For centuries, the essential meaning of marriage was universally understood (and taken for granted) in Western civilization, and, with very few modifications, in the pagan world as well. Because a marriage was always seen as the defining core of a family, providing a context for bearing and rearing children, its purpose and nature were taken to be self-evident, and seldom was thought to require defining. Among those societies informed by Scripture, marriage was also understood to be necessarily heterosexual, monogamous and life-long. With the coming of the sexual revolution of the 1960’s, many of these assumptions began to be eroded...