If you love your house so much why don’t you marry it?
by digby
CALLER: I was listening to Bryan Fischer, and there was a question about if the Supreme Court decides to go with gay marriage, which I hope they never do — but anyway, I was listening to Bryan Fischer, and to show you how far this can get out of hand, I heard Bryan speak about a woman had married a house. That’s really strange, isn’t it?
PERKINS: I wonder if it came with a mortgage?
Here’s the bottom line, all right? We know from the social science and from thousands of years of human history, societies rise and fall based upon the strength of families. You want strong communities, strong societies, you have to have strong families. And what’s the key to a strong family? It is a marriage between a man and a woman.
(Hey, I wonder if it came with a big flagpole, amirite??? AMIRITE???)
I really wish they’d be a little bit more specific about this. Throughout history marriage has traditionally been between a man and a woman — or a man and a woman and another woman and another woman etc, etc. Why do they refuse to acknowledge this? And why do they usually lie outright about it being between “one man and one woman”?
When a man is married to more than one wife at a time, the relationship is called polygyny; and when a woman is married to more than one husband at a time, it is called polyandry. If a marriage includes multiple husbands and wives, it can be called polyamory, group or conjoint marriage.
Some very traditional cultures still practice one of more forms of this very traditional form of marriage:
Globally, acceptance of polygamy is common. According to the Ethnographic Atlas, of 1,231 societies noted, 186 were monogamous; 453 had occasional polygyny; 588 had more frequent polygyny; and 4 had polyandry. At the same time, even within societies that allow polygyny, the actual practice of polygyny occurs unevenly. There are exceptions: in Senegal, for example, nearly 47 percent of marriages are multiple Within polygynous societies, multiple wives often become a status symbol denoting wealth, power, and fame. Polyandry is less rare than the figure commonly cited in the Ethnographic Atlas (1980), which listed only those examples found in the Himalayan mountains (28 societies). More recent studies have found more than 50 more societies that practice polyandry.
Critics of marriage equality will sputter and say that these are not cultures of Judeo-Christian origin so they don’t count. But you only have to look in Tony Perkins’ bible to see that polygyny is extremely common in the Judeo-Christian tradition — well, the Judeo part anyway although Christians have found reasons to allow it as well.
I realize this is a stale point but it bugs me whenever I hear these people self-righteously declare that marriage has always been “between one man one woman” when it so clearly has not — and is not even so today in some cultures. Sure most people today practice monogamy or serial monogamy. But it really wasn’t that long ago in human history when they were commonly practicing polygamy. And that means that the institution has evolved from one thing into another. This sacred “tradition” is a lot more malleable than they want to admit.
Nonetheless, I think we’re a very long way from people “marrying” houses. Unless the house is very, very cute.
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