History shows people wed in many ways for many reasons (Same sex marriage article)

This is part of a series of stories examining the cultural, social and political currents swirling around marriage.

In ancient Greece and Rome, marriage was primarily a way for the upper class to pass down family property.

In early American Colonial times, a man and woman were considered married if they simply said they were.

And it wasn't until about a century ago that the practice of marrying for romantic love became widespread.

In the national debate over gay marriage, supporters say marriage is about love and commitment between two people, and that to deny gay men and lesbians the public sanction and legal benefits of marriage violates their civil rights.

Many opponents argue that legalizing gay marriage amounts to disavowing a cornerstone of Western society — an institution they say has historically been between one man and one woman, and designed primarily for child-rearing.

A look at the history of marriage in Western civilization, especially since the rise of Christianity, shows that it has, indeed, largely been between a man and a woman and designed, in large part, for the production of children. At the same time, it's an institution that has constantly evolved in response to changing social and political forces

"Marriage is not an institution that's etched in stone," said Steven Mintz, a University of Houston professor who specializes in family history. "Whenever people talk about traditional marriage or traditional families, historians throw up their hands, because we say: 'When and where?' "

Marriage has existed since the earliest civilizations, with records of ancient Mesopotamia showing evidence of ceremonies and contracts. The institution likely has endured over the centuries because it fulfilled so many social and personal functions: It offered a structure that determined how property was to be handed down, how labor was to be divided, how children were to be cared for, how companionship would be assured.

Different cultures in different times have practiced many forms of marriage. The ancient Hebrews, for instance, practiced polygamy — a form of marriage once widespread among cultures worldwide. Until the 19th century, some Native American cultures allowed two men to essentially marry, provided one underwent a ritual that resulted in his being considered a crossed-gender or mixed-gender person.

"If you're talking about the history of the world and not just the last two centuries, the proportion of the world populated by monogamous households were a tiny, tiny portion — just Western Europe and little settlements in North America," said Nancy Cott, professor of history at Harvard University.

"What we talk about as marriage — monogamy between a man and a woman that's supposed to be lifelong, unless something goes wrong, and where there's sexual faithfulness — that's a Christian idea."

Indeed, Christianity has provided the foundation of what Western culture understands marriage to be today. It is largely this Christian tradition — the idea of marriage between one man and one woman as being what God intended — that is at odds with the idea of gay marriage.

Yet even within this Christian context, historians say, the purposes and functions of marriage have constantly evolved.

In America, for example, founded on Judeo-Christian values, people have debated everything from whether people of different races could marry, to the role of men and women in marriage.

Throughout this country's history, says Mintz, "Americans have repeatedly contested what marriage is all about and what form it should take."

In ancient Greece and Rome, the foundations of Western civilization, marriage was regarded as a civil contract, conducted mainly by the propertied class to perpetuate the family line and produce legitimate heirs.

The state did not get involved — marriages were considered a private contract arranged between a bridegroom and the father of a bride, and could be terminated at any time by either partner.

Though marriage was a heterosexual union, and a person could have only one spouse, that didn't preclude married men from having concubines who might bear their illegitimate children. It was also acceptable for men — married or not — to have sexual relationships with other males.

In the ancient Greek city of Thebes, for instance, one of its most celebrated military forces was the Sacred Theban Band, which was said to have been formed of 150 pairs of male lovers, some of whom probably had wives, said Lawrence Bliquez, a classics professor at the University of Washington.

Though homosexuality was practiced, ancient Greeks and Romans didn't think of it as either innate or exclusive of relationships with people of the opposite gender. Thus, exclusive same-sex relationships — in which men would not marry, produce offspring and perpetuate the family line — were probably unacceptable, said Bliquez.

It wasn't until the Roman Empire collapsed, around the 5th century, that the Catholic Church — for centuries the only Christian church — further extended its influence. The church elevated marriage from a civil contract to a sacred union, forming the basis of marriage laws in most Western countries.

In the 5th century, the church began clearly articulating the values and practices the faithful were expected to apply to their daily lives, including marriage. Referring to biblical passages, church leaders spoke of marriage as an unbreakable covenant between a man and a woman made "one flesh" by God.

