My great-grandmother, who was a wonderful, bright, generous woman, once told me about that time. She said it was truly horrible. She felt like dirt. She felt dirty, unworthy of love or even of being alive. Understand that when she felt this way, she was a teenager. She was socially isolated, soon pregnant, and, on a daily basis, made to feel like she didn't deserve the basic love and dignity that other people could have, just because of who she was.
The people who did this to her weren't evil people. I'm sure they thought they were doing the right thing. I'm sure they felt it was important to take a stand, to show the world that this kind of union would not be approved of of accepted. It was important to define marriage as only fitting between certain kinds of people, otherwise it would destroy marriage forever.
In the end, my great-grandmother went on to become a valued member of her community. Italians and Irish people continued to marry each other. Eventually, no one saw that as a big deal anymore. It also didn't destroy marriage as an institution. The people who tried to stop the marriage didn't succeed. Well, I suppose they succeeded in making someone hurt and miserable. They made her feel dirty, unworthy, and marginalized. So I guess that's something.
Dan Cathy recently said, "I think we are
inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him
and say 'we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage'
and I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful,
arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what
marriage is about."
My statement back to him is that in EVERY generation, there have been people who had the audacity to be 'prideful and arrogant' enough to think we could define what marriage is. There were people with the audacity to realize that it was not just wrong but downright horrible to force a girl to marry the man who raped her. So we changed marriage there. There were people with the audacity to realize we shouldn't value a woman's virginity over her life, so we changed marriage there. There were people who had the audacity to believe it was okay to live life as a single person, without social penalty or a tax penalty. So we changed marriage there.
People faced down angry parents and married for love. People faced down the leaders of their churches and began to marry outside their faith. People faced down social and religious stigma and fought for more humane divorce laws. People opted to remarry, despite the social and religious stigma against that. People married and chose not to have children. Slaved married in secret, just to have that one bit of happiness in their lives, despite the chance of horrible consequences if they were discovered.
Instead of being angry that our current generation is being audacious enough to open up what marriage can be again, be grateful to them, and to everyone in the past who did the same thing. People have died for the rights of sexual autonomy and personal choice in who we can love and how we can express that love. And all the while, ALL THE WHILE, marriage has never been destroyed and it won't be. It's just too much a part of who we are.
In the meantime, when people try to prevent others from having the basic marriage rights they have, they will tell themselves they are doing the right thing. They will assume they are taking a stand for their culture, their religion, and freedom. Hopefully, if things go the way they have in the past, they will not succeed in preventing the new marriages from happening. Nor will marriage stop existing as an institution. But they will succeed in making people feel dirty and unworthy and marginalized. The more extreme of them will hurt some people, maybe even kill them. They might even lead some others into suicide. So . . . I guess that's something.
My statement back to him is that in EVERY generation, there have been people who had the audacity to be 'prideful and arrogant' enough to think we could define what marriage is. There were people with the audacity to realize that it was not just wrong but downright horrible to force a girl to marry the man who raped her. So we changed marriage there. There were people with the audacity to realize we shouldn't value a woman's virginity over her life, so we changed marriage there. There were people who had the audacity to believe it was okay to live life as a single person, without social penalty or a tax penalty. So we changed marriage there.
People faced down angry parents and married for love. People faced down the leaders of their churches and began to marry outside their faith. People faced down social and religious stigma and fought for more humane divorce laws. People opted to remarry, despite the social and religious stigma against that. People married and chose not to have children. Slaved married in secret, just to have that one bit of happiness in their lives, despite the chance of horrible consequences if they were discovered.
Instead of being angry that our current generation is being audacious enough to open up what marriage can be again, be grateful to them, and to everyone in the past who did the same thing. People have died for the rights of sexual autonomy and personal choice in who we can love and how we can express that love. And all the while, ALL THE WHILE, marriage has never been destroyed and it won't be. It's just too much a part of who we are.
In the meantime, when people try to prevent others from having the basic marriage rights they have, they will tell themselves they are doing the right thing. They will assume they are taking a stand for their culture, their religion, and freedom. Hopefully, if things go the way they have in the past, they will not succeed in preventing the new marriages from happening. Nor will marriage stop existing as an institution. But they will succeed in making people feel dirty and unworthy and marginalized. The more extreme of them will hurt some people, maybe even kill them. They might even lead some others into suicide. So . . . I guess that's something.
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