I just posted this to the Facebook page and wanted to share it here:

 

The Supreme Court arguments have drawn a lot of discussion to this Facebook page this week. Since LGBToday is a project about history, I feel compelled to reply specifically to one of the lawyer’s arguments that we should not make marriage genderless because that would stray from its historical purpose of procreation.

Time for a history lesson. Marriage is a constantly evolving institution. You’ve probably heard by now how the Bible mentions many forms of marriage – men must marry their brother’s widows, women must marry their rapists, men may take multiple wives at once… In US law in the last 100 years or so, we have legalized divorce, legalized birth control for use by married couples, and changed the gender roles by making a woman no longer the legal property of her husband, to name a few. I’d also like to point that passing a law defining marriage as a man and a woman could even be considered “redefining traditional marriage” since it passing yet another law about this institution that didn’t exist before.

Getting back to the procreation issue, it is obvious that heterosexuals have the right to marry whether they are going to produce biological children or not. It is clear that there are other historic reasons for marriage that no longer apply such as the transfer of one family’s land to another. Please remember that the US SUPREME COURT ruled in 1965 that it was unconstitutional to ban a married couple from using birth control. To clarify, that prevents procreation.

There are so many other arguments I would love to take down, but I just had to get that history one out there.