Clio and I must apologise for having neglected this site for so long. Musette has been preoccupied by earthly matters – those strange issues that take up the time and energy of mortals – and so she has felt unequal to carrying on the grand task which Clio assigned to her, that of reviewing new and old history books as they capture our interest. But neither of us want to give up on this blog, or the concept, entirely, and so we think what we’ll do is a little of both: the old, freestyle blogging on whatever issues strike our fancy, and the occasional, more formal piece dealing with works of history. Perhaps some of our former readers will even prefer this?
Anyway, here is a comment recently posted by Musette, going under her mortal initials (or some of them) at the Taki website. Takimaghas a rather vulgar tone and many of its writers express views that are antithetical to ours, but it appears to allow its writers to write whatever they think, to judge by the broad spectrum of political attitudes they espouse. (No, not all of its writers are “right wing”, if you follow them closely.) Here is the comment:
Really, [your] question about infertile couples and their right to marriage is a silly one, and I don’t understand why it has so exercised the minds of both opponents and supporters of gay marriage. The purpose of marriage is the protection of children, not merely their procreation, which could indeed take place without marriage. The protection of children – which means that one of its goals has always been the provision of a stable environment for them, which would include not allowing men to divorce their wives as soon as they reached menopause. (You may have noticed that this was among the first consequences of loosening the divorce laws in the Western world.)Other, less permanent versions of marriage have existed, historically, but they tended to be even harder on women, and far less stable for the children involved.
