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The Provisional Marriage Contract

You know how us social conservatives have been saying that gay marriage is going to complete the destructive social trend of thinking of marriages as nothing more than a contractual arrangement, further weakening the bonds of an institution beleaguered by the sexual revolution and the divorce revolution? Well, apparently we are bigots for saying that […]

You know how us social conservatives have been saying that gay marriage is going to complete the destructive social trend of thinking of marriages as nothing more than a contractual arrangement, further weakening the bonds of an institution beleaguered by the sexual revolution and the divorce revolution? Well, apparently we are bigots for saying that — unless, of course, that very thing is deemed a sign of progress. From a piece in (where else?) The New York Times:

Dr. Schwartz said that gay marriage had become a tipping point to rethink marriage because it simply opened questions most people have been terrified to broach: Is there any other way to do this? Will doing so change the world?

Maybe, she said, for the better. As to my suggestion of a 20-year contract, she countered that people could do contracts of any number of years, adding: “It’s back to the past, which used to involve dowry, bride price, economic arrangement. Nobody pretended this was not an economic arrangement.” The idea of contracts “isn’t new.”

But, she said, “it’s newly arrived at after a period of extreme romanticism.”

This is confusing!  You know how to keep it, er, straight in your head? Ask yourself? “Which argument makes gay marriage an unambiguously great thing?” That will be the morally and politically correct argument to make. Don’t notice if what’s bigoted and retrograde today becomes celebrated for its progressive qualities tomorrow. It’s not about right and wrong, truth and falsity; it’s all about whatever serves the narrative.

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