Love and Marriage: Only Recently Together Like a Horse and Carriage
E.J. Graff, author of What is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution, makes a very original and compelling argument in favor of gay marriage.
I have heard a few different same sex marriage proponents reference the way “straight people already redefined marriage,” but I didn’t grasp the significance of that argument until now.
Graff convincingly makes the case that during the industrial revolution, between 1850 and 1950, heterosexuals began to question the tradition of marrying for property, economic status, familial alliance, business partnership etc., and started marrying for love. This shift was the most significant ‘redefinition’ of marriage in it’s millennia old history, and it was carried out by straight people.
She goes on to claim that homosexuals’ desire to take part in this new kind of marriage is a direct result of the spread of this novel concept of marriage.
Therefore, same sex marriage is not the cause of marriage redefinition, it is the result.
Tags: Gay Marriage, History, Marriage
November 17th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
The definition and purpose of marriage is clearly not a constant but a social construct which changes with custom and time. But I have to take exception to the following quote at the link given:
“[T]he word ‘marriage’ is the constant. If you’re married to a woman and you and she go to Albania, one of you has a heart attack and the other wants to see the person in the emergency room and you say, ‘We are married’ they’re going to treat you as married in Albania under their laws and customs, no matter how different those laws and customs might be here in the United States.”
Yes, if your names are Tom and Mary. However, if your name is Gerald Fitzpatrick and you legally married Patrick Fitzgerald in Connecticut or the Netherlands or even South Africa, for God’s sake, I doubt the Albanians would treat you as married. They may not even treat you at all. Or they may treat you with a syringe of cyanide.
It’ll be a long slog before same-gender marriage is universally recognized since the concept is so relatively new and radical. But I say if Gerald fits Patrick and Patrick fits Gerald, they should have the right to marry and have that marriage recognized universally.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
The definition and purpose of marriage is clearly not a constant but a social construct which changes with custom and time. But I have to take exception to the following quote at the link given:
“[T]he word ‘marriage’ is the constant. If you’re married to a woman and you and she go to Albania, one of you has a heart attack and the other wants to see the person in the emergency room and you say, ‘We are married’ they’re going to treat you as married in Albania under their laws and customs, no matter how different those laws and customs might be here in the United States.”
Yes, if your names are Tom and Mary. However, if your name is Gerald Fitzpatrick and you legally married Patrick Fitzgerald in Connecticut or the Netherlands or even South Africa, for God’s sake, I doubt the Albanians would treat you as married. They may not even treat you at all. Or they may treat you with a syringe of cyanide.
It’ll be a long slog before same-gender marriage is universally recognized since the concept is so relatively new and radical. But I say if Gerald fits Patrick and Patrick fits Gerald, they should have the right to marry and have that marriage recognized universally.