I like the alcohol example, by the way-
Long before belief in the One and True God was as prevalent as it is now, the polytheistic Greeks in Athens co-opted marriage from the temples and priests of various deities and collected money for civil marriage licenses. They also declared that citizens of the city-state of Athens could not marry non-citizens-homosexual (I dislike polite euphemisms like “gay”-call it what it) marriages happened there, too. We all know what happened to the Athenians...
The post-republic Romans turned marriage into an affair of state, too, complete with homosexual marriage, and the non-citizen marriage thing-so if you wanted a “real” marriage in Rome-one that was sanctified and recognized by whatever diety you believed in, you went to a temple, not a government building. We certainly know what happened to the Roman Empire...
When the French revolutionaries were busy removing aristocratic heads and singing “La Marseillaise”, they were also forming-by force-a Godless government. They took marriage from the churches and made it a civil marriage. At one point during Robespierre’s reign of terror, couples could be executed if they got married by a priest and got caught-marriage belonged to the state, and was not a sacrament. France still isn’t exactly a bastion of Christian tolerance, is it?
Just a few good examples of why government should never have charge of “marriage”, (or anything else that belongs to God). Let them call it a civil contract, period-but not marriage, and don’t let JP’s hold “ceremonies” that they call marriage. Marriage is a sacrament performed by the clergy, and is between a man and a woman-anything else is a civil contract, period. Forgive the rant, please...
What a load of silly ramblings, marriage has done just fine in America, now you lefties want to destroy it by using whatever argument gets you to polygamy and the homosexual agenda.
Thank you for the compliment on the alcohol. Other than that the rest of your post makes you sound a little light in your cowboy boots. You better not come out from behind that cactus, they might not take too kindly to your type down thar’
Not according to wiki. "in the early Imperial period some male couples were celebrating traditional marriage rites in the presence of friends. Same-sex weddings are reported by sources that mock them" "Roman law did not recognize marriage between men, but one of the grounds for disapproval expressed in Juvenal's satire is that celebrating the rites would lead to expectations for such marriages to be registered officially.As the empire was becoming Christianized in the 4th century, legal prohibitions against gay marriage began to appear."
Here is another source mentioning polygamy and marriage in history, and in Rome.
History of Polygamy
That’s the question Witte is wrestling with in his new book. He shows that the West has prescribed monogamous marriage for 2,500 years, and criminalized polygamy for 1,750 years. Polygamy was a capital crime in the West from the ninth to the 19th centuries.
Polygamy prohibitions, he says, are both “pre-Christian” in origin and “post-Christian” in application. “Roman law criminalized polygamy before Christianity was established and Enlightenment liberals were the most powerful defenders of the modern common law aversion to polygamy,” he says.