Mike Huckabee recently suggested that if gay marriage is allowed to be passed into law, then American civilization will collapse. Huckabee said, “There’s never been a civilization that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survived. So there is a sense in which, you know, it’s one thing to say if people want to live a different way, that’s their business.”
There’s a simple test of that, of course. Uruguay, which is in the Americas, has rewritten what marriage and family means, by offering civil partnerships to homosexual couples, when it used to be just heterosexual couples that were allowed to be married. So far, the people of Uruguay have survived, although Hugo Chavez did arrive in Uruguay on the same day that the civil unions were approved. Coincidence?
Historically, though, is Mike Huckabee correct? Have civilizations truly been destroyed in the past when their definition of marriage changed?
Well, I did find one example of such a thing, though I don’t think it’s what Mike Huckabee had in mind. There are no Arawaks remaining alive. They were the native inhabitants of the islands first discovered by Christopher Columbus.
According to chronicler Bartolome De Las Casas, the Arawaks, before Christopher Columbus landed, had no notion of marriage. He wrote, “Marriage laws are non-existent: Men and women alike choose their mates and leave them as they please, without offense, jealousy or anger.”
Then, Christopher Columbus came along and tried to redefine marriage. He tried to force the Arawaks to comply with the Christian definition of marriage: One man and one woman, tied together forever under the force of law.
What happened to the Arawaks? Their civilization was destroyed.
What do you think? Does that prove Mike Huckabee’s point?
(Sources: Reuters, December 18, 2007; GC, December, 2007; Voice of America, December 19, 2007; Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States)
My wife has been trying to redefine the meaning of marriage.
Marriage used to mean a union between a woman and a man who vacuums twice a month. She wants to change it to a union between a woman and a man who vacuums once a week.
Wait till she finds out the very fate of civilization hangs in the balance.
“No man has ever been murdered by his wife while doing the dishes.”
the modern mormons seem to have redefined marriage from their ideal polygynous polygamy to a more socially acceptable monogamy — do they appear to you to be flourishing?
Have they? Really? The Moslems here have “redefined” but still have multiple wives, only one can collect the social security though, but it’s rare for Arabs to pay into soc. sec. system as many are self-employed (restaurants). No matter what the law, they still have multiple wives, and the wives ‘know’ they are wives.
BTW I once saw an Arawak, filling a water container at a public spigot in the remote hills on a Carribean island. She was much admired by our rather prolific African-descent cab driver for the shape of her nose. He said you could tell her ancestry by her face profile. But I think their culture was more or less destroyed by smallpox. I doubt there is one or another type of marital arrangement that will protect someone from small pox.