Same Sex Marriages

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             • As late as 1940, married women were not allowed to make a legal contract in twelve states. .
            
             • In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state anti-miscegenation laws in Loving v. Virginia. .
            
             • In 1978, New York became the first state to outlaw rape in marriage. By 1990, only a total of ten states outlawed rape in marriage. In thirty-six states rape in marriage was a crime only in certain circumstances. In four states, rape in marriage was never a crime. .
             These examples, and there are more, clearly documenting that marriage has not been an .
             unchanging institution with unchanging definitions of who can marry and under what .
             circumstances. These are some cultural forms of marriage.
            
             • Ancient Mesopotamia Sumerian marital law of about 4,600 years ago, permited the king to have sex with a bride before their husbands were allowed, according to various translations of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
            
             • Bible Polygamy, that is simultaneously being married to more than one woman, was common for many men featured in the Bible: Abraham, the first Jew, took a concubine, Hagar, for the express purpose of continuing his blood line, since his wife, Sarai, was barren at the time. Patriarch Jacob's two wives, Rachel and Leah, plus two concubines, and produced the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel. King Solomon had seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines (1 Kings 11:3). King David, who had at least seven wives, committed adultery with Bathsheba, then had her husband killed, and married her himself. Interestingly, the Biblical multiple wives do not seem to be simply lovers or property, but full marital partners: "If [a man] take himself another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish" (Exodus 21:10). "Neither can a husband withhold inheritance from the children of an unloved plural wife" (Deuteronomy 21:15-17). Western culture did not view monogamy as essential to marriage until Modestinus, a fourth-century non-Christian Roman lawyer, who defined the institution for the Roman Empire: "Marriage is a union of a man and a woman and a communion of the whole of life, a participation in divine and human law.