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Sparkle (1)
A long time ago I was a Deputy County Clerk for the County of Los Angeles. Part of my job was to issue marriage licenses. I think that was the best part of the job. There were specific tasks I had to perform, questions to ask and I watched as the couple swore or affirmed what they said was the truth.
Sometimes I looked at a couple and thought “For the love of humanity dude, run, do not marry this chick!” or maybe “Hell, they don’t need a license, they are already married in their hearts.”
I did have one lady who I think was working on marriage number 14. I like persistence but at some point you got to give it a rest. There was such a range of people. All with hope and expectations of what they thought marriage was or will do for them. One person loving the other more. Immigration marriages. Impulsive marriages. Love beyond measure so strong it was an honor to prepare the license for them.
Many people seem to conjure a culturally supported mythical image of what an American marriage looks like. I grew up on this particular version (in re-runs, I’m not that old.) of what a typical married household looked like when I was growing up.
This is the opening from The Donna Reed Show.
Definitions of Marriage
I’m going to start old school and open up my paper bound Webster new Explorer Desk Encyclopedia:
Legally and social sanctioned union between, usually, a man and one or more women that accords status to their offspring and is regulated by laws and customs that prescribe the rights and duties of the partners.(Page 759)
The online marriage'>marriage'>Merrian-Webster dictionary has a slightly different meaning:
(1): the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2): the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage.
And to be fair let’s put up a gender neutral definition from Cultural Anthropology, The Human Challenge:
A non-ethnocentric definition of marriage is a culturally sanctioned union between two or more people that establishes certain rights and obligations between the people, between them and their children and between them and their in-laws. (Page 208)
Not matching up to your definition? Yeah, I know. All I have been hearing for the past couple of weeks is one man, one woman. If I had know that I had options that I could marry more than one man at a time I might have been more open to the concept of matrimony. Go figure. Ignorance is definitely not bliss.
There is no one definition of marriage. It is dependent on the culture, the society and the needs of the community. Some of those needs are of commerce and business. In fact, that was the driving factors in early marriages. Love did not necessarily have anything to do with it.
In Ye Olden Days…
If people really want a traditional marriage you might have to start looking at your biological brother or sister in a new way. 2,000 years ago it was important for farm families to hold on to whatever resources they had. It was easier to marry within the family, the immediate family to maintain control over property.
There is an extensive historical article that goes in depth at the History of Marriage by the Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology. In this passage is an explanation of how Greek and Roman marriages were designed. A Greek or Roman man could be married and still play both sides of the street:
A father arranged the most advantageous marriage for his son and then had a contract signed before witnesses. Shortly thereafter a wedding celebration was held and the young couple (who might never have met before) was escorted to bed. All marriages were monogamous. As a rule, the bridegroom was in his thirties and the bride was a teenager. In addition to this disparity in ages there also existed an inequality in education and political rights. Women were considered inferior to men and remained confined to the home. Their main function as wives was to produce children and to manage the household while their husbands tended to public affairs. For their erotic needs, men often turned to prostitutes and
