Vital records are the official documents of the birth, marriage, divorce, and death of members of a society. They are currently kept by an office of state government, but before the 19th or 20th century these documents were under the control of religious institutions, i.e., churches. For example, the state of Nebraska has birth and […]
I have written a number of times about marriage, especially about the oxymoron “same-sex marriage.” Do a search on the word “marriage” to find them. Marriage is a social matter; societies formalize and recognize marriages within a society. There have been significant differences between societies, such as including polygamy or not. Modern societies have civil
The dissertation When Two Become One: Reconsidering Marriage as a Sacrament in Protestant Theology by Adam Neal is online here. What follows are excerpts from the conclusion, pp. 304-310. This study has set out to provide a coherent presentation for why Christian theology should consider marriage as explicitly sacred, and, in particular, advanced comprehensive argumentation
In abstract algebra, a semiring is an algebraic structure similar to a ring, but without the requirement that each element must have an additive inverse. Analogously, what could be called a semi-marriage is like a marriage, but without the requirement that the persons be of opposite sex. (Compare here.) How would this work? First, a
The four explanatory factors (aka four causes) Aristotle described can be used to explain marriage in a time in which people have forgotten what marriage is. The ancient book of Genesis provides the explanation, so it’s not a recent attempt to promote an agenda. Societies through the ages have implicitly followed the explanation, which may
God created marriage, but civil marriage was invented by man. With the French Revolution, religious marriage ceremonies were made secondary to civil marriage. This spread to other countries in the 19th century. Today, outside of the Middle East, civil marriage is the only legal marriage; religiously recognized marriage has no legal status. With the rise of same-sex marriage,
At first civil unions were allowed in several states for same-sex domestic partnerships. Then judges said they were equivalent to civil marriages. Now the U.S. Supreme Court has redefined civil marriage to include same-sex domestic partnerships. Essentially the Court has downgraded civil marriages to civil unions. States should respond by replacing civil marriages with civil unions. Why? That
Human beings certainly have a greater variation of behavior than other kinds of organisms but that should not obscure the existence of norms. The norm for human beings is monogamy: a marriage of one man and one woman. The existence of variations from that norm and failures to adhere to the norm do not invalidate the
