Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyAugust 18th, 2011
I discovered something today that shocked me.
I’ve known for a long time that “traditional” marriage involved a woman who could not own property, could be beaten (lightly) by her husband, and had no protection from being raped by him.
Actually, that’s a bit of a misnomer: Husbands never “raped” their wives because it was considered a logical impossibility. State laws against rape carved out a “marital rape exemption” for husbands.
I knew all that. What shocked me was discovering when those exemptions finally began to disappear.
Do you know? Care to guess?
1976.
Did you get that?
For the first two hundred years of our country, a man could not be prosecuted for raping his wife. I was already 14 years old in 19-fucking-76. Men could safely and fearlessly rape their wives in my lifetime.
Call me naive. I’m a bit less so now.
Don’t let anyone tell you traditional marriage has a long, noble, unchanging history. It doesn’t. It’s evolved, and it continues to evolve.
Thank God.
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Dale
August 18th, 2011
No, I will not thank any god, I have evolved.
Erin
August 18th, 2011
You are awesome, Rob.
Blair Martin
August 18th, 2011
Speaking of evolving… another interesting piece of trivia came by me yesterday… when did the word “homosexual” first appear in an English language translation of the Bible? Seeing as the charismaniacs and fundamentalchallengeds all quote that “God hates homosexual practice because he’s said so about it in the Bible”… this long standing prohibition has been mentioned by the word “homosexual” since – 1946. Wow. And seeing as the word and concept of homosexuality is not even 150 or so years old, once again the poor learning and bad research of these media tarts (as we call them in Australia) is glaringly put on display.
Ted
August 19th, 2011
Here’s some quasi-conservative christian fundamentalist bullshit disingenuousness: If you show how marriage has demonstrably changed throughout history, they will revise their context and say: “but in America the marriage has always been x”. Such bullshit.
Erp
August 19th, 2011
And it is a good thing it evolves.
In the UK it was 1991 though the marital rape exemption was a matter of common law not statute. The last US state was North Carolina in 1993 though some states still treat spousal rape differently from other rape (e.g., shorter time period to report).
Ivan
August 19th, 2011
For those who’ve not seen it already, Betty Bowers (Michelle Bachman’s role model) says it all here on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/MrsBettyBowers#p/u/1/OFkeKKszXTw
Enjoy.
SteC
August 19th, 2011
Apparently an exemption for spousal rape was in effect in North Carolina until 1993.
http://www.ncvc.org/ncvc/main.aspx?dbName=DocumentViewer&DocumentID=32701
John
August 19th, 2011
Prior to this a woman was considered the property of her husband. In many times and cultures a husband could legally kill his wife on the flimsiest of excuses. Even in some cultures today men have a life or death power over his family. Some of us have evolved. Many others haven’t.
BlackDog
August 19th, 2011
That makes me wonder how any woman could support all this talk about “traditional” marriage?
You’d think…out of self-preservation…that “traditional” would be the last thing even “Conservative” women would want.
But then, for all the talk of “submission” to their husbands a lot of these ladies don’t ever submit to anything, and in reality THEY run the house. Well, not everybody is lucky enough to have a non-violent or weak minded husband, Michelle.
Personally I think a lot of this crap just comes down to pure selfishness, but that’s just me.
Jerry
August 19th, 2011
I’m not shocked that it was only in 1976 that marriage was finally removed as an excuse for rape. I’m surprised it was that long ago. I would have guessed about 1990.
RainbowPhoenix
August 21st, 2011
1976 is when marital rape exemptions STARTED to disappear. From what I’ve read they didn’t completely disappear until 1993. Aren’t state rights wonderful?
Timothy Kincaid
August 23rd, 2011
Rainbox Phoenix,
Yes, actually they are. Because 1976 is when they started to disappear. Without autonomous state law, they wouldn’t have disappeared until there was national agreement – which certainly was not in 1976.
In fact, it is a few states beginning change and no great tragedy befalling them which encourages others to consider the same. Without states rights, we would have marriage nowhere in the United States, nor would there be the amount of national support that we currently enjoy.
Does the idea of states rights mean that there will always be stragglers who only change with reluctance? Yes. Alabama will never be a social leader. And those who live in Alabama will suffer from that fact.
But it also means that Massachusetts can take the lead. And those who live there – or choose to move there – need not wait until the mid-point states like Ohio or Nebraska get to where they are.
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