And let me gingerly say: We might even come to an honest rethinking of the Victorian model of one couple, who meet and marry in adolescence and stay together forever. The truth is that America has been practicing serial monogamy for quite some time now, while crushing ourselves with shame for it. Maybe a new look at marriage lets us be honest about heterosexual unions, as well as same-sex unions. Perhaps we could even say honestly that it’s the many losses to the “traditional” institution of marriage that are fueling the strong feelings of some against homosexual unions.
In our lifetime, traditional marriage has been buffeted by the advent of birth control, cohabitation as a norm, women working outside the home, dual-income families and the melding of men’s and women’s roles, increasing rates of divorce, single parenting and weekend parenting.
Action movie after action movie shows the man whose family is threatened or killed, releasing his rage through exacting revenge on those who took his family from him. When do we have the public conversation in which we recognize this country’s rage and grief over the losses to traditional marriage, and stop directing it at homosexuals?