They saw a passage from the Book of Ephesians, equating the love of a husband for his wife to that of Christ's love for his church, as a basis for the sacredness of marriage.

Still, marriages in the early Middle Ages, between the years 400 and 800, were "pretty ad hoc," said Theresa Earenfight, assistant professor of history at Seattle University. Fledgling states "couldn't run themselves then, much less manage marriage."

The church, too, had not yet developed a strong central infrastructure, so marriages were largely celebrated according to existing local customs. The church considered couples married if they simply gave their consent to each other and consummated the relationship.

From about 800 to 1200, as both church and states grew in power, the Catholic Church began enforcing more of its rules on marriage — prohibiting marriage between close relatives, for example, and stipulating that marriage could only be between a willing man and woman.

Church law and royal law worked together to form increasingly detailed laws surrounding marriage — such as rules for inheritance and dowries. Divorces became harder to obtain. In 1215, marriage was officially declared one of the church's seven sacraments, holy rites that include baptism and penance. After about 1200, the distinctions between church and state weddings began to blur, with most Christians getting married in church, and most states recognizing church marriages. In the mid-1500s, churches required marriages to be performed in public, by a church representative and before two witnesses.

For the ruling class in Europe, for example, it remained a way to forge political alliances. In 1540, for instance, King Henry VIII of England, believing he needed an ally to repel threats from France, married Anne of Cleves, whose brother led the Protestants in western Germany. Six months later, after a French threat failed to materialize, the king had the marriage annulled.

For both the upper and aspiring classes, marriage was a way to gain capital — mainly through dowries. And for lower-class families, marriage could increase property holdings by merging one family's land with a neighbor's.

Beginning around the 16th century, the primary purpose of marriage shifted, to that of building the family as a labor force. At the same time, the Protestant Reformation brought about the idea that marriage should focus more on child-rearing.

Critics of the Catholic Church said its emphasis on chastity and a celibate clergy didn't place enough importance on marriage and the raising of children, said Mintz, the University of Houston historian.

The Reformation raised the idea of families as "little churches" that would educate children — an ideal that wouldn't flourish in practice until two centuries later.

Around the 18th century, the Enlightenment movement took hold, shaped by intellectuals who placed greater value on human logic and reason than on faith and church doctrine.

As freedom and personal fulfillment became more important, people began thinking marriage should be for love — not arranged, but rather, entered into freely.

That isn't to say earlier marriages didn't provide comfort and companionship — many people did, indeed, come to love their spouses.

"But people thought it was crazy to marry for such a fragile reason as love," said Stephanie Coontz, a historian with The Evergreen State College and co-chairwoman of the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonpartisan group of family researchers.

It wasn't until about a century ago that that notion of marrying for romantic love became widespread practice.

In the United States, as in Europe, how and why people married, who was allowed to marry, and how marriages functioned has also continually evolved.

In early American Colonial days, when there were few courts or churches, marriages were informal by necessity — many got married by living together and declaring themselves husband and wife. Such common-law marriages are still allowed in 11 states and the District of Columbia, said Mintz, of the University of Houston.

Before the Civil War, slaves were considered property and thus could not marry legally, though many slaves held their own ceremonies.

After the war, many states banned interracial marriages. Also, in the early 1900s, when anti-Asian sentiment was high, a national law said women who married Asians — even U.S.-born Asians — lost their citizenship. The U.S. Supreme Court declared such laws unconstitutional in 1967.

The role of men and women in marriage also has evolved — from husband as legal head of household, to the now widespread notion that marriage should be between equals.

In Colonial times, marriage was "more a work unit than anything else," said David Popenoe, professor of sociology at Rutgers University and co-director of its National Marriage Project, a nonpartisan institute aimed at strengthening marriage through research. "As in any work unit, the idea was you needed a boss to make it work efficiently. So the men were the boss."

Coontz, The Evergreen State College professor, places the current debate over gay marriage in the context of Americans having "already turned our backs on thousands of years of history when we said women should be equal to men, marriage should be for love, and kids should have the right to choose who they want to marry."

