I bring this up in order to shed some light on the pro- and anti- gay marriage rhetoric.<\/p>\n
On the one hand, those against gay marriage need to define “marriage” in a way that excludes same-sex couples.\u00a0 One way to do this is to refer to a “traditional” marriage (image found here<\/a>).<\/p>\n But there is no such thing as a “traditional” marriage, just a long history of evolving forms of marriage.\u00a0 For example, few anti-gay marriage types would actually be in favor of returning marriage to one in which women were property<\/a> that can’t contract, vote, testify in court, own anything, and have no rights to their own bodies or custody of their children\u00a0(though the idea that women are property is still out there today<\/a>).\u00a0\u00a0Because there is no such thing as a “traditional” marriage (that is, no reason to privilege one historical form over another),\u00a0when someone speaks of “traditional” marriage, they actually just mean “the kind of marriage that I like that I am pretending existed throughout all time before this current threat right now.”<\/p>\n On the other hand, to make an argument in favor of gay marriage rights, the movement must either (1) change the collective agreement as to what marriage is (the social construction<\/a> of marriage) or (2) convince the collective that gay marriage already is what we believe marriage to be.<\/p>\n This ad in favor of gay marriage does the latter. Mobilizing the social construction of marriage as about love, the commercial then defines same-sex relationships as about love. If you accept both premises, then, presto, you are pro-gay marriage.\u00a0 That is exactly what this commercial is trying to do:<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/10\/capture3.jpg\")
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