Timothy George highlights a revived trend in lifestyle choices in First Things, called “sologamy,” which began over 20 years ago. George writes: “Sologamy is the marriage of someone to one’s own self—the his- or herness of it is not relevant, although it seems to be mostly women who are doing it.” Self marriage is not recognized in the U.S. or Europe, but nevertheless, more reports are surfacing of individuals marrying themselves.
The first person to marry herself to herself was Linda Baker in December 1993, George reports. Another is Sara Sharpe, “who wrote about her self-marriage in A Dress, A Ring, Promises to Self.”
Last January, the Houston Chronicle reported that Yasmin Eleby “married herself at the Houston Museum of African American Culture … in a lavish ceremony with 10 bridesmaids in attendance, plus family and other guests on hand to celebrate the event.” Her ceremony was illegal, not recognized by the state or federal government as marriage. Her sister performed the “ceremony,” and Yasmin went on a honeymoon with herself to “Cambodia, Laos, and a jazz festival in Dubai.”
And CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviewed a North Dakota woman, Nadine Schweigert, who married herself in front of her roughly 40 close friends. These were her vows:
“I, Nadine,” she said to herself, “promise to enjoy inhabiting my own life and to relish a lifelong love affair with my beautiful self.”
There was also, Dutch woman, Jennifer Hoes, who married herself. Aeon Magazine conveys her story in a ten-minute documentary, called, “Marrying Me.”
And Jeff Dunetz of TheLidBlog.com highlights excerpts from Stylist Magazine, which describes the self-marriage of British Sophie Tanner. She married herself last year in a ceremony performed by her friend at a Unitarian Church who wore a rented bishop’s costume, which also included 20 bridesmaids.
Of her day, Sophie said:
“I got married to myself; I was ridiculously happy and the vibe was amazing.”
The Stylist reported:
“The sun shone brightly and all 20 bridesmaids showed up for a quick dance rehearsal and some bubbles. Then we picked up our sunflowers and processed through the Pavilion Gardens to the sound of whooping crowds. Kendrick Lamar’s I Love Myself blasted over our portable speakers as we danced past the lawns.
“I’d hired my friend James a cardinal outfit and he was waiting for us at the Unitarian Church stage, looking resplendent in his red robes. My Dad gave me away in traditional style, then James delivered the ceremony with fantastic aplomb and more and more people gathered to see what was going on, gasping in fascination when they heard it was a self-wedding.”
Vice Magazine also reports that Tanner remarked that “her love [for herself] grew after” after she married herself.
“(…) in the honeymoon period there was a change. I was more, ‘You know what? We’re going to have a night in together.’ There was a sense of treating yourself and indulging. People ask if I want to get married and I can say, ‘Actually, I’m already married to myself.’ You don’t have to worry any more. You’re not waiting around for the one because you are the one. You’ve found that person.”
George suggests this behavior is reflective of extreme narcissism embraced by an ever-increasing narcissistic culture:
“In some ways same-self marriage is the logical outgrowth of what cultural critic Christopher Lasch described in his 1979 bestseller The Culture of Narcissism. Lasch, building on Sigmund Freud’s classic essay ‘On Narcissism’ of 1916, applied the term to the sense of grandiosity and excessive self-love that seem to mark not only psychologically disordered individuals but post-sixties American society as a whole.”
While this is true, there’s a much simpler answer that has existed for thousands of years. This lifestyle choice is indicative of the perversion explained in Romans 1 and Isaiah 5:20. We live in a time when people call:
“evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Is. 5:20).
And the consequence of perverted behavior is perversion itself – because wickedness suppresses the truth. People who reject who God is and what he has made known are without excuse. As a result, God:
“gives them over in sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised.
“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion” (Rom. 1: 24-27).
God gave these women and others interested in self marriage over to their own “depraved minds.” Their depravity is the result of their rejection of God and they “do what ought not to be done.”
Lifestyle choices reflect more than an individual’s personal choice.
They have eternal consequences.
In fact, such evil results in death. Being turned over to wickedness denotes a character marked by:
“envy, deceit, insolence, arrogance, boastfulness, invent[ing] ways of doing evil, [being] senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them” (Rom. 1:29-32).
Evil, exists not only in those who engage in it, but those who condone their practices. Affirming self-marriage is just as wrong as those who practice it.
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