14 Apr 2004 Shelby Steele: Marriage is More Than Love and Fulfillment

Posted at 06:18h in Blog by

Shelby Steele has a piece in The New Republic Online on gay marriage. It is part of a larger public conversation with Andrew Sullivan and is worth reading. Two sentences in particular:

“Marriage brings ‘stability’ to love by humbling it, by making it often less important than the responsibilities to family and community. When love and fulfillment are of first importance, marriage weakens as an institution, as the high divorce rates of recent decades illustrate.”

A lot of people, including (unfortunately) married people, don’t get this. It is an important point that in itself transcends the gay marriage debate.



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