A few weeks ago Protect Marriage/Yes-on-Prop-8 revised their marketing tag line from “protect marriage” to “protect traditional marriage.” One assumes they believe the inclusion of the word traditional carries some additional weight or somehow adds enhanced credibility to their arguments in favor of limiting marriage to mixed-sex couples in the state of California.
This revised rhetorical stratagem is a distortion, in that they’re not actually addressing the tradition of marriage as much as they are promoting their definition of conventional marriage, as it currently exists in much, but not all, of Western Civilization. The wily pro-eighters, in their attempt to revoke marriage equality for all citizens of California, conveniently ignore the history of the institution of marriage, while their loudest argument in favor of Prop 8 remains that if the institution of marriage remains broadened to include same-sex couples, the teaching of that expanded definition will be mandatory in public schools.
Both are counterfeit arguments.
The definition of marriage has evolved over many thousands of years. At several points in history it was defined as between one man and many women. The Bible is sometimes, in Judaism, Islam and Christianity, referred to as The Book of of Abraham. But Abraham himself had two wives, one of whom was also his niece. The Biblical King Solomon, frequently touted as the wisest of the wise, had 700 wives.
Ergo, to bray that “marriage has always been between one man and one woman” is an historically-false assertion.
Throughout history, and in the Bible, there have been countless permutations of the definition of marriage. For centuries loveless marriages were arranged for social or political gain, or to perpetuate the family bloodline — Lott’s daughters tricked their father into inseminating them to perpetuate his seed. In the Old Testament, women were regarded as chattel (property) to be used, discarded or killed as their husbands saw fit. Under Biblical Law, brothers of non-related widows were compelled to marry their deceased brother’s wives.
What is considered the appropriate age of the bride has also frequently changed. Muhammad had 13 wives and loved to brag that he could service the lot every single night. The youngest of these, and his favorite, was 9 years old. The Bible and the history of Western Civilization are filled with accounts of child brides forced to submit to their husband’s desires.
At one time, marriages between black slaves were absolutely forbidden; it was up to their good Christian masters to determine the most efficient way to breed their property. And The Bible has much to say about the treatment of slaves because, according to the Old Testament, God not only approves of slavery but also lays out very specific guidelines for the institution.
Emancipation and the end of slavery didn’t begin in America; it began with secular enlightenment in Western Europe. As a consequence of the Age of Enlightenment in Europe the Biblical God’s inerrant handbook of rules was set aside in favor of reason and decency. The founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson among them, brought this unconventional wisdom to America, but it was not until the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln that a full-stop to the institution of slavery was finally appended.
Even after The Emancipation Proclamation marriages between mixed-race couples remained legally forbidden in the United States of America. It took, what the radical religious right now call, activist judges to strike that abomination down, because the majority, with the will of the people on their side, still wished to perpetuate that discrimination in the law.
Today many marriages no longer involve the blessing of either state or church, because many couples are enlightened enough to feel that neither church nor state should have a say in whom they’re allowed to love — nor how. The Christianists love to point to secular Europe’s acceptance of marriage equality as the cause behind the decline in the number of conventional marriages and, consequently, the birthrate in Europe. Practically speaking, a decline in the number of births makes perfect sense in a world in which we human beings are incapable of feeding, clothing and educating an ever-growing worldwide population.
As California law currently exists, civil marriages are permitted between mixed-sex couples and same-sex couples. Proposition 8 would take away the right of civil marriage for a single class of people. That right, and not conventional marriage, is what is at risk if discrimination is written into the California Constitution.
The protect-conventional-marriage crowd have endlessly and erroneously claimed that, against their wishes as parents, tolerance for marriage equality and the homosexual lifestyle (whatever that is) will, by some mandate from Sacramento, be taught in California’s public schools.
They conveniently ignore that fact that every parent in the state of California has the right to opt their child out of any class without penalty to that child. If they disagree with the teaching of Evolution, they can keep Dylan out of his Biology class; if they have some beef with René Descartes, they can keep Heather out of Geometry. Public schools are called “public” because it is the parents, at the local school district level, who control what is taught. If parents are genuinely concerned about what is taught in their local schools, they’d be well advised to start playing a more proactive role in their children’s education by attending school board meetings and participating in the setting of curricula. That is their right.
It’s time to stop disingenuously perpetuating the myth that marriage equality will lead to the teaching of tolerance, as if that were a bad thing, over conventional marriage in public schools.
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