Title: History of Same Sex Marriage
Headings: History of Same Sex Marriage
History of Same Sex Marriage
Jump Ahead:
Historical Same-Sex Precedence
Greco-Roman
Indigenous Peoples
The Fight at Home for Marriage Equality
Victory! Free at Last

Content: Property and procreation were no longer considered the primary reasons for a union. The infertile and elderly could enjoy the right, along with couples that didn’t want children. With the women’s liberation movement, relationships between heterosexual couples became much more egalitarian, allowing for deviation from traditional gender roles. Today, marriage is largely centered around love, commitment, and companionship. Same-sex couples can readily fit that definition, and that is exactly what was argued before the Supreme Court in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges that  resulted in marriage equality becoming the law of the land in the United States in 2015. Historical Same-Sex Precedence
A few Supreme Court Justices challenged the existence of societies that accepted and recognized gay unions during the Obergefell v. Hodges case. Chief Justice John Roberts declared, “Every definition that I looked up, prior to about  a dozen years ago, defined marriage as a unity between a man and a woman as husband and wife,” ignoring many Biblical accounts of revered men of faith having several wives. The late Justice Antonin Scalia asked, “But I don’t know of any - do you know of any society, prior to the Netherlands in 2001, that permitted same-sex marriage?” While Scalia may have had a wealth of legal knowledge, he clearly didn’t do his research in this case. Indeed, there are numerous examples of same-sex marriages throughout history, though different cultures have different  conceptions of “marriage” itself.