E-Mail This Article to a Friend CIVIL-RIGHTS MOVEMENT Gay marriage in history BY KRISTEN LOMBARDI

Since February 12, when San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom married a lesbian couple as an act of civil disobedience, thousands of same-sex couples have tied the knot nationwide. In the Bay State, the Supreme Judicial Court has ordered the issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples beginning May 17. We’re clearly living through a historic moment. But how is this moment different? Is this push for civil-marriage rights unique in our history? These questions will be answered during a historians’ panel discussion titled "The Peculiar Institution of Marriage," held at the Boston Public Library on March 27. Earlier this week, the Phoenix spoke with panelist Hendrik Hartog, a Princeton University history professor, about the gay-marriage movement and what it says about the history of marriage.

Q: Is gay marriage the most fast-paced movement for cultural change ever?

A: I’m a historian, so it’s hard to say "the most" of something. But there is a shift, and it strikes me as generational. It’s fascinating that a school like Baylor College [a Christian college in Texas] can be divided on this issue. That tells me that same-sex marriage is being normalized.

Q: Does the current controversy mirror past marriage controversies?

A: I see continuities between today and the struggle over free divorce in the late-19th century. There was a huge struggle when Indiana, South Dakota, and Nevada made it easy to get a divorce. Many questions that arise today — like what happens when Massachusetts legalizes same-sex marriage — came up then because you could be a legally divorced and remarried person in one state and a bigamist in another. There was immense passion, a sense of the country going to hell, a need to reassert a vision of marriage as a sanctified institution. Sound familiar?

Q: You signed a historians’ amicus curiae brief for the Goodridge case. What did it say?

A: The brief showed a continuing change in the understanding of marriage over two centuries. There isn’t a point at which you could say, "Marriage has always been this, and to change it would change the fundamental institution." Clearly, the brief was pro-same-sex-marriage.

Q: Did you think you’d see those marriages so quickly?

A: No. But I did think the way in which marriage has been redefined as a matter of individual right makes it unimaginable to distinguish gay people from straight people. Of course, people would say, "By definition, marriage is this." In a sense, they’re right. There is no logic of history that says anything has to happen. But today, too much passion is invested in the idea of marriage.

Q: Is that why this issue has dominated public consciousness?

A: To some extent. It’s also crafty political calculation. The Bush administration needs to secure its right-wing base, and this is a cheap way to do so. [Gay-rights] advocates are pushing a political claim when society seems open. This isn’t happening just because of an upswelling of mass opinion.

Q: What does history teach us about this topic?

A: Marriage was founded on inequality of the sexes. That inequality was undone in the 1960s and ’70s by a set of transformative things — women in the workplace, the separation of reproduction from marriage. Because this happened, marriage has become attractive for same-sex couples in a way it might not have been. It’s also become harder to draw categorical distinctions that marriage is one man and one woman.

History professors Hendrik Hartog, Peggy Pascoe, and Estelle Freedman will discuss gay marriage at a special session of the 2004 Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting on March 27, in the Rabb Auditorium of the Boston Public Library. The session is free and begins at 11:15 a.m.