Tuesday, November 08, 2011

You must maintain bigotry, lest we be called bigots II

Here's the first post about Bishop Salvatore Cordileone's testimony against the repeal of DOMA, given at a recent Senate hearing. There is one sentence in that testimony that I want to pick up on here:
Any non-conforming conduct and even expressions of disagreement [about gay marriage], based simply on support for marriage as understood since time immemorial, are wrongly being treated as if they harmed society, and somehow constituted a form of evil equal to racism.
This guy sounds like Katherine Kersten, doesn't he? Marriage as we know it today is hardly timeless.

Marriage has changed a lot over the centuries. Somehow, the idea that Mr. and Mrs. Cro Magnon are just like a married couple today doesn't ring true for me. And what about the centuries of plural marriage, continuing in some places even today?

Marriages used to be arranged; again, they still are in some places. Or how about the fact that married women used to be unable to own property in their own names and had little or no right to inherit?

You also have to love the Biblical rules that if a guy raped a woman who was "unbetrothed," he paid a bride price of fifty shekels and married her, or that a widow had to marry her brother in law, whether he already had a wife or not. You do love those rules, don't you? Well, maybe not.

Not many of us yearn for the days when a divorce was nearly impossible to get, and domestic abuse didn't exist, either, at least in the law.

So, the bishop is full of doo doo when he paints marriage as this timeless, changeless institution. It has gone through many changes as the culture and scientific knowledge have changed.

It is going through another one right now, and believe me, Bishop, it won't be denied, regardless of what you think.

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