The most important job of all is “mother”, because she is our first and most essential teacher, and without constant and long instruction humans cannot survive to adulthood. Father and mother both create the child, but it is the mother who nurtures it. The father becomes her support system, he works for her, not the other way round, but he gets the wealth and power because he is physically stronger.

It is fitting that we all serve a long apprenticeship, that we are subservient, passive, at home, school, battle, work. It takes a long time to teach a human what he needs to know. Subservience came with the division of labor. Men were expendable, they could afford to take losses in battle or the hunt. Females could gather food as easily as any male; contrary to popular belief, we are NOT descended from mighty hunters of powerful and dangerous beasts. Through most of our evolution we were gatherers and scavengers: nuts, roots, grubs and berries. The males are bigger and stronger because they must slow down the leopard while the females and young escape. They are expendable.

And the male/female power relationship that has evolved since we civilized ourselves is now under threat. What happens when females become breadwinners, and males stay home to manage the household? We are creating a society where the most important and well paying industrial tasks can be performed as easily by women as by men, and where even the menial work is just as easily performed by either sex. What happens to “traditional family values” when the workplace does not elevate the prestige of one gender over another?

Women are becoming more educated than men, and sheer physical strength is becoming less important on the job, and women can do a lot of menial work while men are often unemployed. A society where “breadwinner” becomes detached from “man” is going to see some changes.

You’re going to see a lot of pissed off old guys.

Oh, our advice is heard, our wishes taken under consideration, and ultimately there is a “subservient passive role”. It’s understood and accepted by all.

However, my impression is that by wife and husband, these people were defining duties rather than subservience.

Now it is true, in every close and loving relationship, either family or friendship, there is a dominant partner in those areas where their authority overlaps. Ultimate authority rests with one or the other, especially if circumstances force financial responsibility on one of them. But even that is not absolute, or insisted on in every situation, or even at all times in life. The exercising of that authority should be avoided by both partners, and reserved only for irreconcilable differences in circumstances where compromise or negotiation is not possible. It is not to be taken lightly. For the dominant partner, it is an awesome responsibility, one not to be abused.

As Bob Dylan put it, “I want to be your lover, baby, I don’t want to be your boss.”

“Excuse me, I have to be a good wife and get my husband’s lunch ready” is what one told me. Another one, a friend really, a nurse I met at the hospice, invited me to their house and he showed off his husband’s home office, husband’s walk-in closet and so on. It seemed strange to me that there seemed to be a drive toward traditional roles, but there it was.

It also makes sense that some would opt to both be husbands or both be wives, again respecting traditional roles. Looks to me as if people are choosing whatever they are comfortable with.

Of course, the tribal elders didn’t just gather in Council and declare “Lets invent marriage!”. It evolved, in a very Darwinian fashion; those cultures that didn’t have some sort of culturally enforced marriage ceremony simply were unstable and tended to fall apart. Reproductive and economic management made it essential, and cultures evolve by natural selection just as life-forms do.

Of course, all sorts of religious and moralistic mumbo-jumbo had to be devised to do this, since our biological evolution had already programmed us to make every effort to keep every female in sight pregnant. But this very trait provided the drive to keep the marriage institution going: from the point of view of the individual, if you didn’t get in the club, you wouldn’t get laid.

We are essentially monogamous by nature, even in cultures where polygamy is allowed it is uncommon, usually reserved as a privilege of the rich. So the marriage contract could be coupled with our biological nature. Our usual preference to have a long-time mate and companion fit in quite well with the cultural arrangements needed to enforce it. This is not to say “primitive” people don’t genuinely love their mates and children, evolution programmed us that way as well. Our ancestors were probably no different than we are in that respect. But it sure helps when our social, biological and cultural natures are in synch.

We all know our modern notion of “romantic” sexual love is a relatively recent development. No, people have been falling in love since cave man days, but it didn’t really exist as a prerequisite for marriage until very recently. Marriages are TRADITIONALLY family affairs, arranged by parents for their children for purely economic and social reasons. We’ve substituted all sorts of dodges to obscure this (we tend to select mates from our own race, social and economic class, etc) but the ability to marry across social and economic lines (and now, even gender barriers!) is something new.

This is what drives both same-sex marriage as well as the opposition to it. Regardless of its Paleolithic origins, marriage now has practical benefits and liabilities which affect us today. There are economic benefits to being married even when kids (or even sex!) is not an issue. People simply fail to understand how much their social behavior is driven by ancient cultural forms, how truly arbitrary and artificial all these rules are, and how in so many cases they are simply irrelevant today. And it works both ways. People fear sudden changes or what they perceive as sudden restrictions. We have technical means of controlling our reproduction now, abortion and contraceptives, which to a great extent are replacing the cultural institutions that used to do this. We also have societal means (laws and courts) of managing property and inheritance as well. Even barren or same-sex couples can adopt children and the State feels it has an obligation to intervene to ensure their welfare. Whether this is good or evil, or even practical, in the long term for the human species is debatable. But morality and religion has nothing to do with it.

I’m sure god doesn’t give a shit who you marry, and the godly have no business deciding who you should or shouldn’t marry, either.