Harvard Professor Nancy Cott last week on the social meaning of marriage, as paraphrased by Courage Campaign Institute Chair Rick Jacobs while liveblogging Perry vs Schwarzenegger, aka the Prop 8 Trial:
The ability to marry, to say I do, is a civil right. It demonstrates liberty. This can be seen in American history when slaves could not legally marry. As unfreed persons, they could not consent. They lacked that very basic liberty of person to say I do which meant they were taking on the state’s obligates and vice versa. A slave could not take on that set of obligations because they were not free.
…
People remain unaware that in marrying, one is exercising the right of personal freedom. They don’t tend to equate the civil rights aspects to it. It’s only those who cannot marry at all who are aware of the extent to which marriage is an expression of basic civil rights.
This has been bouncing around in my head, blowing my mind grapes, since I first read it yesterday. I’ve never seen the argument for marriage as a civil right made exactly this way.
(also tumbld)
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