Two Discussions Of Marriage

With thanks to my colleague Adam, here are two really fantastic and different perspectives on sexuality, marriage, logic and history.

First, a Catholic historian's overview of the history of marriage and the truly grey and undefined reality of that "history."

A History of Marriage

Here are a few excerpts:

Maybe the most frustrating thing I have heard in the recent debate is this claim that has become a mantra: that we are in the processing of changing some allegedly unchanging 3,000-year-old institution called "marriage." Of course, the decision to grant marriage licenses would be a "change" in marriage practice, but "marriage," whatever that is, is always in the process of being changed. To pretend that its alteration is somehow a rupture in what is otherwise a three-thousand year continuity is just silly.
...
Today's concept of marriage, in which a conservative figure of a 40% divorce rate is part of the package, would have been unthinkable a century ago. On the other hand, statistics seem to show that the average longevity of today's marriage is identical to those a century ago. The difference is that a century ago people (mostly women) died, i.e., often died from childbirth, too many pregnancies, or dangerous deliveries. Thus, whereas the people of the mid-19th century could not have imagined 21st-c. marriage/divorce rates, likewise, we cannot really imagine the marriage/death rates of the mid- 19th century. Antibiotics have fundamentally altered our expectations of reality.
...
In fact, it seems more correct to say that the idea of a "civil marriage" between anyone whomsoever was the genuine modern innovation in marriage practice, and that its transformation from a Christian sacrament (or at least a church ceremony, since many Protestants recognize only Baptism and Eucharist as "sacraments") to a civil union has been incomplete, messy, and perhaps incoherent. (Cf. all the talk about the "sanctity of marriage" in the civic sphere.) American practice blurs these boundaries between Church and State: a Catholic priest simultaneously serve as the State's "marriage" authority. Generally speaking, European practice separates these functions and maintains clearer boundaries between Church and State. - Stephen Schloesser, S.J. - Assistant Professor of History - Boston College

And from a completely different perspective, the logic around understanding marriage as a category to be tracked by a system.

Gay Marriage: The database engineering perspective

Here's an excerpt from that:

`humans`
- `id`
- `forename`
- `surname`
- `birthdate`
- `sex` ("male" or "female")

`marriages`
- `id`
- `husband_id` (foreign key references a male in column `humans`.`id`)
- `wife_id` (foreign key references a female in column `humans`.`id`)
- `marriage_date`
- `divorce_date` (NULL if marriage not ended)

Finally we are reaching something which is non-stupid and non-sexist enough that it might actually exist somewhere in reality. This schema is reasonably sensible assuming you live in a fairly God-fearing administrative district. There is actually a slight disadvantage from the previous schema in that to enforce a one-man-one-woman marriage, you would have to have some application logic to ensure that each `husband_id` doesn't point to a female and that each `wife_id` doesn't point to a male.

(And, I guess, you would also need to ensure that no married male changes to female, and that no married female changes to male. Or, if you were feeling nasty, that nobody ever changes sex at all. More on this later.)

Up until this point, implementing gay marriage in your schema has been remarkably difficult. But what we now have is different. To allow men and women to marry men and women respectively, all you actually have to do is remove those application-layer checks. For the sake of politeness you would most likely rename the database columns, too.

Just a couple of things I'm reading on the side this morning.