Disarmed

An essay by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese on marriage. She has two good insights:

a) That aberrations like gay marriage are in reality perfectly consistent with the dominant understanding of marriage, which is why they are almost unstoppable.

b) That the family is really an obstacle to power and that the goal here is "disaggregating all of the remaining social institutions that provide the foundations for any collective resistance against political and economic domination."

Comments

[Freder1ck]

Marx: Theses on Feuerbach #4

[Anonymous]

Gay marriage strengthens marriage as an institution because it (1) enlarges the pool of those eligible to marry; (2) provides a legitimate way of life for homosexuals who might otherwise have 'tried' a heterosexual marriage for the social benefits; and (3) has no effect on heterosexual marriages that anyone can point to. If the Church doesn't want to perform gay marriages (or go back to performing adelphopoiia), that's their right. But how is this different than the difference between Catholic and civil law on divorce and remarriage?

And why not polygamy, since it is biblically sanctioned, after all -- at least in the Old Testament? If not for Christians, at least for Jews and Muslims?