Why Marriage Matters
America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry
Chapter One
What Is Marriage?
Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human
being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality,
companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family.
Massachusetts Supreme
Judicial Court Goodridge v. Department of Public Health (2003)
How the world can change,
It can change like that,
Due to one little word:
"Married."
John Kander and Fred Ebb,
"Married," Cabaret (1966)
Depending on which linguistic expert you ask, there are anywhere from two
thousand to seven thousand different languages spoken in the world today.
That's a huge number to put your mind around - even for someone who lives in
Manhattan, where seemingly hundreds of those languages can be heard on the
subway on any given day. Still, I'm willing to bet that each of these languages
has something in common with the others: a word that means marriage.
No matter what language people speak - from Arabic to Yiddish, from Chinook to
Ch ... read full excerpt from: Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry ebook
