Same-sex marriage is making the headlines, with Stephen Fry’s wedding and the US supreme court soon to decide on its legality. It seems like a quintessentially 21st-century issue. In fact such formal unions have a long and fascinating history
What do you think of Stephen Fry getting married to Elliott Spencer? Did you see the pictures of Elton John and David Furnish’s wedding? Can you remember the name of Mary Cheney’s bride, or Jodie Foster’s? Just a few years ago, such questions would have been nonsensical. For same sex marriage seems a quintessentially 21st‑century phenomenon. As the US supreme court justice Samuel Alito exclaimed in 2013, before voting against it, it was surely “newer than cellphones or the internet”. He has a point. Even in the western world, most people have still never met a married homosexual couple.
Its opponents decry the recent spread of gay marriage as political correctness gone mad. Its supporters, on the other hand, celebrate it as a sign of progress. Same-sex marriage was a very recent but welcome innovation, the American Historical Association has advised the supreme court. Equal marriage is unprecedented, the UK government agrees, but its introduction will make “our society fairer and more inclusive”. (Or, as Spencer’s elderly former neighbour put it when doorstepped by the Daily Mail: “Life is different now, you have to get with the times.”)
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Its opponents decry the recent spread of gay marriage as political correctness gone mad. Its supporters, on the other hand, celebrate it as a sign of progress. Same-sex marriage was a very recent but welcome innovation, the American Historical Association has advised the supreme court. Equal marriage is unprecedented, the UK government agrees, but its introduction will make “our society fairer and more inclusive”. (Or, as Spencer’s elderly former neighbour put it when doorstepped by the Daily Mail: “Life is different now, you have to get with the times.”)
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