The
agitated opposition to same-sex marriage is partly the result of a fundamental(ist)
misunderstanding. Ignorant people confuse “marriage” with the “Holy Matrimony”
of Christian theology, which is for them a divine dispensation. The
secularization of American society and communications media has contributed to this confusion by
increasingly ignoring the religious phrase and substituting “marriage.”
In reality, same-sex marriage is never even mentioned in the Bible—much less prohibited.
Marriage is not “Holy Matrimony.” “Holy Matrimony” is a
specifically Christian religious concept: Its defenders base their argument on
the Christian Bible and on medieval Christianity’s theological definition of “Nature”—and on the manipulation of that definition so that many common
animal (including human) behaviors could be classed as “unnatural,” as in the fantasized pseudo-biology books called “bestiaries,” written by medieval clerics.
The
theological concept, “Holy Matrimony,” is not shared by many other religions—not even all Christian churches
admit “Holy Matri-mony” as a “sacrament”—and in the United States
this religious concept (including the idea that a union between two people must
be between only one man and one woman) cannot be
imposed by some citizens on others without violating the First Amendment.
And how
can Christians forget that the Lord’s anointed King Solomon had 700 wives and 300
concubines? In the Holy Bible. Does that sound like “the traditional one-man, one-woman” marriage touted by homophobic Christian fanatics?
Marriage (not “Holy Matrimony”) existed all over
the world long before Christianity, and still exists outside Christianity, in
order to ensure the orderly transfer of property—through an economic pact
between two families which would include (but was not limited to) inheritance by children. That is why
marriages have always required “dowries” and “bride-prices,” to guarantee
economic solvency.
In fact, these contracts were required among the Hebrews,
from whom Christianity originated. Remember how Jacob in the Old Testament, had
to buy his two wives, Leah and Rachel, from his father-in-law, Laban? And they
were sisters. Sister-wives. In the Holy Bible. (They were also his cousins on his mother's side. Incest.) Does that sound like “the traditional one-man, one-woman” marriage of reactionary Christians?
Outside Islamic and Judaic theocracies, marriage (not
“Holy Matrimony”) is a civil contract registered with and regulated by the
state. It is, in effect, a kind of incorporation. That is why couples are
required by law to go to a demographic registry and fill out a marriage
license. They register with the state, which establishes by law who will possess the property that each brings to the marriage and the property that they acquire during the marriage.
That is also why modern countries require not only a
state-issued marriage license but also, if the marriage is dissolved, a civil
divorce decree that, among other things, apportions the couple’s assets and
assigns obligations, sometimes as established by law.
Furthermore, the
fact that marriage is a civil contract is clearly shown in the prenuptial
agreements that dispose of the couple’s property in the case of a dissolution
of the marriage. They are contracts—modifications of the property distributions
explicit and implicit in marriage contracts.
In summary, “marriage” is de facto a
civil compact, a civil union; “holy matrimony” is a religious concept
superimposed on it first by the medieval Church and now by reactionary Christians,
and is the excuse that they and others use for depriving a hated minority of
its civil right to form such unions.
One has to
wonder at the virulence of homophobia today, in the face of the facts and of
plain logic; after all, same-sex marriage is never even mentioned in the Bible—much less prohibited.
But, aside from the way children and young people unthinkingly absorb the dominant attitudes around them, the explanation seems fairly simple: These
people compulsively imagine homosexual couples engaged in coitus, revoltingly
“nasty”—noisy, squishy, smelly, dirty—conveniently ignoring the fact that heterosexual
coitus is equally “nasty.”
It explains
their obsessive use of the word “abomination” in its modern sense of something
disgusting, although in repeating the word, today’s Bible merely preserves the Authorised (King James) Version’s 17th-century translation of a Hebrew word that
meant basically “ritually unclean: ineligible, under the law, to kill animals in the Temple, and burn
them, and smear their blood around for the delectation of the Lord” —Not noisy? Not squishy? Not smelly? Not dirty?—Hebrew law also barred the “unclean” from a few other community activities as well.
This level of
irrationality can hardly be persuaded away. The government will simply have
to enforce the law, as it did with the civil-rights legislation of the 1960s
and 1970s. And GLBT people will have to
continue to demonstrate that they are human beings who deserve respect.
