The talk about gay marriage recently has been important because gay rights are the next big barrier for civil equality. But even serious issues can be fun. GraphJam had an interesting analysis of the consequences of gay marriage earlier this week, and now a database engineer has chimed in with his views both on gay marriage and how to properly represent it in databases. It requires some basic knowledge of databases but even if you don’t even know what a database is, I think you’ll get the gist. He begins with some fairly simple concepts, which only support simple heterosexual marriage, and through 14 different revisions of the database schema — dealing with issues ranging from homosexuality, to transgendered people, to polygamy — develops a pretty out there format for storing a barely recognizable form of marriage. When introducing his final revision here’s what he has to say:

The legal ramifications of what I’m about to describe are unguessable. I have no idea what rights a civil union like the ones which would be possible below would have, nor do I have any idea what kind of transhuman universe would require so complex a system. This is the marriage database schema to take us up to the thirty-first century, people.

I’m all for it. Marriage as an emotional commitment is a fairly novel concept anyways, so changing it to be even more accepting is a good thing. And the more you think about the arbitrary limitations we’ve placed on marriage and other cultural ideals by virtue of nothing more that historical inertia, the more you’ll be willing to understand, accept, and support it.