That ' s exactly why I said you must have misread something . Where did I say that M and F marriages were not normal ? The myth of traditional marriage stems from the idea promoted by conservatives that the very narrow window of history where socalled traditional marriage dominated during the 1950 s is how marriage has always been . Any cursory reading of history shows this is a lie . This is one of Coontz ' s major ideas in the book and has no real opposition . The interesting part , is that Coontz argues that every generation tries to appeal to nostalgia like this , because the institution of marriage inevitably changes . She argues that same sex marriage was a natural result of this change and progression . And we do see this progression quite clearly throughout history . From human rights , to the abolition of slavery , to labor rights to the rights of children , to women ' s rights and even animal rights . And with the rise in technology , we see entirely new areas of research focused solely on the potential rights of machines in the event that they become sentient . So the idea that same sex marriage also went through this progression follows the same patterns we see elsewhere .