Image by Aaron G on the thoroughly enjoyable GraphJam.com.

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, echoing something I was muttering to myself in the car this morning, nails why marriage equality is now a good idea even if, in the past, the whole idea might have seemed as incomprehensible as the idea that commoners and the aristocracy went to the same heaven. (Oh, wait!)

There are many parts of Judge Walker’s decision overturning Prop 8 that are delicious reading, but the most interesting part was how Walker repeatedly stressed that marriage had already changed—-that strict gender roles that justified restricted marriage in the past have already gone away.  We all know what he’s talking about: men don’t legally own their wives anymore, no-fault divorce degenders divorce legally, women are allowed to work and men to care for children, the legal restrictions on women’s rights in marriage have mostly fallen away.  Spouses aren’t legally distinct anymore, so there’s no reason to say they have to be different genders. 

She said it here.

Wives were once a man’s property in exactly the same way (in fact in exactly the same Biblical Commandment) as a man’s house or his servants or his cattle. And so when ‘wingers speak in outraged tones that once gay marriage was allowed the marriage between men and dogs might be next they don’t see it as that big a leap.

Since marriage is no longer a purchase, and brides no longer become the property of the groom “to have and to hold,” after the father “gives her away,” the tradition underlying “traditional marriage” is already dead. Instead marriage is now a partnership between equals rather than an acquisition of property or livestock. And being a partnership between equals the sex of those partners is no longer relevant.

Works for me!

(Graphjam image via David Kurtz and Breakup Girl.)