Opponents of same-sex marriage worry that allowing two men or two women to wed would radically transform a time-honored institution. But they're way too late on that front. Marriage has already been radically transformed - in a way that makes gay marriage not only inevitable, as Vice President Biden described it in an interview late last year, but also quite logical.
We are near the end of a two-stage revolution in the social understanding and legal definition of marriage. This revolution has overturned the most traditional functions of the institution: to reinforce differences in wealth and power and to establish distinct and unequal roles for men and women under the law.
For millennia, marriage was about property and power rather than love. Parents arranged their children's unions to expand the family labor force, gain well-connected in-laws and seal business deals. Sometimes, to consolidate inheritances, parents prevented their younger children from marrying at all. For many people, marriage was an unavoidable duty. For others, it was a privilege, not a right. Often, servants, slaves and paupers were forbidden to wed.
Read more -
2 comments:
Thanks for highlighting this article which I've read all the way through.
Some of what it says agrees with the history of marriage which I understand from the UK perspective (although I find the long middle section of her thesis rather rambling and woolly) and since her conclusion echoes her starting assumption it works!
WHen I began working in gay rights in the UK there were certainly quite a few lesbians and other politically radical women working with us who claimed that women's liberation was all part and parcel of gay liberation.
To quite some extent this seems to have been true (and being a liberal and a Liberal I see the race and creed tolerances as all being part of the same fight anyway).
Micky, you are right, it is a bit long and wooly, but interesting reading on the whole.
I've always seen the fight for equality is just that - equality for all.
Yes, I may focus my fight mainly on equality for my gay brothers and sisters, but really I want equality for all.
Thanks for visiting and reading and even more so for commenting.
Post a Comment