Published: March 15, 2013
Later this month, the Supreme Court will hear challenges to two major laws on marriage — California’s Proposition 8 and the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act. Both define marriage as between a man and a woman, and both have sparked heated arguments over what marriage should mean in America today.
Of course, those arguments have a history. So in this hour of BackStory, we look at how past generations of Americans have defined and redefined marriage. We explore the 20th century origins of marriage counseling (and its dark side), as well as a panic over child brides that swept across the country in the late 1930s. We also take a look at how the experience of marriage changed for enslaved people after Emancipation. And we visit a modern-day wedding in Elkton, MD — the former get-hitched-quick capital of America.
Keith Smith
Each Sunday morning at 5 a.m. I listen to Back Story. It is always interesting and educational. I really liked today’s issue: Marriage in America. But I was disappointed you never got up to the 21st century and the significance of gay marriage. My partner and I lived together for 30 years before New York State recognized gay marriage. NOw, we are legally married in the state’s eye, but not in the federal government’s. We are hoping that the Supreme Court will see this as a civil rights case, but are doubtful because of so many conservative judges.
Keep up the good work, but also, do not ignore 10% of all populations.
Keith Smith
Missy
I haven’t got a great deal of time to build my case, but the idea of consent in marriage is far older than the 17th century- it can be chased back at least as far as the 11th century, after Europe had been more or less fully Christianized for a while.
Christianity’s fundamental innovation was to recognize women’s souls as fully valid in the eyes of God (after all it was primarily women and the disenfranchised that initially took up and spread the cause of Christianity before it moved up the ladder to apostles -> lower classes -> middle classes -> senators -> emperors. Christianity was a grass roots organization at its inception).
Prior to the widespread acceptance of Christianity, a woman could be married off by her family as a form of property, without her input. After all, her soul and mind and body were of lesser value to the gods. After Christianity, the premise that women’s souls were equal in the eyes of God was slowly accepted, though this was not the same as being equal to men in value in society. As the Church began inserting itself into the marriage process, for a woman to stand in front of and eventually inside of a church with a prospective husband, the Church had to confirm that she consented to the union.
Of course this was only theoretical, and naturally many women were coerced by their families to enter into marriages, arranged or otherwise. But the idea that *consent* and potentially *love* from both parties was required for a holy matrimony to ensue was a concept that took seed in the early medieval period, the veritable adolescence of Christianity.
For starters, see:
- “Marriage in Medieval Culture: Consent Theory and the Case of Joseph and Mary” by Irven M. Resnick
- Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages by Frances Gies, Joseph Gies
- Tales of the marriage bed from medieval France (1300-1500) by R. C. Famiglietti