>
>Marriage is no longer bound to antiquated gender roles. And
>when those gender roles are removed, the case for marriage
>discrimination breaks down.
>
>“ wouldn’t be asking for this relief if
>the law of marriage was what it was a millennium ago. I mean,
>it wasn’t possible. Same-sex unions would not have opted
>into the pattern of marriage, which was a relationship, a
>dominant and a subordinate relationship. Yes, it was marriage
>between a man and a woman, but the man decided where the
>couple would be domiciled; it was her obligation to follow
>him.
>
>There was a change in the institution of marriage to make it
>egalitarian when it wasn’t egalitarian. And same-sex unions
>wouldn’t — wouldn’t fit into what marriage was once.”
>
>Marriage today is not what it was under the common law
>tradition, under the civil law tradition. Marriage was a
>relationship of a dominant male to a subordinate female. That
>ended as a result of this court’s decision in 1982 when
>Louisiana’s Head and Master Rule was struck down. Would that
>be a choice that state should be allowed to have? To
>cling to marriage the way it once was?
>
>*Head and Master laws were a set of property laws in the U.S.
>that gave the husband the final authority in all household
>decisions on the basis that the husband’s role was to
>provide for the family and the wife’s was to keep house,
>rear children, and provide sex.*
>
>
>Bursch also tried to assert that gay marriage would be
>detrimental to the institution of marriage in general. Not so,
>Ginsburg responded.
>
>"All of the incentives, all of the benefits that marriage
>affords would still be available. So you’re not taking away
>anything from heterosexual couples. They would have the very
>same incentive to marry, all the benefits that come with
>marriage that they do now."
>
>"The change in people’s attitudes on that issue has been
>enormous," Ginsburg continued. "In recent years, people have
>said, ‘This is the way I am.’ And others looked around,
>and we discovered it’s our next-door neighbor — we’re
>very fond of them. Or it’s our child’s best friend, or
>even our child. I think that as more and more people came out
>and said that ‘this is who I am,’ the rest of us
>recognized that they are one of us."
>
>
>
>


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson


"One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're