She sees the debate as "really a question of which part of the history do we want to keep and which do we want to discard. We've already discarded a lot of it."

Popenoe agrees marriage has evolved but believes its most important function should be to provide a stable environment for raising children.

Research has shown, he said, that growing up with both a mother and a father is beneficial to children and thus to society.

Some scholars believe another evolution in marriage may be taking place in Western countries.

After the purpose of marriage became primarily love and happiness, people who fell out of love could — and increasingly did — get divorced. When marriage is driven by love, and divorce is an option, the breakup rate is high.

But "the most notable change in marriage in recent years is not divorce, but the decline in the number of marriages," Mintz said.

Indeed, the marriage rate in the U.S. is half what it was when it peaked right after World War II.

To some extent, Mintz sees marriage in Western cultures returning to a kind of "pre-modern pattern" where upper-class people marry to protect their holdings while many others don't marry at all.

"There's kind of an irony that we as a society are fixating on marriage," he said, "when in fact much of what is going on is happening outside of marriage."

But "the most notable change in marriage in recent years is not divorce, but the decline in the number of marriages," Mintz said.
Indeed, the marriage rate in the U.S. is half what it was when it peaked right after World War II.

Actually the decline in marriages seems to be partially a result of the "liberation" the socialists have been preaching. Tear down the institution of marriage one brick at a time; same sex marriage is another tool to dismantle the institution with.

We are not better off as a nation with the decline in marriages. Single parent households abound (with dependents suckling on the social support teat). Abortion figures show MILLIONS of babies murdered out of convenience.

"Marriage is not an institution that's etched in stone," said Steven Mintz, a University of Houston professor who specializes in family history. "Whenever people talk about traditional marriage or traditional families, historians throw up their hands, because we say: 'When and where?' "
[snip]
Different cultures in different times have practiced many forms of marriage. The ancient Hebrews, for instance, practiced polygamy — a form of marriage once widespread among cultures worldwide. Until the 19th century, some Native American cultures allowed two men to essentially marry, provided one underwent a ritual that resulted in his being considered a crossed-gender or mixed-gender person.
"If you're talking about the history of the world and not just the last two centuries, the proportion of the world populated by monogamous households were a tiny, tiny portion — just Western Europe and little settlements in North America," said Nancy Cott, professor of history at Harvard University.
"What we talk about as marriage — monogamy between a man and a woman that's supposed to be lifelong, unless something goes wrong, and where there's sexual faithfulness — that's a Christian idea."

AntiChristian bigotry?

Actually the Bible has it that at least some aspects of marriage were "set in stone". Adultery is mentioned as prohibited in the 10 Commandments (a document that is held by the Jews as well as Christians).

And just what was the name of this American Indian tribe that practiced same sex marriage? I have never seen any evidence of any culture offering an institutional acceptance of same sex marriage. When was this practice introduced and how long did it survive? What were the impacts on the society?

I suspect that what they're calling "same sex marriage" in some Native American cultures was in fact the rare but accepted ability of a person in some of these cultures to assume the de facto identity of the opposite sex. There's a liberal tendancy to speak of Native cultures as if they are homogeneous as well as superior to ours with regard tolerance. That's nonsense, of course.

Textbooks speak of a person who would adopt the dress and work roles of the opposite sex; this was indeed accepted in some tribes, and the person's role would be that of the other gender in just about every way that mattered including that of marital relationships. It was not a universal practice nor was it an everyday thing. Nor is it the same thing as an open same sex marriage as an institution between two practicing males or practicing females, and it's a dishonesty on the part of the liberal writer to pretend so. It's a way SOME Native cultures handled people with gender dysphoria, which is NOT homosexuality. And that's it.

I suspect that much gender dysphoria originates from faulty sex-assignment due to defective, abnormal genitalia of infants at birth. In modern Western society such infants are routinely handled by surgeons informed by DNA testing, but that option hasn't been available very long. The Indians had to muddle through without that, till lately, along with the rest of us.

