Marriage, Among Other Things

It's a topic that keeps coming up -- more on it at Andrew Sullivan this morning (actually, yesterday, I suppose -- I think Sullivan probably gets up later than I do [make that "recently" -- this post took a couple of days to finish]), Epinions Addicts, a few other places. I just wanted to make a few basic comments. ("First causes," remember?)

When I get someone going on and on about "traditional marriage," my first response is generally one simple question:

"Did your father-in-law accept payment in cattle or sheep?"

It's about property. It's always been about property. Sometimes property and politics, sometimes property and social status, sometimes property and property. It seems, however, that there has always been a transfer of property, of some sort. Even the "procreation" is about property: getting legitimate heirs (i.e., we all know who their father was) to inherit the property. It's still about property. Think about buying a house, retirement plans and beneficiaries, all the federal privileges of marriage -- they're all about property.

The motivations for getting married may have changed in the past hundred years or so, but the institution itself hasn't all that much -- except that wives and children are no longer property themselves, at least in the West.

A tangent off that "knowing who their father was" remark: Reading a very interesting book, a cultural history of the early modern period in the Ottoman Empire (Suraiya Faroqhi's Subjects of the Sultan), in which the author talks about the cultural role of women. As most places, aside from the upper segments of society, it's not very well documented, but there are some interesting things to note, particularly for any feminist Islam-bashers in the audience: women held property in their own right, and widows, in addition to a share of the estate (which went first to children, by the way), were due a sum of money on the death of their husband. They also went into business for themselves, sometimes because they inherited one, sometimes because they needed cash.

This is by way of noting another thing about marriage: if you want a good take on the role of women in "traditional" marriage, one need only read a little bit of history to realize that we think those times and places when women were allowed to own property and retain control of it when married worthy of comment. (Biblical Israel, as nearly as I can determine, was not one of those times or places.)

With this background, the religious pronouncements on the idea that the love between a woman and man is somehow more so than the love between a man and man, or woman and woman, strikes me as so much self-serving rhetoric. (But then, most of the pronouncements of most hierarchical religions strike me as self-serving rhetoric.) (The Christian Church, by the way, didn't even recognize marriage as a sacrament until the 11th or 12th century. So much for the idea of getting government out of marriage and leaving it to the churches. The government has a significantly prior claim.) The churches have a political aim here, which is perfectly aligned with their historic function as a means of social control.

So you see, once again the Christianists have perverted the whole idea. (For a take on just how successful the Christianists have been on the marriage front, see this post at Pam's House Blend.)

At Random, the Mini-series:

Law Day

I kid you not. The preznit proclaimed May 1 as "Law Day." The theme: "Liberty Under Law: Separate Branches, Balanced Powers."

Puh-leeze.

This is the president who has stated his authority to ignore over 750 specific laws passed since he took office. That doesn't even count the ones passed before. See this piece by Charlie Savage from the Boston Globe:

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Stephen Colbert

Pick your favorite lefty blog and you'll find some coverage of Colbert's performance at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. Pick your favorite daily, and you probably won't (although Dan Froomkin did a piece at WaPo).

(Froomkin also provided the link for Charlie Savage's article. In fact, read Froomkin's whole column. Do it. This is not optional.)

Truth in Politics

An interesting observation from Freedom Camp:

Democrats don't have to avail themselves of dog-whistle politics precisely because, on the whole, their policy proposals are not cause for instinctual revulsion among most Americans. The left doesn't have to come up with euphemisms for eradicating HeadStart or decimating environmental protections; they are for providing tots with educational opportunities and keeping our water potable.

Later. . . .