Another Look at the True Biblical Definition of Marriage

I've noted previously that the Christofascist claim that the Bible - that source of justification for so much hate and violence over the centuries -  defines marriage as "one man and one woman" is simply untrue.  Indeed, in the Old Testament, marriage is typically anything and everything but "one man and one woman."  But the Christofascists' aim their anti-gay diatribes at simple minded morons who seemingly have never actually bothered to read the Bible.  Or at least not beyond proof texting certain passages that they have been trained to rely upon like trained circus dogs.  Just last week, Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis (pictured above left) spoke at the Family Research Council's "Watchmen on the Wall" conference where he again repeated the Christianist lie about marriage.  A piece in Right Wing Watch does a great take down of this repeated lie about the "Biblical definition of marriage."  In fact, it makes the case that to be true to the Bible's definition, one needs to engage in polygamy and/or incest. Here are some excerpts:

Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis  .  .  .  warned that the failure to embrace a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis is undermining "the doctrine of marriage" and leading to things like gay marriage.

As luck would have it, just last week I bought a copy of "The One Year Chronological Bible" and had begun reading through it in conjunction with my copy of The ESV Study Bible. Ham's assertion that a literal interpretation was required in order to understand the true nature of biblical marriage was in the forefront of my mind as I began working my way through Genesis, especially once I realized how much polygamy and incest the book contained.

In fact, outside of Adam and Eve, and Noah and his wife, just about every major patriarch engaged in either polygamy or some form of incest, and often both.

According to Genesis 16, Abraham slept with and married his wife's Sarah's slave because Sarah was was unable to bear children. On top of that, according to Genesis 20, Sarah was also Abraham's half-sister and he later took at least one more wife.

Abraham's son Issac was married to Rebekah, who, according to Genesis 24, was the daughter of the son of Abraham’s brother, which would make Rebekah the daughter of Issac's cousin, or Issac's first cousin, once removed.

Rebekah then gave birth to Esau and Jacob. According to Genesis 26, Esau married two Hittite women and then later took a third wife while Jacob married the daughters of his mother's brother, his first cousins, named Leah and Rachel. Rachel was unable to bear children and so gave Jacob her servant to sleep with and take as a wife, to which Leah responded by likewise giving Jacob her servant for a wife.

In addition to these arrangements, Genesis 38 tells the story of Judah sleeping with and impregnating his daughter-in-law while Genesis 19 tells the story of God's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah where only Lot and his two daughters were saved ... after which Lot's daughters got their father drunk and slept with him and became pregnant.

One of the arguments we hear most often from the Religious Right is that changing "the biblical definition of marriage" by allowing gay marriage will lead to things like polygamy and incest ... which is odd considering that, according to the Book of Genesis, polygamy and incest were predominant forms of marriage.

As I've said before, whenever a "godly Christian" is making pronouncements, the safest course of action is to assume that they are lying.  Rarely will such not be the case.

Traditional Marriage: One Man, Many Women, Some Girls, Some Slaves

With Barack Obama's recent endorsement of same sex marriage and the vote for bigotry in North Carolina, there are fortunately more and more stories hitting the news media that look at the real model of "traditional marriage," and it is NOT a model based on "one man and one woman."  As the title to this post, the real millennial old model of marriage was one man and many women, some of who were mere children and some were slaves.   Would that the simple minded cows like Maggie Gallagher would learn some accurate history.  Or even bother to read their Old Testaments beyond limited passages in Leviticus.  As seems to always be the case, ignorance, gullibility and intellectual laziness are the three pillars of fundamentalist religion.  A piece in Religion Dispatches looks at the real history of marriage and it's not the image the Bible beaters and Neanderthals ignorantly embrace:

Well, it’s been quite a whirlwind week for same-sex marriage, from North Carolina to Obama to Colorado—and, of course, to the many outraged conservatives concerned with preserving traditional marriage, i.e., the time-honored sacred bond between one man and one woman. Why, just last week, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said that marriage has meant just that for over five thousand years.  Huh?

Time to break out your Bible, Mr. Perkins! Abraham had two wives, Sarah and her handmaiden Hagar. King Solomon had 700 wives, plus 300 concubines and slaves. Jacob, the patriarch who gives Israel its name, had two wives and two concubines. In a humanist vein, Exodus 21:10 warns that when men take additional wives, they must still provide for their previous one.

But that’s not all. In biblical society, when you conquered another city, tribe, or nation, the victorious men would “win” their defeated foes’ wives as part of the spoils. It also commanded levirate marriage, the system wherein, if a man died, his younger brother would have to marry his widow and produce heirs with her who would be considered the older brother’s descendants. Now that’s traditional marriage!

