Remember how marriage has been since Adam and Eve? Well, it ain't...

[lsanderson]

Op-Ed Contributor
Taking Marriage Private
By STEPHANIE COONTZ

Olympia, Wash.

WHY do people — gay or straight — need the state’s permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didn’t, because marriage was a private contract between two families. The parents’ agreement to the match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its validity.

For 16 centuries, Christianity also defined the validity of a marriage on the basis of a couple’s wishes. If two people claimed they had exchanged marital vows — even out alone by the haystack — the Catholic Church accepted that they were validly married.

In 1215, the church decreed that a “licit” marriage must take place in church. But people who married illictly had the same rights and obligations as a couple married in church: their children were legitimate; the wife had the same inheritance rights; the couple was subject to the same prohibitions against divorce.

Not until the 16th century did European states begin to require that marriages be performed under legal auspices. In part, this was an attempt to prevent unions between young adults whose parents opposed their match.

The American colonies officially required marriages to be registered, but until the mid-19th century, state supreme courts routinely ruled that public cohabitation was sufficient evidence of a valid marriage. By the later part of that century, however, the United States began to nullify common-law marriages and exert more control over who was allowed to marry.

By the 1920s, 38 states prohibited whites from marrying blacks, “mulattos,” Japanese, Chinese, Indians, “Mongolians,” “Malays” or Filipinos. Twelve states would not issue a marriage license if one partner was a drunk, an addict or a “mental defect.” Eighteen states set barriers to remarriage after divorce.

In the mid-20th century, governments began to get out of the business of deciding which couples were “fit” to marry. Courts invalidated laws against interracial marriage, struck down other barriers and even extended marriage rights to prisoners. More

Comments

[ginahelen.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting articles like these. :)

That was interesting -- history is enlightening. I agree with the main gist of the article, that a marriage license is no longer a good barometer of obligations, and the implied point that state interference in marriage is recent, a political abberation and a morass of blind prejudices. But the last line doesn't sit well with me. "Let churches decide which marriages they deem 'licit.' But let couples — gay or straight — decide if they want the legal protections and obligations of a committed relationship." My questions and uneasy concerns are: 1. Which churches? That brings up the danger that the government would decide which churches could marry people. Since a presidential-type person has recently said that paganism/Wicca are not valid religions, there's potential by any politician to be narrow-minded. 2. Use of the word 'couples' by the article's author. I'm in a committed triad -- I know several others in this town, too -- if we're opening up marriage and bringing it into the current era, let's not close it off using the same arbitrary mindset that got us into this mess in the first place...

_stepping off my soapbox now... thanks for letting me yap away here...