the history of marriage

[enochs_fable]

Nothing irritates me more than people who point to a particular instance of an institution and imagine that it (in this case, marriage) is as it was, so to speak, for thousands of years -- when in fact the historical reality, as evidenced by cursory research, is quite different.

history of marriage. The whole man-breadwinner, woman-homemaker

Comments

[echoweaver]

Like with many other subjects, I don't think think this is actually about the Bible, tho many people will tell you it is. I think it's about fear of change. The Bible has been used time and time again to as evidence for opinions people already have. I pretty much don't believe there's a single person (OK: a statistically significant population) who read the Bible critically for their opinions of marriage, relationships, and sexuality. They built those opinions based on other influences and then went grunging through the Bible to "prove" those opinions to themselves. As you've pointed out, what the Bible actually has to say is pretty ambiguous and inconsistent and NOT in keeping with our current laws and mores.

My folks have come a long way on acceptance of homosexuality. I haven't asked them for their feelings on this subject, but I can almost here my mother's voice in my head, "We've given them so much; now they want marriage too??" I think that is the source of the emotion -- this is a hard cultural change, and many, many people feel pushed to fast and threatened.

[enochs_fable]

I completely agree that a large component is fear of change. However, while the Bible is certainly inconsistent, that's something only clear on a critical reading, which is not what the average person does - rather they receive the teachings from their clergy or their parents, and the general message about the current interpretation of mores comes through fairly clearly. Certainly it is read selectively to support current culture, but when we're talking about the fairly religious segment of people, there's a fairly standard set of morals that is read from it. I don't think this can be cast entirely to other influences.

[echoweaver]

That's just the point. These opinions have nothing to do with reading the Bible at all. They're reinforced socially and culturally. Which means that it's no different than the rest of the fear surrounding the greater acceptance being granted to homosexuality. It's a social, not a religious, issue.