A few disturbing historical facts about marriage that seem to have escaped some of our friends

David Anderson's original post on same-sex marriage, Here Comes the Groom, and donviti's My Retort to Stupidity, have drawn between them well over 150 comments. This post won't do that (I think a high-traffic post is one that draws more than five comments), but I wanted to correct the statement that David Anderson made regarding the universality of the modern Christian form of marriage. David said,

The species is one in which the offspring are best raised in a mixed sex environment. Unsurprisingly, thousands or millions of years of experience (I am not arguing origin theory here) has led to the evolution of an institution to best channel that reality. It exists in the most advanced of cultures and the most primitive of cultures in one form or another. We call it marriage. It consists of a mixed sex relationship or relationships for the purpose of raising families and bonding between the sexes.

Marriage over different cultures has different variations. Some have more than two partners. Some are exclusive for life. Some have an escape valve. Yet around the world, it is clear that marriage is between a man and a woman. It is not a confusing proposition. It is not open for judicial guessing.

Later, it becomes clearly evident that what David is promoting is the idea that traditional Christian marriage is the approved form, as he introduces the "spiritual" component:

The fact that an institution exists in a basic form throughout written history in thousands of different cultures is not a reason to keep it, but evidence of the need to change it according to these people. Everything done in the past was not based upon the wisdom built up as we went from herding nomads to farmers to manufacturers to information engineers. It is based upon prejudice and discrimination. The will of God is considered a repressive scam which must be overturned.

I reject the premise and the goals of the secular progressive left. I proudly stand for tradition, the Bible, and the collective experience of billions of people over the nonsense of a radical elite.

First, we need to realize that marriage--even in the Judeo-Christian tradition--has had many variations, such as Levirate marriage:

Levirate is the practice of a woman marrying one of her husband's sons or brothers after her husband's death, in order to continue his line. Levirate has been practiced by societies with a strong clan structure in which exogamous marriage outside the clan was forbidden. Groups that have practiced levirate include the Israelites, the Xiongnu, the Mongols, and the Tibetans.

Nor is Western Civilization the only civilization struggling over the definition of marriage, as evidenced by India's Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929:

It is note worthy that a contravention of the provisions of the Act does not render the marriage invalid as the validity of the marriage is a subject beyond the scope of the Act. A marriage under the Hindu Law by a minor male is valid even though the marriage was not brought about on his behalf by the natural or lawful guardian. The marriage under the Hindu Law is a sacrament and not a contract. The minority of an individual can operate as a bar to his or her incurring contractual obligations, but it cannot be an impediment in the matter of performing a necessary "Sanskara". A minor's marriage without the consent of the guardian can be held to be valid on the application of the doctrine of factum valet.

The maximum penalty for violating this law? A three-month prison sentence and a small fine, but the marriage itself remained legitimate (and the act specifically did not apply in Kashmir and Jammu).

Then, of course, there's the widespread (both in historical and geographic terms) of Polyandry (marriage of a woman to more than one man):

According to inscriptions describing the reforms of the Sumerian king Urukagina of Lagash (ca. 2300 BC), he is said to have abolished the former custom of polyandry in his country, on pain of the woman taking multiple husbands being stoned with rocks upon which her crime is written.

Polyandry in human relationships occurs or has occurred in Tibet, the Canadian Arctic, Zanskar, Nepal, Bhutan, Ladakh, the Nymba, and Sri Lanka, and is known to have been present in some pre-contact Polynesian societies, though probably only among higher caste women. It is also encountered in some regions of Mongolia, among the Mosuo people in China, and in some Sub-Saharan African and American indigenous communities. Polyandry has been practiced in several cultures in India — in the Jaunsar region in Uttarakhand, among the, Nairs, Theeyas and Toda of South India, and the Nishi of Arunachal Pradesh. The Guanches, the first known inhabitants of the Canary Islands, practiced polyandry until their disappearance. In other societies, there are people who live in de facto polyandrous arrangements that are not recognized by the law. Non-fraternal polyandry is extremely rare and is marked by violence. There are no known indigenous communities that currently practice polyandry involving unrelated males.

The Hebrew Bible prohibits polyandry. For a woman to have sexual relations when she is married to another (which would include a situation such as polyandry) would constitute adultery, with the consequences that it would have on her status, as well as of her children from that relationship.

Islam also bans polyandry.

Important issues to note here: (1) Polyandry pre-dates the Old Testament and is prohibited by it; (2) yet exists as a custom and law in multiple societies.