Later Islamic and Jewish sources, unclear on these parameters (the prophet Muhammad, of course, had several wives), debated whether it is permissible for a man to marry a three- or four-year-old girl.

And of course, even until the present day, traditional marriage has meant arranged marriage. The notion that two adults would enter into a marriage on their own volition is a radical innovation in the institution of marriage, at most two hundred years old.

Oh, and let’s not forget that in Europe and North America, marriage was considered a commercial proposition first and foremost—not a romantic one. Princes married princesses not because of fairy tales, but because their parents had political alliances to consider. Further down the economic ladder, people married for a variety of biological, commercial, and genealogical reasons—but rarely for love.

Oh, and that’s right, I almost forgot about interracial marriage, which in some parts of America was seen as a crime against nature and God up until the 1960s. (Of course, Moses himself was in an interracial marriage, but the anti-miscegenation crowd overlooked that inconvenient fact.)   .   .   .   .   let’s remember that a century ago, African Americans were not considered fully human by religious conservatives.

Traditional marriage is one man with multiple wives, multiple concubines, wives conquered in war and wives acquired in levirate marriage, possibly including girls under the age of ten, but definitely not including anyone of a different ethnic group, in an arranged marriage with disposition of property as its purpose. That seems very different from “one man, one woman,” does it not?

Perhaps this is why the Tony Perkinses of the world simply ignore the Bible when it doesn’t suit their purposes  .   .   .   .   The Bible’s truths are just too inconvenient.

The Evolution of Marriage and the Lies of the Christianists

As I note frequently on this blog, when it comes to lying, virtually no one beats out the "godly Christian" crowd and the "family values" organizations.  Indeed, if their lips are moving, the best assumption is to assume that they are lying until proven otherwise - something that doesn't occur often.  Candidly, following their constant lies and hypocrisy has made me come to hold contempt for the term "Christian" because as the Christianist practice Christianity it is truly something ugly if not down right evil.  In the realm of gay rights, the lies from the godly Christians are endless and range from continued quotes of faux "research" that was discredited decades ago to the current favorite lie that throughout history, marriage has been between "one man and one woman."  Even the Bible shows the lie of this claim.  But it's also useful to recognize the type of historic monogamous marriage the Christianist worship if they want to protect historic marriage.  An article in The Daily Beast looks at marriage's evolution and also makes the case that changes in marriage make same sex marriage something fully justified.  Here are excerpts: .

President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage last week was certainly historic. But it was not a historical game changer. While Obama may pay a political price for outraging the well-funded minority that passionately opposes gay marriage, he is actually swimming with a strong historical tide.

The country’s division over same-sex marriage is narrow enough for opponents to throw serious obstacles in its path. But it’s only a matter of time until they’re swamped by a demographic tide, because opposition to same-sex marriage is heavily concentrated in the oldest segments of the population. Less than one third of Americans aged 70 to 79 support same-sex marriage, whereas 56 percent of those aged 30 to 39 and more than 70 percent of those aged 18 to 29 are in favor of it.

And the growing visibility of gays and lesbians—in the military, in business, on television, and in people’s own kin networks—is eroding opposition even among the older generation. A 70-year-old Romney supporter told a New York Times reporter the day after Obama’s announcement: “I can’t say if I’m for it or against it, because I don’t know what my grandkids will be.”

For millennia, marriage was about property and power rather than mutual attraction. It was a way of forging political alliances, sealing business deals, and expanding the family labor force. For many people, marriage was an unavoidable duty. For others, it was a privilege, not a right. Servants, slaves, and paupers were often forbidden to wed, and even among the rich, families sometimes sent a younger child to a nunnery or monastery rather than allow them to marry and break up the family’s landholding.

The redefinition of traditional marriage began about 250 years ago, when Westerners began to allow young people to choose their partners on the basis of love rather than having their marriages arranged to suit the interests of their parents. Then, just 100 years ago, courts and public opinion began to extend that right even to marriages that parents and society disapproved.

In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional for states to prohibit interracial marriage. In 1987 it upheld the right of prison inmates to marry.

The path to same-sex marriage was further opened up when heterosexual couples began to push back against state control over their sexual and reproductive lives. Until the 1950s, some states forbade married couples from using assisted reproduction to have children, ruling that artificial insemination was tantamount to adultery and any resultant child was illegitimate. Conversely, until the Supreme Court ruled in 1965 that couples had a right to sexual privacy, many states refused to allow the sale of birth control to married couples who wanted to prevent or limit their childbearing.

