One argument for redefining marriage is that marriage has changed several times over the course of history

[Holly3278]

Hey everyone. I have heard this argument for redefining marriage several times and I have no idea how to answer it. Basically people say that marriage has changed several times in history and therefore there is no such thing as traditional marriage. They say that this means that marriage should be redefined to allow “gay marriage”. How does one answer this?

 

[JimG]

Marriage has sometimes changed over the course of history. Mostly it has changed first, from polygamy to monogamy, and from large paternalistic families to a domestic family. It hasn’t changed to man-man or woman-woman because every society since the dawn of history knew what men and woman were for and how the next generation of citizens came about.

(Carle Zimmerman in “Family and Civilization” gives a history of family types over the millennia, which are remarkably few and follow a remarkably consistent pattern.)

 

[TheWarriorMonk]

Marriage has sometimes changed over the course of history. Mostly it has changed first, from polygamy to monogamy, and from large paternalistic families to a domestic family. It hasn’t changed to man-man or woman-woman because every society since the dawn of history knew what men and woman were for and how the next generation of citizens came about.

(Carle Zimmerman in “Family and Civilization” gives a history of family types over the millennia, which are remarkably few and follow a remarkably consistent pattern.)

That basically sums it up in a nutshell. I’ve done some limited research on the subject myself, and have also seen some patterns. It all boils down to reproduction and/or genetic diversity. One other pattern that was noted is that the simple male/male and female/female marriage does not exist, for blatantly obvious biological reasons.

 

[Holly3278]

So basically what I should say is that even though marriage has changed in the past it has never embraced homosexual marriage because they knew that it is against the natural law… that new human beings do not come into existence with two men or two women. Am I understanding correctly?

 

[TheWarriorMonk]

So basically what I should say is that even though marriage has changed in the past it has never embraced homosexual marriage because they knew that it is against the natural law… that new human beings do not come into existence with two men or two women. Am I understanding correctly?

That appears to be the case. The “knowing” part may not have even been part of a thought process; it just occurred. Just like eating.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Marriage has sometimes changed over the course of history. Mostly it has changed first, from polygamy to monogamy, and from large paternalistic families to a domestic family. It hasn’t changed to man-man or woman-woman because every society since the dawn of history knew what men and woman were for and how the next generation of citizens came about.

(Carle Zimmerman in “Family and Civilization” gives a history of family types over the millennia, which are remarkably few and follow a remarkably consistent pattern.)

Are you saying that marriage started with polygamy?

 

[holyrood]

So basically what I should say is that even though marriage has changed in the past it has never embraced homosexual marriage because they knew that it is against the natural law… that new human beings do not come into existence with two men or two women. Am I understanding correctly?

Yes. EVERY single form of marriage throughout history has included a man and a woman or women. There has never been even the concept of man-man or woman-woman marriage. There are a few places/times where polyandry has been practiced. But in every single case, it has been male and female. And even in the cases of multiple spouses, it’s clearly the man married to each woman, *not *the women married to each other and the man.

 

[JimG]

Are you saying that marriage started with polygamy?

No, it started with Adam and Eve. But in civilizations with a weak government, political order tended to focus on large extended families headed by a patriarch, (such as Abraham). The patriarch exercised a great deal of control, and those cultures may have included polygamy.

As governments exercised more political control, the power of patriarchs became less, and families tended to settle into the more domestic family model–mom, dad, children–even though the families might have included aspects of extended family.

Sometimes, societies became so characterized by individualism that family ties tended to break down, in effect atomizing the family structure. In those instances, family could no longer be a stable basis for civilization. That’s about where we are now. I rely on Zimmerman for the historical review of the types of families and the effects of different family structures.

 

[MarcoPolo]

So basically what I should say is that even though marriage has changed in the past it has never embraced homosexual marriage because they knew that it is against the natural law… that new human beings do not come into existence with two men or two women. Am I understanding correctly?

Marriage has changed for the worse several times. Why do people think change is correct? That’s what you can tell them. When we opened up to more divorce, that was change - but it was bad. It’s a fallacious argument to say that change has occurred, therefore it must be good.

