History

‘Traditional’ marriage ‘for millenia’? Not so.

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During oral argument of Obergefell v. Hodges this morning, I was stuck by these statements from the Justices:

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said he was concerned about changing the conception of marriage; the definition of marriage “has been with us for millennia.”

Justice Scalia repeated Justice Kennedy’s observation that the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman has been in effect “for millennia.”

MoonWeddingWow. A millennium is a thousand years. The plural “millenia” infers thousands of years. Our Supreme Court Justices need a remedial history course.

The concept of romantic love between a husband and a wife in marriage only dates back to the 17th century. Much of the world, even today, still practices arranged marriages. Mass weddings and arranged marriages are a staple of the Unification Church. 21 Surreal Photos From A Moonie Mass Wedding – BuzzFeed. Where does this fit into the Justices’ conception of “traditional” marriage “for millenia”? It appears to me they have a Eurocentric conception of history grounded on their Catholic faith.

The Week has a good historical summary in How marriage has changed over centuries:

Has marriage always had the same definition?
Actually, the institution has been in a process of constant evolution. Pair-bonding began in the Stone Age as a way of organizing and controlling sexual conduct and providing a stable structure for child-rearing and the tasks of daily life. But that basic concept has taken many forms across different cultures and eras. “Whenever people talk about traditional marriage or traditional families, historians throw up their hands,” said Steven Mintz, a history professor at Columbia University. “We say, ‘When and where?'” The ancient Hebrews, for instance, engaged in polygamy — according to the Bible, King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines — and men have taken multiple wives in cultures throughout the world, including China, Africa, and among American Mormons in the 19th century. Polygamy is still common across much of the Muslim world. The idea of marriage as a sexually exclusive, romantic union between one man and one woman is a relatively recent development. Until two centuries ago, said Harvard historian Nancy Cott, “monogamous households were a tiny, tiny portion” of the world population, found in “just Western Europe and little settlements in North America.”

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150 years later, Lincoln little noted

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With the exception of The New York Times, which has been running a Civil War Notebook almost daily for the past five years, the media and the nation took little notice of the 150th anniversary of the death of president Abraham Lincoln at the hand of an assassin, John Wilkes Booth, at Ford’s Theater on the evening of April 14, 1865. The mortally wounded president was carried across the street to the William Petersen’s boarding house, where Lincoln died at 7:22:10 a.m. on April 15, 1865.

The New York Times writes today, In Washington, a Solemn Anniversary of Lincoln’s Death:

lincolnAt just before 8 p.m. on Tuesday night, looking straight out from the Petersen House on 10th Street in Washington, it was briefly possible to filter out the peripheral sounds and sights of the city and imagine the scene 150 years ago almost to the minute, when President Abraham Lincoln’s carriage pulled up in front of Ford’s Theater and delivered him to his fate.

A few hundred people – tourists, some schoolchildren, history buffs – had been drawn to site of America’s first presidential assassination. They milled in front of the arches of the theater, mingling among the smattering of volunteers in Union uniforms. There were a few early theatergoers who had snagged tickets to a memorial performance – not of “Our American Cousin,’’ which Lincoln was watching, but “Now He Belongs to the Ages,’’ which included excerpts from his speeches.

Official Washington paid little heed; President Obama issued a Presidential Proclamation, but when he attended a gospel singing performance in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday night, he never mentioned the anniversary. Outside Ford’s Theater, there were no speeches, or even politicians, except for a Lincoln impersonator with a top hat.

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Harold Meyerson on the ‘southernization’ of American labor and the GOP

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I posted about this the other day, Rejecting the Neo-Confederate Arizona Tea-Publican Party:

Confederale SoldiersThe “Party of Lincoln” is dead. It’s dead carcass has been hollowed out by the far-right fringe parasites of the Neo-Confederate secessionists, John Birchers, and theocratic Dominionists. The pundits have yet to come to accept this obvious fact, and to write the obituary of the Arizona Republican Party.

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This is the face of your Tea-Publican Party, Arizona. They should drop the pretense of clinging to the “Party of Lincoln” label and just embrace what they have become by holding an annual Jefferson Davis/Robert E. Lee Dinner, followed by a good old-fashioned cross burning.

The Washington Post’s Harold Meyerson writes about the “southernization” of American labor and the Republican Party. The GOP is the party of Jefferson Davis:

One hundred and fifty years ago [today], after Union infantry effectively encircled the Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee sent a note to Ulysses S. Grant proposing a meeting to discuss terms of surrender. With that, the Civil War began to end.

And at some point in the future, it may yet.

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‘New Birth of Freedom Day’ and the Third Reconstruction

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Today, April 9, is the Sesquicentennial (15oth) Anniversary of the unofficial end to the Civil War when Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia.

Brian Beutler at The New Republic argued that we should make its defeat, and the end of slavery, a national holiday, and call it “New Birth of Freedom Day”.

general-grant-meets-robert-e-lee-english-school-

The Civil War left unresolved many issues that Americans are still in conflict over today. Much of this results from the Compromise of 1877, an unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election by awarding Republican Rutherford B. Hayes the White House over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, on the understanding that Hayes would pull federal troops out of state politics in the South. This “Grand Bargain” effectively ended the Reconstruction Era.

Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University and the author of “Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad,” “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution” and “A Short History of Reconstruction,” recently wrote at the New York Times, Why Reconstruction Matters:

THE surrender of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House, 150 years ago next month, effectively ended the Civil War. Preoccupied with the challenges of our own time, Americans will probably devote little attention to the sesquicentennial of Reconstruction, the turbulent era that followed the conflict. This is unfortunate, for if any historical period deserves the label “relevant,” it is Reconstruction.

Issues that agitate American politics today — access to citizenship and voting rights, the relative powers of the national and state governments, the relationship between political and economic democracy, the proper response to terrorism — all of these are Reconstruction questions. But that era has long been misunderstood.

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Obama at Selma: ‘Pledge to make it their mission to restore the Voting Rights Act this year’

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President Obama delivered a rousing speech at the 50th Anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama today. Transcript: Full Text of President Barack Obama’s Speech in Selma (Excerpt):

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[W]e can protect the foundation stone of our democracy for which so many marched across this bridge – and that is the right to vote. Right now, in 2015, fifty years after Selma, there are laws across this country designed to make it harder for people to vote. As we speak, more of such laws are being proposed. Meanwhile, the Voting Rights Act, the culmination of so much blood and sweat and tears, the product of so much sacrifice in the face of wanton violence, stands weakened, its future subject to partisan rancor.

How can that be? The Voting Rights Act was one of the crowning achievements of our democracy, the result of Republican and Democratic effort. President Reagan signed its renewal when he was in office. President Bush signed its renewal when he was in office. One hundred Members of Congress have come here today to honor people who were willing to die for the right it protects. If we want to honor this day, let these hundred go back to Washington, and gather four hundred more, and together, pledge to make it their mission to restore the law this year.

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