[T]he most important cultural change that has increased support for same-sex marriage is the equality revolution within heterosexual marriage.  For most of history, the subordination of wives to husbands was enforced by law and custom. As late as the 1960s, American legal codes assigned differing marital rights and obligations by gender. The husband was legally responsible for supporting the family financially, but he also got to decide what constituted an adequate level of support, how to dispose of family property, and where the family would live. The wife was legally responsible for providing services in and around the home, but she had no comparable rights to such services.

That is why a husband could sue for loss of consortium if his spouse was killed or incapacitated, but a wife in the same situation could not. And because sex was one of the services expected of a wife, she could not charge her husband with rape. 

Between the 1970s and 1990s, however, most Americans came to view marriage as a relationship between two individuals who were free to organize their partnership on the basis of personal inclination rather than preassigned gender roles. Legal codes were rewritten to be gender neutral, and men’s and women’s activities both at home and work began to converge.

The collapse of rigid gender expectations and norms has fostered the expectation that marriage should be an individually negotiated relationship between equals, replacing the older notion of marriage as a prefabricated institution where traditional roles and rules must be obeyed.

The growing acceptance of same-sex marriage is the result of these profound changes in heterosexual marriage. It’s not just the president’s views on marriage that have evolved. Marriage itself has evolved in ways that make it harder to justify excluding same-sex couples from its benefits and obligations.

A rearguard action by a determined minority may hold back the tide of history for a while. That is why many opponents are eager to pass one-man/one-woman amendments that will take a two-thirds majority to overturn. But same-sex unions are here to stay. The question is whether our political and legal system will recognize that reality now—or whether gays and lesbians will have to wait until the out-of-touch opposition to marriage equality literally dies off.

It's instructive that the GOP's anti-women agenda ties in with the far right Christianists goal of returning marriage to a pre-1960's model: no contraception, rigid gender roles, no divorce, and male dominance over women.   While that model may appeal to Bible beaters and Kool-Aid drinkers, I suspect most women find the concept frightening.  And as the father of two daughters, I surely do NOT want them reduced to chattel controlled by their husbands.  Yet that is precisely where the Christianist model wants marriage to follow.

Romney Prostitutes Himself to Extremists at Liberty University

Demonstrating that he will stoop to any lengths to endear himself to Christofascist extremists, Mitt Romney spoke at the commencement at Liberty University - the late Jerry Falwell's lasting stain on Virginia  today.  Appearing at Liberty was part of Romney's pandering campaign to endear himself to the Christianist base of the Republican Party.   As the Richmond Times Dispatch reports, during his speech, Romney endeavored to stress his shared values of family and service.  The service part, of course, is aimed solely at those who are willing to submit to Mormon beliefs.  And as for family values, Romney glossed over his family history that makes a mockery of the Christianist claims that throughout history marriage has been "one man and one woman."  Truth be told - and telling the truth is not something Romney likes to engage in - Romney's ancestors were champions of alternate "lifestyles to use the terminology the Christofascists like to direct against gays.  This tidbit from Wikipedia tells it all:

Miles Park Romney (1843-1904) was born in Nauvoo, Illinois, the son of Miles Romney.^[1][2] He was the president of the St. George Social Hall Company and the St. George Dramatic Association, and also served as a chief of police, attorney-at-law, newspaper editor, and architect.^[3] Romney's son was Gaskell Romney, his grandson was George W. Romney and his great-grandson is Mitt Romney.

 [Miles Park] Romney, on April 7, 1885, joined a party leaving Arizona to find land outside the U.S., in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, on which his family could settle, free from fear of his arrest.^[8] Romney died on February 26, 1904, in Colonia Dublan, Mexico.

[Miles Park]Romney's five wives, in order of marriage, were Hannah Hood Hill, Caroline "Carrie" Lambourne, Catharine Jane Cottam, Alice Marie "Annie" Woodbury and Emily "Millie" Henrietta Eyring Snow.  

If that this equates to "one man one woman," Mitt Romney is very seriously math challenged.  But it gets worse.  Even Fox News - typically a/k/a "Faux New"s on this blog - has more details on Mitt "Etch A Sketch" Romney's family background that show the lie of his comments at Liberty University today.  Her e are some highlights:

 

Romney's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married his fifth wife in 1897. That was more than six years after Mormon leaders banned polygamy and more than three decades after a federal law barred the practice.