Jesus faced this same question with the Pharisees, and he replied to them how marriage should be. He appealed to the “beginning” in reference to Adam and Eve. He said, “For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” (Matt. 19:8)

In other words, Jesus Christ himself appeals to the proper order of marriage, between one man and one woman, indissoluble, with Adam and Eve as the original pedigree before man fell into sin.

 

[Holly3278]

Thank you everyone for these answers. I greatly appreciate them!

 

[Weissystems]

Marriage is Marriage is Marriage. Change it and it is no longer marriage. This includes the so called “Gay marriage”.
www.catholicprayergroup.net

 

[vsedriver]

Yes. EVERY single form of marriage throughout history has included a man and a woman or women. There has never been even the concept of man-man or woman-woman marriage. There are a few places/times where polyandry has been practiced. But in every single case, it has been male and female. And even in the cases of multiple spouses, it’s clearly the man married to each woman, *not *the women married to each other and the man.

marriage has even included incestuous relationships. some cultures had married brothers and sisters in the royal families. But they still included opposite genders.

Historically marriage was all about the production of children. It is only in the last 40 years that our society has separated sex from baby making and with this change the silly idea that anyone who loves someone should have the right to marry.

 

[manualman]

Are you saying that marriage started with polygamy?

Polygamy is an outcome of original sin. Slightly more men are born on average than women in a large population. But men have the bad habit of killing each other in primitive societies. It happened in the second generation of humans EVER and it never quite goes away in advanced societies either!. Men also are prone to the sins of lust and pride.

So here you have powerful men (the survivors of men habitually killing each other off) and a resulting imbalance where there are more women than men. Is it any surprise that some smart alec eventually dreamed up polygamy?

 

[jonathan_hili]

Hmm, here’s my two cents.

I’d say the argument that: “since marriage has changed throughout different cultures and times, we can legitimately change it now” is problematic for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, marriage has not changed in the quality that is at issue in the same-sex “marriage” debate, namely, never has a society at any time recognised widespread same-sex marriage as a norm, equal or even comparable to heterosexual marriage. The exceptions are very specific and often not anything like the same thing, for instance, involving some form of transgenderism (physical, social and/or spiritual).

Secondly, arguments from history aren’t necessarily legitimate. We don’t base our understanding of human rights on the Ancient Babylonians or even the Ancient Romans. Rather, we have a concept of what it means to be human, and, reflecting on (definitely not avoiding) history, we develop a better understanding. This is the way we should approach marriage too.

Thirdly, the argument may be pointless. Surely our aim as a society is to understand why we have the institution of marriage. The principal socially and politically legitimate reason for having this public institution is to join men and women in a small society for the purposes of child bearing and rearing. Since same-sex “marriage” is by nature infertile, one has to wonder why we even bother with it.

 

[JamesCaruso]

marriage has even included incestuous relationships. some cultures had married brothers and sisters in the royal families. But they still included opposite genders.

Historically marriage was all about the production of children. It is only in the last 40 years that our society has separated sex from baby making and with this change the silly idea that anyone who loves someone should have the right to marry.

More than that-- the silly idea that everyone who loves someone should have the right to have sex. The primary restriction that modern culture puts on sex is whether or not it is protected sex. Even those who cheat their spouses are often seen as doing so for love. Unless of course they rob the cradle in their selection-- then we still tend to be “old-fashioned.”

 

[JontheMaronite]

Ryan Anderson, Robbie George, and Sherif Girgis’s recent book “What is marriage” nails this point (and indeed every other point that SSM advocates have raised). While I encourage you to read their book or find their journal article online, I’ll quote some points from the section: Is Marriage Endlessly Malleable? and subsection: Features.

… Many other features (after referring to permanent commitment) of marriage – like its legal benefits – vary widely across cultures and even couples. …

Consider, by analogy, friendship. It clearly takes different forms across history, but no one is fooled by this into thinking that it does not retain an objective core, fixed by our social nature. True friendship requires mutual and mutually acknowledged good will and cooperation. Lacking that, a relationship between two people simply lacks the distinctive value of friendship; they owe each other none of the special consideration that friends do.

