A historian testifying in the Proposition 8 trial this morning disagreed with attorneys for the measure who argued that marriage’s fundamental purpose through the ages has been procreation and child-rearing by one man and one woman.

“I would certainly agree it is one of the purposes, but certainly not the central or the defining purpose,” Harvard University’s Nancy F. Cott said when asked to respond to opening statements about procreation made Monday by Proposition 8 attorney Charles Cooper.

Cott is a witness for gay plaintiffs in a landmark federal trial under way in San Francisco that is testing the federal constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, which declares marriage as only between a man and a woman.

Voters passed the measure in November 2008 as a state constitutional amendment. The California Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that voters had the right to amend the constitution, a decision that superseded the court’s own prior May 2008 ruling that gay people had a state constitutional right.

Thousands married until Proposition 8 was approved.

Cott, who has researched marriage law through U.S. history, said in U.S. District Court that marriage has evolved socially and legally. Interracial restrictions that lasted for years were eventually struck down, and women’s rights increased so that husbands no longer exclusively controlled their wives’ earnings and decisions in public life.

Read the rest of the Sacramento Bee article by Susan Ferriss here.