Marriage Isn’t A Recent Invention

Laurie Essig is a lesbian with a message — marriage, whether
between gay or heterosexual couples, is wrong. And Essig isn’t about to let
tiny details like historical facts get in the way (Same-sex marriage).

Essig’s argument against marriage is the typical radical feminist
view that was borrowed from Marxism — marriage is an inherently
oppressive social institution. “Although we like to pretend that marriage is
natural and universal,” Essig writes, “it is an institution founded in
historical, material and cultural conditions that ensured women’s
oppression…”

The logical fallacy here is jumping to the conclusion that any
social institution created by an oppressive culture must itself, by
definition, be oppressive. Taking this argument at its face value is what
leads some radical feminists to condemn things like science as inherently
oppressive to women.

But Essig really drops the ball when she bizarrely claims that
“Monogamous, heterosexual marriages were an invention of the Industrial
Revolution’s emerging middle-class.” This claim is so absurdly wrong that
it’s unbelievable the Salon editor’s let it pass.

Monogamous, heterosexual marriage didn’t exist until the Industrial
Revolution? That assertion would have come as a shock to the Romans,
the Hebrews, the Greeks and a whole host of other societies that
practiced monogamous, heterosexual marriage. Has Essig really never noticed the
numerous proscriptions against adultery in the Old Testament? Or read
any of the tedious Church writings on marriage in medieval Europe?

Even in cultures where monogamous marriage was not the rule, some
form of marriage institution is pretty much universal (anyone who
disagree is more than welcome to name a single culture that had absolutely no
marriage-like institution).

In fact, although clearly most Westerners today might not want some
of the sexist excesses of medieval or even Victorian marriage, marriage
survives as an institution precisely because it appeals to something
very deep in the human psyche. Essig finds this impulse to marriage
appalling.

What annoys me is that no one, not even queers, can imagine anything
other than marriage as a model for organizing our desires.

Essig does have a point that the state shouldn’t favor (nor
penalize) marriage over other forms of personal relationships. Someone who
wants to remain single shouldn’t be penalized for that decision (although
today it is married couples, not single individuals, who are penalized
by the tax code).

Other than that, though, Essig’s attack on marriage as a social
institution is historically inaccurate and absurd.

The Marriage Isn’t A Recent Invention by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

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