Thus also for marriage. The average 1990s Ameican marriage and its 1890s counterpart surely have different emotional profiles, divisions of labor, and economic purposes and implications. Largely rejected in the West today, polygamy and arranged marriage have existed in many cultures. A British royal wedding looks very different from a Navajo wedding…

But none of this should unsettle proponents of the conjugal view. None of it disproves what reflection reveals:

Marriage has an objective core, fixed by our natures as embodied, sexually reproductive (hence complimentary) beings; and to deviate from it is to miss a crucial part of this basic human good.

First, some cross-cultural differences in marriage practices do not go to its objective core. Parties to arranged marriages, for example, may still consent to whomever they are assigned, as required for true marriage. The conjugal view neither forbids nor requires any presumption of intense feeling, or a certain economic purpose to marriage.

Second, the conjugal view is not even disproven by cultures that omit what it sees as central. No moral truth of much specificity has enjoyed universal assent – not the wrong of seeking innocent blood, nor the value of freedom from slavery, nor anything else. That makes them no less true.

It is natural rather to think that the most basic ethical principles would be most widely held, while those derived from more basic principles would meet with patchier understanding and assent, since we reach them by applying other principles. From this angle, the historical record is unsurprising, given the truth of the conjugal view. What it considers most basic to marriage – like bodily union and connection to family life – are nearly universal in marriage practice. And what it and our argument treats as grounded in these basics – permanent, exclusive commitment – is less represented. Hence the presence of polygamy in many cultures, contrasted with the nearly perfect human consensus on sexual complementarity in marriage.

They go on to talk about the philosophical and legal traditions for marriage, and the errors in reasoning marriage as a fully malleable construct, and the problems of revising marriage policy as such.

But it is these fundamental core components of what marriage is, that do not differ from culture to culture and time period to time period. Namely, the anthropological difference between man and woman, the biological fact that human reproduction requires a man and a women, and the social reality that children need a father and a mother.

 

[JamesCaruso]

The point is that redefining marriage, no matter how many times it has been done before, still does harm to the authentic Catholic view of marriage as instituted by God. So, no matter how many times it has been redefined in the past, it is important that we resist any new attempt to redefine it.

 

[bsroufek]

Jesus talked about, how in the beginning, they were made male and female and for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and become one flesh.

But, Abraham and Israel practiced polygamy, especially King David and the other kings.

So, Jesus and the Apostles (esp. St. Paul) brought marriage back to its beginning, between one man and one woman.

 

[epan]

So basically what I should say is that even though marriage has changed in the past it has never embraced homosexual marriage because they knew that it is against the natural law… that new human beings do not come into existence with two men or two women. Am I understanding correctly?

First, you need to differentiate between civil marriage, and religious marriage. Religious marriage has not changed much, if at all.

But civil marriage has changed. In fact, there is now no legal gender distinction as far as marital duties, as there once was. This is a recent phenomenon, very recent. It was not long ago that in order to dissolve a marriage contract through divorce, one party sued the other basically for breach of the contract. A wife could be sued for divorce, if she refused to relocate with him geographically, but she did not have a reciprocal right, for example. So, the thinking goes, if there is no legal gender distinction in marital duties, then why should there be a gender distinction as to who may marry, in the first place.

This is basically the line of reasoning that Judge Walker followed in his Prop 8 ruling, which now stands. He starts out showing that marriage is a civil right guaranteed by the Constitution, then proceeds to outline how the legal definition of marriage, as a contract, has changed over the past 150 years. If you want to understand the whole line of argument, his opinion is readily available online.

 

[Cojuanco]

Hey everyone. I have heard this argument for redefining marriage several times and I have no idea how to answer it. Basically people say that marriage has changed several times in history and therefore there is no such thing as traditional marriage. They say that this means that marriage should be redefined to allow “gay marriage”. How does one answer this?

What do all those marriages have in common? That’s the question I usually ask.