chicagotribune | In the battle over same-sex marriage, opponents are strongly in favor
of deferring to the wisdom of our ancestors. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence
uses the prevailing formula when he says, "I support traditional
marriage." The Christian Coalition of America urges its friends to "Say
'I Do' to Traditional Marriage."
They have friends on the U.S. Supreme Court. In arguments over a
California ban on gay marriage, Justice Samuel Alito expressed
reservations about abandoning time-honored arrangements. "Traditional
marriage has been around for thousands of years," he said, while
same-sex marriage is "newer than cellphones or the Internet."
Invoking age-old customs has not served to convince the American
people, most of whom now favor letting gays wed. But then Americans have
rarely rallied to the idea that we should do something just because
that's what was done in the time of Henry VII or even George Washington.
Ronald Reagan was fond of quoting 18th century pamphleteer Thomas
Paine's ringing declaration, "We have it in our power to begin the world
over again." Beginning the world over again does not imply a slavish
attachment to olden days and olden ways.
America has always been trailblazer of the future, not custodian of
the past. So opposing same-sex marriage on grounds of tradition is a
chancy proposition.
But this approach has another major flaw: What conservatives regard
as traditional marriage is not very traditional at all. It's radically
different from what prevailed a century or two centuries ago. And if you
want to talk about "thousands of years," you'll find that almost
everything about marriage has changed.
The Hebrew King Solomon, after all, was a dedicated polygamist, with
700 wives. Monogamy has always been the norm in Christianity, but not as
part of a marriage of equals.
The 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone explained, "By
marriage, the husband and wife are one person in the law; that is, the
very being or legal existence of a woman is suspended, or at least
incorporated or consolidated into that of the husband, under whose wing,
protection, or cover she performs everything."
Women generally couldn't enter into contracts without permission from
their husbands. In legal status, they were a notch above sheep and
goats. In America, it was not until well into the 19th century that
states began to grant married women something resembling full property
rights.
Even then, marriage had attributes that traditionalists would like to
forget. Husbands who forced themselves on their wives were not guilty
of rape, since they were legally entitled to sexual access.
Contraception was forbidden in many states. Only in 1965 did the Supreme
Court decide that such laws "violate the right of marital privacy."