Romney's great-grandmother, Hannah Hood Hill, was the daughter of polygamists. She wrote vividly in her autobiography about how she "used to walk the floor and shed tears of sorrow" over her own husband's multiple marriages.

Romney's great-great grandfather, Parley Pratt, an apostle in the church, had 12 wives. In an 1852 sermon, Parley Pratt's brother and fellow apostle, Orson Pratt, became the first church official to publicly proclaim and defend polygamy as a direct revelation from God.

Romney's father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, where Mormons fled in the 1800s to escape religious persecution and U.S. laws forbidding polygamy. He and his family did not return to the United States until 1912, more than two decades after the church issued "The Manifesto" banning polygamy.

"When you read the family's history, you realize how important polygamy was to them," said Todd Compton, a Mormon and independent historian who wrote a book about the polygamous life of the church's founder, Joseph Smith. "They left America and started again as pioneers, after they had done it over and over again previously."  . Carmon Hardy, a polygamy expert and retired history professor at California State University-Fullerton, said polygamy was "a very important part of Miles Park Romney's family."

While it's true that one doesn't get to pick their family, one DOES get to choose whether they will knowingly tell lies for political expedience.  The truth is that Mitt Romney's family tree makes monogamous same sex marriage look pretty run of the mill compared the the generations of polygamous m2012arriage that were the norm in Romney's family tree for nearly well over a century.  Whenever Romney opens his moth to bloviate about "one man one woman" marriage "throughout recorded history," his nose needs to grow like Pinocchio.  His own family proves the lie of that claim. Oh, and then there's the problem of the Old Testamant, including bit not limited to King Salomon's 700 wives and 300 concubines.   If Leviticus continues to apply to gays, then what about the Old Testament approved form of marriage - polygamy?.    

Exposing Tony Perkins' and Mitt Romney's Lies About Marriage

I have vented before about the mainstream media giving anti-gay hate group leader Tony Perkins (who also has white supremacist ties) a platform from which to spout deliberate lies and falsehoods about the LGBT community and the true history of marriage.  The latest lazy news outlet to allow Perkins to spout unchallenged lies is CNN.  Fortunately, Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC let Perkins have it and laid out the falsehood that marriage has always been "one man and one woman."  He also touched on Mitt Romney's hypocrisy - Mr. Etch A Sketch conveniently forgets that his grand father had five wives.  Just like he's forgotten his past homophobic bullying.  Here's a clip of O'Donnell's smack down for those who missed it last night:

In addition, GLAAD president Herndon Graddick has a scathing piece in Huffington Post that goes after the shiftless news anchors who never challenge Perkins' lies.  Here are highlights:

 Judging by its coverage of President Obama's announcement that he now supports marriage equality, it appears CNN still has a little "evolving" of its own to do.

The bulk of the media's coverage of this issue has been focused on what this statement will mean politically for President Obama and the Democratic Party -- and what it means for the future of marriage equality, now that a solid majority of Americans and the president support it. This includes CNN, which had several thoughtful pieces and interviews on these ideas. For example, Anderson Cooper's panel of Alex Castellanos, Paul Begala and Evan Wolfson broke down the issue purposefully, in a way that would help the audience better understand the significance of this announcement.

So with a wealth of political thinkers, analysts and strategists to go to -- why has CNN turned to Tony Perkins three times in the last few days to represent the "other side?"

Here's the crux of the problem -- and the exact reason why GLAAD's Commentator Accountability Project was born. Tony Perkins and others of his ilk cannot be used to exemplify those who simply oppose marriage equality. CNN is more than welcome to interview him on the issue of marriage equality, of course. His is unquestionably one of the loudest voices in the nation speaking about the issue.

But when Perkins gets interviewed, a responsible journalist needs to tell the audience exactly who Perkins is speaking for. Based on his own statements -- Tony Perkins represents people who believe supporting LGBT equality is akin to being a terrorist. Who believe marriage equality is the same as bestiality. Who say that gay people are "vile," "hateful," "spiteful" "pawns of the enemy." Tony Perkins does not represent people who oppose marriage equality. Tony Perkins represents those who oppose LGBT people -- period.

If CNN wants that side represented in this discussion, then Perkins is absolutely the right man for the job. But they need to make it clear to the audience that that's what he's there for. And by not doing so, they have not told the whole story. Wolf Blitzer's interview with Perkins is a perfect example of this.

To cable news viewers, he's just the conservative guy who comes on sometimes to talk about gay stuff from a Republican point of view. But Perkins' own statements will show you that those positions don't come from politics. They are the result of pure animus towards gay people, and a belief that they're doing the work of "the enemy."