Modern Western-European-style marriage, with its strange history of being intertwined between law and sacrament, church and state, emerged only with the Council of Trent in 1563:

In the decrees on marriage (twenty-fourth session) the excellence of the celibate state was reaffirmed (see also Clerical celibacy (Catholic Church)), concubinage condemned and the validity of marriage made dependent upon its being performed before a priest and two witnesses -- although the lack of a requirement for parental consent ended a debate that had proceeded from the twelfth century. In the case of a divorce, the right of the innocent party to marry again was denied so long as the other party is alive, even if the other may have committed adultery.

Basic rule of thumb: governments and churches do not bother to legislate against things people are not doing. Thus we can reasonably infer (and scholars have backed this up with research) that the following existed in Europe pre-Trent: (1) marriages not solemnized by a priest; (2) adultery was commonly considered a justification for divorce; (3) that there had been a mixture of civil and canon law with variant definitions of precisely what marriage was.

What did the Council of Trent replace? The Justinian Code--an earlier Christian formulation. Even Christian scholars and writers admitted that other forms of marriage had pre-existed monogamous, heterosexual marriage, and it is also clear that it is the influence of Christianity that caused the Roman Empire to outlaw variant forms of marriage:

In the Christian tradition, a "one man one woman" model for the Christian marriage was advocated by Saint Augustine (354-439 AD) with his published letter The Good of Marriage. To discourage polygamy, he wrote it "was lawful among the ancient fathers: whether it be lawful now also, I would not hastily pronounce. For there is not now necessity of begetting children, as there then was, when, even when wives bear children, it was allowed, in order to a more numerous posterity, to marry other wives in addition, which now is certainly not lawful." (chapter 15, paragraph 17) Sermons from St. Augustine's letters were popular and influential. In 534 AD Roman Emperor Justinian criminalized all but monogamous man/woman sex within the confines of marriage. The Justinian Code was the basis of European law for 1,000 years.

Opponents of gay marriage like to fear-monger with the speculation that same-sex marriage will lead to people marrying sheep, or other such perversions. They clearly have not sampled the historical variety of marriage in different cultures, which includes marrying plants (!), ghosts, and corpses:

Some parts of India follow a custom in which the groom is required to marry with an auspicious plant called Tulsi before a second marriage to overcome inauspicious predictions about the health of the husband. This also applies if the prospective wife is considered to be 'bad luck' or a 'bad omen' astrologically. However, the relationship is not consummated and does not affect their ability to remarry later. One should note that this is not a norm found across the entire Indian sub-continent.

In the state of Kerala, India, the Nambudiri Brahmin caste traditionally practiced henogamy, in which only the eldest son in each family was permitted to marry. The younger children could have sambandha (temporary relationship) with Kshatriya or Nair women. This is no longer practiced, and in general the Nambudiri Brahmin men marry only form the Nambudiri caste and Nair women prefer to be married to Nair men.

In Mormonism, a couple may seal their marriage "for time and for all eternity" through a "sealing" ceremony conducted within LDS Temples. The couple is then believed to be bound to each other in marriage throughout eternity if they live according to their covenants made in the ceremony. Mormonism also allows living persons to act as proxies in the sealing ceremony to "seal" a marriage between ancestors who have been dead for at least one year and who were married during their lifetime. According to LDS theology, it is then up to the deceased individuals to accept or reject this sealing in the spirit world before their eventual resurrection. A living person can also be sealed to his or her deceased spouse, with another person (of the same sex as the deceased) acting as proxy for that deceased individual.

Other unusual variations include marriage between a living human and a ghost (Taiwan), a living human and a recently-deceased human with whom they were emotionally involved (France), and between a human being and God (Catholic and Orthodox monasticism). Again, these lack the social meaning of ordinary marriage and belong rather to the realm of religion or (in the case of weddings of dogs to other dogs, Kermit the Frog to Miss Piggy, and the like) pure spectacle.

One society that traditionally did without marriage entirely was that of the Na of Yunnan province in southern China. According to anthropologist Cia Hua, sexual liaisons among the Na took place in the form of "visits" initiated by either men or women, each of whom might have two or three partners each at any given time (and as many as two hundred throughout a lifetime). The nonexistence of fathers in the Na family unit was consistent with their practice of matrilineality and matrilocality, in which siblings and their offspring lived with their maternal relatives. In recent years, the Chinese state has encouraged the Na to acculturate to the monogamous marriage norms of greater China. Such programs have included land grants to monogamous Na families, conscription (in the 1970s, couples were rounded up in villages ten or twenty at a time and issued marriage licenses), legislation declaring frequent sexual partners married and outlawing "visits", and the withholding of food rations from children who could not identify their fathers. Many of these measures were relaxed in favor of educational approaches after Deng Xiaoping came into power in 1981.

Point being: if you're going to make an argument for or against a certain definition of marriage, and you're also going to state that your definition is the one sanctioned by history and nature, then you'd best do your homework.

Social conservatives are notorious for not doing theirs.