The debate about marriage equality often centers, however discretely, on an appeal to the Bible. Unfortunately, such appeals often reflect a lack of biblical literacy on the part of those who use that complex collection of texts as an authority to enact modern social policy.<\/p>\n
As academic biblical scholars, we wish to clarify that the biblical texts do not support the frequent claim that marriage between one man and one woman is the only type of marriage deemed acceptable by the Bible\u2019s authors.<\/p>\n
The fact that marriage is not defined as only that between one man and one woman is reflected in the entry on \u201cmarriage\u201d\u009d in the authoritative Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000): \u201cMarriage is one expression of kinship family patterns in which typically a man and at least one woman cohabitate publicly and permanently as a basic social unit\u201d\u009d (p. 861).<\/p>\n