because being in san francisco
… gives me the perfect excuse for making a gay marriage-related post:
“In the twentieth century, many Christians who would rabidly insist on this or that aspect of “moral matrimony” (e.g., procreative purpose in in the view of the Roman Catholic hierarchy–but probably not the average Catholic layperson; sexual fidelity for most Protestants) casually accept the fact that Solomon was “married” to seven hundred women while he also maintained three hundred concubines. Although they would doubtless not approve if one of their contemporaries engaged in such behavior, they have little trouble applying the word “marriage” to such relationships. Aside from the moral questions this episode raises,6 it throws the deeper meaning of “marriage” into lively uncertainty. What did it mean to be one of seven hundred women “married” to Solomon, who also had three hundred concubines? How much of a commitment could there have been on either side? Indeed, how often could the one thousand women who belonged7 to the king through marriage or concubinage even have had causal intercourse (social or sexual) with him?
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6 These are attenuated perhaps by the fact that the prohibition of polygamy presumably postdated this; but the prohibition was never divinely revealed either to Christians or Jews, which also might raise a variety of questions, but never seems to.
7 Although this usage might appear sexist, it seems to me to reflect accurately the historical reality, which was also sexist.
-From the preface to Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, John Boswell, 1994