Sunday, March 31, 2013

Institutions Evolve!

I was watching ABC This Week (see the transcript for today's program here).  I liked what Matthew Dowd said in response to Republican Congressman Peter King's statement that "we have to look at the consequences of changing a 2,000 year institution", namely, marriage.  Dowd said:

"But the argument to me that people say this is an institution that's been a traditional institution for 2,000 or 3,000 years, ignores the fact that the institution that was -- if you really want to go to a traditional marriage, it wasn't monogamous, races couldn't marry, women [were] property and they couldn't give consent. That was the traditional view of marriage for 2,000 years.  [M]arriage has always evolved over the course of time and this is just another evolution."