Note to the AFA and SCOTUS: Marriage Predates the Bible

[cbayer]

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/03/25/note-afa-scotus-marriage-predates-bible.html

By: Hrafnkell Haraldssonmore from Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Wednesday, March, 25th, 2015, 8:03 am



The American Family Association, which views Jews as second-class citizens lacking First Amendment rights, has never been afraid to co-opt the Jewish Bible for its own purposes, and did so with a full-page ad in The Washington Post yesterday proclaiming marriage an invention of their god.

Citing Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in His image…male and female He created them,” the ad reads, below,

A message to the United States Supreme Court:

As you deliberate on marriage
Remember whose idea it was in the first place.

Marriage was neither manmade nor created by any law or Constitution. It was God’s plan and purpose for civilization from the beginning. He created man and woman as distinctly separate but inherently compatible; each unique yet sexually complementary – providing both the means for and the ideal relationship within which to raise children from that union.

Before you now is a great question: Will you bend what God designed merely to suit the desires of man, knowing that you do so at the expense of children, perhaps even civilization itself? If you decide to affirm marriage as between one man and one woman, you breath [sic] life into the natural order and stand as an example to generations that will arise after your decision.

The only problem with all this is that it is not true. And if the Religious Right is free to believe that their god invented marriage, they are not free to legislate it on the basis of that belief. The First Amendment, not the Bible, is the law of the land, and it prohibits such lawmaking, regardless of how many Christians there might be who think this way (and there are fewer every day).

Factually, marriage was in existence as a social contract for many centuries before anyone heard of little Israel (the Merneptah stela, c. 1220 BCE). We know of Mesopotamian marriage from the Code of Hammurabi (18th century BCE). It is only thanks to Pharaoh Merneptah (reigned c. 1224-1214), the son of Ramesses II, who raised a stela in celebration of his victories, that we know Israel existed at all some 500 years later.

more at link

[TreasonousBastard]

1. I've always wondered...

in whose image did God create male and female chimpanzees and cockroaches?

And, if in His image, who's the female God?

[cbayer]

2. "image" is a pretty subjective and flexible concept, I guess.

This unfortunate phrase have led people to paint (literally) a very anthropomorphized god.

If there is a god, I suspect it bears virtually no resemblance to a human.

[TreasonousBastard]

5. I'm not entirely sure why, but most gods are anthropomorphized...

Seems to me that a large point of being God would to be apart from earthly creatures.

Maybe it's too difficult to explain such a god? And, the Greeks weren't the only ones to use their gods to point out human flaws.

[cbayer]

6. Explain the unexplainable? Describe the indescribable?

Impossible. I'm not sure humans have had any other option but to see their gods in a form that makes sense to them and that they can relate to.

[okasha]

3. Yahweh was originally married, to Asherah.

The Yahweh-alone movement and the Josiahan reforms divorced them.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. Heh...

It would be interesting to speculate on Christianity if Judaism had remained polytheistic.