Stephen Hough shows how the meaning of marriage has evolved even in the Catholic Church:
The Church altered its teaching from the mid-20th century onwards away from the traditional 'procreation first, relationship second' to an equal billing for the two. Pope John Paul II was a key thinker in this shift of official opinion when he was still a mere priest teaching in Poland – a hundred years ago he would have been considered a heretic for his views. But people now, at least in the West, primarily choose their partners based on love, companionship and compatibility.
Alex Massie expands on those changes:
Indeed in many respects gay marriage has more in common with heterosexual marriage now than contemporary heterosexual marriages do with nineteenth century heterosexual marriages. Changing societal norms have seen to that. Women are no longer viewed as property; they have agency themselves. This, in many ways, is just as great a change in the definition and practice of marriage as anything proposed by campaigners for gay marriage. Indeed, one could argue that given the percentage of the population affected by these changes, the twentieth century's evolving understanding of hetereosexual marriage marked a much greater change than anything proposed now.
(Image: "(Ipswich)" from Eric Standley's series Either/ Or Decreed of cut paper sculptures)
The Dish 