You can expose how extreme Perkins' positions are by challenging them, like O'Brien and Morgan did. But you're still not telling the whole story, unless you tell your audience what's at the heart of those positions. We are once again asking journalists to hold anti-gay activists like Perkins accountable for their own statements against LGBT people, and to deliver that critical information to their audiences.

The Big Lie: Marriage and "Tradition"

The Kansas City Star has an lengthy op-ed piece in the form of an open letter to Obama that does an amazing job of exposing the lies fabricated by anti-gay Christianists concerning "traditional" marriage which in point of fact is a relatively recent development in the time line of history. Few are more dishonest and prone to re-write history to support their agenda than the anti-gay forces who rely on the ignorance of the masses when it comes to knowing history. The column is lengthy but should be read in full because it fully exposes President Obama's spinelessness and also the disingenuousness of our foes. The fact that the "family values" organizations lie incessantly in and of itself evidences that they are the ones who are the false Christians. Here are selected highlights:

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Dear Barack (I can still call you “Barack,” right?) If you have any plans for the rights of gay and lesbian Americans that don’t involve high speed and a very large bus, it’s time to say what those are. Because in the battle for the equal rights of gays, lesbians and their families you’ve been MIA. Especially on two recent and very visible fronts: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and securing same-sex marriage.
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Not only does DOMA clearly discriminate against same-sex couples and families headed by same-sex couples, but your Justice Department is helping it move forward on a lie: that two-partner, heterosexual marriage is the “traditional and universally recognized form of marriage.”
That lie is based on a bigger lie that one often hears touted by religious opponents of same-sex marriage: that marriage itself has been an unchanging and unchangeable institution for two thousand years.

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Leaving aside the history of legalized same-sex marriage in pre-modern Europe and Asia (You may be interested to see the works of university professors John Boswell, Gary Leupp and William Eskridge) and the failure of current nations which have recently legalized same-sex marriage to fall to ruin and make their dying flops onto that “dustbin of history” Pat Robertson warns about, over historical time and geographical space “traditional” marriage has looked many different ways.

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Depending on the time, society, economy and “tradition” under question, traditional marriage has taken polygamous (one man, multiple wives) and even polyandrous (one woman, multiple husbands) forms as well as the opposite-sex couple formation currently fetishized. Even this is a laughably broad and simplistic characterization of the history of human marriage.

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Not only has marriage changed greatly over the course of thousands of years, but it’s changed substantially in our own nation’s short history. Most often as a result of the demands of democracy itself. American democracy has demanded the inclusion of formerly excluded groups and forged change in the rights of individuals within marriage as the rights of less empowered partners (women) had to be increasingly considered under the law.

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One hundred forty years ago enslaved blacks had neither rights of legal marriage nor rights in the ownership of their children. Marriage rights for enslaved blacks would have undermined the property ownership rights of white slaveholders who supplied plenty of biblical and legal support for slavery. Consequently, marriage, as recognized under the state, wasn’t between “one man and one woman.” It was between “one white man and one white woman.”

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One hundred twenty years ago, white women were still legally “covered” in their marriages. Under “laws of coverture” women didn’t have the right of ownership of property or children. Nor did they have the right to enter contracts (though this varied somewhat by state with progressive states offering more rights and conservative states restricting them.) A woman’s property given by her father became her husband’s to control. Nor did most women have the right of divorce despite physical or sexual abuse, or economic mismanagement or deprivation.

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And, a little over fifty years ago, interracial marriage was against the law in over half the states of the union. Moreover, it was denied federal recognition until the Supreme Court decided Loving vs. Virginia in 1967. In the year that you were born, Mr. Obama your own parents would have been denied the right to marry in over 19 states.

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If you can understand that being gay is a natural, healthy state of being which can’t be changed through “reparative therapies” (as does the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry) how can you not fight fully and forcefully to affect equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans?

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Now, in the clarity of hindsight, we can see that the deep and sincere religious conviction of southern segregationists was as wrong as those of Christian men (and women) fearful of giving women the vote and equality in marriage, and as misguided as those of religious whites who believed allowing interracial couples to marry violated God’s law.

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Finally if you are a believer in our Constitutional creed that “All men are created equal” and have the historical understanding that group after group in our great nation (African Americans, white women, Native Americans, Asians, Mexican-Americans, the disabled) have had to fight against the “tyranny of the majority” to become part of that “All men,” why won’t you put the full force of your power behind ensuring the entrance of this group of Americans?