Traditional Marriage Can Have Many Definitions (Page 1 of 2)

Here in Tennessee, we’ll be asked to vote about marriage in November’s election. Marriage, you know, is a sacred institution, ordained by God, between a man and a woman. Any other definition of marriage would a) destroy the institution of marriage and our social structure with it; b) tamper with a sacrament that God ordained and established; c) make some of us really uncomfortable; d) I don’t want to talk about it.

Those are the popular choices in much of East Tennessee, and you don’t have to get very far into a discussion before the cultural biases begin to show up. And the selective memory. Arguments run quickly to the Bible as the foundation of marriage as we know it.

There’s a fairly decent point to be made that our governments—federal, state, and local—are responsible to respect the rights of all its citizens and should not be basing legislation or practices exclusively on the holy book of only one segment, no matter how large. But let’s set that aside.

In order to be ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church, USA, I had to become pretty familiar with the Bible while I was in Seminary. In my life before that, I memorized large chunks of the Bible; I could spit out the Book of Galatians verbatim at one time without even thinking.

The Bible says a little about marriage and tells a lot of stories about men and women. The sacred institution, as practiced by God’s chosen people, bears little resemblance to what most of us in the Christian world now call the sacred institution of marriage. Polygamy was pretty common in the Old Testament. Tell Abraham about the one-wife rule and he would laugh (I’m not sure that Hagar and Sarah would, though Sarah does have a famous laughing scene in those stories).

Polygamy was common and did not apparently offend God, though it didn’t always work out so well for the humans. Abraham’s grandson Esau, says the Bible, was 40 years old when he married Judith, the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite, “And they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.” In-laws, you know. Isaac and Rebekah sent the other son, Jacob, out of Hittite country to find his mate. He found two; he married sisters. Esau, the older boy, got wind of the trip, realized his women were not pleasing to the folks, and went off to find someone more acceptable. His third wife was his cousin, Mahalath. Ah, the noble, Biblical institution of marriage.

Whether you are a Biblical literalist who takes these stories at face value, or someone who thinks they are instructive stories, or are just a disinterested observer from another faith, the undeniable point is this: The Bible is not so cut and dried on this marriage business as a lot of people remember.

Selective memory, see. There is a verse in Genesis about a man and woman cleaving together that is recited at almost every wedding; it’s burned into people’s brains, and it has become the picture of a Bible marriage. Only it’s not. God even had one guy get married just to send a message (check out the opening chapter of Hosea, in the Old Testament).

There are a lot of decent arguments to be made about preserving the institution of marriage in our society, but the “God wants it this way because the Bible says so” is not one of them. When you hear that argument, you are hearing someone who is backing up his personal bigotry with what he hopes is an authoritative source. They just seem to forget that their authoritative source’s second greatest teacher, the Apostle Paul, wrote: “In Christ there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Greek.” Selective memory.

So what about those other decent arguments for preserving the institution of marriage: good for the kids, social structure, gives us some legal clarity on voluntary relationships, property ownership, inheritance rights, end-of-life decisions. Funny thing, though. None of these arguments has anything at all to do with gender. These benefits to society would accrue whether the married couple were man/woman, woman/woman, man/man.

But, whoa! We’re not used to thinking like that.

A couple years ago I went to Nashville when the legislature was all abuzz about protecting the institution of marriage from collapse in the face of civil rights advocates who want the benefits of marriage extended to same-sex couples. (Funny, the same people who argue against affirmative action, saying the government should be color-blind, get apoplectic if you suggest the state should be gender-blind when it gives out marriage licenses.)