article_snippet.sent: For centuries we had and Europe had this coverture system where a woman's legal identity was absorbed into that of a woman's legal identity husband and men and women had different prescribed legal roles.  
article_snippet.sent: And again, because of equality and changing social circumstances, all of those gender differences in the rights and responsibilities of the married pair have been eliminated.
article_snippet.sent: Once upon a time, wives were the legal property of wives husbands and "marital rape" was not only not a crime but not even a concept.  
article_snippet.sent: To argue that the definition of marriage has not changed since then is either willfully ignorant or woefully naïve.
article_snippet.sent: If anything, the nobility and sacredness of marriage need protecting from straight people.  
article_snippet.sent: One downside to arguing that marriage has "always been" between a man and a woman is that, therefore, any problems in the institution of marriage are also plainly the responsibility of heterosexual couples, too.
article_snippet.sent: Anti-miscegenation laws banning interracial marriage were first introduced in 1661 in Maryland.  
article_snippet.sent: That means that by 1967, when the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of such laws, bans against interracial marriage had been officially part of the American "definition" of marriage for over 300 years.  
article_snippet.sent: So, while the definition of marriage has unarguably evolved, a fact hopefully the Supreme Court will soon confirm with a ruling in favor of marriage equality, what's also clear is that the Supreme Court has evolved.