Fallenmonk points to a very good post by Hecate on marriage. Having just noted the celebration of Mother’s Day — and getting ready for Father’s Day in a month — it’s worth a moment to think about it.

I’ve written before and a lot about how the idea of marriage being between a man and a woman is fine if you’re a man or a woman and you find someone of the opposite sex you want to spend the rest of your life with. But the idea that that is the “traditional” definition of marriage is fiction, pure and simple. (For fun, watch Tony Perkins, the president of the irony-challenged American Family Association, get his head handed to him by Barney Frank on Hardball. It’s worth enduring Chris Matthews to watch it.) The idea of “one man, one woman, one marriage” is, in the scheme of things, a very new development in civilization, and has yet to have an impact on a number of cultures, including those of some of our friends, such as Saudi Arabia.

I don’t have a problem with people believing in the idea of cross-gender marriage; if it works for them and they’re not harming themselves or others, go for it. I simply wish that those who wish to defend it so vehemently would offer the same respect for those who want the same rights and responsibilities but with someone of the same gender. And I really wish that they would stop re-writing history to justify their views in order to impose them on others.