Contact: Prof. Brett Krutzsch
Link to his PowerPoint slides HERE.
The U.S. state has often taken a role in regulating the borders and boundaries of marriage. In the past, there have been debates over polygamy and interracial marriage.
The Polygamy Question
Mormon founder Joseph Smith said that he received revelation from God saying that Mormons were called to practice plural marriage - one husband and multiple wives. In 1862, the federal government outlawed bigamy in the Morrill Act - one man married to two women. The law was never enforced because Lincoln feared that the Mormons would join the Confederacy. In 1879, the Mormons church argued that they had the right to free exercise. It went to the Supreme Court in Reynolds v. United States supreme court case. Reynolds argued that the free exercise clause of the First Amendment protected their right to obey revelation from God regarding plural marriage. The Supreme Court ruled against Reynolds, arguing that the free exercise only applies to belief but not practice of polygamy. You can believe what you want, but can't do what you want. In 1887, Congress issued the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which made it a crime to be in a polygamous marriage. You could also lose citizenship rights. Federal troops were sent to monitor Utah. In 1891, the president of the Mormon church announces a new revelation to end polygamy. In 1896, Utah was allowed to become a state. The story shows that religious freedom has had boundaries and borders in U.S. history.
The Question of Same-Sex Sexuality
During the First World War, there was a great fear among leadership that men were having sex with men. They tried to screen recruits and attempt to weed them out. By WWII, the U.S. government passed laws that incentive men and women to get married and have children. In 1946, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible was released and for the first time in history, the term homosexuality was added to the Bible. The question of why this new translation choice? A new book by Alfred Kinsey called Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948). Kinsey discovered that 1/3 of American men at some point in their lives had a sexual encounter with another man. It concluded that most men were on a spectrum of sexual orientation.
During the Cold War, government authorities were concerned that gay and lesbian people could be subjected bribes by foreign agents. Gay people viewed as a national security risk. During the 1950s, the police would bring journalists along on their raids on gay bars. The publicity was intended to humiliate homosexual people.
A group of liberal Christian activists began to take a stand with gay and lesbian citizens. Rev. Troy Perry was a gay man who came to the conclusion that God loved him and he needed to tell the others. Click HERE for a video about Troy Perry and his founding of the Metropolitan Community Church. A key event, the raid on a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in New York City. This has been considered as the birth of the modern day gay rights movement. Activists embraced the notion of "coming out" as gay was critical to advancing the movement. The first Gay Pride parade was hosted in ___ in Los Angeles. By the late 1970s, Conservative Christians began to politicize the issue and view gay people as a threat. Anita Bryant founded a "Save our children crusade." She argued that gay and lesbian people were recruiting people to turn gay. She helped to overturn a law which gave civil rights protection to gays. In Ronald Reagan's political campaign, he built support with the help of conservative, white evangelicals. During the 1980s, a new disease was emerging that appeared to impact men. Religious Right leaders such as Jerry Falwell argued that this disease AIDS, was God punishment on homosexual people and the nation for supporting them. In reality, AIDS affected more than gay people. The AIDS quilt was a national project - each quilt symbolized a person who died of AIDS. The quilt was displayed on the mall in Washington D.C. Pop culture shows such as Ellen Degeneres and Will and Grace became shows that introduced gay people in a positive light. These representations portrayed gay people as desexualized. The murder of a gay youth, Matthew Shepherd in 1998 - he was targeted for robbery because he was gay. He became an icon of gay dignity. During his funeral, a group of extremist Christians led by Rev. Fred Phelps, protested the funeral and said God hated gay people. This began to galvanize Christian support for gay people.
