It's Hard to Clean up Santorum

FACT: Trees are trees.
FACT: Cars are cars.
FACT: Trees are not cars.
FACT: Marriage is marriage.

It's tough to argue with such solid logic. I mean, trees are trees, and cars are indeed cars. Trees are not cars and cars are not trees. This is all definitely true.

But what it has to do with marriage, I fail to understand. After all, trees and cars are physical objects - one of them alive and one of them mechanical. Marriage, on the other hand, is at once an abstract concept, a religious sacrament, and a legal status. A particular marriage between two (or, in some cases, more) people could be any combination of those three things. Certainly two people in the United States can be legally married without involving religion, or vice-versa. A couple could also have lived together for so long that they consider themselves married, with or without a certificate saying it's so. In fact, my old roommate and I used to call each other "wifey" due to the extreme domesticity and emotional closeness in our relationship. It was a marriage, of sorts, even if it wasn't a tree or a car.

Beyond the metaphysical, however, there is a bigger reason why this argument of Santorum's doesn't work. This reason is obvious to anyone who has ever thought about anything ever, and therefore Old Frothy is unlikely to ever understand it. I don't even need to tell you what the reason is, because you almost certainly know: marriage has already been re-defined.


It's only in recent history that the majority of Western marriages have stopped being of the arranged variety. Marriages for love (or like or whatever) are now the norm. This is a major redefinition of marriage, one that I doubt even Santorum would argue against. That said, arranged marriages still happen, even in the United States. Orthodox Jews, for example, still exclusively use matchmakers to find a spouse. These marriages are different from the norm, but still entitle the married couple to the same benefits a "traditional" married couple would receive.

It also used to be common practice in the West for the families of the bride to pay a dowry to the families of the husband when an engagement took place. This was to ensure that the woman, who could not work outside the home, would be supported by her husband. This practice no longer takes place for several reasons, not the least of which being that women are seen as a little more useful these day than they had been in the past. Certainly the disappearance of the dowry is a redefinition of marriage with which Santorum would not take issue.

Even in the Bible, we can see marriage evolve. In the Old Testament, nearly all the marriages were polygamous. Men of status had a veritable harem of wives and lovers, with whom they had many children. In the New Testament, this practice disappears, leaving married women with a social status that was slightly more elevated than before. I highly doubt that this redefinition of marriage from polygamy to monogamy is something Santorum abhors.

FACT: Marriage, like trees that grow from saplings to giants and come in many different species, is a multi-faceted and ever-changing concept.
FACT: Marriage, like cars that have increasingly become smarter, faster, and more fuel efficient, has evolved with the times.
FACT: Santorum is the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.