SUNRISE, SUNSET: I recently had reason to look at the archives of MarriageDebate, and it made me think that you all might be interested to see how our site has changed over the years. On the one hand, we’re not a great example, because MD started as an attempt to host the best possible debates about gay marriage–when I was brought on board, my mandate was to make the site 50/50 pro- and con- on that, while keeping it fascinating and broadly-focused.

As years went by it became more of a clearinghouse for marriage- and sex- and gender-related stories and op-eds and blog posts and whatnot. That was great insofar as gay marriage is in no way the only (or, I would argue, the most important) marriage debate of our time. So we were able to broaden our focus. On the other hand, the debate became more static (I think in part because one’s stance on gay marriage became an identity issue, like gun ownership [in the US], rather than a philosophical issue on which people from lots of different identity-categories could take divergent views without feeling too much like traitors) and I wish we could have continued drawing out the best respondents from both sides.

Any old how. Our archives are confuzzled right now, but here I go:

Our second week of operation. (The first week only has two posts.) A lot of stuff immediately prior to the gay-marriage court decision in MA; a lot of exchange between Maggie Gallagher and various people, esp inc Jonathan Rauch and Norah Vincent.

Week of 2/8/04: Goodridge (MA gay marriage), cloning, competing understandings of “liberation”; Federal Marriage Amendment still relevant at this time, thus all the familiar “process” arguments appear as fed-vs-state rather than judicial-vs-legis/vote.

Week of 2/6/05: culture, 14th amdmt, bisexuality (at Yale!); right vs. norm, who is kin?, more Maggie, lots of religion.

Week of 2/5/06: Brokeback Mountain (inc Maggie’s take), we have comments but I don’t know why, penguin lust (and stranger things!).

Week of 2/11/07: A short and random selection of links on family diversity, de-facto parenting, cousin marriage in Islam (Stanley Kurtz), and a bit more. Slim pickings really, and if I had more patience I’d find a more-representative week.

Week of 2/10/08: Canada!; divorce; polygamy; schools w/r/t gay marriage; fathers; contemporary problems with… how to put this?… men.

Week of 2/8/09: sex differences, sex scandals, sex vs. food, sex when you’re a chick, sex that makes lots of babies, sex on campus, Prop 8, the “Octomom.” And sex.

I also think this NYT piece and this post, about competing compromises, look very strange at the moment. You can get lots more about these compromises if you go here and here and scroll about a bit. It’s really worth it.

Current front page: The college gender gap (correlating with the “mancession,” as much as I hate that term); divorce, abstinence, paternity leave. And I’ll be posting more links soon.

If I might be permitted a philosophical conclusion, I’d say that you can’t have a marriage debate without also having a sex debate and a sex-difference debate. You have to talk about sex, and about men and/versus/plus women.

I’d be interested in any other observations you all have about the changes at md.com and/or in the broader marriage debate over the years….