Re: Is "GAY MARRIAGE" valid because such may have existed in the

On Jul 4, 6:00=A0am, Howard Brazee <how...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Marriage should be a sacrament.
>
> Get the state out of the business of defining marriage. =A0

What the fundamentalists refuse to acknowledge is that marriage is a
societal construct and has been since the first men stood up on their
two feet and walked onto the veldt.  Religion had nothing to do with
it.  Marriage developed as a method by which societies defined
inheritance and property rights.  Depending on the society this
matrilineal or patrilineal.  In the Western world our idea of marriage
comes from the Romans.  It was monogamous and patriarchal.  Women were
chattel being passed from their fathers to their husbands with very
few rights of their own.  After the fall of the Empire, marriage was
practiced among the titled cl***** complete with clergy saying some
appropriate words.  Marriages were arranged not for love but for
economic or political reasons.  For example, Henry II [of England]
married Eleanor of Acquitaine with the result that he owned most of
modern France.  Serfs and other people of lower cl***** did not get
married in churches for two simple reasons.  First they could not
afford to pay for the ceremony and second they had no reason to do
so.  Marriage for them was what we would now call "common law"
marriage, that is a simple declaration of the fact, like moving in
together, perhaps with some sort of party.

Among the lower class and middle class, marriage in the sense of going
to a church and having some sort of words said commences with Martin
Luther who acknowledges it as a civil institution being blessed by the
church.  It is not until the early Victorian age that it was firmly
established.  In the states, on the frontier marriage remained very
much of the common law sort but where clergy were available words
might be said blessing the union.

So marriage has always been the business of the state or its
predecessors.