What is Marriage?
For the most part, people have no idea what marriage is. When you then start to talk about gay marriage, or bestiality or man boy love, then you don’t have a foundation to stand on, to even begin to argue your points. Let’s do away with all this nonsense of not understand, define what marriage is and where it came from, so that when someone comes to you saying they “really love their dog”, you can refute them with a sound argument and them which way, how, and when they can go to hell, in the most polite way possible. For the children! Because, I always do things for the children [joke]. Before we can define what we “think” marriage is today, let’s look at where marriage came from. Nothing on this planet, just happens right here and now. You must know where it came from to even begin to be an adult and have some wisdom. How can you begin to understand why the Koreans hate the Japanese if you have no clue about their wars that they fought? You’d be operating out of a place of ignorance and not one of wisdom. So let’s take a look at where marriage came from.
History of Marriage
First of all, let’s go back to ancient times. Contrary to popular European belief, there was no rampant promiscuity going on in early man. All empirical evidence points to early man actually taking in wives and living a monogamous life.
All authorities agree that during historical times promiscuity has been either non-existent or confined to a few small groups. Did it prevail to any extent during the prehistoric period of the race? Writing between 1860 and 1890, a considerable number of anthropologists, such as Bachofen, Morgan, McLennan, Lubbock, and Giraud-Teulon, maintained that this was the original relationship between the sexes among practically all peoples. So rapidly did the theory win favour that in 1891 it was, according to Westermarck, “treated by many writers as a demonstrated truth” (History of Human Marriage, p. 51). It appealed strongly to those believers in organic evolution who assumed that the social customs of primitive man, including sex relations, must have differed but slightly from the corresponding usages among the brutes. It has been eagerly adopted by the Marxian Socialists, on account of its agreement with their theories of primitive common property and of economic determinism. According to the latter hypothesis, all other social institutions are, and have ever been, determined by the underlying economic institutions; hence in the original condition of common property, wives and husbands must likewise have been held in common (see Engles, “The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State”, tr. from German, Chicago, 1902). Indeed, the vogue which the theory of promiscuity for a time enjoyed seems to have been due far more to a priori considerations of the kind just mentioned, and to the wish to believe in it, than to positive evidence.
Ancient marriage and even more recent historical marriage wasn’t the romanticized thing that we want to think it means today. The fact is, marriage was for one thing and one thing only: to produce children. This production of children in early man was a very desperate need. We don’t think of this as a need these days with 6.7 billion people on the planet. Now we see children as a nuisance and a drain on the money. Before children were seen as a little more than slave labor force.
After careful consideration, due to children being the product of marriage, quite a few smart fellows saw a great opportunity to get marriage to do for them what a sword couldn’t, i.e. make peace.
When we look at the marriage customs of our ancestors, we discover several striking facts. For example, for the most of Western history, marriage was not a mere personal matter concerning only husband and wife, but rather the business of their two families which brought them together. Most marriages, therefore, were arranged. Moreover, the wife usually had much fewer rights than her husband and was expected to be subservient to him. To a considerable extent, marriage was also an economic arrangement. There was little room for romantic love, and even simple affection was not considered essential. Procreation and cooperation were the main marital duties.
So marriage could quell wars, and build an economic bond between two people, with a free labor force, depending on the fertility of the woman. Let’s focus on this for a second. Imagine this, just you getting a roommate, who shares all of your expenses equally, cuts down on your own personal expenditure of expenses. Now jump to the idea of being married. You’ve not only cut down your expenses, but all of your needs are taken care of [yes ladies AND guys, I said all] and your wealth grows. Now add in kids, who work for you for free, basically. Your production goes up, assuming you have a business that needs laborers, and your wealth, again, grows. As your children grow and marry, you create a tiny empire unto yourself. Then, you go into an agreement with another man, such as yourself, and agree to pool your empire with his empire through the marriage of your child to his.
Rights in Marriage
Everyone talks about rights and rights in marriage. The truth is heterosexual couples have been and still are fighting for rights and freedoms away from the federal govern. What about ancient historical marital rights? Let’s look at Rome and Greece:
In ancient Greece marriage was seen as a fundamental social institution. Indeed, the great lawgiver Solon once contemplated making marriage compulsory, and in Athens under Pericles bachelors were excluded from certain important public positions. Sparta, while encouraging sexual relationships between men, nevertheless insisted on their marrying and producing children. Single and childless men were treated with scorn.
However, while marriage was deemed important, it was usually treated as a practical matter without much romantic significance. A father arranged the most advantageous marriage for his son and then had a contract signed before witnesses. Shortly thereafter a wedding celebration was held and the young couple (who might never have met before) was escorted to bed. All marriages were monogamous. As a rule, the bridegroom was in his thirties and the bride was a teenager. In addition to this disparity in ages there also existed an inequality in education and political rights. Women were considered inferior to men and remained confined to the home. Their main function as wives was to produce children and to manage the household while their husbands tended to public affairs. For their erotic needs, men often turned to prostitutes and concubines.
Marital rights started and ended on the question of legal inheritance. Again, it’s about the kids, the offspring. The marriage itself is never concerned with if the man loves the woman and how well they get along. The marriage is concerned about did she produce children and does she sleep around… in case she produces illegitimate children.
The Heart of Marriage
All of this article is going to fall on its face with this next sentence. Everything said thus far about marriage, only concerned men who had money. If you did not have money, or rights [as in you weren’t a citizen] it didn’t matter what you did. For the most part, in western civilization, marriage and marriage rights revolves around property owners. If you don’t own property, who cares who you marry and who’s going to inherit your non-property.
This entire pop culture reference to marriage then, is a farce and a scam. If you don’t “establish” yourself, i.e. get married, build a house and own land, then you’re pretending to have a life. This comes full circle to the economic situation we are in now. This stupid practice of credit and building credit is nothing more than a ploy to get you to give away all of your rights, property and money. Bear with me here. People were being expected to move and buy a new house every 2 years, to make a profit on the old house. However, if you were to go back to the way a wealthy person lives, you’d establish a family base, buy land, build a house, get married, have children and pass all of that on to your children. Your children then have nearly nothing in their life to worry about except building the family wealth even more and passing it on to their children.
With sound economic sense and the wisdom to realize how marriage is really intended to be used, even a poor man can achieve wealth and be safe and secure in his home. At the heart of this all is marriage.
European Court of Strasbourg declares that gay marriage is not a human right.
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