes coming together and parenting; and
laws are sometimes made with only ‘moral’ justifications.
In
various, though not all, cultures, the idea of marriage may well serve
as a societal and governmental rulebook for the responsibilities of
parenting: if you are the legal husband of a woman, you are responsible
for any children born in the marriage, and vice versa. However, this
particular responsibility inherent in a marriage only applies if there
are children. A logical suggestion would be that if one wants to avoid
these responsibilities, one should avoid becoming the legal parent of
any children.
Procreation is not a requirement in
legal marriage, and love is not a given. Love for children is also not
the exclusive purview of marriage. Of our state’s 1 million total
households raising their own children, almost 400,000 are doing so
without a husband or wife present. These single parents also love.
Nationally, almost 2 million children are living with grandparents. The
president of the United States was raised, in part, by loving
grandparents. If single-parenting is your concern, then it is a big one,
and you should be working hard to find ways to limit it. None of these
objections has anything to do with gay marriage, and none would be an
issue disproportionately in gay marriages.
--
http://www.gemworld.com/US-MarriageLicense.htm
http://www.lp.org/platform
Cherokee women: gender and culture change, 1700-1835 By Theda Perdue
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