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Traditional Marriage

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Traditional Marriage
The Meaning Behind ‘Traditional Marriage”
“In Sacred Rite or Civil Right,” Howard Moody, a Baptist minister, discusses his inner thoughts on the subject of marriage. He explains the tradition of marriage and informs the rights and freedoms of the people along with describing how it all affects people whether they are against it or with it.
Most Christians of all denominations believe that a “traditional marriage” is the union between two people of the opposite sex and only have one significant other. Moody explains, “Christians feel superior about their ‘tradition’ of marriage, I would remind them that their scriptural basis is not as clear about marriage as we might hope” (353 Moody). He discusses how in the Bible that some important men have more than one wife and some children have different mothers and fathers. Most people forget this or choose not to see it that way. They “seem to be unaware of the real history of the institution of marriage” (Mataconis). Anti-gay religious groups and anti-gay individuals are people who discriminate gays and lesbians and believe that they should not be given a “traditional marriage” because they view them as sinful and damned in hell for all eternity. Moody explains that these religious groups and individuals do not realize that their so called “traditional marriage” isn’t as what it seems to be. In earlier periods of time, such as the 1700s and 1800s, “Marriage was about property and power rather than mutual attraction. It was a way of forging political alliances, sealing business deals, and expanding the family labor force. For many people, marriage was an unavoidable duty” (Mataconis). As Mataconis states, a “traditional marriage” was thought of as a legal contract; that a couple who was to be married should be married under certain circumstances, not out of love as people nowadays believe it to be.
Freedoms and rights are also huge according to Moody. “If freedom of choice means anything to individuals (male or female),

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