How Southerners Changed Traditional Marriage
- Print print this page
- Discuss 11 comments, Blog about
Advertisement
This is reprinted with permission from The News & Observer of Raleigh.
By Patrick W. O'Neil
In The News & Observer
One of the claims made by supporters of the amendment that will appear on North Carolina ballots is that marriage has followed an unbroken line from the beginning of time to today.
"The primary thing here," said state Sen. Dan Soucek in September, when the amendment made it onto the May 8 ballot, "is that marriage, the institution of marriage, has been a time-tested fundamental part of society throughout history."
And Mark Creech, of the Christian Action League of North Carolina, warns that the failure of "God's first institution of marriage" will ensure that "over time the country itself will fail."
These arguments make political sense. Legislators sound better defending a time-honored institution than denying a minority group its rights.
But to claim that marriage has not changed since Adam and Eve, or even since 1776, is simply untrue. Indeed, 19th century Southerners had no problem legislating against centuries of marital tradition. As voters contemplate the fate of "traditional" marriage, it's worth looking back to a time when lawmakers throughout the South fundamentally changed the nature of marriage.
A little history. For centuries, the definitive fact of marriage wasn't love, or even procreation. It was coverture. Coverture meant that a woman's independent legal existence was extinguished the moment she got married. All her possessions, her earnings, even her legal identity, passed to her husband.
Coverture made it easy for wealthy families to exchange property. But if a man went broke, his wife's dowry - the money and goods her parents gave her when she married - went to his creditors.
In the boom-and-bust 19th century, this was a serious problem. Families gave their daughters marriage gifts in hopes of ensuring their economic security; yet coverture meant that their gifts were useless in a financial crisis.
So, between 1839 and 1846, politicians in Mississippi, Maryland and Arkansas passed Married Women's Property Acts. (Northerners began passing similar acts in the 1840s, but Mississippi started the ball rolling.) These laws gave women ownership of the property they brought to marriage. The idea was to keep women's property away from their husbands' creditors in times of financial panic.
North Carolina passed its Married Women's Property Act in 1868. The timing is not coincidental: Former slaveholders were mired in bankruptcy, and the law was supposed to give struggling households some rainy-day insurance for when creditors came calling - not to mention protecting women from "scoundrels" and fortune-hunters.
In the North, Married Women's Property Acts were supported by women's rights advocates. But in the South, these acts followed the most conservative of impulses: Their authors wanted to help people who had property to keep it.
We can get some sense of their motives from the fact that the first man to introduce a Married Women's Property Act, Mississippi state Sen. T.B.J. Hadley, introduced only one other measure in 1839: a bill protecting him from creditors.
Such men little dreamed of altering one of marriage's central functions. Yet that was what they did. Married Women's Property Acts killed coverture, an essential fact of married life since the Middle Ages.
Historian Carole Shammas calls this "the most substantial change in women's legal status in 700 years." Ending coverture instantly lessened marriage's economic significance: Marrying a wealthy woman no longer guaranteed a man a healthy profit. It also diminished men's power over their wives: The more property a woman owned, the less she needed to stay with an abusive spouse. The divorce rate rose accordingly.
It may be surprising, given how passionately many North Carolinians today feel about keeping marriage the same, to see how willing their ancestors were to change it. But ending coverture was a practical solution to a very real problem, offering women and their families some much-needed economic protection.
Today, the debates are different. North Carolinians are debating not what marriage should be like for its participants, but who can participate in it at all. Still, this story helps contextualize the debate over gay marriage, reminding us that marriage has changed for numerous reasons through the years, not all of them radical.
The people who ended coverture fundamentally redefined marriage, paving the way for the relative equality of husbands and wives. But they were acting on conservative, not radical, impulses: Their primary objective was to save families from ruin, and they succeeded.
To the lawmakers of the 19th century, marriage was no sacred cow; it was an institution that they wanted to make work for society. They realized that marriage in its current state was hurting people they cared about, so they changed it. We might ask whether those who claim to defend marriage today would be willing to do the same.
Patrick W. O'Neil is an assistant professor of history at Methodist University in Fayetteville.
More like this story
Advertisement
Comments
OldSpook 1 year ago
At the risk of asking the obvious, is there a reason that the Pilot only prints, and reprints, articles in support of this homosexual issue? I mean really, has anyone seen this paper present anything other than support of homosexual marriage? How about it Mr. Nagy, can we see some fair, balanced and maybe even unbiased reporting?
And no, I do not support homosexuality. But then again I do not support pedophilia or incestuous relationships either.
DoubleHeroides 1 year ago
it was stated in the article from Mr. Bouser on Wednesday that the institutional stance of the Pilot was against Amendment One. Good, bad, or indifferent that is likely why you do not see articles in support of the amendment. As far as pedophilia and incest, those are not as victimless of sexual activities as homosexuality. Pedophilia involves a mature adult having relations with a minor which is not old enough to consent to sexual activity. Incestual behavior has a negative effect on the health of potential offspring. Homosexual activity has no impact on you or society whatsoever OldSpook. Further, I took to reading this article because it contained a very valid argument that undermines a common train of thought of those supporting the amendment, that marriage is "traditional" and has been the same for centuries.
eflat7 1 year ago
Blah blah blah blah gay marriage is cool, blah blah blah.
