Marriage is an outdated patriarchal tradition, in my ever so humble opinion. Up until about four thousand years ago families were small groups of up to thirty people. Most anthropologists believe these groups had several male leaders and multiple women shared among them. Marriage became popular sometime after 2350 BC. The idea that a man and a woman should marry has since spread through the many cultures of the world like a virus that never goes away, kind of like herpes.
As hunter-gatherers settled down humans entered into the age of agriculture and as a result, property ownership became important. As property ownership gained importance so too did marriage. The purpose of marriage was to bind one woman to one man so that the man would be guaranteed his heirs were 100% his children. Women were chattels to be given away on their wedding day along with some livestock and property or some other dowry. Essentially the father of the bride would pay a man to take his daughter for a wife. Love and morality had nothing to do with getting married.
While women were bound to one man the same could not be said of the man in some cultures. Ancient Hebrew men could have multiple wives, ancient married Greek and Roman men could satisfy their needs with concubines, prostitutes and teenage male lovers, however the women were to remain faithful. A little lop-sided, if you ask me.
The Catholic Church may have been happy to preform marriage ceremonies since the eighth century but it didn’t become cannon law until 1563 at the Council of Trent. From then on the Catholic Church only recognized marriages preformed by them as legal. I suspect from then on marriage became a moral issue.
I should mention that I’m not anti marriage, it’s fine for people who want to be married. I also happen to think that monogamy is a made up social construct but that’s a whole other article.
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My Phoenix Rising 