Yes, it's possible for a female infant to have something that resembles a penis yet be female in every way that matters. It's possible for a male infant to appear to be female. This is not something published in the birth announcement, and cultures like ours that don't routinely let children run naked aren't going to be very aware of these cases as I assume the Indians had to be. I'm sure it was a relief to everybody when these ambiguous cases pronounced themselves to be one gender or the other and settled into a socially normal role, even if it seemed by surface appearance that the individual was opting for the "wrong" or apparently transsexual role.

You'd never know most transsexuals, and they certainly do not identify themselves as gay nor think that their relationships are gay marriages. No doubt gay marriage activists would be delighted to label them and count them as part of their numbers. But let's not allow the activists to get away with this verbal slight-of-hand.

It's easy to try to justify anything on the basis of the practices of cultures without a substantial written history.

And just what was the name of this American Indian tribe that practiced same sex marriage?

"Berdache" marriages were recorded amongst a number of Native American peoples, including (most notably) the Maya, Aztec, and Inca.

I have never seen any evidence of any culture offering an institutional acceptance of same sex marriage.

Have you ever looked? In any case, same-sex marriages are recorded amongst the ancient Hellenes (particularly Thebes, Phocis, and Elis); amongst the Chinese (particularly during the Five Dynasties and the Song era); amongst several African peoples (most notoriously the Azande of the Western Bulge); and amongst the aforementioned Native Americans (especially in northeastern Brazil, lowland Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and the northern Great Plains).

Quasi-institutional same-sex unions also took place in parts of Europe at times of the Christian era, most notably in the Low Countries (but also reported in Italy and Britain, among other places). These were not met with anything remotely approaching the regard that the instances above were. They could not be considered "institutions" in any meaningful sense (though some have argued that adelphopoiia should be deemed thus).

When was this practice introduced and how long did it survive?

It is unknown when the practice was introduced among Native American and African ethnic groups that featured it, but it survived until the advent of the colonial era in the respective regions.

In Greece the only clear record of introduction involves Thebes, and appears to pinpoint the 5th to 4th Century BC. There it certainly survived until the destruction of Thebes by Alexander the Great.

It is also unclear when the practice was introduced in China, but it is known to have been prevalent at least in Fujian by no later than the Five Dynasties Era and it persisted through to the Ming Dynasty. However, same-sex marriages are recorded amongst the Chinese emperors as far back as the Han Dynasty.

There are other instances which are less clearly institutional, such as the European constructs noted above, so I won't bother getting deeper into those.

What were the impacts on the society?

Wow. That's a pretty involved question. Someone could probably write a 328 page book on that one. ;^)

And just what was the name of this American Indian tribe that practiced same sex marriage?

The most documented examples come from the Zuni tribe.

From http://staff.jccc.net/scorbett01/ch8/zuni_berdache.htm

'Another early, although less sympathetic, observer was Mary Dissette, who began teaching at the Presbyterian mission school at Zuni in 1888. Over thirty-five years later, Dissette recorded her recollections of Zuni berdaches in a letter preserved in the papers of the Indian Rights Association.[50] Dissette had known five lhamanas, whom she considered "victims of a religious superstition." Two died shortly after her arrival; one, named Manna, had done some weaving for her. Most interesting is her account of a younger lhamana "in course of training." Kwiwishdi ("Que-wish-ty") was the cousin of a Zuni girl named Daisy, whom Dissette had adopted. At the time that Dissette first offered him a regular meal, enrollment in the mission school, and a dollar a week for doing chores and laundry, he had not yet formally entered lhamana status -- that is, he still wore male clothing. But he already manifested several traits typical of Zuni berdaches, especially his enthusiasm for hard work. As Dissette recalled, "He was so strong and so quick and willing." Kwiwishdi's blossoming as a lhamana, however, left the school teacher bewildered and dismayed:

