the random oracle

With all this hogwash about traditional marriage and other cynical interpretations of history, let’s be clear what this “traditional marriage” is.  Depending on whose traditions you’re looking at, marriage in the past could have meant ownership of the wife (i.e. most human societies up until modern times), a politically or financially motivated transaction (again, most human societies up until and including the modern age), polygamy (I’m looking at you, Utah), intra-racial marriage only (I’m looking at you, Virginia), or “until death or distance do us part” (I’m looking at you, Confederacy).

Calling marriage the most sacred and cherished of our social institutions is ok, but it needs to be qualified with all of the exceptions I mentioned above, as well as others.  Just because some aspect of marriage is traditional doesn’t make it right; certainly two men or two women marrying is not nearly as abominable as saying that one wife is worth two cows.

Whatever you think traditional marriage is, let’s say what marriage today definitely is not:

• It’s not about procreation because plenty of straight couples get married and choose not to have children, or choose to adopt children rather than give birth to children.
• It’s not about religion because we all have different gods (or none at all) and yet many people end up marrying someone of a different faith.
• It’s not about eternity because half of all marriages end in divorce.
• It’s not about tradition because many of the marriages performed today would have been illegal 50 years ago (inter-racial, inter-faith, etc.), and many of the marriages that would have happened 100 years go would not happen today (arranged marriages, etc.).
• It’s not (just) about legal rights, because civil unions are not and never will be equal to marriage.