Intermarriage

Othello and Desdemona from William Shakespeare's Othello, a play concerning a biracial couple.

Intermarriage is the marriage either religious or civil between two people of different backgrounds. This background can be either religious (e.g. a Christian marrying a Jew]] or racial (e.g. a caucasian person marrying a person of African descent). Views towards each type of intermarriage have evolved throughout history, although each remains controversial in certain sects of modern society.

Interreligious Marriage

Views of religions on interreligious marriage

Judaism

Intermarriage in Judaism is informed by two basics of Jewish law. First, the child of a Jewish female is considered to be Jewish, regardless of the faith of its father, while, historically, the child of a male Jew and a female non-Jew is not (see Who is a Jew?). Second, a Jewish marriage is, by definition, a contract between two Jews (see Ketubah). Intermarriage under strict Jewish law is therefore not only forbidden, but actually impossible. Questions of civil intermarriage arise when rabbis are asked to officate at civil marriage ceremonies.

Orthodox Judaism strictly forbids interreligious marriage as well as any sexual intercourse with a member of a different faith. Secular intermarriage is seen as a deliberate rejection of Judaism, and an intermarried person is effectively cut off from most of the Orthodox community.

Conservative Judaism rejects intermarriages as being a violation of halakha, and as causing severe demographic harm to the Jewish people. Conservative rabbis are not allowed to perform intermarriages. However, the Leadership Council of Conservative Judaism has a more nuanced understanding of this issue than does Orthodoxy. The Conservative movement has stated:

In the past, intermarriage...was viewed as an act of rebellion, a rejection of Judaism. Jews who intermarried were essentially excommunicated. But now, intermarriage is often the result of living in an open society....If our children end up marrying non-Jews, we should not reject them. We should continue to give our love and by that retain a measure of influence in their lives, Jewishly and otherwise. Life consists of constant growth and our adult children may yet reach a stage when Judaism has new meaning for them. However, the marriage between a Jew and non-Jew is not a celebration for the Jewish community. We therefore reach out to the couple with the hope that the non-Jewish partner will move closer to Judaism and ultimately choose to convert. Since we know that over 70 percent of children of intermarried couples are not being raised as Jews...we want to encourage the Jewish partner to maintain his/her Jewish identity, and raise their children as Jews.

Leadership Council of Conservative Judaism, Statement on Intermarriage. Adopted on March 7, 1995

Reform Judaism and Reconstructionist Judaism (known internationally as Progressive Judaism) discourage intermarriage, but, since they do not view halacha as binding, have no mechanism for legal prohibition of the practice in the manner of the Conservative and Orthodox movements. Progressive rabbinical associations have no blanket prohibition on their members officiating at intermarriages. As a result, some Progressive Rabbis do perform such weddings without fear of the sanction faced by their Conservative counterparts. Intermarried Progressive Jews are encouraged to raise their children in the Jewish faith, and to become part of the local Jewish community, even if the Gentile partner does not convert to Judaism. Gentile spouses of Jews are welcome in Progressive synagogues as long as they do not proselytise. See also: Reform views on intermarriage.

Christianity

Many Christians believe that anyone has the freedom to choose her or his partner for life, and that love has no boundaries. This attitude is found most often among those who may be identified as progressive or liberal Christians.

Some Christian denominations forbid interreligious marriage, drawing from 1 Corinthians 7 and 2 Corinthians 6:14, and in some cases Deuteronomy 7:3.

The Catholic church requires permission for mixed marriages, which it terms all unions between Catholics and baptized non-Catholics, but such marriages are valid, though illicit, without it: the pastor of the Catholic party has authority to grant such permission. Marriages between a Catholic and an unbaptized person are not sacramental, and fall under the impediment of disparity of worship and are invalid without a dispensation, for which authority lies with the ordinary of the place of marriage.

Bahá'í Faith

According to the Bahá'í Faith, all religions are inspired by God, therefore interreligious marriage is allowed. In that case, the Bahá'í ceremony should be performed, and the non-Bahá'í rite or ceremony can also be performed. If it is the case that both ceremonies are performed, the non-Bahá'í ceremony should not invalidate the Bahá'í ceremony and it should be made clear to all that the Bahá'í partner is a Bahá'í and is not accepting the religion of the other partner by going through with the ceremony. The Bahá'í partner should also abstain from undertaking any vows or statements that commit the Bahá'í to any declaration of faith in another religion or that are contrary to the principles of the Bahá'í Faith. The two ceremonies should happen on the same day, but the order is not important. The Bahá'í ceremony may be performed in the place of worship of the other religion provided that it is given equal respect to that of the non-Bahá'í ceremony and is clearly distinct from the non-Bahá'í ceremony.

Hinduism

Hinduism declares that there are always innumerable paths to God. And that one’s belief or perception of God is an individual matter and best left to the individual to decide his own path.

Thus, the Hindus have never hesitated to respect the freedom of other faiths to coexist and flourish and thus inter-religious marriages are accepted in Hindu society. It also does not put any obligation of faith on the non-Hindu partner. Inter-caste marriages were somewhat frowned upon but this too is becoming more acceptable with time. In metropolitan cities it is common to find couples with different faith, caste and regional background. There are numerous laws in the Indian legal system, safeguarding inter-faith marriage. Examples of such marriages occasionally appear in Kipling's stories.

Islam

Islam only allows a man to marry a non-Muslim only if she is Christian or Jewish. The wife need not adopt any Muslim laws, and the husband is not allowed to keep her from going to church or synagogue. The early jurists of the most prominent schools of Islamic jurisprudence ruled in fiqh law that the marriage of a Muslim man to a Christian or Jewish women is mukruh (reprehensible) if they live in a non-Muslim country. The Caliph Umar (634–644) denied interfaith marriage for Muslim men during his command of the ummah.

