Should Christians Be Allowed To Marry?
Now I’m not a bigot – even George Brandis thinks that I have a right to be. In fact, some of my friends are Christian, so it’s not that I object to Christians per se and, until recently I was prepared to live and let live. I thought if Christians want to marry, where’s the harm?
However, after a comment that one of them made about marriage equality, I must say that I’ve been forced to reassess my whole attitude on the subject. They told me that if I did some research, I’d find that marriage had a long history and it shouldn’t be changed just to accomodate the latest fad.
So I did just that.
And well, I discovered that marriage has been around for a long time. A very long time. It’s been around nearly as long as we have. In fact, it was shortly after Adam and Eve’s children have that family dispute that we have the first mention of marriage in the Bible. (For those of you who don’t have a knowledge of the Bible, Cain killed his brother Abel then runs off to the Land of Nod where he takes a wife. Personally, I’ve always thought that it was the fact that Adam and Eve weren’t married that led to them being such a dysfuntional family! Ok, it wasn’t totally their fault – there was nobody around to perform the ceremony!)
Anyway, after that we have plenty of marriages: Abraham and Sarah, Noah and his wife who doesn’t rate a name, Jacob and Leah and Rachel (he wants to marry Rachel but as Leah is the oldest he has to marry her before he can marry her sister – it’s hardly polygamy when it’s all in the family like that), Jonathan and David. Heaps. So, it’s pretty clear that marriage predates Christianity by several thousand years. Consequently, I don’t see how Christians can claim that their marriages are “proper” or “legitimate”, because you can’t just change the definition of marriage to suit the latest group who want to claim it as their own.
Yes, I know. Some of you are going to suggest that they’re not doing any harm and if Christians want to marry, what business is it of mine?
And, up to a point, I can agree. If they were just content to call it a “marriage” and leave it at that, I’d have no problem. However, one must consider the children. I fear that many Christians try to indoctrinate their children to be like them rather than allowing them to grow up “naturally” and make up their own minds when they’re of a mature age.
Then there’s the teasing. I know of several children who’ve been very upset by other children teasing them at school. “My parents are Christians,” one told me, “that’s not my fault, is it? So why do the other kids mock me and call me names?”
I mean what can you say to child at a time like this?
So if Christians want to form partnerships, then by all means, let them. But don’t let them call it “marriage” which pre-dates the Christian religion by several thousand years.
And certainly don’t let them have children. After all, Tony Abbott was the product of a so-called marriage between Christians.
21 comments
Login here Register here-
Anthony Element (@observationpt) -
mars08 -
Kaye Lee -
RosemaryJ36 -
Rossleigh -
Kezzz -
Miriam English -
Sen Nearly Ile -
Kyran -
abbienoiraude -
Sir ScotchMistery -
Sir ScotchMistery -
keerti -
Michael -
Pappinbarra Fox -
Rossleigh -
paul walter -
cordannao -
win jeavons -
Sir ScotchMistery -
jim
Return to home pageWell done you.
A very nice piece of satire, and point both well and elegantly made.
Oh wait… So we’re all descended from a couple of bastards?
I had never thought of the Old testament argument before.
Before the 1184 Council of Verona, no specific ritual was prescribed for celebrating a marriage: “Marriage vows did not have to be exchanged in a church, nor was a priest’s presence required. A couple could exchange consent anywhere, anytime.”
As Ross so rightly points out in his inimitable way, it was not the Christians who invented marriage.
And as for the one man and one woman thing, that only became the norm in the West in about the 9th century.
You mention Jonathan and David. http://www.wouldjesusdiscriminate.org/biblical_evidence/david_jonathan.html Sounds close to SSM to me – except they did not formally unite.
Actually, Rosemary, they had a covenant:
Samuel 18:3 “And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself.”
One of your best.thanks for the giggles.
Very nicely done. I’ll have to use this argument next time a religious bonehead tries to argue that marriage should be reserved for christians and denied same sex couples. 🙂
bastards? my parents got married in a registry office, the proverbially 5 minutes before my little sister was born. So I am a b whilst my sister is simply, like millions of catholics, a coow(conceived out of wedlock)?
Remember bashed breeding women being forced, on the promised of purgatory, by asinine church’s, santimonious priests, to stay with disturbed men.
As for the rabbott, he wasn’t borne, he was shot up against a wall and hatched by the sun.
Marriage by peter cook in the great film Princess Bride sums up the xstians beautifully.
My Christian is really rusty. If god created Adam and Eve, wouldn’t he (by any account) have had the authority to perform the marriage ceremony? As to bastardry, didn’t he have a son, borne from a woman he had no ‘knowledge’ of? As to caring for children, didn’t his omnipotence allow his ‘only son’ to be crucified?
“dysfunctional family” OMG. And may your god go with you.
Thankyou, Rossleigh. Take care
I laughed…gawd I laughed at you Rossleigh as well as “Sen Nearly IIe.”
Wonderful.
No going to the idea that women were not ‘allowed’ to be in the mix of choosing who they married ( Father ‘owned’ them then the ‘husband’)…and no children were the mother’s as they were owned by the man as well….You see, if she was upset and wanted to swan off then she could not take her children, or her property ( given to her by her father) or her money or her life…coz they just weren’t hers to begin ( and end) with.
Years and millennia of it….Women being owned controlled and bought and sold by men…
And then along came the Church.
Well they wanted their ‘pound of flesh’ ( Shakespeare) and became the ‘conduit’ ( ie paying money to get married ) and so NEEDED women to be ‘virgins’ and owned by any man who would claim her…her father, her brothers, her husband, her sons, and the (male) Church.
How long has it been that ‘marriage’ mattered freely to women????
Oh about 50 years! Even then it was ‘do what I say’ (says the Church and the ‘family’).
Thank you Ross…There is more to this than meets the woman.
I remember when I was a young person ( around 12) being told that if you leave your husband the only thing you have a ‘right’ to was a sewing machine ( by English law)…a bloody sewing machine, so you can make your own living and way in the world!
How’s them banana’s Xtian dickheads?
Rosemary I am shocked beyond calculation.
SSM
Calculations..
I’ve always thought that if someone needed to be in an institution, that marriage would be a good one! At the same time I’ve also always thought that if you wanted to be in a marriage that you should be put into an institution!
When was the Old Testament first written, again?
When Noah boarded the ark he only took family so for the continuation of the human species incest must have been the norm and being god fearing good Old Testament folk they would have married. So they had to marry within the family. So marriage outside the family is a johnny-come-lately concept.
Well, actually Pappinbarra Fox, it could be argued that it was already incestuous from the days of the Garden of Eden. Although the Bible also tells us that Cain went off and found a wife in the Land of Nod, Adam, Eve and he were the only people on earth, so there’s not only a Biblical case for polygamy. but it also appears marrigage to animals is ok.
Was it Lot who was seduced by his daughters who got him drunk, to perpetuate the race?
Saucy minxes.
Marriage is a description of two parts, when joined together a nut and bolt are married.
Marriage means joined together.
If Christians, Jews, Muslims or Hindi etc. want to label the joining a marriage that’s fine by me as long as they are happy to accept other versions of marriage.
I may be old, but I never accepted the idea that a father ( or brother ) could give the bride away. On the other hand my father married me ( he was the parson ).
Jebus Win, and I thought i was the only groom that was married by my father.
If this is a fact then why don’t our intels shout this at every level.I say this ’cause 99% of the population would think marriage was a Christian thing.LOL