I wonder what it says about me that I was going to blog this and totally forgot until my boyfriend, in a blog post about me, mentioned it. (I feel like this reflects the nature of our relationship. I do something, then forget about it, and Bryce has to remind me of things I’ve done. Last time I updated my resume I had to ask him what I’d accomplished in the past year.)

Anyhoo. I mentioned this in a blog post about gay marriage earlier, but marriage has been evolving since the dawn of time. I wouldn’t really care otherwise, but thanks to current debates erupting in the media and all over the internet, people are really into the history of marriage and the purpose it serves. (“It has always been X!” “No, it hasn’t! It’s about Y!”) Out of curiosity I started researching the topic, because I am a history dork. (And if you don’t believe me, I have a history award to prove it!)

And because this is me we’re talking about, I started taking notes and envisioning this beautiful infographic that would illustrate what I was learning. Several really late nights—powered by kettle corn and tea—and I had an extremely long infographic to show for my unnecessary summer research.

Click on it! Do it for glory!

I always have a sneaking suspicion that someone somewhere, every time I get into any sort of non-artistic issue, is sighing exasperatedly and going “Sharon, won’t you shut up about equality and whatever already and go play piano?” This person is probably a figment of my imagination.

But I feel obligated to explain that this wasn’t so much to prove any sort of point so much as it was to show the extremely fascinating history of Western marriage. Honestly, you could use the information here to argue your case whichever side of the gay marriage debate you want to take. You could also use it to prove a point on the issue of gender equality. If you really wanted to, you could probably use it to prove that we are controlled by aliens. I don’t know. Just remember, kids, knowledge is power and you should use it for good, not evil!