Fiqh also forbids Muslim women from marrying non-Muslim men, although there is nothing in the Quran nor the Sunnah that explicitly prohibits such unions. Some Muslim scholars (ahli kitab) go so far as to state that such a marriage is an act of apostasy, but with the growing number of such marriages, this position is being questioned. In some Muslim countries, if a non-Muslim woman is married to a non-Muslim, and she converts to Islam, the marriage is suspended until her husband converts to Islam. When he converts a new marriage is not needed.

Reasons for prohibition

Prohibitions against interreligious marriage without the conversion of the spouse can have a number of reasons:

• Some religions view their rules on marriage as commandments from God.
• A few religions view themselves as a priestly people, with a specific mission to carry out.
• Some people believe that introducing two contradictory belief systems into a marriage is grounds for marital strife, and increases the rate of divorce.
• Some believe that having parents of two opposing religions causes psychological stress on the children in such a marriage, as they often are effectively forced to "choose" one parent's faith over another.
• Religious intolerance. A person professing a different faith is considered incompatible and not worth marrying.
• The possibility of temptation to "wrong" practices by the "outsider" spouse, as well as the possibility of the children growing up in the "other" faith, or torn between two faiths.
• Some religions, such as the Druze religion, are closed communities and do not accept new members, whether through marriage or through conversion.

When a man and a woman professing different religions want to marry, and the religious laws of the faith upheld by one of them forbid this, they might:

• abandon the relationship and seek a partner of their own faith,
• consider the Conversion of one spouse,
• live as if married with no ceremony,
• have a purely civil marriage ceremony, or
• if one of the two religions does allow interreligious marriage, hold the wedding according to the ritual of the accepting religion.

Interracial Marriage

United States

A black/white couple enjoying a moment during their wedding on the beach in Monterey, California

In Social Trends in America and Strategic Approaches to the Negro Problem (1948), Gunnar Myrdal ranked the social areas where restrictions were imposed by Southern whites on the freedom of African-Americans through racial segregation from the least to the most important: jobs, courts and police, politics, basic public facilities, “social equality” including dancing, handshaking, and most important, marriage. This ranking scheme seems to explain the way in which the barriers against desegregation fell. Of less importance was the segregation in basic public facilities, which was abolished with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most tenacious form of legal segregation, the banning of interracial marriage, was not fully lifted until the last anti-miscegenation laws were struck down in 1967.

The interracial disparity for American Indians is low. According to the 1990 US Census (which only counts indigenous people with US-government-recognized tribal affiliation), American Indian women intermarried White Americans 2% more than American Indian men married White women.

Education and interracial marriage

Using PUMS data from both the 1980 and 1990 US Census to determine trends within interracial marriage among White Americans, African Americans, Hispanic or Latinos, and Asian Americans, it may be seen that endogamy (marrying within race) was more prevalent for African American men at lower education levels.

In 1980, the numbers were as follows: African American males without a high-school diploma participated in endogamy at 96.5%; for those who received a high-school diploma, 95.6%; for those with a college degree and above, the percentage of endogamy dropped to 94.0%. However, the rates for African American women changed very little with different educational levels. For the African American woman who had not received a high school diploma the rate was 98.7%, high school diploma was 98.6%, with some college it was 98.2%, and college degree or higher, 98.5%. During this time there was a significant increase in marriages between whites and African Americans, maintaining that African Americans are most likely to marry whites over other groups.

The 1990 results show that rates of endogamy dropped for both males and females, albeit more for the African American male. In 1990, an African American male with a college degree and more was participating in endogamy at 90.4%; for an African American female with the same educational level, 96.4%. The results for the propensity of individuals at higher educational attainment levels to participate less in endogamy over the 10-year period were similar across races, including whites, Hispanics, and Asian Americans.

Immigrants and interracial marriage

File:First-dance.jpg

An Iranian groom and a Mexican-American bride enjoy their first dance as a mixed-race married couple.

It is found that racial endogamy is much stronger for immigrants as compared to natives; it is 4.9 times more likely for immigrants of African descent than for African Americans. Additionally, immigrants of African descent have the highest rates of endogamy of immigrants. Also, African immigrants are much more likely to marry other same-race immigrants and African Americans, than to out-marry racially. Native-born White Americans are also 1.6 times more likely to marry a native-born African American than an immigrant of African descent. Female immigrants of African descent are generally more likely to marry native-born whites than their male counterparts.

United Kingdom

As of 2001, 2% of all UK marriages are inter-ethnic. Despite having a much lower non-white population (9%), mixed marriages are as common as in the United States. For example, Black British men are significantly more likely to have non-black wives than African American men; 18% of UK black African husbands, 29% of UK black Caribbean husbands, and 48% of other Black British husbands have a wife from a different ethnic group.

A similar trend can be seen in the UK. According to the UK 2001 census , Black British males were around 50% more likely than black females to marry outside their race, whereas British Chinese women were twice as likely as their male counterparts to marry someone from a different ethnic group. Among British Asians (South Asians, not including Chinese), Pakistani and Bangladeshi males were twice as likely to to have an inter-ethnic marriage than their female counterparts, while Indian and "Other Asian" males were more likely to have an inter-ethnic marriage than their female counterparts by a smaller percentage.

In Africa

Indian (Asian) men have married many African women in Africa. Indians have long been traders in East Africa. The British Empire brought workers into East Africa to build the Uganda Railway. Indians eventually populated South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Rhodesia and Zaire. These interracial unions were mostly unilateral marriages between Indian men and East African women.

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