Saturday, January 9, 2010

Want to redefine marriage?

I found this article very interesting. Especially the part about polygamy being the “subject of contentious national debate”. It got me thinking. Some believe that marrying more than one woman is okay, and that both marriages are true marriages. Although this isn’t the popular idea in America, it fits in with the definition society has held of marriage in the past. Marriage is between one woman and one man (as is the popular way of putting it). Polygamy fits this. One man marries one woman, and he just so happens to also have another marriage to one woman. This can multiply for however many wives the man has. So, he has a “marriage” with wife 1, a “marriage” with wife 2 and so on. One woman and one man. This seems to be less controversial than what America wants to call marriage.

So why is no one in America looking to change marriage to include polygamy? The new definition (as was added by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary) is: the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage.

Why do we want to stop there? Why not include polygamy? If we really think that we can make up our own definition for something like marriage, why not include anything and everything you are “united to”?

The answer is simple. Americans in fact don’t want marriage to include everything in the marriage definition because deep within their hearts they know there is only one way to have a true marriage. And it’s not declared by the state, nor by one’s own opinions about it. It’s a shame to see how much convincing we do, when in the end, we still can’t hide from the truth.

By the way, a Catholic marriage is defined as a: ...covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring, has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptized.

More on marriage here.

2 comments:

  1. Thank you, Ruth, for putting up the prayer button for Ray. That is very kind of you!

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  2. Of course! You, Ray and all your family are in my prayers.

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