In the debate over who can marry, both sides imbue the institution of marriage with an importance it neither deserves nor possesses.
Back in 1983, I sold my own wedding. My mother, a lifelong New Yorker, refused to make a trip to California, so in exchange for moving the location of my wedding to Long Island, I received from her a tidy cash payment.
At the time, I found nothing strange about selling my wedding because I was deeply cynical about marriage as an institution. As a child of the ’60s counter-culture, I equated marriage with the Vietnam War — some sham ceremonial act, like saving the world from communist hordes, that actually had nothing to do with mental health, romance or commitment, but was rather one more way that mass society sought to colonize our minds.
I am not kidding, and, believe me, I wasn’t alone.
Read all of: Is Marriage Rational? by G. Pascal Zachary, AlterNet. Posted August 22, 2006.