what even is the sanctity of marriage anyhow?

There's a term that I hear thrown around a lot: sanctity. The sanctity of marriage. The sanctity of life. Sanctity basically means sacred and holy. If something possesses sanctity it is of the utmost importance. Now, the sanctity of life totally makes sense to me. Each and every life is sacred and important, and that value should be at the core of our society. The "sanctity of marriage" term started to be thrown around a lot especially when people started freaking out about gay marriage. It was outside the traditional definition and therefore threatened the sanctity of the institution. Now, regardless of your own beliefs on the matter, let's really look at the "sanctity" of the marriage deal, because I personally think it doesn't really exist. Actually, I think its something that can exist ideally, but for the most part hasn't shown up that much.

What we think of as marriage is really what marriage has been in the last 100 or 150 years. I used to think it would be cool to have lived in a different time, but I am seriously glad that I live in the 21st century. As a woman, living in any other time would kind of really suck. When I think about the life I have, getting to have my own individuality, pursuing education, getting to make decisions about my relationships and where I live and what I do for a career...ya that didn't use to exist for us of the female persuasion. And marriage, for the vast, vast majority of history, was not the union of two equals who decide to live their lives together. Legally and socially, women were not equals. They were not able to make decisions about themselves or their families. Throughout their whole lives they would have been defined by two things: either someone's daughter, or someone's wife. Men took charge over their families and women and children were legally chattels. If you don't know, chattel is the legal term for personal possessions, or property other than real estate. A wife was a personal possession of her husband. That was marriage. That was a "proper"  marriage. 

Where's the sanctity? I see no sacredness in being a chattel.  And if that was sanctity, we must have destroyed it when women became legal persons in Canada in 1929 and offset the whole balance of the operation. We have completely redefined marriage as a culture. If you think that there is continuity of what marriage has been throughout all these years of people on earth, you are disillusioned. It isn't a glorious institution that has stood the test of time. Just because we call it the same word doesn't mean we are truly referring to the same thing.

How can an operation that was completely controlled by one sex, that gave dominion over the other in a legally binding relationship, give us the idea that it has this ancient sanctity? 

Personally, I think that in the last 100ish years we've had it the most right. I think we finally have the idea of what a marriage should be, and that the marriages people enter into now are the most meaningful. Because they don't have to, but they choose to. There might be a sanctity of two people choosing to love each other because they really want to. But the historical reality of marriage, the institution that was practiced for thousands of years, I believe is a display of  corrupted sanctity.

So let's not pretend we truly understand what holiness is, because obviously we're still figuring it out.