DaveyNC 1 year ago
Well, Mr. O'Neil, let's not throw any perspective into this debate. Might cause some people to actually think rather than jerk their knees in response.
moonchild7 1 year ago
Enlightening and well written. A little over 2000 yrs ago there was another Transcendental Leader who preached to the citizenry that "divorce" was unacceptable. Except his reasoning had more to do with the fact that women were considered "pieces of property" and men had the tendency to DISCARD/DIVORCE women on a whim. The "OLD LAW" of Deuteronomy 24: 1-2 says: "....when a man hath taken a wife and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her; then let him write her a bill of divorcement and give it in her hand, and send her out of the house..." So, let it be known also that the "OLD LAW" of the OLD TESTAMENT did NOT allow women to divorce her husband. Jesus wanted women to be respected as HUMAN BEINGS, not as property that could be thrown away at any time. That's why he was AGAINST DIVORCE. He wanted WOMEN to have the SAME rights as men and concluded that the best way to that end was to condemn divorce altogether. Marriage is the committment of two human beings who love each other. The sexual relations and sexual identity that are a part of that commitment are of course a part of the marriage but are not the most important part, and in some cases there are possibly little to no sexual relations happening. That does not negate the LOVE and COMMITMENT the two people have for each other. LOVE is always better for HUMANITY as an entirety not as something that only a MAN or WOMAN can have for each other.
JimHeim 1 year ago
Oldspook, this is not about gay marriage. No matter the outcome of the vote, gay marriage remains illegal.
This is an assault on unmarried relationships and the children who belong to them. The toll this measure will take on families and children will have to be determined by the courts, which apparently is conservatives' favorite method of legislating.
nothingspecial 1 year ago
Old Spook, you sure hit the nail on the head. Two more weeks of this endless propaganda against the amendment dredged up from all corners.
Of course it is obvious that this exhaustive history of aberrant exceptions about marriage is certainly not meant to put across an opinion :-) After all the writer is a PROFESSOR from METHODIST university.
They seem to be of the opinion or hope once again with this one, that there are a large population of impressionable people, right on the edge of changing their minds, who also happen to read the news.
And we're "assaulting" folks now if we support the amendment. We're the monster for asking our fellow adults to grow up or at least keep it private for the sake of retaining a PG world for kids to grow up in. Don't you know, marriage between a man and a woman has always been changeable/adaptable through the centuries? What?!
Actually it's entertaining all the funny, goofy angles that keep cropping up.
link2eternity 1 year ago
O'Neil's idea that "marriage has not changed since Adam and Eve, or even since 1776, is simply untrue," is itself, at least per his argument, not true. Every example he uses stands within the confines of heterosexual marriage. His column does not present any evidence that any of the "changes" mentioned therein were paradigmatically different. In other words, he does not support his all encompassing idea that marriage has actually and foundationally changed in the past to the extent that the fight for gay marriage attempts to change it. None of the examples he used, more simply, reveal a change to the divinely intended heterosexual standard that God initiated in the beginning.
Also, Jesus' observation was that marriage was between a man and woman, the very paradigm originally intended, and as I have mentioned in other columns, both here and other papers, confirmed the legitimacy of that paradigm with his physical resurrection. Any position against the divine design of marriage, then, by either minister, church, or university prof., overlooks Jesus' take on the foundational marital model.
I'd be interested to read O'Neil's take on Jesus' take on marriage as between a man and woman.
Tony (link2eternity)
Toda 1 year ago
Amendment One has taken on the biblical role of justification of using scripture to endorse one's point of view. Sadly, scripture can be used as a crutch to argue so many points for justification: Colossians 3:18 "Wives, be subject to yor husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Colossians 3:22 "Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only in being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartly, fearing the Lord; Matthey 5:32b "...Whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery; 1 Cor 7:8 To the unmarried widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am"...need more of scripture? Are these passages not as relevant today as in Christs time or a matter of convenience for those who interpret certain passages to make a point?
GoldenDreams 1 year ago
Toda, well said. Christians needs to balance the Scriptures with the Constitution and make a thoughtful decision on Amendment One. Most Christians on these boards seem to fear that gays will be able to marry if the amendment is defeated; this is not true. We already have a law banning gay marriage. A vote against Amendment One does acknowledge other unions (even heterosexual ones) and allows them their rights with medical insurance, emergency legal situations, etc.
link2eternity 1 year ago
Hello ToDa,
Let me begin by saying that I really like how you arrived at your user name, "ToDa." That is pretty cool actually.
Now on to the issue.
As I noted above, O'neil's argument fell short of proving the idea that he purported. None of the arguments he used revealed any challenge whatsoever to the divine paradigm for marriage as between a man and woman.
As I said of him, I will say of you, I'd be interested to read O'Neil's take on Jesus' take on marriage as between a man and woman, and I would also like to read your take on the matter. Just what did Jesus endorse with his reference to original creation and marriage?
As for the other issues you raised, I could spend some time interpreting them in their contexts, but each of them avoid the issue at hand. If you want an honest and thorough discussion on the topics you raised, I will be glad to interact, Just let me know.
Tony