'He was with us a year or two and always spoken of as a boy by us and by the Inds. [Indians]. After a time he began to wear the `Petone' [bidonne] or large square of cloth over the shoulders [a traditional article of women's clothing] and was in great demand at grinding bees and other female activities in the village. In another year he had quite an illness it appeared and came to tell me of it, and that he could not work for me any longer. . . . I did not see him at all that winter but in the spring [of 1890] a camping party which included Dr. Fewkes came to Zuni and hired Quewishty as cook and he came out in full female attire. '

Not long after this, Kwiwishdi formed a relationship with a young Zuni man and the couple set up housekeeping. Dissette found Kwiwishdi's behavior incomprehensible. When she asked him (through Daisy as interpreter) the reason he had adopted women's clothing, he replied that it was because he did women's work. "But I often do a man's work, Quewishty," she responded, "and I do not put on a man's clothes to do it." Daisy spoke to Kwiwishdi for several minutes and then told the teacher, "He say[s] you do not love all peoples in the world as much as he do[es], and that's why he do[es] that." Still confused, Dissette concluded, "This accounts for a kind of spiritual arrogance that is peculiar to those creatures."

But it's specious to claim this is "gay marriage."

Which brings us back to the question, "What, exactly, is marriage," the answer to which, the article claims, tends to shift with culture and place.

More info on Zuni marriage: The Zuni Language is part of the Penutian Language family. They have patrilineal clans. Marriage is simply an agreement between a couple where the woman welcomes the advances of a man. There are a few ways that a couple comes around. The first way is that after a few meetings between the man and a woman, the woman consults her mother to see if he is acceptable. After which, she invites him to bed in secret. During the secret period if the man calls off the marriage, he has to pay the bride price or she can force him into the marraige arrangement by publicizing the relationship. This is done at high noon and the woman brings a basket of corn to his mother, at which point, the man's mother responds by giving the woman the traditional black dress, moccasins, shawls and beads and the woman takes the man back to her home with him. The second way happens if the couple finds themselves compatible during the secret bedroom meetings. The girl then grinds the corn in the basket before giving it to his mother at high noon. The third way happens when a man presents gifts to the bride at her home. The bundle of gifts is placed in the room and he is fed. Within the Zuni, there is no such thing as illegitimate children. Source: http://www.bigeye.com/sexeducation/zuni.html

So, if that's all that's involved in a Zuni marriage, I don't think it's specious at all to claim that the Berdache marriage was seen as being as much a marriage as any other in the tribe.

There are the Mosuo, and the Nayar...odd customs that serve (frankly) odd cultures but wouldn't suit us.

I'm personally not opposed to changes in the law that would simplify the federal tax code with respect to households, whether they are two old maid aunts living together, a mother and son living together, a couple of gay guys, or a traditional family. Marriage and religion are more threatened by the epidemic of straight divorces that litter the national landscape than they would be by gays calling themselves married. To me, it's clearly a state issue to define marriage, not a federal issue. I hate to see conservatives tilting at this windmill. I could call my car a space shuttle, but that won't make it launch.

How does gay marriage threaten straight marriage? I support even incremental improvement in morality--if they want marriage, let them marry--but make them live it--without the promiscuity that makes the gay lifestyle so very expensive to society.

I agree up to a point, and again point out the basic thrust of the article, which is that definition of marriage is a difficult thing when seen in a historical, global, cross cultural scale. Similarly with homosexuality. Some men define themselves as homosexuals. Others just have homosexual sex when women aren't available (convicts or 19th Century sailors, for example). Some homosexuals dress as women. Some heterosexuals dress as women. There was an article in Vanity Fair a couple of years back about a cruise geared to Southern, Christian crossdressers and their wives, all of whom got very upset if you thought they were gay. A few are clinically gender dysphoric. A smaller number are clinically hermaphroditic. Again, pinning down definitions is a slippery thing. Is a man who has sex with a transsexual gay? Is a transsexual who has sex with a woman gay? Any line you draw is going to be arbitrary. If the Zuni Berdache was different from a gay man, what about the man he took up housekeeping with?

Ultimately, I agree that some sort of domestic partnership agreement will be created, with the same legal rights and responsibilities as marriage. And once you start seeing gay divorces with big alimony payments, I expect the craze to cool down fast.

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