The establishment of same-sex marriage is not a bolt from the blue, but the logical outworking of a series of related developments in Americaâ??s practice and understanding of marriage. Same-sex marriage was unthinkable just a few decades ago. What made it thinkable wasnâ??t a concerted campaign on the part of gay rights activists to undermine marriage, but the changing material, economic, social, ideological, and moral conditions of the wider society and the way that our practice of marriage was both altered by and advanced this broader social mutation. The neutralizing of sex in marriage is like the sudden collapse of a wall that has long been undermined.
The character of marriage has changed under many influences. Medical, technological, and economic influences have been among the most powerful of these. Contraceptive medication and other contraceptive devices, coupled with greater access to abortion, have facilitated the growing detachment of sex from procreation. It has normalized a situation where society regards the default form of sex as â??safeâ??â??sterile and, ideally, STD-free. Sex that is open to the possibility of procreation is a break from the default form of sex, either a failure of responsibility or a determined act of choice. It is no longer regarded as just natural.
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