Marriage Quote by Randy Neugebauer

Neugebauer’s line isn’t really about history; it’s about foreclosing debate by dressing a present-day policy preference in the robes of inevitability. The opening move, “Thousands of years and many civilizations,” is an argument from antiquity designed to make dissent feel like a reckless break from human nature itself. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of pointing at a long timeline and saying: don’t touch.

The sharper edge is the warning shot: “With few exceptions… perished.” That phrase smuggles in a causal claim without doing the work. Civilizations fall for reasons like war, famine, economic collapse, plague, state overreach. Neugebauer folds all that messy reality into a neat morality play where nonconforming marriage norms become a civilizational suicide pact. The subtext is disciplinary: change this, and you invite collapse; support same-sex marriage, and you’re not just wrong, you’re endangering the republic.

Context matters. Neugebauer was a Republican congressman speaking in an era when marriage equality was moving from cultural controversy toward legal recognition, and opponents needed an argument that sounded bigger than discomfort or theology. “Civilization” functions here as a proxy for cultural authority and for anxiety about social change: gender roles, sexuality, and who gets counted as fully legitimate.

The tactic is also selective memory. History includes polygamy, concubinage, and legal regimes where marriage was property management more than romance. By claiming a single, universal definition, the quote tries to turn a contested institution into a fixed fact, then uses fear of decline to police the boundary.