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-Short Attention Span Theater-
NYT - Stephanie Coontz: Taking Marriage Private
2007-11-27
I'm leaving this one, but as a mod let me make clear, we're getting too many off-topic submissions.
WHY do people — gay or straight — need the state’s permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didn’t, because marriage was a private contract between two families. The parents’ agreement to the match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its validity.

For 16 centuries, Christianity also defined the validity of a marriage on the basis of a couple’s wishes. If two people claimed they had exchanged marital vows — even out alone by the haystack — the Catholic Church accepted that they were validly married.

In 1215, the church decreed that a “licit” marriage must take place in church. But people who married illictly had the same rights and obligations as a couple married in church: their children were legitimate; the wife had the same inheritance rights; the couple was subject to the same prohibitions against divorce.
Posted by:Delphi

#2  The comments in pink aren't my own, but the Moderators. Thank you for leaving this up. I will be more careful in the future.

Posted by: Delphi   2007-11-27 11:55  

#1  Delphi: you're right. Make it a rule - no NYT's pieces no matter how relative or irrelevant.
Posted by: Jack is Back!   2007-11-27 09:53  

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