ABSTRACT

Indeed, evolutionary language seems tightly bound to the “gay marriage” agenda. “There is an evolution of society,” cooed Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien in 2003 when announcing a new national policy opening marriage to homosexual couples.1 Jacqueline Murray, columnist for the Toronto Globe and Mail, agrees that evolution is at work here: “Extending marriage to people of the same sex may be the final frontier and the logical conclusion of this evolution.”2 Writing in the Boston Globe, Virginia Postrel argues that social institutions such as marriage are themselves “the result of an evolutionary process”; gay marriage, as such, represents another promising “experiment in living” contributing to forward evolution.3 Columnist Ellen Goodman concludes that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling that homosexuals have a right to marriage “may be as evolutionary as it is historic,” adding: “The evolution of gay rights and marriage laws now merge into the definition of marriage written by the Massachusetts court.”4