PJ Media

Tex Taylor is right, marriage was, prior to the mid 1800s mostly a religious institution. But let’s be totally clear about the history of marriage. The Catholic Church actually had formalized rights to sanctify same-sex relationships (those darned Greeks and Romans who ran things back then you know) before a formal liturgy for straight marriage. Back at the beginning of marriage (you know, traditional marriage) women were property, and in biblical times, polygamy was common and accepted.

So Tex, even the “religious” definition of marriage has changed much over time, so it’s that whole institution that’s under-girded society for millenia thing after all.

Then, people started getting divorces and annulments, and some of the wealthier noble women wanted their share, and the Church decided it wanted no part of having to divide up property, so the Church itself gave over the control of marriage to the government. All they wanted to do was have weddings and the nice receptions that followed.

So here’s the rub in all this. Once the church turned over marriage to the government, it became a civil issue. But people, through the government, still kept piling benefits on married people…legal, property, tax, and all sorts of other benefits. So it became, like it or not Tex, a civil institution to which a large portion of government-funded and mandated benefits accrue.

The founders, though struggling withe issue of equality for all themselves, we smart enough to know that America should move towards that very ideal. They wrote a Constitution that says, in civil matters, everyone gets treated equally. To make sure of that, they didn’t form a democracy, the gave us a democratic republic. In our form of government, the majority rules, but they can never take away equal rights from the minority…that’s in the Constitution. That’s why there are checks and balances and an independent judiciary.

So the question is Tex, how would you feel if we voted to outlaw your particular religion? You’d scream bloody murder, and pull out your copy of the Constitution and start quoting. This sense of entitlement just amazes me. Just because you are in the majority does not give you the right to vote on my rights. That attitude is as un-American as it gets, and flies in the face of what the founders intended. As my grandfather would say, “your right to swing your fist stops at the tip of my nose.” You don’t get to vote in a law that says otherwise, and unless your only motivation is hate, why would you want to?

It’s really sad how little of history and civics people bother to understand these days.